22 ms·

Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

879 points by convexstrictly 3y ago

Jakub Pachocki, director of research; Aleksander Madry, head of AI risk team, and Szymon Sidor. Scoop: theinformation.com Paywalled link: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/three-senior-openai-researchers-resign-as-crisis-deepens https://www.theinformation.com/articles/three-senior-openai-... Submitting information since paywalled links are not permitted.

ThinkBeat 3y ago
How difficult would it be for Altman and these guys to start OpenAI² tomorrow and become competitive with their old company? Presumably it would require enormous startup capital?
- deegles 3y ago
  They could get dump trucks full of cash within a week if they wanted it.
  - ThinkBeat 3y ago
    I think you are correct. I think they literally could get dump trucks full of cash. I see no reason why they would of course. Still as far as I understand and I fully admit that Is not a lot, OpenAI is running on a lot of MS cloud, so they would (probably ) ot be able to offer OpenAI² enough compuete in the near future. I doubt anyone could, but if it became a need I am certain every at scale provider would be doing their upmost to win the business.
- jerpint 3y ago
  It’s a lot cheaper to replicate than to innovate
flowzai 3y ago
Hear today Microsoft hires Sam Altman to lead advanced AI research team after OpenAI ousting – business live.
convexstrictly 3y ago
In March, Sam Altman said that Pachocki's "overall leadership and technical vision" was essential for pre-training GPT-4. https://twitter.com/sama/status/1635700851619819520 https://twitter.com/sama/status/1635700851619819520
- aidaman 3y ago
  He also brought Pachocki to capitol hill soon after.
- andomiz2 3y ago
  Yep, this and the capital hill stuff is what got the plug pulled. Thank God somebody finally recognized what an enormous threat this guy and his mad scientist friends are.
convexstrictly 3y ago
Jakub Pachocki and Szymon Sidor have worked on mu-parametrization/tensor programs and Dota 2. https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/J.-Pachocki/2713380?sort=pub-date https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/J.-Pachocki/2713380?s... As @eachro pointed out, Aleksander Madry is on leave from his MIT professorship. His publications: https://madry.mit.edu/ https://madry.mit.edu/
thr8976 3y ago
Aleksander in particular is deeply invested in AI safety as a mission. It's a very confusing departure, since most of the reporting so far indicates that Ilya and the board fired Sam to prioritize safety and non-profit objectives. A huge loss for OpenAI nonetheless.
- cinntaile 3y ago
  The way Sam and Greg were fired maybe led him to no longer have faith in the company and so he quit?
  - mannyv 3y ago
    More like the guy who engineered this situation is an asshole and they don't want to work for him.
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
      Who's the situation-engineer for some of us duller but curious folks?
      - kcb 3y ago
        It's been confirmed to be Ilya.
    - notRobot 3y ago
      Who was that? How are they an asshole?
  - deneas 3y ago
    Important detail: Only Sam was fired, Greg was removed from the board and then later quit. Source: https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559 https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559
- MattRix 3y ago
  Perhaps you could argue that he wants to stick with Sam and the others because if they start a company that competes with OpenAI, there’s a real chance they catch up and surpass OpenAI. If you really want to be a voice for safety, it’ll be most effective if you’re on the winning team.
eachro 3y ago
Was Madry at OpenAI for a sabbatical? I thought he was a professor at MIT.
- convexstrictly 3y ago
  "I am currently on leave from MIT and spending it at OpenAI." https://madry.mit.edu/ https://madry.mit.edu/
hindsightbias 3y ago
I'm going to predict more by tomorrow as the AGI secures its position. In other news, Tesla FSD has been rebranded Saneer-Weeksbooth Autobot. So be careful out there folks.
karmasimida 3y ago
Well it begins. OpenAI will be a shell of itself in very short time. Advice: you can't win over a narrative, which is what Sam has become. People and resources will come to him, by themselves.
- BoorishBears 3y ago
  The advice seems off-point: overall it seems like Sam has operated opposite of the narrative he built (which aggrandized a vision of the future and downplayed the importance of making money) and got fired for it. If I was OpenAI I'd want to quit today not because I want to follow Sam, but because the same bullshit that people left Google Brain et al. for has managed to catch up with them at OpenAI. It's a shame honestly, it was so exciting to see a company finally free itself of the shackles of navel gazing and just build things, but it seems like that's over today.
  - karmasimida 3y ago
    You misunderstood my point. The narrative I am referring to is a simple one: take back what should be his. A.k.a, revenge. That is for sure a strong word. People live on stories (collective imagination, if fancier), and what they like most is a wronged prince/princess took back his/her crown. It is the same with Taylor Swift rerecording her albums. The story potential will feed itself, until it is fully realized. The OpenAI board had committed a historical misstep, but maybe it is indeed what it is designed for: they hold no stakes in the business, so their view can't be held accountable in a business microscope. But money will really dislike it.
    - BoorishBears 3y ago
      > If I was OpenAI I'd want to quit today not because I want to follow Sam Sounds like I did? I think this is kind of a bad take, no one is quitting OpenAI before Sam has even had 24 hours to process being fired to help him take on his revenge arc. Instead it sounds like people are angered by the process and powers that lead to him being fired like that, which is extremely understandable given the history of OpenAI. People forget half of OpenAI's competitive advantage was just not letting themselves be mired in self-sabtoage, the exact kind their board just demonstrated today.
wyy1995 3y ago
Sam should lead a group of outstanding engineers to rebuild another AI company. Maybe in the long run, leaving openai's naive board of directors might not be a bad thing for him.
- Racing0461 3y ago
  > group of outstanding engineers to rebuild another AI company openai was that backed by a nonprofit structure. and it still caused sam to be michael dell'ed/steve job'ed. seems like the issue was with having a board/didnt have a majority on it. Zuckerberg having 53% voting power on the board is probably the greatest thing he managed. Anything sam does from now should follow the same. /disclaimer - i have no idea how voting shares work.
xyst 3y ago
2024 for OpenAI is looking bleak.
- miohtama 3y ago
  The world needs more truly open source AI models where the success and outcomes do not depend on a single figurehead or a corporation.
  - philovivero 3y ago
    Who grey-texted this comment? So confused who could disagree with it. Is that the problem, this comment is so obviously true, it's just redundant?
    - konschubert 3y ago
      The problem is that you cannot finance the training of a competitive AI model and then turn around and give it all away for free. Who's supposed to pay for that?
      - miohtama 3y ago
        Open and paid are not mutually exclusive. Someone is paying for Linux kernel development as well.
      - joachim4 3y ago
        Universities usually do that, they work on open problems and publish their findings for free.
        konschubert 3y ago
        Since there is enough private investment available, why spend public money?
      - wildrhythms 3y ago
        Good lord, is this the 'hacker' mindset now?
dschuetz 3y ago
Are those the first cracks in the AI market bubble?
- huytersd 3y ago
  Is it a bubble if it’s useful and I use it dozens of time a day?
  - dschuetz 3y ago
    I agree AI is useful, but not to that extent to what it is valued on the market. I do not think that AI companies can deliver as much as they promise. With the driving core at OpenAI basically gone, I bet they will soon implode under the weight of their promises. Which means, investors will start pulling out their stakes. boom
    - romeros 3y ago
      What's the use of a newborn baby? AI is as real as the mobile/internet/pc revolution of the past. So many use it obsessively every single day.
      - lazystar 3y ago
        "This is good for bitcoin."
    - corethree 3y ago
      I paid the 20 dollar subscription. I don't even subscribe to netflix.
    - hilux 3y ago
      Speaking for my own n of 1, ChatGPT Pro has almost entirely (>90%) replaced the Google search engine in my daily life. The results from ChatGPT are just so much better and faster. That's got to be worth something, since Alphabet is a $1.7T company mostly on the strength of ads associated with Google search.
corethree 3y ago
We need to know why he was let go. All else is speculation. I doubt people would follow Sam if he was let go for a good reason.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
  Unless they don't know the reason. (But of course, it's hard to imagine what reason could be so secret that it's better to let people start jumping ship than share it with employees.)
- ssnistfajen 3y ago
  We don't know if these people left to follow Sam. There's so few details surrounding what the actual catalyst of the firing was and neither said are revealing the details.
  - username332211 3y ago
    I think you can safely assume the reason they left is related to the firing. The question is,are they following Altman or are they just disgusted by the power struggle.
waihtis 3y ago
As I said in the other thread, this is 100% a AI doomerist hijack.
- lannisterstark 3y ago
  Doomerism when it comes to technology has always been such a weird mindset to me. "oh no, they're gonna take the horses/horse buggies/telegram/landlines away!" "Goddamn, how dare they invent the bigger cannons!?" - Romans, 1453, in Constantinople probably. (One incident where I can use my exempt powers).
  - waihtis 3y ago
    its not even that, they have literally one argument and its nanobots
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      The more realistic argument is that AI will be used as a power amplifier by the already powerful.
      - waihtis 3y ago
        actually is the opposite, it would democratize power at an unprecedented scale, that's why corporations are funding these NGO's (useful idiots)
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        Through what mechanism would it democratize power? I thought the GPTs were already limited to regular end users due to computational constraints. Most people can't afford dozens of Nvidia GPUs and the API infrastructure to data mine.
