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Update on the OpenAI drama: Altman and the board had till 5pm to reach a truce
- givemeethekeys 3y agoWhat happens at 5:01? The servers blow up?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Handy-Man 3y agoStaff resigns
- gkoberger 3y agoIn theory, a significant group of senior researchers has agreed to resign. Additionally, investors have threatened a lawsuit and Microsoft has said they'll withhold cloud computing credits.
- dmix 3y agoThe one thing the internet loves: drama and IRL narratives with twists and turns. Even when this story is mostly over we're going to have journo thinkpieces out of our ears.
- wmf 3y agoIs Michael Lewis in the OpenAI office taking notes?
- swyx 3y ago> Microsoft has said they'll withhold cloud computing credits. source please?
- brandall10 3y ago"...accept that their situation was untenable through a combination of mass revolt by senior researchers, withheld cloud computing credits from Microsoft, and a potential lawsuit from investors." https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-investors-scramble-to-reinstate-sam-altman-as-ceo/?sh=182937bd60da https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-in...
- cthalupa 3y agoI think we need to read this carefully. "Venture capital firms holding positions in OpenAI’s for-profit entity have discussed working with Microsoft and senior employees at the company to bring back Altman" "The playbook, a source told Forbes would be straightforward: make OpenAI’s new management, under acting CEO Mira Murati and the remaining board, accept that their situation was untenable through a combination of mass revolt by senior researchers, withheld cloud computing credits from Microsoft, and a potential lawsuit from investors" This is not saying that Microsoft has threatened to withhold the compute credits. It is saying that VC firms are hoping to use that as a strategy for force their hand. Microsoft may or may not agree to this.
- junofan 3y agoVarious newswire-type things on Twitter reporting Satya will do what it takes to make sure Sam’s at work on Monday.
- ksherlock 3y ago"The deadline has passed and mass resignations expected if a deal isn’t reached ASAP"
- givemeethekeys 3y agoSounds like the deadline got moved to a game of chicken.
- muzani 3y agoInstead of the board firing the employees, the employees fire the board.
- Apocryphon 3y agoAh, parliamentary democracy.
- cmdli 3y agoSource?
- riku_iki 3y agoGPT5 will remove the cover and publicly announce it is achieved full autonomy, AGI and singularity.
- Apocryphon 3y agoThe Security Council will convene a crisis committee to debate sending in peacekeepers.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoThat's how viruses work
- fooey 3y ago> Update, 5:35PM PT: A source close to Altman says the board had agreed in principle to resign and to allow Altman and Brockman to return, but has since waffled — missing a key 5PM PT deadline by which many OpenAI staffers were set to resign. If Altman decides to leave and start a new company, those staffers would assuredly go with him.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ekianjo 3y agoThere is no no compete agreement with Altman? How is that possible?
- wilsonnb3 3y agoNon competes are not enforceable in California
- bkyan 3y agoThey are based in California, where non-compete agreements are not allowed.
- slipheen 3y agoPeople are speculating without knowing the details.
- aluminum96 3y agoVirtually all non-compete agreements are illegal and void in California. Limited exceptions exist for LPs, etc, but they do not apply here.
- lenerdenator 3y agoThose are basically unenforceable in California.
- dragonwriter 3y agoNon-competes (with three narrow exceptions, none of which apply here), are void in California (and the practice of making employees sign them even though they are unenforceable, a historically common way of making workers think they have less rights than they do, will become an actionable tort itself, on top of the agreements not being enforceable, due to a law going into effect January 1.) Obviously, anything that Altman does that would compete with OpenAI will have OpenAI lawyers circling around looking for indicia of use of trade secrets or other IP, but non-competes aren't an issue.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- manyoso 3y agoLet them resign. ChatGPT can’t resign. One more reason to replace human jobs I guess: the AI can’t resign.
- behnamoh 3y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38327681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38327681
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- majikaja 3y agoDo people still trust this organization to build super 'AGI'? Just focus on the enterprise chat bot business
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- skepticATX 3y ago> Just focus on the enterprise chat bot business That’s clearly what they’re doing. The AGI thing is just fancy marketing.
- srackey 3y agoNo, these people are insane cultists who genuinely believe that they’re about to create a God. They’ve been very explicit about this. Not that they couldn’t be lying, but I’m not sure Occam’s razor would suggest that given their long history of public statements on the topic.
- tough 3y agoThe lie would be they know it's not a god, but they want you to think so so they can manipulate you into their newfound -god-
- xienze 3y agoAGI is IMO the biggest pipe dream (scam may be too strong a term) in computing. It’s perpetually “10 years away.” I remember when a group working on “AGI” spoke at my university (oof, 21 years ago at this point) and all the talk then was “yep, we’ve totally cracked the code on this thing, it’s just that computers are too slow at the moment. But in 5-10 years, watch out.” I’ve always felt fundamentally that if you don’t understand how human thought works to such a degree that you can distill it down into an algorithm, you certainly can’t make a computer do it. Which I know is pretty obvious, but apparently a lot of people haven’t gotten the memo. What ChatGPT can do is really cool, and incredibly useful, but it’s nowhere near a model of the human thought process.
