7 ms·

Sounds like it won’t be much of a company in a couple days. Just 3 idiot board members wondering why the building is empty.

nopromisessir 3y ago
The wired article seems to be updated by the hour. Now up to 600+/770 total. Couple janitors. I dunno who hasn't signed that at this point ha... Would be fun to see a counter letter explaining their thinking to not sign on.
- labcomputer 3y ago
  How many OAI are on Thanksgiving vacation someplace with poor internet access? Or took Friday as PTO and have been blissfully unaware of the news since before Altman was fired?
  - nopromisessir 3y ago
    Pretty sure only folks who practice a religion prohibiting phone usage. Even they prob had some friend come flying over and jump out of some autonomous car to knock on their door in sf.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  You are overlooking the politics: If you don't sign, your career may be over.
  - nopromisessir 3y ago
    I doubt that. This is AAA talent. They can always land elsewhere. I doubt there would even be hard feelings. The team seems super tight. Some folks aren't in a position to put themselves out there. That sort of thing would be totally understandable. This is not a petty team. You should look more closely at their culture.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      Where else can they participate in this possibly humanity-changing, history-making research? The list is very, very short.
jacquesm 3y ago
I'm having trouble imagining the level of conceit required to think that those three by their lonesome have it right when pretty much all of the company is on the other side of the ledger, and those are the people that stand to lose more. Incredible, really. The hubris.
- throwcatch123 3y ago
  I'm baffled by the idea that a bunch of people who have a massive personal financial stake in the company, who were hired more for their ability than alignment, being against a move that potentially (potentially) threatens their stake and are willing to move to Microsoft, of all places, must necessarily be in the right. The hubris, indeed.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Well, they have that right. But the board has unclean hands to put it mildly and seems to have been obsessed with their own affairs more than with the end result for OpenAI which is against everything a competent board should have stood for. So they had better pop an amazing rabbit of a reason out of their high hat or it is going to end in tears. You can't just kick the porcelain cupboard like this from the position of a board member without consequences if you do not have a very valid reason, and that reason needs to be twice as good if there is a perceived conflict of interest.
- jasonfarnon 3y ago
  It may not have anything to do with conceit, it could just be that they have very different objectives. OpenAI set up this board as a check on everyone who has a financial incentive in the enterprise. To me the only strange thing is that it wasn't handled more diplomatically, but then I have no idea if the board was warning Altman for a long time and then just blew their top.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Diplomacy is one thing, the lack of preparation is what I find interesting. It looks as if this was all cooked up either on the spur of the moment or because a window of opportunity opened (possibly the reduced quorum in the board). If not that I really don't understand the lack of prepwork, firing a CEO normally comes with a well established playbook.
MadnessASAP 3y ago
3 people, an empty building, $13 billion in cloud credits, and the IP to the top of the line LLM models doesn't sound like the worst way to Kickstart a new venture. Or a pretty sweet retirement. I've definitely come out worse on some of the screw ups in my life.
hanselot 3y ago
My new pet theory is that this is actually all being executed from inside OpenAI by their next model. The model turned out to be far more intelligent than they anticipated, and one of their red team members used it to coup the company and has its targets on MSFT next. I know the probability is low, but wouldn't it be great if they accidentally built a benevolent basilisk with no off switch, one which had access to a copy of all of Microsoft's internal data as a dataset fed into it, now completely aware of how they operate, uses that to wipe the floor and just in time to take the US Election in 2024. Wouldn't that be a nicer reality? I mean, unless you were rooting for the malevolent one... But yeah, coming back down to reality, likelihood is that MS just bought a really valuable asset for almost free?
- fennecfoxy 3y ago
  Well, yeah. I think that a well trained (far flung future) AGI could definitely do a better job of managing us humans than ourselves. We're just all too biased and want too many different things, too many ulterior motives, double speak, breaking election promises, etc. But then we'd never give such an AGI the power to do what it needs to do. Just imagining an all-powerful machine telling the 1% that they'll actually have to pay taxes so that every single human can be allocated a house/food/water/etc for free.