        waihtis 3y ago
svnt 3y ago
I just want to point out that it was exactly a week ago that OpenAI was openly announcing $10M pay packages to pull AI researchers from other major companies, like Alphabet. These other companies are well established and if OpenAI were a normal corporation might look at various hostile takeover strategies. How much more cost effective to just fool half the board of a nonprofit into taking unnecessarily aggressive action.
- deleted 3y ago
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quickthrower2 3y ago
Makes me wonder whether to keep building upon OpenAI? Given that they have an API and it takes effort to build on that vs. something else. I am small fry but maybe other people are wondering the same? Can they give reassurances about their products going into the future?
- deleted 3y ago
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- siva7 3y ago
  I am wondering the same. It’s a PR desaster to their dev community and i’m not even sure if Sutskever isn’t secretly happy about this.
  - karmasimida 3y ago
    I am at lost. Not fear, just lost. Don't know what to do. Is my investment into their API still worth it? It feels very unstable at this moment.
    - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
      Microsoft owns it. I honestly can not imagine trying to build a business on an API owned by Microsoft of all companies.
      - karmasimida 3y ago
        Would like to elaborate a bit? Though my investment will be still tiny at the moment, but not other multi-modal model on the market right is as good.
        reissbaker 3y ago
        I actually wouldn't be worried in the short term for exactly this reason. Microsoft has legal access to GPT-4 and is allowed to host and serve it via Azure. If OpenAI somehow tanks its API in the near term, MS is sitting on a gold mine and will make use of that by continuing to serve it. In the long term I am worried, but less worried if Sam and Greg form a competing co to continue to build.
ookblah 3y ago
people can have multiple overlapping reasons for things, it doesn't have to be they are on "sam's side" or the "board's side" or whatever. you can agree w/ a firing and for whatever reason disagree w/ the way it was done or future direction of a company, etc. all just guessing anyway.
grizzles 3y ago
If you're an OpenAI engineer, now would be a good time to ask for a raise.
- siva7 3y ago
  Google and Microsoft are todays big winners.
  - schleck8 3y ago
    Microsoft not very much
    - siva7 3y ago
      They have the GPT tech, now they can poach the talent from openai without guilt
      - transportgo 3y ago
        Why should they feel guilt for giving workers a chance to get paid what they really are worth?
        justinjlynn 3y ago
        Because capitalism is a bad thing for rich people when poor people also get to do it like they do.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    Microsoft has a huge stake in OpenAI, so they're very much a loser.
    - aidaman 3y ago
      IdK Satya might sense there's a wounded gazette in the midst, and starve OpenAI for funds, and pick up the pieces.
Simon_ORourke 3y ago
The board is like a who's who of privilege and nepotism - https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/17/openai-sam-altman-firing-board-members/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/17/openai-sam-altman-firing-b...
- deleted 3y ago
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- namdnay 3y ago
  Why nepotism? The article you linked to has no mention of particular family ties that got them there? If anything it’s a remarkably meritocratic board, when compared with most other industries The fact that it’s all well connected wealthy people is kind of the point, the board is there (among others) to bring advice and experience
  - saberience 3y ago
    What credentials does Tasha McCauley have to be on the board of a company like OpenAI? I can think of 100s or perhaps 1000s of people more qualified to be there.
    - Racing0461 3y ago
      i think its more about nepotism being the child of someone important.
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    If you really want to nitpick you could say it's cronyism, but we all know what nepotism means in this context, and there's no requirement nepotism be based on family ties anyways.
- refurb 3y ago
  On a side note, what is the with the ownership structure diagram? OpenAI non-profit --owns---> Holding Company for Open AI non-profit That makes no sense. How does a non-profit "own" a holding company, that own the non-profit?
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n_ary 3y ago
While I don’t know what is happening in OpenAI, from my experience(long enough to have an opinion), top people often leave when the employer is doing well or passing the last hurdle because, by that time the employer has gained adequate presence and brand identity that anyone leaving can immediately end up in top FAANG or equivalent Corps with much better benefits and of course pay/equity and other things. Only time employees leaving is a bad sign had been when the company had been in zombie mode too long(few years) and haven’t delivered anything yet or still in alpha/beta stage with crappy deliveries no one is using or has no significant uptake. Also, if there are financial difficulties, then a lot of people leave in droves and some actually come back after finances get better.
- aidaman 3y ago
  yea you missed the thing that happened lol
- siquick 3y ago
  FAANG would probably be viewed as a step down from OpenAI at this point (or at least until today)
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    Nothing wrong with greener pastures/lower steppes
  - LudwigNagasena 3y ago
    Which is exactly why you can expect a good position and lots of benefits.
    - dkarras 3y ago
      does not matter, even CEO of Facebook role is a step down. This is a different game. I doubt these people have to work anymore. they are after something else.
      - 3y ago
aidaman 3y ago
GPT5 pre-training just ended I believe. Brock, Pachocki, Szymon Sidor, would have likely all been involved. These are huge losses. Pachocki led pre-training for GPT-4, and probably GPT-5. Brockman is the major engineer responsible for the efficiency improvements that enabled ChatGPT and GPT-4 to be even remotely cost-effective. That is a piece that is often overlooked, but OpenAI's advantage over the competition in compute efficiency is probably even larger than the model itself.
- convexstrictly 3y ago
  "Greg Brockman works 60 to 100 hours per week, and spends around 80% of the time coding. Former colleagues have described him as the hardest-working person at OpenAI." https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6309033/greg-brockman/ https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6309033/greg-brockman...
  - schleck8 3y ago
    This is like a supervillain origin story, Greg and Sam are 100 % going to start something new now, even if it's just out of spite with how much both seem to have liked their work at OpenAI
    - karmasimida 3y ago
      Greg seems to be much loved by OpenAI employees, and generally inspiring person.
    - saberience 3y ago
      If they were popular at OpenAI, I would say they have a good chance of succeeding too. They could offer excellent equity packages to all the best engineers and researchers and due to the non-profit nature of OpenAI (and hence no equity), these people might be very tempted to leave.
      - rlt 3y ago
        OpenAI is supposedly “capped profit” so employees do get equity with limited upside. But yeah, since Sam and Greg were apparently pushed out because they were building too good of a business any OpenAI employees that were aligned with them are likely to jump ship and join them, and OpenAI will revert to the non-profit research lab it started out as.
deepsun 3y ago
[flagged]
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
My prediction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309611&p=7#38311488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309611&p=7#38311488 So here's my theory which might sound crazy. Sam planned to open a new AI company and taking away openAI's top talents to his company. And breaking up openAI into non profit and his for profit company. Sam's first tweet after all this has, just hours after this article: > will have more to say about what’s next later. So either he knew that he was about to be fired or at least was prepared. Also based on the wording of the press release, Sam did something that the board absolutely hated. Because most of the time even if he did something illegal it doesn't make sense to risk defamation by accusing him publically. Also based on his video of yesterday at the APEC summit, he repeated the similar lines few times: > I am super excited. I can't imagine anything more exciting to work on. So here if we assume he knew he was about to get fired, the conclusion is clear.
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Kidman 3y ago
Some Microsoft bullshit. I've read an article where they said Greg to be a really hard worker at Open AI,so I can't possibly think of a reason other than this. Maybe they'll do something with Google? Who knows
hathym 3y ago
they seems to finally achieve AGI, they realized they don't need as many people anymore :D
- ykonstant 3y ago
  They now have Sam AItman.
RichieAHB 3y ago
Makes we wonder how much of the investor’s money was put in to OpenAI as a company or in Sam and the leadership. I think the answer is probably the latter, and the fact that Sam’s firing was this easy (and would likely have the effect of others going in quick order) seems like a massive oversight in terms of investor due diligence in board structure etc.
urbandw311er 3y ago
Just seen their departure tweets (link below) What’s with this annoying trend of omitting capital letters from comms? https://x.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559?s=20 https://x.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559?s=20
- keiferski 3y ago
  Glad I’m not the only one who finds this irritating. I once applied to a job and the manager replied using all lower case letters. I guess he was trying to seem cool and approachable, but to me it just reads as unprofessional. I find it hard to take a piece of writing seriously when it’s formatted that way.
  - NKosmatos 3y ago
    Oh that’s great, we’re more who find such kind of writing unprofessional. Especially spelling errors in CVs, formatting errors in documents/presentations, one sentence paragraphs and similar kind of things. It might indicate intelligence and people who are extra busy, thus not wasting their time, but depending on the position and circumstances a nicely written text is essential.
    - keiferski 3y ago