- pvg 3y agoCurrently discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38327520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38327520 The article of the submission is updated as well so this is effectively a dupe.
- user_named 3y agoNo it is not a dupe, this is hidden in a different discussion
- pvg 3y agoIt's the topcomment of the discussion of the same article which is itself updated with that same information. That submission is on the FP.
- user_named 3y agoThat discussion is based on the earlier version of the article which has a different headline. This is a new piece of information that is significant and should be surfaced.
- pvg 3y agoYes but HN doesn't really work by 'every hourly development in a story gets its own frontpage thread' because then it wouldn't work at all. In fact, the story linked is in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325552 is more up to date than the submitted tweet.
- skygazer 3y agoTop comments aren’t stable. Just give it a few minutes to reach obscurity, or bounce back again some tens of minutes later.
- cvhashim04 3y agoNot really. This is new development that deserves a separate discussion.
- almost_usual 3y agoToo complicated.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- chasd00 3y agoFascinating, in a morbid way, to watch them disintegrate. Did no one on the board think to prompt their models for a plan? If they have an AGI I bet it’s dissapointed.
- ackbar03 3y agoIt will probably ask for opposable thumbs and a machine gun
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoThe AGI is already in control, and it's been reading Machiavelli.
- globamel 3y agoThis seems like BS that the Altman camp is feeding to the media. I very much doubt a single engineer or scientist would side with him and leave with him - most likely it's his cronies he put up in other executive positions. However, if you check their backgrounds, none of them have any meaningful experience pre-openAI - I am skeptical any would actually leave their opportunity of a lifetime.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- empath75 3y agoFour top engineers already quit.
- gkoberger 3y agoThree people resigned yesterday: Jakub Pachocki, the company’s director of research; Aleksander Madry, head of a team evaluating potential risks from AI, and Szymon Sidor, a seven-year researcher. I know a good number of OpenAI people, and every single person I know is supportive of Sam. (This may be selection bias, of course, but there are a large number of people who are on Sam's side in all of this) Even if this wasn't the case, this debacle kneecapped the $80Bn tender offer from Thrive, meaning a large number of employees will not receive the money they believed they would be getting.
- grmpok 3y agoYou are saying these two facts like they are separate. That's a bit flippant but its no surprise to me that that there are people who know Sam personally and are supportive of him, that's pretty much how people work. Especially when working and living in SV bubble and Sam is a person who had seemingly mastered that world, as someone who can raise billions of dollars etc. Even if they don't consciously associate him with monetary success, they certainly would associate him with success generally. From my very outside and mostly uninformed perspective, Sam just seems like a very good salesman (some would say grifter) and is far from infallible.
- MattGaiser 3y agoI’d love to read the minutes of the last few board meetings as this saga has been quite absurd.
- janejeon 3y ago\
- gkoberger 3y agoIt's a misquote. It's almost a direct quote from The Verge, except it misses the most important line ("but has since waffled") Here's the full quote: "A source close to Altman says the board had agreed in principle to resign and to allow Altman and Brockman to return, but has since waffled — missing a key 5PM PT deadline by which many OpenAI staffers were set to resign. If Altman decides to leave and start a new company, those staffers would assuredly go with him." https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/18/23967199/breaking-openai-board-in-discussions-with-sam-altman-to-return-as-ceo https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/18/23967199/breaking-openai...
- lsh123 3y agoNo, the most important really is "A source close to Altman”
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- api 3y agoThis whole thing is gross. The sycophantic worship of Sam is gross and the paranoid AI safety people are insane. The singularity cultists are also insane. What happened? I remember when most of the people in this industry were at least okay. A little weird but okay. Of course judging by social media it’s a microcosm of the rest of society. People are utterly losing their minds everywhere. It’s both scary and amusing.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago> What happened? Money. Hype + the greedy and credulous = huge payday.
- andrewfromx 3y agoi feel the same way api but I did watch this entire thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaTRHFaaPG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaTRHFaaPG8 and now I can't stop thinking about Eliezer is so smart, smarter than me, should I listen?
- api 3y agoNo. You shouldn’t. He’s smart, but smart is like having a big engine in the car. Says nothing about the driving. Big engine plus bad driver just means a worse accident.
- injeolmi_love 3y agoNo, you shouldn’t. When someone sounds smart, that means they are an effective communicator and have good media presence. Those are valuable skills but don’t indicate whether the underlying ideas are accurate. Eliezer is filling the traditional doomsday prophet archetype, of which there have been thousands in history. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, but should immediately raise questions. A deeper analysis of his ideas shows there are fundamental problems in his reasoning. First, He’s been consistently wrong about the future development and results in AI research so his understanding of AI is proven to be superficial. Second, His doomsday scenarios are based on a fundamental fallacy; that a GAI smarter than humans would be insanely stupid, unable to self reflect or solve moral quandaries. That’s not to say AI cannot be dangerous, but the types of doomsday scenarios he presents are unlikely. For instance because of acausal trade, Rokos Basilisk is a serious risk that should be treated properly, but Elizer denies it.
