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A Timeline of the OpenAI Board
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoSo out of 4 people who fired Sam, 3 of them have conflicting interests with OpenAI. Adam more clearly as his company is creating ChatGPT's competitor, and Tasha and Helen's employer are funding Anthropic. The curious part was how did investors including Microsoft missed this in their DD. Or they found out but they wanted to invest in OpenAI so bad that they let go of this fact.
- levidos 3y agoPoe is just a proxy for other third party AI bots, I don't see it as a very direct conflict of interest.
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoThey have their own assistant as well. It's on top of poe. It's quite bad now but for someone like Adam with dataset like quora, he likely has bigger plans.
- anupamchugh 3y agoInteresting that Sam is also an investor in Quora: https://blog.samaltman.com/quora https://blog.samaltman.com/quora It’s convulated
- jug 3y agoYes and the killer feature of Poe for me is the easy access of several models _besides_ OpenAI. They are there too but they are also on ChatGPT. The interesting bits are the rest, like an Anthropic AI and open source model interface, and customizing bots around those.
- brianjking 3y agoMinus that they are in direct competition to the GPTs and the "app store" and "revenue sharing" that Sam announced on dev day.
- huytersd 3y ago4 board members left post Microsoft’s purchase.
- swyx 3y ago1. i am surprised that Sam, a known prepper, left himself vulnerable to the most traditional risk a CEO can have. presumably he had a lot of control over board composition? 2. soooo is Sam back? how exactly might satya influence a nonprofit board he has zero votes in? why would the board flipflop so quickly in the span of 24 hrs when presumably they took the original action knowing the shitstorm that would ensue? none of these things make sense given that everyone in the room is presumably smart and knows how the world works
- cinntaile 3y ago> none of these things make sense given that everyone in the room is presumably smart and knows how the world works The board can try to anticipate the next actions after they fire them, but predicting the final outcome of what essentially are human actions seems quite difficult.
- vbezhenar 3y agoWhen you can turn the switch and cut off fleet of nvidias from ChatGPT, you have a very strong influence.
- p1esk 3y agoOpenAI can just as easily turn the switch and cut off access to gpt models. OpenAI can get compute anywhere, while Microsoft can only get GPT4 at OpenAI.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- schiffern 3y agoPoe AI is just a clear straight conflict, no question there. On the governance matter, the thesis is a bit more shakey. > Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley... participating in an... AI governance organization... calls into question the independence of their votes. > I am not accusing anyone (to be clear, even the Board Directors that I consider conflicted) of having acted subject to conflicts of interest. [AKA "Just Asking Questions" technique] > If... this act of governance was unwise, it calls into serious question the ability of these people and their organizations... to conduct governance So they're conflicted because they're also in governance, and they shouldn't govern because they might have been conflicted. It seems like the author's real problem isn't any specific conduct by these two board members, but more of a "you got chocolate in my peanut butter" issue.
- ealexhudson 3y agoI think there are a bunch of problems in the timeline, not least the ongoing mismatch between statements and filings, and the lack of anything in 2022. It does look like governance very much played second fiddle, and the unsurprising outcome of that was that governance hasn't worked very well. I don't know who can rightfully take the blame for that, though, other than the Chair and maybe CEO. If the board wasn't fit, it was their job to fix it.
- patrickhogan1 3y agoThe conflicts of interest here are staggering. Non-profits are supposed to benefit the public. At a minimum they need an Independent Review.
- baking 3y agoYou are thinking of a public charity. Not all non-profits are public charities. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-public-private-nonprofit-organizations-26366.html https://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-public-pr... https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/eo-operational-requirements-private-foundations-and-public-charities https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/eo-operational-req... "Under the tax law, a section 501(c)(3) organization is presumed to be a private foundation unless it requests, and qualifies for, a ruling or determination as a public charity. Organizations that qualify for public charity status include churches, schools, hospitals, medical research organizations, publicly-supported organizations (i.e., organizations that receive a specified portion of their total support from public sources), and certain supporting organizations." Edit: Looking at the IRS determination letter from November 3, 2016, OpenAI was organized as a public charity under 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) "Organizations Receiving Substantial Support from a Governmental Unit or from the General Public" Their last 990 form, filed November 15, 2021, for the calendar year 2020, shows total support over the past 5 years (2016-2020) of $133M, only $41M of which was individual donations of over 2% ($2.6M) so they easily met the 5-year public support test.