      I started to write my comment in all lower case letters as a joke, but it was taking too long to cancel each autocorrect suggestion. So I definitely don’t buy the “I’m too busy” reason. I think the main reason I find it unprofessional is that it is such a distraction. Professional communication should be clear and “get out of the way” so that the focus can be on the ideas being discussed.
      - deleted 3y ago
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- NKosmatos 3y ago
  And I thought I was the only one that didn’t like this kind of writing. No capitalization, writing “i” instead of “I” and generally trying to write as fast as possible. I guess that’s what happens if you’re working 60-100 hours per week coding ChatGPT, and you don’t have time to waste. Sometimes I feel sorry for these kind of people and other times I envy them.
seydor 3y ago
It would be ironic but sincere if the new company is named ClosedAI or sth
- mirzap 3y ago
  Even more, if the model was open-sourced, weights and everything.
antman 3y ago
So what was he lying about that got the board so pissed? A story that fits is that they assumed/knew that he had different goals and/or was going to create a spinoff. If they waited for the GPT5 pretraining to finish and then they minimized the cost of the loss of Altman and the engineers. The whole secrecy, compartmentalization and urgency of their actions could only be explained by being against a wall. Otherwise if it was about ethics, future plans or whatever political it would happen at a slower pace. Hope they involved their investors beforehand but I don't know if they had time, OpenAI probably still exists and evolves on other people's money. But what else could they do?
- thinkingemote 3y ago
  current popular theory is that those fired/left were taking OpenAI for profit, and the board stuck with their original goal of non profit.
  - Lacerda69 3y ago
    you mean current completely made up speculation by anon online?
    - thinkingemote 3y ago
      That's one source. There are others about, but as I wrote it's a "theory". edits: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38314420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38314420 I imagine when the full story comes out all these theories and speculations will be ignored and we will literally forget ever being interested in them!
      - sigmoid10 3y ago
        I didn't even need to check the source. I immediately thought that this was obvious when it was announced (implicitly) that Ilya must have voted out Sam on the board. Whatever legalese is going on in the side channels to justify everything, I can totally see the conflict in visions between these two guys. And I'm sorta glad Ilya came out on top, even though I'm not a big fan of him either. Brockman is the real loss from this mess.
Tade0 3y ago
I'm embarrassed to say, being Polish myself, I had no idea that key people in OpenAI were Polish - I assume it was a coordinated resignation then. Madry is actually spelled Mądry, which translates to "Wise".
- konschubert 3y ago
  Why make this about nationality?
  - Tade0 3y ago
    Is that something controversial? Anyway, I was providing context. The way I see it, since they speak the same language natively, they might have had a frank conversation about this at some point and decided to resign in concert.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      I thought you were very clear. You clearly stated that it was an assumption, and why. So many people overstate state their ideas, which is basically deceit. People who represent guesses as fact are either lying or have a special kind of arrogant ignorance.
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 3y ago
    It's rather unusual to have all three people mentioned be Polish.
- deleted 3y ago
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- kubb 3y ago
  A lot of top talent from Polish universities went to work in the Silicon Valley (with the US spending $0 on their education BTW). They're very well represented per capita of their home country, but just a drop in the ocean of international talent that the Bay Area is swarming with.
wojciechpolak 3y ago
Meanwhile, in the parallel universe, they founded a new company with Sam and Greg, and Apple entered the scene as a significant partner or investor.
riverdweller 3y ago
If the speculation that the board want to open up everything so that it is truly open/public domain "for the benefit of humanity" turns out to be accurate, I can't see Microsoft being terribly happy about this now that they own 49% of OpenAI and want not only to recoup their investments but make ongoing profit. An exodus of staff might provoke a very quick release of a lot of code, pipelines, and training data by the remaining board before investors' lawyers have a chance to stop it.
- cactusplant7374 3y ago
  It’s the opposite. They are irrationally fearful of what they have built. Therefore, they will handicap any progress or competitive advantage that they have.
  - hackerlight 3y ago
    A few days ago Sam said that a recent breakthrough was a game changer. They recently finished pretraining GPT-5 apparently. So it could be related to the rapid rate of progress.
    - cactusplant7374 3y ago
      Sort of like Apple gives us a breakthrough every year? Sam is biased.
  - enumjorge 3y ago
    A lot of comments on this thread are sharing personal theories as if they were facts. Sam also talked about the dangers of AI. It’s likely that he did so to encourage a regulatory moat around OpenAI.
- AgentME 3y ago
  Neither Sam nor Ilya thinks that committing to open sourcing their models is good for the safety of humanity. This conflict is not about open source at all. (https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/15/23640180/openai-gpt-4-launch-closed-research-ilya-sutskever-interview https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/15/23640180/openai-gpt-4-lau...)
Shank 3y ago
It seems like firing Sam and causing this massive brain drain might be antithetical to the whole AGI mission of the original non-profit. If OpenAI loses everyone to Sam and he starts some new AI company, it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal company. All of the organizational safeguards OpenAI had inked with Microsoft and protection against "selling AGI" once-developed are out-the-window if he just builds AGI at a new company. I'm not saying this will happen, but it seems to me like an incredibly silly move.
- concordDance 3y ago
  > it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal compan I can't imagine him doing that. He cares about getting well aligned AGI and profit motives fuck that up.
- Lacerda69 3y ago
  If MS gets their hands on an AGI help us god, but no "organizational safeguards" will matter. Not that I think AGI is possible or desirable in the first place, but that's a different discussion.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    Impossible with LLMs, with currently known techniques or impossible full stop?
    - wil421 3y ago
      Impossible with computers full stop. IMHO, we may be able to slice together DNA or modify it to create a new or smarter organism than AGI in a computer. They already shifted goal posts and they’ll do it again. AI used to mean AGI but marketing got a hold of it. Once something resembling AGI comes out they’ll say well it’s not Level 5 AGI or something similar.
      - concordDance 3y ago
        > Impossible with computers full stop. This combined with it being possible with DNA is a very rare view. How did you come by it?
mirzap 3y ago
This is escalating rather quickly. It is an incredibly irresponsible move by the OpenAI board. Hypergrowing company, and now they managed to shake up their user's trust in leadership stability. This has Adam's (D'Angelo) fingerprints all over it (for context, he did overthrow his co-founder, and Quora has been struggling ever since). This guy shouldn't sit on any board ever again. I predict the board will be fired, and Sam and the team will return and try to contain the situation.
- chasd00 3y ago
  Who fires the board at a 501.3c?
  - mirzap 3y ago
    They resign under public pressure, I guess?
    - Rastonbury 3y ago
      Why would they if they are advancing the goals of the non-profit and Altman was endangering that goal?
      - jdthedisciple 3y ago
        Hahaha "advancing the goals of non profit" right after making billions. All of a sudden their amnesia stopped huh? Hypocrites and virtue signallers, the whole board.
        Rastonbury 3y ago
        I mean, the board doesn't have equity and the for-profit subsidiary is profit capped
        jdthedisciple 3y ago
        They still stand to benefit personally, do they not?
lencastre 3y ago
Sam and his friends will land on their feet, likely at $NVDA
- konschubert 3y ago
  I think sam is smart enough to not waste his time inside a corporate mill.
  - gdiamos 3y ago
    Jensen isn't a normal CEO
    - hackerlight 3y ago
      I don't think NVDA would want to work on LLMs/AGI, it doesn't cohere with their business. In the short term they're focused on upscaling and frame generation, and long term it'd be neural rendering.
username332211 3y ago
This looks more and more like a coup, rather than a proper removal of a CEO. If there was some real misconduct by Altman, others won't be resigning with him, would they?
benkarst 3y ago
It's incredible how many of you alleged tech people think that Sam just wanted a world of safe AI while his actions suggest he wanted to make dump trucks of money. He was the one who partnered with Microsoft and turned it from a non-profit to a for-profit company.
- philovivero 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - konschubert 3y ago
    Consider the possibility that people who know a thing or two technology might still think AI brings a lot of good and that kneecapping AI isn't the right move at this time.
    - jonbell 3y ago
      Impossible challenge
    - j_maffe 3y ago
      There are plenty of AI experts who believe that AI will do more harm than good if it keeps being developed at this rate.
      - Loughla 3y ago
        This is not as strong of an argument as you think. There have been experts who believe pretty much every technological innovation, since we transitioned from rock tablets to paper, that it will do more harm than good. Context: I believe the end of humanity will be real AI and not climate change.
        j_maffe 3y ago
        I, myself, am a lot more worried about a few monopolists doing whatever they get to choose for the rest of humanity. AI fuels that vision more than any other piece of technology.
majikaja 3y ago
What are these people trying to do exactly? Create an AI that enslaves humanity?
kozikow 3y ago
I know Jakub Pachocki and in my feeling, Jakub leaving is worse for gpt than Greg or Sam. Im not claiming to know more than everyone else, but Sam was IMO just a face. Greg is backend engineer - that's less important than actual research.