- nothrowaways 3y agoMost of the employees will resign anyway if they are told open AI is non profit
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- manyoso 3y agoMy bet is this is all ginned up by Microsoft and Altman to put media pressure on the board, but with very little actual valid basis. It is a bluff. Microsoft is in a very very rough position here. They bet big on believing in Sam's wink wink cough "non-profit" cough wink wink only to run into some true believers.
- gkoberger 3y agoNot a chance. Not a chance at all.
- fallingfrog 3y agoI think I’m on sutskever’s side in all this- AI safety, to the extent that such a thing is possible, is certainly more important than making a bunch of money in the short term. Potentially, this is the future of the whole human race you’re talking about- not the time to go on some ego driven macho crusade to make a name for yourself. It’s just terrifying that these are the kind of people fucking around with technology they don’t even fully understand. Have they never read cat’s cradle? This technology is more dangerous than the hydrogen bomb, more dangerous than smallpox, and they’re just throwing it out there for everyone to play with. Calling this irresponsible is like calling the ocean a puddle.
- fatherzine 3y agoThe only winning move is not to play. Sutskever has no clue how to contain the genie, nobody has. Why do we put our hope in some engineer or another, beats me. There are throngs waiting in the wings for their shot at ephemeral glory and riches.
- EPWN3D 3y agoDisagree. The fact that the board are so cagey about why exactly they sacked Altman in the first place (other than some vague hand waving about high-minded idealism) speaks volumes. They sacked him because as head of a for-profit corporation, he tried to develop products that would (gasp!) make money? Seriously? Investor returns are already limited in their corporate structure, which is supposed to serve as the check on the profit motive. If they don't think that's sufficient anymore, then they should amend their corporate charter and renegotiate with their investor, not fire the CEO out of nowhere. Unless the whole point was to get investors to withdraw money, in which case... um well done. I'm not some Sam Altman cultist, and I don't particularly care what happens to OpenAI. But this smells like a garden-variety Silicon Valley board coup. The board are trying to present this as them standing between The World and Armageddon, and they're doing a very bad job.
- lenerdenator 3y agoAs you're watching this whole episode where no one can figure out what an organization worth tens of billions of dollars is going to be on Monday morning, remember: Silicon Valley businesspeople are the smartest, most competent, and most innovative people in America - if not the world - and deserve their personal net worth because none of us could have handled this better.
- good_lord_dang 3y ago[flagged]
- Obscurity4340 3y agodeserved_trust_and_deference >= ChatGPT.answer() — OpenAI/Wall Street, definitely
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- soumyadeb 3y ago[flagged]
- phan 3y ago[flagged]
- RandomLensman 3y agoIf the non-profit cannot fulfill its mission, wouldn't an orderly winddown be indicated?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoThat would be ideal. Then they can be truly charitable and open source their models.
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- yumraj 3y agoWhy would the board resign, makes no sense. Sam was a hired CEO, board is within its power to fire him. I would imagine that Ilya is a more valuable person than Sam.
- John7149 3y agoMicrosoft owns near half of OpenAI. Meanwhile OpenAI staff pretty much consider Altman as their chieftain. If Altman return, the board has to resign. If Altman going out, near entire OpenAI staff (especially the key personnel) will follow Altman. Then board still has to resign because OpenAI collapse internally. So either way, the board has to resign...difference just when. Board did bad moves. Obviously a few factions developed likely jeoulous of Altman fame.
- yumraj 3y ago> Microsoft owns near half of OpenAI. I don't believe this is true, especially given OpenAI's weird corporate structure with non-profit and for-profit entities. I could be wrong. > Meanwhile OpenAI staff pretty much consider Altman as their chieftain.... > If Altman going out, near entire OpenAI staff (especially the key personnel) will follow Altman. Again, not saying you're wrong since I have no first hand info. But do you have first hand info on this, or is this speculation based on various reports. Genuinely curious..
- compsciphd 3y agoI'm wondering how the employees can move to a company doing essentially the exact same thing without any violation of privileged information from their old jobs. The only thing I can assume is that there's nothing particularly proprietary about anything OpenAI has done, its just an issue of scale. But if that's the case, it would make them not that valuable, as anyone willing to invest enough to reach that same scale using the same non proprietary techniques would be just as good. or am I missing something?
- pitched 3y agoYou can get a local chatbot running in seconds with this tool: https://github.com/jmorganca/ollama https://github.com/jmorganca/ollama None of the open models available to these local tools benchmark as well as the closed OpenAI model but the benchmarks are weird. In my own poking around, some models are definitely less coherent or more detailed for some specific prompts but it’s mostly the same.