- upwardbound 3y ago> they asked: who on earth are Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner? As a prominent researcher in AI safety (I discovered prompt injection) I should explain that Helen Toner is a big name in the AI safety community - she’s one of the top 20 most respected people in our community, like Rohin Shah. The “who on earth” question is a good question about Tasha. But grouping Helen in with Tasha is just sexist. By analogy, Tasha is like Kimbal Musk, whereas Helen is like Tom Mueller. Tasha seems unqualified but Helen is extremely qualified. Grouping them together is sexist and wrong.
- reducesuffering 3y ago> But grouping Helen in with Tasha is just sexist. No, it's not. They're grouped together because everyone knows who Sama, Greg Brockman, Ilya, and Adam D'Angelo (Quora founder / FB CTO) are, and maybe 5% knew who Helen and Tasha are. You linked to a rando twitter user making fun of her, but I've seen far more putting down Ilya for his hairline.
- hhjinks 3y agoHow do you "discover" that user input can be used for injection attacks?
- upwardbound 3y agoGood question. We were the first team to demonstrate that this type of vulnerability exists in LLMs. We then made an immediate responsible disclosure to OpenAI, which is confirmed as the first disclosure of its kind by OWASP: https://github.com/OWASP/www-project-top-10-for-large-language-model-applications/blob/main/1_1_vulns/LLM01_PromptInjection.md https://github.com/OWASP/www-project-top-10-for-large-langua... In the citations: 14. Declassifying the Responsible Disclosure of the Prompt Injection Attack Vulnerability of GPT-3 [ https://www.preamble.com/prompt-injection-a-critical-vulnerability-in-the-gpt-3-transformer-and-how-we-can-begin-to-solve-it https://www.preamble.com/prompt-injection-a-critical-vulnera... ]: Preamble; earliest disclosure of Prompt Injection
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- mw67 3y agoFinally a board that acts to benefit all humanity as the charter demands. VCs want billions so they will try anything starting with the nonsense of “do no harm” priciple which has nothing to do with corporate governance. It is the Hippocrates oath taken by doctors. VCs are already cheating, expect more to come. They come from the ethic of move fast, break things, make billions and show no conscience about the masive harm done to all humanity. Let us see in detail how a greedy bunch will remove the fiduciaries of all humanity and make us all pay dearly for their privilege.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> It is the Hippocrates oath taken by doctors. Which actually isn't. Some places use other oaths, more or less derived from the Hippocratic Oath, other places don't do it at all. But hardly anyone uses the OG oath itself.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- paulddraper 3y agoHow does firing Altman benefit all humanity?
- zarzavat 3y agoBy putting the brakes on and allowing slower progress. Altman is clearly obsessed with making money to the exclusion of the organization’s goals.
- paulddraper 3y ago> Altman is clearly obsessed with making money He has zero equity. > the exclusion of the organization’s goals. What did Altman do to clearly exclude OpenAPI's goals?
- reducesuffering 3y ago
- jbverschoor 3y agoSam posted something on x that he’d “go off “.. maybe some there about the board they’re scared of coming out. It’s one shit show over there
- borski 3y agoThat was sarcasm; the joke was that he has no shares, and thus if he were to “go off” the board should come after him for all his shares. Basically, he was saying he had very little to lose by going public with his story.
- jbverschoor 3y agoTechnicalities. He stated he did not have any equity in OpenAI. While he might not shares directly in OpenAI, but he might have indirectly, or has some other economic interest agreement. OpenAI consists of at least the following entities: OpenAI OpCo, LLC OpenAI Global, LLC OpenAI Nonprofit. OpenAI GP LLC OpenAI, Inc. OpenAI, L.L.C OpenAI, LP. OpenAI Startup Fund Management, LLC OpenAI Startup Fund I, L.P. OpenAI Startup Fund GP I, L.L.C. OpenAI Ireland Ltd A Delaware Limited Partnership doesn't have shares, so he's technically correct by that statement. --ianal
- borski 3y agoAside from a small investment through a YCombinator fund (sama was formerly its president), he doesn't have any equity in the company.
- jbverschoor 3y agoThat’s so hard to believe. As an employee, he’s probably entitled to some stock. But again, that means he currently “doesn’t own” it
- borski 3y agoHard to believe or not, them’s the facts. He does not own any stock, and does not have any issues options or anything like that.
- username332211 3y agoThat's probably the most illuminating article on the whole situation I've seen, and it's just because it includes one key fact. The board went from 10 people to 6 in the span of a year. That explains absolutely everything that happened at OpenAI. Why couldn't we get that little tidbit from a media publication?