- martindbp 3y ago
  The whole team that trained GPT1-3 and came up with RLHF left to found Anthropic, perhaps proving that key people are maybe not so key and that other factors are more important. This is a further blow though on top of the previous one.
digitcatphd 3y ago
I really wonder if a dividing line started to emerge internally regarding the path to take the company. [1] On one hand they serve Microsoft and developers, building digital AI infrastructure. [2] On the other hand, they seem to try and want to build some monopoly and destroy as many startups (and companies) as possible. In the last developer day, they did a half-ass job of both. GPTs suck. The OpenAI Assistants don't have enough documentation to be used and therefore, equally suck. I really hope for the sake of the AI community (and economy) that [1] is the outcome. I really do not know how they could scale both. As an AI startup, I have a love-hate relationship with GPT and am eager to grow independent on them because how can I trust a company doing [2]?
- FeepingCreature 3y ago
  Uh, sorry, what? You think serving Microsoft would be opposed to building a monopoly?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- dabeeeenster 3y ago
  "GPTs Suck" Never change, hacker news!
- killerstorm 3y ago
  Was it a right choice to make ChatGPT accessible by the public? To a person who is not an expert at prompting LLMs, ChatGPT is basically a shitty version of Bing Chat (aka Copilot). Especially the free version - it's an outdated model which cannot search the internet (or does it strictly worse than Bing Chat). Why does OpenAI pay for access to a shitty version of Bing Chat? There's only one possible reason for this: raising money at a very high valuation. They burned through hundreds of millions dollars to show VC that they have 100+ M users (and growing rapidly!) to raise at valuation ~$100B.
SSLy 3y ago
The second person is named Aleksander Mądry, thank you.
- michpoch 3y ago
  Not according to his linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksander-madry-61115b233/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksander-madry-61115b233/ (it's about just one letter - a vs ą) If that's the way he wants to be known, it's up to him.
  - SSLy 3y ago
    His MIT page on the other hand. https://madry.mit.edu/ https://madry.mit.edu/
gjvc 3y ago
I've a penny that says the good ol' MSFT "embrace extend extinguish" is back in full swing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... Literally people thought they were saints because of VSCode FFS.
pknerd 3y ago
The other cofounder also quit
andrewstuart 3y ago
Ilya’s job won’t survive this power play……. Satya has been humiliated and will be furious.
- Solvency 3y ago
  How so?
  - jvolkman 3y ago
    Reports say Microsoft was caught completely off guard. Here's the damage control tweet Satya found it necessary to make shortly after it all went down: https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1725656554878492779 https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1725656554878492779
- cthalupa 3y ago
  What mechanism does Satya have to do anything here? Microsoft has a minority stake in the for-profit subsidiary that is wholly controlled by the 501(c)(3). All investors (and employees) in the for-profit have to agree to the operating agreement that specifies the for-profit is not actually obligated to actually make a profit and that it is all secondary the charter the non-profit operates under. https://openai.com/our-structure https://openai.com/our-structure https://openai.com/charter https://openai.com/charter There is not a higher power than the board of the non-profit.
  - DannyBee 3y ago
    So, for starters, they own all the compute being used. I think people seriously underestimate how hard it is to get the GPU compute/etc that is necessary to be useful here. Lead time would be years, easily, even if you had the money. NVidia can't change this for you even if they liked you - they literally can't build chips fast enough. Depending on the exact agreement, Microsoft may have just given them credits/free use, and the part where they make sure the resources are actually available is just good faith that may no longer exist. That's one example. Even beyond that, you are assuming they can only do super-direct things, but it turns out to be fairly easy to make things very uncomfortable for people/companies indirectly.
menshiki 3y ago
Is it a coincidence that all of them are Polish?
password54321 3y ago
Anyone who follows the gaming industry knows that Microsoft ruins nearly everything it touches.
huggingmouth 3y ago
> head of AI risk team That's a good sign imo.
ksynwa 3y ago
Forgive my ignorance but I am asking this because a lot of people have been mentioning AGI. Does OpenAI say anywhere that they want to achieve AGI at somw point in the future? While GPT and other generative AIs are extremely innovative and cool they are really really far away from being AGI. Setting sights on something like AGI seems delusional or a marketing stunt at this point.
- 3np 3y ago
  > OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. First sentence on https://openai.com/about https://openai.com/about
- cthalupa 3y ago
  Yes. AGI is literally their charter. https://openai.com/charter https://openai.com/charter
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
wslh 3y ago
Could we say that OpenAI is not only the company with the fastest product traction and impact in the world but the fastest to implode? When there are a lot of things at stake, not only money, people collide. This is a rant but we are seeing several examples now in 2023. There are "rules" for normal startups and different ones in another scale.
suziemanul 3y ago
This is Olek Madry and Jakub Pachocki we are talking about. Check out their respective dblps if you don't get it. It's a kind of loss that will be hard to recover from. In relation to other comments here. There is "coding" and there is "God's spark genius of algorithms" kind of work. This is what made the magic of OpenAI. Believe me, those guys were not "just coding". My bet is that it could be all about some research directions that were "shielded" by Sam.
- belter 3y ago
  If all of that would be enough, there would be a ChatGPT from Google, a long time ago...
  - fsloth 3y ago
    In general Google sucks in creating new consumer offerings. So it's not about resources for sure. I guess it's about synergy, culture, taste and talent.
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    Wasn’t OpenAI populated in part by Google Brain people who left Google’s bs bureaucracy and internal politics?
    - suziemanul 3y ago
      Totally, most of the Transformers folks ;-)
  - sbrother 3y ago
    Google invented the core technology, and they had an internal version long before ChatGPT was released. I joined when it was already at the "accessible to all employees" stage and it absolutely blew my mind. They just hadn't -- and still haven't -- figured out how to commercialize it yet. I don't think they'll be the ones to crack that nut either. IMO they are too obsessed with "safety" to release something useful, and also can't reasonably deploy a service like ChatGPT at their scale because the costs are too high. With OpenAI imploding this whole race just got a lot more interesting though...
etewiah 3y ago
I'm super curious to know what happens to the GPTs store. I've started a directory of GPTs on gipety.com so personally the longer it takes for the official store to be launched the better ;)
deleted 3y ago
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minzi 3y ago
I keep seeing so many comments about how the move was irresponsible from the board because it was a hyper growth company and blah blah blah. This board was not set up to care at all about shareholder value. I’m not making any judgement about whether they made the correct decision. I’m just stating that everyone keeps talking about this as if it were a normal company structure and it absolutely is not.
totallywrong 3y ago
So now you've got the CTO, CEO, and 3 top engineers creating a new company pronto, with VCs and the usual suspects queueing up to throw money at them. Bad move from OpenAI.
YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
>> Submitting information since paywalled links are not permitted. They are? Here's my submission of your link. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38320350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38320350 Maybe @dang can put it under your name?
Jayakumark 3y ago
OpenAI was started as non profit and it went the profit route with capping. For profit will always win non-profit because It’s run by people - once they see money , they want more not less. This was meant to happen when it changed its structure to cap profits at 100x . If Microsoft invests $10 billion openAI Can make $1 trillion in profits before giving a dime to its non profit. If it makes $1 trillion it can just ask someone to invest $1 billion and wait until it makes another $100 billion . Sam, Brockman and others who resigned will start a new for-profit company. Sam will use his influence to get funding and contracts. They know the tech and with know how of everything, build better model. And OpenAI will be forced to give up and work with them as it’s part of their founding policy.
gnu8 3y ago
ChatGPT is a toy, OpenAI isn't open, no one can download the models or the data, and no one can buy the chips needed to work with them. This whole thing is a joke. Shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.
deleted 3y ago
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onlinewebtutor 3y ago
This news is worrying for the AI community. Three important researchers, Jakub Pachocki, Aleksander Madry, and Szymon Sidor, have resigned from OpenAI. It makes us wonder about the direction and teamwork at OpenAI. Aleksander Madry was in charge of the AI risk team, a group focused on making sure AI is used safely. Their leaving might affect how OpenAI works on AI and deals with potential risks. OpenAI needs to tell us more about why they left so that people can trust that OpenAI is still committed to developing AI responsibly. We hope to get more information to understand what happened.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
> Submitting information since paywalled links are not permitted. This rule should be dropped. It's the reason that HN is dominated by low quality outlets. It's also in tension with another rule, which is that the original source of the article should be posted - the original source is usually an outlet that has the resources to do original research, thanks to a paywall.
revskill 3y ago
It' time to just let ChatGPT to be the real BOSS, no more non-sense.
Yuridhahadi 3y ago
[dead]
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ThinkBeat 3y ago