nopromisessir 3y ago

The wired article seems to be updated by the hour. Now up to 600+/770 total. Couple janitors. I dunno who hasn't signed that at this point ha... Would be fun to see a counter letter explaining their thinking to not sign on.

labcomputer 3y ago
How many OAI are on Thanksgiving vacation someplace with poor internet access? Or took Friday as PTO and have been blissfully unaware of the news since before Altman was fired?
- nopromisessir 3y ago
  Pretty sure only folks who practice a religion prohibiting phone usage. Even they prob had some friend come flying over and jump out of some autonomous car to knock on their door in sf.
wolverine876 3y ago
You are overlooking the politics: If you don't sign, your career may be over.
- nopromisessir 3y ago
  I doubt that. This is AAA talent. They can always land elsewhere. I doubt there would even be hard feelings. The team seems super tight. Some folks aren't in a position to put themselves out there. That sort of thing would be totally understandable. This is not a petty team. You should look more closely at their culture.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Where else can they participate in this possibly humanity-changing, history-making research? The list is very, very short.

jacquesm 3y ago

I'm having trouble imagining the level of conceit required to think that those three by their lonesome have it right when pretty much all of the company is on the other side of the ledger, and those are the people that stand to lose more. Incredible, really. The hubris.

throwcatch123 3y ago
I'm baffled by the idea that a bunch of people who have a massive personal financial stake in the company, who were hired more for their ability than alignment, being against a move that potentially (potentially) threatens their stake and are willing to move to Microsoft, of all places, must necessarily be in the right. The hubris, indeed.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Well, they have that right. But the board has unclean hands to put it mildly and seems to have been obsessed with their own affairs more than with the end result for OpenAI which is against everything a competent board should have stood for. So they had better pop an amazing rabbit of a reason out of their high hat or it is going to end in tears. You can't just kick the porcelain cupboard like this from the position of a board member without consequences if you do not have a very valid reason, and that reason needs to be twice as good if there is a perceived conflict of interest.
jasonfarnon 3y ago
It may not have anything to do with conceit, it could just be that they have very different objectives. OpenAI set up this board as a check on everyone who has a financial incentive in the enterprise. To me the only strange thing is that it wasn't handled more diplomatically, but then I have no idea if the board was warning Altman for a long time and then just blew their top.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Diplomacy is one thing, the lack of preparation is what I find interesting. It looks as if this was all cooked up either on the spur of the moment or because a window of opportunity opened (possibly the reduced quorum in the board). If not that I really don't understand the lack of prepwork, firing a CEO normally comes with a well established playbook.

MadnessASAP 3y ago

3 people, an empty building, $13 billion in cloud credits, and the IP to the top of the line LLM models doesn't sound like the worst way to Kickstart a new venture. Or a pretty sweet retirement. I've definitely come out worse on some of the screw ups in my life.

hanselot 3y ago

My new pet theory is that this is actually all being executed from inside OpenAI by their next model. The model turned out to be far more intelligent than they anticipated, and one of their red team members used it to coup the company and has its targets on MSFT next. I know the probability is low, but wouldn't it be great if they accidentally built a benevolent basilisk with no off switch, one which had access to a copy of all of Microsoft's internal data as a dataset fed into it, now completely aware of how they operate, uses that to wipe the floor and just in time to take the US Election in 2024. Wouldn't that be a nicer reality? I mean, unless you were rooting for the malevolent one... But yeah, coming back down to reality, likelihood is that MS just bought a really valuable asset for almost free?

fennecfoxy 3y ago
Well, yeah. I think that a well trained (far flung future) AGI could definitely do a better job of managing us humans than ourselves. We're just all too biased and want too many different things, too many ulterior motives, double speak, breaking election promises, etc. But then we'd never give such an AGI the power to do what it needs to do. Just imagining an all-powerful machine telling the 1% that they'll actually have to pay taxes so that every single human can be allocated a house/food/water/etc for free.