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If Ilya unknown-to-anyone thinks people prefer him to Altman, he has another thing coming. I'm not an Altman fanboy, but anyone can see Altman is a rockstar an
by andrewstuart 3y ago
If Ilya unknown-to-anyone thinks people prefer him to Altman, he has another thing coming. I'm not an Altman fanboy, but anyone can see Altman is a rockstar and richt or wrong, that matters HUGELY to OpenAI.
If it's truly about a power play then this will be undone pretty quick, along with the jobs of the people who made it happen.
Microsoft has put a vast fortune into this operation and if Satya doesn't like this then it will be changed back real fast, Ilya fired and the entire board resign. That's my prediction.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIt sounds like someone neutral from MSFT leadership needs/ed to moderate and bring people together before the wheels fell off.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dannykwells 3y agoCompletely agree. Sam is on the phone with Satya as we speak. Alternative is Sam goes in house to MS who already have all the weights of GPT-4 and build again, but constrained by any existing charter.
- andrewstuart 3y agoThe most likely outcome at this stage IMO is Sam will start a new thing with a huge equity stake and just do it again.
- dinobones 3y agoSam is not an engineer. He can't do it without Ilya or Ilya-lite. And there are like 4 of those in the world.
- bushbaba 3y agoAnd Ilya can't do anything without lots of funding, which is given on premise of future profits.
- andrewstuart 3y ago>>He can't do it without Ilya or Ilya-lite. The wrongest thing I've read on HN for a long while. The world has alot more smart people in it than you realise, and Sam's rockstar profile gives him direct access to them.
- dinobones 3y agoHow many people do you think are capable of pushing the state of the art in AI research? There is a massive amount of tooling and infrastructure involved. You can't just get some Andrew Ng Coursera guy off the street and buy 50,000 H100s at your local Fry's electronics. I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't even enough GPUs in the world for Altman to start a competitor in a reasonable amount of time. I stand by my number, there are like 4 people in the world capable of building OpenAI. That is, a quality deep learning organization that pushes the state of the art in AI and LLMs. Maybe you can find ~1,000 people in the world who can build a cheap knock-off that gets you to GPT3 (pre instruct) performance after about two years. But even that is no trivial effort.
- dannykwells 3y agoDid you see Greg Brockmann also quit? Who do you think has contributed more to OpenAI code base??
- bart_spoon 3y agoI agree that it’s far than a one man show at OpenAI, but on the other hand megacorps full of many of the smartest, best compensated research scientists and engineers haven’t been able to touch OpenAI at this point, even with much greater resources. There is a significant advantage that OpenAI has built for themselves with their research and development.
- rirarobo 3y agoSorry, what do you mean by "unknown -to-anyone"? Ilya is a co-founder of OpenAI, the Chief Scientist, and one of the best known AI researchers in the field. He has also been touring with Sam Altman at public events, and getting highlights such as this one recently: https://youtu.be/9iqn1HhFJ6c https://youtu.be/9iqn1HhFJ6c
- andrewstuart 3y agoAltman is virtually a household name. Relative to that - Ilya is unknown.
- staticman2 3y agoAltman is a heck of a lot less famous than CHATGPT-- so if fame is the issue, OpenAI seems fine?
- strikelaserclaw 3y agoAltman is NOT a household name. ChatGPT is in the western world to some extent.
- rirarobo 3y agoI see, thanks for clarifying. I agree that Ilya is relatively lesser known publicly, but in the grander scheme of things I don't think Altman is really that well known either. I mean, anecdotally, most non-tech friends and family I know probably have heard of ChatGPT, but they don't know any of the founders or leadership team at OpenAI. On the other hand, since I work in the field, all of my AI research friends/colleagues would know Ilya's work, and probably think of Sam more as a business guy. In that sense, as far as attracting and maintaining AI researcher talent, I think it's arguable that people would prefer Ilya to Sam.
- andrewstuart 3y ago>> in the grander scheme of things I don't think Altman is really that well known either. Wall Street Journal front page, top item right this minute: "Sam Altman Is Out at OpenAI After Board Skirmish" Times Of London front page, right this minute: "Sam Altman sacked by OpenAI after directors lose confidence in him" The Australian front page, right now: "OpenAI pushes out co-founder Sam Altman as CEO" MSNBC front page, right now: "OpenAI says Sam Altman exiting as CEO, was 'not consistently candid' with board" That's his name right there, front page news around the world - they assume people know his name, that's why they put it there.
- Imnimo 3y agoPeople don't know who Ilya is?
- andrewstuart 3y agoDo a survey of ordinary smart people you know, ask if they have heard of Sam Altman. Ask if they know Ilya.
- dontbestupid29 3y ago[dead]
- davorak 3y ago> If it's truly about a power play then this will be undone pretty quick, along with the jobs of the people who made it happen. The board that made this decision to fire Altman and they are the captain of the ship. > if Satya doesn't like this then it will be changed back real fast, Ilya fired and the entire board resign. That's my prediction. MS does not own openAI if the board does not want Satya to have a say Satay does not have a say. MS/Satay could throw lawyers at the issue, try to find a crack where the board has violated the law and or their own rules. The key is they can try, but MS/Satay have no immediate levers of power to enforce their will.
- aamoyg 3y agoI am pretty sure that Satya Nadella would want Altman booted.