How difficult would it be for Altman and these guys to start OpenAI² tomorrow and become competitive with their old company? Presumably it would require enormous startup capital?

deegles 3y ago
They could get dump trucks full of cash within a week if they wanted it.
- ThinkBeat 3y ago
  I think you are correct. I think they literally could get dump trucks full of cash. I see no reason why they would of course. Still as far as I understand and I fully admit that Is not a lot, OpenAI is running on a lot of MS cloud, so they would (probably ) ot be able to offer OpenAI² enough compuete in the near future. I doubt anyone could, but if it became a need I am certain every at scale provider would be doing their upmost to win the business.
jerpint 3y ago
It’s a lot cheaper to replicate than to innovate

flowzai 3y ago

Hear today Microsoft hires Sam Altman to lead advanced AI research team after OpenAI ousting – business live.

convexstrictly 3y ago

In March, Sam Altman said that Pachocki's "overall leadership and technical vision" was essential for pre-training GPT-4. https://twitter.com/sama/status/1635700851619819520 https://twitter.com/sama/status/1635700851619819520

aidaman 3y ago
He also brought Pachocki to capitol hill soon after.
andomiz2 3y ago
Yep, this and the capital hill stuff is what got the plug pulled. Thank God somebody finally recognized what an enormous threat this guy and his mad scientist friends are.

convexstrictly 3y ago

Jakub Pachocki and Szymon Sidor have worked on mu-parametrization/tensor programs and Dota 2. https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/J.-Pachocki/2713380?sort=pub-date https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/J.-Pachocki/2713380?s... As @eachro pointed out, Aleksander Madry is on leave from his MIT professorship. His publications: https://madry.mit.edu/ https://madry.mit.edu/

thr8976 3y ago

Aleksander in particular is deeply invested in AI safety as a mission. It's a very confusing departure, since most of the reporting so far indicates that Ilya and the board fired Sam to prioritize safety and non-profit objectives. A huge loss for OpenAI nonetheless.

cinntaile 3y ago
The way Sam and Greg were fired maybe led him to no longer have faith in the company and so he quit?
- mannyv 3y ago
  More like the guy who engineered this situation is an asshole and they don't want to work for him.
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    Who's the situation-engineer for some of us duller but curious folks?
    - kcb 3y ago
      It's been confirmed to be Ilya.
  - notRobot 3y ago
    Who was that? How are they an asshole?
- deneas 3y ago
  Important detail: Only Sam was fired, Greg was removed from the board and then later quit. Source: https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559 https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559
MattRix 3y ago
Perhaps you could argue that he wants to stick with Sam and the others because if they start a company that competes with OpenAI, there’s a real chance they catch up and surpass OpenAI. If you really want to be a voice for safety, it’ll be most effective if you’re on the winning team.

eachro 3y ago

Was Madry at OpenAI for a sabbatical? I thought he was a professor at MIT.

convexstrictly 3y ago
"I am currently on leave from MIT and spending it at OpenAI." https://madry.mit.edu/ https://madry.mit.edu/

hindsightbias 3y ago

I'm going to predict more by tomorrow as the AGI secures its position. In other news, Tesla FSD has been rebranded Saneer-Weeksbooth Autobot. So be careful out there folks.

karmasimida 3y ago

Well it begins. OpenAI will be a shell of itself in very short time. Advice: you can't win over a narrative, which is what Sam has become. People and resources will come to him, by themselves.

BoorishBears 3y ago
The advice seems off-point: overall it seems like Sam has operated opposite of the narrative he built (which aggrandized a vision of the future and downplayed the importance of making money) and got fired for it. If I was OpenAI I'd want to quit today not because I want to follow Sam, but because the same bullshit that people left Google Brain et al. for has managed to catch up with them at OpenAI. It's a shame honestly, it was so exciting to see a company finally free itself of the shackles of navel gazing and just build things, but it seems like that's over today.
- karmasimida 3y ago
  You misunderstood my point. The narrative I am referring to is a simple one: take back what should be his. A.k.a, revenge. That is for sure a strong word. People live on stories (collective imagination, if fancier), and what they like most is a wronged prince/princess took back his/her crown. It is the same with Taylor Swift rerecording her albums. The story potential will feed itself, until it is fully realized. The OpenAI board had committed a historical misstep, but maybe it is indeed what it is designed for: they hold no stakes in the business, so their view can't be held accountable in a business microscope. But money will really dislike it.
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    > If I was OpenAI I'd want to quit today not because I want to follow Sam Sounds like I did? I think this is kind of a bad take, no one is quitting OpenAI before Sam has even had 24 hours to process being fired to help him take on his revenge arc. Instead it sounds like people are angered by the process and powers that lead to him being fired like that, which is extremely understandable given the history of OpenAI. People forget half of OpenAI's competitive advantage was just not letting themselves be mired in self-sabtoage, the exact kind their board just demonstrated today.

wyy1995 3y ago

Sam should lead a group of outstanding engineers to rebuild another AI company. Maybe in the long run, leaving openai's naive board of directors might not be a bad thing for him.

Racing0461 3y ago
> group of outstanding engineers to rebuild another AI company openai was that backed by a nonprofit structure. and it still caused sam to be michael dell'ed/steve job'ed. seems like the issue was with having a board/didnt have a majority on it. Zuckerberg having 53% voting power on the board is probably the greatest thing he managed. Anything sam does from now should follow the same. /disclaimer - i have no idea how voting shares work.

xyst 3y ago

2024 for OpenAI is looking bleak.

miohtama 3y ago
The world needs more truly open source AI models where the success and outcomes do not depend on a single figurehead or a corporation.
- philovivero 3y ago
  Who grey-texted this comment? So confused who could disagree with it. Is that the problem, this comment is so obviously true, it's just redundant?
  - konschubert 3y ago
    The problem is that you cannot finance the training of a competitive AI model and then turn around and give it all away for free. Who's supposed to pay for that?
    - miohtama 3y ago
      Open and paid are not mutually exclusive. Someone is paying for Linux kernel development as well.
    - joachim4 3y ago
      Universities usually do that, they work on open problems and publish their findings for free.
      - konschubert 3y ago
        Since there is enough private investment available, why spend public money?
    - wildrhythms 3y ago
      Good lord, is this the 'hacker' mindset now?

dschuetz 3y ago

Are those the first cracks in the AI market bubble?

huytersd 3y ago
Is it a bubble if it’s useful and I use it dozens of time a day?
- dschuetz 3y ago
  I agree AI is useful, but not to that extent to what it is valued on the market. I do not think that AI companies can deliver as much as they promise. With the driving core at OpenAI basically gone, I bet they will soon implode under the weight of their promises. Which means, investors will start pulling out their stakes. boom
  - romeros 3y ago
    What's the use of a newborn baby? AI is as real as the mobile/internet/pc revolution of the past. So many use it obsessively every single day.
    - lazystar 3y ago
      "This is good for bitcoin."
  - corethree 3y ago
    I paid the 20 dollar subscription. I don't even subscribe to netflix.
  - hilux 3y ago
    Speaking for my own n of 1, ChatGPT Pro has almost entirely (>90%) replaced the Google search engine in my daily life. The results from ChatGPT are just so much better and faster. That's got to be worth something, since Alphabet is a $1.7T company mostly on the strength of ads associated with Google search.

corethree 3y ago

We need to know why he was let go. All else is speculation. I doubt people would follow Sam if he was let go for a good reason.

SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
Unless they don't know the reason. (But of course, it's hard to imagine what reason could be so secret that it's better to let people start jumping ship than share it with employees.)
ssnistfajen 3y ago
We don't know if these people left to follow Sam. There's so few details surrounding what the actual catalyst of the firing was and neither said are revealing the details.
- username332211 3y ago
  I think you can safely assume the reason they left is related to the firing. The question is,are they following Altman or are they just disgusted by the power struggle.

waihtis 3y ago

As I said in the other thread, this is 100% a AI doomerist hijack.

lannisterstark 3y ago
Doomerism when it comes to technology has always been such a weird mindset to me. "oh no, they're gonna take the horses/horse buggies/telegram/landlines away!" "Goddamn, how dare they invent the bigger cannons!?" - Romans, 1453, in Constantinople probably. (One incident where I can use my exempt powers).
- waihtis 3y ago
  its not even that, they have literally one argument and its nanobots
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    The more realistic argument is that AI will be used as a power amplifier by the already powerful.
    - waihtis 3y ago
      actually is the opposite, it would democratize power at an unprecedented scale, that's why corporations are funding these NGO's (useful idiots)
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        Through what mechanism would it democratize power? I thought the GPTs were already limited to regular end users due to computational constraints. Most people can't afford dozens of Nvidia GPUs and the API infrastructure to data mine.
        waihtis 3y ago

svnt 3y ago

I just want to point out that it was exactly a week ago that OpenAI was openly announcing $10M pay packages to pull AI researchers from other major companies, like Alphabet. These other companies are well established and if OpenAI were a normal corporation might look at various hostile takeover strategies. How much more cost effective to just fool half the board of a nonprofit into taking unnecessarily aggressive action.