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> The board went from 10 people to 6 in the span of a year. That explains absolutely everything that happened at OpenAI. Could you elaborate? This explains exactly nothing to me.
- robg 3y ago100%, for all the palace intrigue, this mismanagement / misalignment of the Board has been stewing for a while.
- layer8 3y agoI don’t remember which media publication, but at least one of the ones posted on HN on Friday/Saturday noted that three board members had resigned this year, and it was also mentioned in related HN threads that this is probably what has made Friday's vote possible in the first place. Edit: This one for example: https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/17/openai-sam-altman-firing-board-members/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/17/openai-sam-altman-firing-b...
- username332211 3y agoMaybe that's true, but I can't read every single one of them. I don't think I saw anything in Ars's in-depth article recaping the whole drama or "the Verge"'s reporting. Though as can be expected, I skimmed most of what I read, it makes no sense to re-read the same information re-told again and again by different writers. In any case, finding out the key fact about a situation shouldn't require reading multiple articles by different publications. It should have been highly emphasized in any publication's reporting.
- chubot 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hallqv 3y ago[flagged]
- kmlevitt 3y agoPeople keep trying to make this about wokeness gone mad, but it was Ilya,the white guy most involved in their biggest technological innovations, that instigated all this. Basically, it’s a nonprofit organization, and so they picked people who are professionally on the boards of nonprofit organizations and think about these matters in terms of ideology rather than tawdry profits. Then everybody is shocked when they fire the CEO for caring more about profit than the ideologies they have based their careers around. The problem isn’t that they were women. The problem is Sam tried to cosplay OpenAI as a nonprofit organization trying to do good in the world rather than just make money, and was in for a shock when it turned out the board members actually took that seriously.
- fsckboy 3y ago>People keep trying to make this about wokeness gone mad, but it was Ilya,the white guy most involved in their biggest technological innovations, that instigated all this. there are too many uninteresting debates here about wokeness that lead nowhere, so I'm not starting one. But it is the very definition of wokeness to evaluate this situation on the basis of a white guy's race and gender, as if that indicates anything (everything?) about his POV.
- rplnt 3y agoI don't think that's the case here? No evaluation, just a response to the parent comment saying "you are wrong, here's why".
- SantalBlush 3y agoThat wasn't the point. They mentioned the "white guy" in this case because it was relevant to the insinuations of wokeness.
- kmlevitt 3y ago
- gardenhedge 3y agoWow OP, this is one of the best things I've read on HN. The last thing to capture my interest this much was the actual release of ChatGPT last year. I'm also learning a lot about company boards. > They all resigned within a few months of one another despite OpenAI looking like the rocketship of the century? Something feels a little odd about that. Exactly what I was thinking when reading through the timeline.
- loeber 3y agoHi, I’m the author. Thanks for the compliment!
- seydor 3y agoIt's time for a new, new start. Let's rename it DramaAI
- JonChesterfield 3y agoI'm expecting RealAI. Would line up neatly under OpenAI (typographically) and generally has an ambitious sound to it.
- zkid18 3y agoI mostly struggled with the fact that OpenAI's influence extends far beyond the borders of the United States. Yet, its board is constrained by the US residents, limiting the ability to cultivate empathy locally. Such a viewpoint is both difficult and rooted in exceptionalism when it comes to designing gov policies.
- athrow 3y agoLooks like a board of a crypto(scam): weak, unclear profiles, frequent changes, no board experience, personal connections. It's quite amazing they've seemingly stumbled upon $100b product.
- araes 3y agoThree things. 1. I read to the bottom of this, and somebody's like "BTW, Altman has no equity." Really, the CEO and a board member has no equity? 2. The CIA joined the board (former, whatever, you're CIA)? And suddenly, everybody has somewhere else to be. 3. "We got everything we need, run away! We all happen to be developing closely aligned products, thanks Microsoft."
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoA > When a Board rapidly changes in size, rarely is the remainder left well-balanced. Potential conflicts only make the balancing act harder. + B > It seems much easier to govern a single-digit number of highly capable people than to “govern” artificial superintelligence. If it turns out that this act of governance was unwise, then it calls into serious question the ability of these people and their organizations (Georgetown’s CSET, Open Philanthropy, etc.) to conduct governance in general, especially of the most impactful technology of the hundred years to come. =C > Many people are saying we need more governance: maybe it turns out we need less. How does this conclusion come from these premises?