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quickthrower2 3y ago

Makes me wonder whether to keep building upon OpenAI? Given that they have an API and it takes effort to build on that vs. something else. I am small fry but maybe other people are wondering the same? Can they give reassurances about their products going into the future?

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siva7 3y ago
I am wondering the same. It’s a PR desaster to their dev community and i’m not even sure if Sutskever isn’t secretly happy about this.
- karmasimida 3y ago
  I am at lost. Not fear, just lost. Don't know what to do. Is my investment into their API still worth it? It feels very unstable at this moment.
  - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    Microsoft owns it. I honestly can not imagine trying to build a business on an API owned by Microsoft of all companies.
    - karmasimida 3y ago
      Would like to elaborate a bit? Though my investment will be still tiny at the moment, but not other multi-modal model on the market right is as good.
      - reissbaker 3y ago
        I actually wouldn't be worried in the short term for exactly this reason. Microsoft has legal access to GPT-4 and is allowed to host and serve it via Azure. If OpenAI somehow tanks its API in the near term, MS is sitting on a gold mine and will make use of that by continuing to serve it. In the long term I am worried, but less worried if Sam and Greg form a competing co to continue to build.

ookblah 3y ago

people can have multiple overlapping reasons for things, it doesn't have to be they are on "sam's side" or the "board's side" or whatever. you can agree w/ a firing and for whatever reason disagree w/ the way it was done or future direction of a company, etc. all just guessing anyway.

grizzles 3y ago

If you're an OpenAI engineer, now would be a good time to ask for a raise.

siva7 3y ago
Google and Microsoft are todays big winners.
- schleck8 3y ago
  Microsoft not very much
  - siva7 3y ago
    They have the GPT tech, now they can poach the talent from openai without guilt
    - transportgo 3y ago
      Why should they feel guilt for giving workers a chance to get paid what they really are worth?
      - justinjlynn 3y ago
        Because capitalism is a bad thing for rich people when poor people also get to do it like they do.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Microsoft has a huge stake in OpenAI, so they're very much a loser.
  - aidaman 3y ago
    IdK Satya might sense there's a wounded gazette in the midst, and starve OpenAI for funds, and pick up the pieces.

Simon_ORourke 3y ago

The board is like a who's who of privilege and nepotism - https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/17/openai-sam-altman-firing-board-members/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/17/openai-sam-altman-firing-b...

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namdnay 3y ago
Why nepotism? The article you linked to has no mention of particular family ties that got them there? If anything it’s a remarkably meritocratic board, when compared with most other industries The fact that it’s all well connected wealthy people is kind of the point, the board is there (among others) to bring advice and experience
- saberience 3y ago
  What credentials does Tasha McCauley have to be on the board of a company like OpenAI? I can think of 100s or perhaps 1000s of people more qualified to be there.
  - Racing0461 3y ago
    i think its more about nepotism being the child of someone important.
- BoorishBears 3y ago
  If you really want to nitpick you could say it's cronyism, but we all know what nepotism means in this context, and there's no requirement nepotism be based on family ties anyways.
refurb 3y ago
On a side note, what is the with the ownership structure diagram? OpenAI non-profit --owns---> Holding Company for Open AI non-profit That makes no sense. How does a non-profit "own" a holding company, that own the non-profit?

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n_ary 3y ago

While I don’t know what is happening in OpenAI, from my experience(long enough to have an opinion), top people often leave when the employer is doing well or passing the last hurdle because, by that time the employer has gained adequate presence and brand identity that anyone leaving can immediately end up in top FAANG or equivalent Corps with much better benefits and of course pay/equity and other things. Only time employees leaving is a bad sign had been when the company had been in zombie mode too long(few years) and haven’t delivered anything yet or still in alpha/beta stage with crappy deliveries no one is using or has no significant uptake. Also, if there are financial difficulties, then a lot of people leave in droves and some actually come back after finances get better.

aidaman 3y ago
yea you missed the thing that happened lol
siquick 3y ago
FAANG would probably be viewed as a step down from OpenAI at this point (or at least until today)
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  Nothing wrong with greener pastures/lower steppes
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago
  Which is exactly why you can expect a good position and lots of benefits.
  - dkarras 3y ago
    does not matter, even CEO of Facebook role is a step down. This is a different game. I doubt these people have to work anymore. they are after something else.
    - 3y ago

aidaman 3y ago

GPT5 pre-training just ended I believe. Brock, Pachocki, Szymon Sidor, would have likely all been involved. These are huge losses. Pachocki led pre-training for GPT-4, and probably GPT-5. Brockman is the major engineer responsible for the efficiency improvements that enabled ChatGPT and GPT-4 to be even remotely cost-effective. That is a piece that is often overlooked, but OpenAI's advantage over the competition in compute efficiency is probably even larger than the model itself.

convexstrictly 3y ago
"Greg Brockman works 60 to 100 hours per week, and spends around 80% of the time coding. Former colleagues have described him as the hardest-working person at OpenAI." https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6309033/greg-brockman/ https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6309033/greg-brockman...
- schleck8 3y ago
  This is like a supervillain origin story, Greg and Sam are 100 % going to start something new now, even if it's just out of spite with how much both seem to have liked their work at OpenAI
  - karmasimida 3y ago
    Greg seems to be much loved by OpenAI employees, and generally inspiring person.
  - saberience 3y ago
    If they were popular at OpenAI, I would say they have a good chance of succeeding too. They could offer excellent equity packages to all the best engineers and researchers and due to the non-profit nature of OpenAI (and hence no equity), these people might be very tempted to leave.
    - rlt 3y ago
      OpenAI is supposedly “capped profit” so employees do get equity with limited upside. But yeah, since Sam and Greg were apparently pushed out because they were building too good of a business any OpenAI employees that were aligned with them are likely to jump ship and join them, and OpenAI will revert to the non-profit research lab it started out as.

deepsun 3y ago

[flagged]

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

My prediction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309611&p=7#38311488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309611&p=7#38311488 So here's my theory which might sound crazy. Sam planned to open a new AI company and taking away openAI's top talents to his company. And breaking up openAI into non profit and his for profit company. Sam's first tweet after all this has, just hours after this article: > will have more to say about what’s next later. So either he knew that he was about to be fired or at least was prepared. Also based on the wording of the press release, Sam did something that the board absolutely hated. Because most of the time even if he did something illegal it doesn't make sense to risk defamation by accusing him publically. Also based on his video of yesterday at the APEC summit, he repeated the similar lines few times: > I am super excited. I can't imagine anything more exciting to work on. So here if we assume he knew he was about to get fired, the conclusion is clear.

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Kidman 3y ago

Some Microsoft bullshit. I've read an article where they said Greg to be a really hard worker at Open AI,so I can't possibly think of a reason other than this. Maybe they'll do something with Google? Who knows

hathym 3y ago

they seems to finally achieve AGI, they realized they don't need as many people anymore :D

ykonstant 3y ago
They now have Sam AItman.

RichieAHB 3y ago

Makes we wonder how much of the investor’s money was put in to OpenAI as a company or in Sam and the leadership. I think the answer is probably the latter, and the fact that Sam’s firing was this easy (and would likely have the effect of others going in quick order) seems like a massive oversight in terms of investor due diligence in board structure etc.

urbandw311er 3y ago

Just seen their departure tweets (link below) What’s with this annoying trend of omitting capital letters from comms? https://x.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559?s=20 https://x.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559?s=20

keiferski 3y ago
Glad I’m not the only one who finds this irritating. I once applied to a job and the manager replied using all lower case letters. I guess he was trying to seem cool and approachable, but to me it just reads as unprofessional. I find it hard to take a piece of writing seriously when it’s formatted that way.
- NKosmatos 3y ago
  Oh that’s great, we’re more who find such kind of writing unprofessional. Especially spelling errors in CVs, formatting errors in documents/presentations, one sentence paragraphs and similar kind of things. It might indicate intelligence and people who are extra busy, thus not wasting their time, but depending on the position and circumstances a nicely written text is essential.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    I started to write my comment in all lower case letters as a joke, but it was taking too long to cancel each autocorrect suggestion. So I definitely don’t buy the “I’m too busy” reason. I think the main reason I find it unprofessional is that it is such a distraction. Professional communication should be clear and “get out of the way” so that the focus can be on the ideas being discussed.
    - deleted 3y ago
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NKosmatos 3y ago
And I thought I was the only one that didn’t like this kind of writing. No capitalization, writing “i” instead of “I” and generally trying to write as fast as possible. I guess that’s what happens if you’re working 60-100 hours per week coding ChatGPT, and you don’t have time to waste. Sometimes I feel sorry for these kind of people and other times I envy them.

seydor 3y ago

It would be ironic but sincere if the new company is named ClosedAI or sth

mirzap 3y ago
Even more, if the model was open-sourced, weights and everything.

antman 3y ago

So what was he lying about that got the board so pissed? A story that fits is that they assumed/knew that he had different goals and/or was going to create a spinoff. If they waited for the GPT5 pretraining to finish and then they minimized the cost of the loss of Altman and the engineers. The whole secrecy, compartmentalization and urgency of their actions could only be explained by being against a wall. Otherwise if it was about ethics, future plans or whatever political it would happen at a slower pace. Hope they involved their investors beforehand but I don't know if they had time, OpenAI probably still exists and evolves on other people's money. But what else could they do?

thinkingemote 3y ago
current popular theory is that those fired/left were taking OpenAI for profit, and the board stuck with their original goal of non profit.
- Lacerda69 3y ago
  you mean current completely made up speculation by anon online?
  - thinkingemote 3y ago
    That's one source. There are others about, but as I wrote it's a "theory". edits: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38314420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38314420 I imagine when the full story comes out all these theories and speculations will be ignored and we will literally forget ever being interested in them!
    - sigmoid10 3y ago
      I didn't even need to check the source. I immediately thought that this was obvious when it was announced (implicitly) that Ilya must have voted out Sam on the board. Whatever legalese is going on in the side channels to justify everything, I can totally see the conflict in visions between these two guys. And I'm sorta glad Ilya came out on top, even though I'm not a big fan of him either. Brockman is the real loss from this mess.

Tade0 3y ago

I'm embarrassed to say, being Polish myself, I had no idea that key people in OpenAI were Polish - I assume it was a coordinated resignation then. Madry is actually spelled Mądry, which translates to "Wise".

konschubert 3y ago
Why make this about nationality?
- Tade0 3y ago
  Is that something controversial? Anyway, I was providing context. The way I see it, since they speak the same language natively, they might have had a frank conversation about this at some point and decided to resign in concert.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    I thought you were very clear. You clearly stated that it was an assumption, and why. So many people overstate state their ideas, which is basically deceit. People who represent guesses as fact are either lying or have a special kind of arrogant ignorance.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 3y ago
  It's rather unusual to have all three people mentioned be Polish.
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kubb 3y ago
A lot of top talent from Polish universities went to work in the Silicon Valley (with the US spending $0 on their education BTW). They're very well represented per capita of their home country, but just a drop in the ocean of international talent that the Bay Area is swarming with.

wojciechpolak 3y ago

Meanwhile, in the parallel universe, they founded a new company with Sam and Greg, and Apple entered the scene as a significant partner or investor.

riverdweller 3y ago

If the speculation that the board want to open up everything so that it is truly open/public domain "for the benefit of humanity" turns out to be accurate, I can't see Microsoft being terribly happy about this now that they own 49% of OpenAI and want not only to recoup their investments but make ongoing profit. An exodus of staff might provoke a very quick release of a lot of code, pipelines, and training data by the remaining board before investors' lawyers have a chance to stop it.

cactusplant7374 3y ago
It’s the opposite. They are irrationally fearful of what they have built. Therefore, they will handicap any progress or competitive advantage that they have.
- hackerlight 3y ago
  A few days ago Sam said that a recent breakthrough was a game changer. They recently finished pretraining GPT-5 apparently. So it could be related to the rapid rate of progress.
  - cactusplant7374 3y ago
    Sort of like Apple gives us a breakthrough every year? Sam is biased.
- enumjorge 3y ago
  A lot of comments on this thread are sharing personal theories as if they were facts. Sam also talked about the dangers of AI. It’s likely that he did so to encourage a regulatory moat around OpenAI.
AgentME 3y ago
Neither Sam nor Ilya thinks that committing to open sourcing their models is good for the safety of humanity. This conflict is not about open source at all. (https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/15/23640180/openai-gpt-4-launch-closed-research-ilya-sutskever-interview https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/15/23640180/openai-gpt-4-lau...)

Shank 3y ago

It seems like firing Sam and causing this massive brain drain might be antithetical to the whole AGI mission of the original non-profit. If OpenAI loses everyone to Sam and he starts some new AI company, it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal company. All of the organizational safeguards OpenAI had inked with Microsoft and protection against "selling AGI" once-developed are out-the-window if he just builds AGI at a new company. I'm not saying this will happen, but it seems to me like an incredibly silly move.

concordDance 3y ago
> it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal compan I can't imagine him doing that. He cares about getting well aligned AGI and profit motives fuck that up.
Lacerda69 3y ago
If MS gets their hands on an AGI help us god, but no "organizational safeguards" will matter. Not that I think AGI is possible or desirable in the first place, but that's a different discussion.
- concordDance 3y ago
  Impossible with LLMs, with currently known techniques or impossible full stop?
  - wil421 3y ago
    Impossible with computers full stop. IMHO, we may be able to slice together DNA or modify it to create a new or smarter organism than AGI in a computer. They already shifted goal posts and they’ll do it again. AI used to mean AGI but marketing got a hold of it. Once something resembling AGI comes out they’ll say well it’s not Level 5 AGI or something similar.
    - concordDance 3y ago
      > Impossible with computers full stop. This combined with it being possible with DNA is a very rare view. How did you come by it?

mirzap 3y ago

This is escalating rather quickly. It is an incredibly irresponsible move by the OpenAI board. Hypergrowing company, and now they managed to shake up their user's trust in leadership stability. This has Adam's (D'Angelo) fingerprints all over it (for context, he did overthrow his co-founder, and Quora has been struggling ever since). This guy shouldn't sit on any board ever again. I predict the board will be fired, and Sam and the team will return and try to contain the situation.

chasd00 3y ago
Who fires the board at a 501.3c?
- mirzap 3y ago
  They resign under public pressure, I guess?
  - Rastonbury 3y ago
    Why would they if they are advancing the goals of the non-profit and Altman was endangering that goal?
    - jdthedisciple 3y ago
      Hahaha "advancing the goals of non profit" right after making billions. All of a sudden their amnesia stopped huh? Hypocrites and virtue signallers, the whole board.
      - Rastonbury 3y ago
        I mean, the board doesn't have equity and the for-profit subsidiary is profit capped
        jdthedisciple 3y ago
        They still stand to benefit personally, do they not?

lencastre 3y ago

Sam and his friends will land on their feet, likely at $NVDA

konschubert 3y ago
I think sam is smart enough to not waste his time inside a corporate mill.
- gdiamos 3y ago
  Jensen isn't a normal CEO
  - hackerlight 3y ago
    I don't think NVDA would want to work on LLMs/AGI, it doesn't cohere with their business. In the short term they're focused on upscaling and frame generation, and long term it'd be neural rendering.

username332211 3y ago

This looks more and more like a coup, rather than a proper removal of a CEO. If there was some real misconduct by Altman, others won't be resigning with him, would they?

benkarst 3y ago

It's incredible how many of you alleged tech people think that Sam just wanted a world of safe AI while his actions suggest he wanted to make dump trucks of money. He was the one who partnered with Microsoft and turned it from a non-profit to a for-profit company.

philovivero 3y ago
[flagged]
- konschubert 3y ago
  Consider the possibility that people who know a thing or two technology might still think AI brings a lot of good and that kneecapping AI isn't the right move at this time.
  - jonbell 3y ago
    Impossible challenge
  - j_maffe 3y ago
    There are plenty of AI experts who believe that AI will do more harm than good if it keeps being developed at this rate.
    - Loughla 3y ago
      This is not as strong of an argument as you think. There have been experts who believe pretty much every technological innovation, since we transitioned from rock tablets to paper, that it will do more harm than good. Context: I believe the end of humanity will be real AI and not climate change.
      - j_maffe 3y ago
        I, myself, am a lot more worried about a few monopolists doing whatever they get to choose for the rest of humanity. AI fuels that vision more than any other piece of technology.

majikaja 3y ago

What are these people trying to do exactly? Create an AI that enslaves humanity?

kozikow 3y ago

I know Jakub Pachocki and in my feeling, Jakub leaving is worse for gpt than Greg or Sam. Im not claiming to know more than everyone else, but Sam was IMO just a face. Greg is backend engineer - that's less important than actual research.

martindbp 3y ago
The whole team that trained GPT1-3 and came up with RLHF left to found Anthropic, perhaps proving that key people are maybe not so key and that other factors are more important. This is a further blow though on top of the previous one.

digitcatphd 3y ago

I really wonder if a dividing line started to emerge internally regarding the path to take the company. [1] On one hand they serve Microsoft and developers, building digital AI infrastructure. [2] On the other hand, they seem to try and want to build some monopoly and destroy as many startups (and companies) as possible. In the last developer day, they did a half-ass job of both. GPTs suck. The OpenAI Assistants don't have enough documentation to be used and therefore, equally suck. I really hope for the sake of the AI community (and economy) that [1] is the outcome. I really do not know how they could scale both. As an AI startup, I have a love-hate relationship with GPT and am eager to grow independent on them because how can I trust a company doing [2]?

FeepingCreature 3y ago
Uh, sorry, what? You think serving Microsoft would be opposed to building a monopoly?
- deleted 3y ago
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dabeeeenster 3y ago
"GPTs Suck" Never change, hacker news!
killerstorm 3y ago
Was it a right choice to make ChatGPT accessible by the public? To a person who is not an expert at prompting LLMs, ChatGPT is basically a shitty version of Bing Chat (aka Copilot). Especially the free version - it's an outdated model which cannot search the internet (or does it strictly worse than Bing Chat). Why does OpenAI pay for access to a shitty version of Bing Chat? There's only one possible reason for this: raising money at a very high valuation. They burned through hundreds of millions dollars to show VC that they have 100+ M users (and growing rapidly!) to raise at valuation ~$100B.

SSLy 3y ago

The second person is named Aleksander Mądry, thank you.

michpoch 3y ago
Not according to his linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksander-madry-61115b233/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksander-madry-61115b233/ (it's about just one letter - a vs ą) If that's the way he wants to be known, it's up to him.
- SSLy 3y ago
  His MIT page on the other hand. https://madry.mit.edu/ https://madry.mit.edu/

gjvc 3y ago

I've a penny that says the good ol' MSFT "embrace extend extinguish" is back in full swing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... Literally people thought they were saints because of VSCode FFS.

pknerd 3y ago

The other cofounder also quit

andrewstuart 3y ago

Ilya’s job won’t survive this power play……. Satya has been humiliated and will be furious.

Solvency 3y ago
How so?
- jvolkman 3y ago
  Reports say Microsoft was caught completely off guard. Here's the damage control tweet Satya found it necessary to make shortly after it all went down: https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1725656554878492779 https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1725656554878492779
cthalupa 3y ago
What mechanism does Satya have to do anything here? Microsoft has a minority stake in the for-profit subsidiary that is wholly controlled by the 501(c)(3). All investors (and employees) in the for-profit have to agree to the operating agreement that specifies the for-profit is not actually obligated to actually make a profit and that it is all secondary the charter the non-profit operates under. https://openai.com/our-structure https://openai.com/our-structure https://openai.com/charter https://openai.com/charter There is not a higher power than the board of the non-profit.
- DannyBee 3y ago
  So, for starters, they own all the compute being used. I think people seriously underestimate how hard it is to get the GPU compute/etc that is necessary to be useful here. Lead time would be years, easily, even if you had the money. NVidia can't change this for you even if they liked you - they literally can't build chips fast enough. Depending on the exact agreement, Microsoft may have just given them credits/free use, and the part where they make sure the resources are actually available is just good faith that may no longer exist. That's one example. Even beyond that, you are assuming they can only do super-direct things, but it turns out to be fairly easy to make things very uncomfortable for people/companies indirectly.

menshiki 3y ago

Is it a coincidence that all of them are Polish?

password54321 3y ago

Anyone who follows the gaming industry knows that Microsoft ruins nearly everything it touches.

huggingmouth 3y ago

> head of AI risk team That's a good sign imo.

ksynwa 3y ago

Forgive my ignorance but I am asking this because a lot of people have been mentioning AGI. Does OpenAI say anywhere that they want to achieve AGI at somw point in the future? While GPT and other generative AIs are extremely innovative and cool they are really really far away from being AGI. Setting sights on something like AGI seems delusional or a marketing stunt at this point.

3np 3y ago
> OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. First sentence on https://openai.com/about https://openai.com/about
cthalupa 3y ago
Yes. AGI is literally their charter. https://openai.com/charter https://openai.com/charter
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wslh 3y ago

Could we say that OpenAI is not only the company with the fastest product traction and impact in the world but the fastest to implode? When there are a lot of things at stake, not only money, people collide. This is a rant but we are seeing several examples now in 2023. There are "rules" for normal startups and different ones in another scale.

suziemanul 3y ago

This is Olek Madry and Jakub Pachocki we are talking about. Check out their respective dblps if you don't get it. It's a kind of loss that will be hard to recover from. In relation to other comments here. There is "coding" and there is "God's spark genius of algorithms" kind of work. This is what made the magic of OpenAI. Believe me, those guys were not "just coding". My bet is that it could be all about some research directions that were "shielded" by Sam.

belter 3y ago
If all of that would be enough, there would be a ChatGPT from Google, a long time ago...
- fsloth 3y ago
  In general Google sucks in creating new consumer offerings. So it's not about resources for sure. I guess it's about synergy, culture, taste and talent.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  Wasn’t OpenAI populated in part by Google Brain people who left Google’s bs bureaucracy and internal politics?
  - suziemanul 3y ago
    Totally, most of the Transformers folks ;-)
- sbrother 3y ago
  Google invented the core technology, and they had an internal version long before ChatGPT was released. I joined when it was already at the "accessible to all employees" stage and it absolutely blew my mind. They just hadn't -- and still haven't -- figured out how to commercialize it yet. I don't think they'll be the ones to crack that nut either. IMO they are too obsessed with "safety" to release something useful, and also can't reasonably deploy a service like ChatGPT at their scale because the costs are too high. With OpenAI imploding this whole race just got a lot more interesting though...

etewiah 3y ago

I'm super curious to know what happens to the GPTs store. I've started a directory of GPTs on gipety.com so personally the longer it takes for the official store to be launched the better ;)

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minzi 3y ago

I keep seeing so many comments about how the move was irresponsible from the board because it was a hyper growth company and blah blah blah. This board was not set up to care at all about shareholder value. I’m not making any judgement about whether they made the correct decision. I’m just stating that everyone keeps talking about this as if it were a normal company structure and it absolutely is not.

totallywrong 3y ago

So now you've got the CTO, CEO, and 3 top engineers creating a new company pronto, with VCs and the usual suspects queueing up to throw money at them. Bad move from OpenAI.

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago

>> Submitting information since paywalled links are not permitted. They are? Here's my submission of your link. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38320350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38320350 Maybe @dang can put it under your name?

Jayakumark 3y ago

OpenAI was started as non profit and it went the profit route with capping. For profit will always win non-profit because It’s run by people - once they see money , they want more not less. This was meant to happen when it changed its structure to cap profits at 100x . If Microsoft invests $10 billion openAI Can make $1 trillion in profits before giving a dime to its non profit. If it makes $1 trillion it can just ask someone to invest $1 billion and wait until it makes another $100 billion . Sam, Brockman and others who resigned will start a new for-profit company. Sam will use his influence to get funding and contracts. They know the tech and with know how of everything, build better model. And OpenAI will be forced to give up and work with them as it’s part of their founding policy.

gnu8 3y ago

ChatGPT is a toy, OpenAI isn't open, no one can download the models or the data, and no one can buy the chips needed to work with them. This whole thing is a joke. Shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.

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onlinewebtutor 3y ago

This news is worrying for the AI community. Three important researchers, Jakub Pachocki, Aleksander Madry, and Szymon Sidor, have resigned from OpenAI. It makes us wonder about the direction and teamwork at OpenAI. Aleksander Madry was in charge of the AI risk team, a group focused on making sure AI is used safely. Their leaving might affect how OpenAI works on AI and deals with potential risks. OpenAI needs to tell us more about why they left so that people can trust that OpenAI is still committed to developing AI responsibly. We hope to get more information to understand what happened.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

> Submitting information since paywalled links are not permitted. This rule should be dropped. It's the reason that HN is dominated by low quality outlets. It's also in tension with another rule, which is that the original source of the article should be posted - the original source is usually an outlet that has the resources to do original research, thanks to a paywall.

revskill 3y ago

It' time to just let ChatGPT to be the real BOSS, no more non-sense.

Yuridhahadi 3y ago

[dead]

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