9 ms·

The only specific accusation made in the article is that Sam criticized Helen Toner for writing a paper: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intent

The only specific accusation made in the article is that Sam criticized Helen Toner for writing a paper: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/ https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/ That says Anthropic has a better approach to AI safety than OpenAI. Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he was trying to navigate a tricky relationship with the FTC. She apparently told him to kick rocks and he started to look for ways to get her off the board. All of that ... seems completely reasonable? Like I've heard a lot of vague accusations thrown at Sam over the last few days and yet based on this account I think he reacted the exact same way any CEO would. I'm much more interested in how Helen managed to get on this board at all.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 3y ago
It's interesting but it may well be they both have a point: Helen for telling him to get lost and Sam for attempting to remove her before she would damage the company. But she could have made that point more forcefully by not comparing Anthropic to OpenAI, after all who better than her to steer OpenAI in the right direction. I noted in a comment elsewhere that all of these board members appear to have had at least one and some many more conflicts of interest. Helen probably believes that her loyalty is not to OpenAI but to something higher than that based on her remark that destroying the company would serve to fulfil its mission (which is a very strange point of view to begin with). But that doesn't automatically mean that she's able to place it in context, within OpenAI, within the USA, the Western world and the world as a whole. It's like saying the atomic bomb would have never been invented if the people at Los Alamos didn't do it. They did it in three years after it became known that it could be done in principle. Others tried and failed but without the same resources. I suspect that if the USA had not done it that eventually France, the UK and Russia would have gotten there as well and later on China. Israel would not have had the bomb without the USA (willing or unwilling) and India and Pakistan would have achieved it but much later as well. So we'd end up with the same situation that we have today modulo some timing differences and with another last chapter on WWII. Better? Maybe. But it is also possible that the Russians would have launched a first strike on the USA if they were unopposed. It almost happened as it was! The open question then is: does she really believe that no other entity has the resources to match OpenAI and does she believe that if such an entity does exist that it too will self destruct rather than to go through with the development? And does she believe that this will hold true for all time? That they and their colleagues are so unique that they hold the key to something that can otherwise not be replicated.
- jltsiren 3y ago
  I think the real issue is that OpenAI was doomed to fail from the beginning. AI is commercially too valuable to be developed by an organization with a mission like them. Eventually they had to make a choice: either become a for-profit without any pretensions about the good of humanity, or stay true to the mission and abandon ambitions of being at the cutting edge of AI development. A non-profit could not have beaten the superpowers in developing the atomic bomb, and a non-profit cannot beat commercial interests in developing AI.
  - Davidzheng 3y ago
    I think it's different bc atomic bomb is pure cost and AI can have returns from products. But your overall point may stand
    - dboreham 3y ago
      There's definitely (very large) returns from having atomic weapons.
    - lazide 3y ago
      Having the bomb first has infinite ROI.
  - adolph 3y ago
    > either become a for-profit without any pretensions about the good of humanity Not a day passes that I don't hear from some company that has pretensions about the good of humanity and how they are leading the way to it. Plenty of non-profits and government orgs have the same pretensions.
  - jart 3y ago
    I always thought the structure was there to pull the wool over the eyes of the world's smartest researchers, to get them to agree to help them build a doomsday sort of technology. I never expected the board would be drinking their own kool aid.
- 3y ago
comp_throw7 3y ago
> Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he was trying to navigate a tricky relationship with the FTC. She apparently told him to kick rocks and he started to look for ways to get her off the board. Huh, this sounds pretty crazy to me. Like, it's assuming that a board member should act deceptively in order to help the for-profit arm of OpenAI avoid government scrutiny, and that trying to remove them from the board if they don't want to do that is reasonable. But in fact the entire purpose of the board is to advance the mission of the parent non-profit, which doesn't sound obviously compatible with "avoid giving the FTC (maybe legitimate) ammunition against the for-profit subsidiary, even if that means you should hide your beliefs".
- jacquesm 3y ago
  No, it means that you go outside only after you've exhausted all avenues inside. It's similar to a whistle blower situation, only most whistleblowers don't have their fingers on the self-destruct button. So to press that button before exhausting all other options seems a bit hasty. There is no 'undo' on that button.
  - comp_throw7 3y ago
    We're talking about the publication of a relatively milquetoast report that has some lines which can be read as mild criticisms of OpenAI's release strategy for ChatGPT & GPT-4. Why exactly is publishing such a report controversial? It's totally compatible with Helen Toner's role on the board.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      I wasn't aiming that at the report per-se but at the actions on Friday. He wanted to keep that kind of report inside or at a minimum to see it beforehand, she didn't, he tried to remove her and ended up being removed himself. Both are out of line. Sorry for the confusion.
letmevoteplease 3y ago
According to the paper, Anthropic's superior safety approach was deliberately delaying release in order to avoid “advanc[ing] the rate of AI capabilities progress." OpenAI is criticized for kicking off a race for AI progress by releasing ChatGPT to the public. [1] https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding-Intentions.pdf https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding...
- himaraya 3y ago
  The paper reads a lot more nuanced than that. It compares the "system card" released with GPT-4 to the delay of Claude and the merits of each approach vis a vis safety.
  - Emma_Goldman 3y ago
    Not really, and your own description is little different from the person you're responding to anyway?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- danenania 3y ago
  It's important to remember that part of OpenAI's mission, apart from developing safe AGI, is to "avoid undue concentration of power". This is crucial, because safety is a convenient pretext for people whose real motivations are elitist. It's not that they want to slow down AI development; it's that they want to keep it restricted to a tight inner circle. We have at least as much to fear from elites who think only megacorps and governments are responsible enough to be given access as we do from AI itself. The failures of our elite class have been demonstrated again and again in recent decades--from the Iraq War to Covid. These people cannot be trusted as stewards, and we can't afford to see such potentially transformative technology employed to further ossify and insulate the existing power structure. OpenAI had the right idea. Keep the source closed if you must, and invest heavily on safety, but make the benefits available to all. The last thing we need is an AI priesthood that will inevitably turn corrupt.
foobarqux 3y ago
Who is being completely reasonable? Board member has a mandate and appears to be making a good faith effort to carry it out and the CEO tries to overthrow her. Whether that is standard behavior for CEOs is irrelevant.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  She has a mandate not to promote Anthropic on the back of OpenAI. Very unprofessional
  - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
    This is something you don’t get. What happens to the for-profit arm of OpenAI is not her problem, her loyalty lies with the non-profit arm’s charter (and not even the organization itself). She is doing her job to uphold the mission of the organization.
    - sumedh 3y ago
      > What happens to the for-profit arm of OpenAI is not her problem Who pays the bill for the non profit arm, wasnt that the for profit arm?
      - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
        The for-profit arm was always meant to be subservient to the non-profit arm - the latter practically owns the former. The important thing for the non-profit arm is the mission, its own existence is secondary.
        sumedh 3y ago
        > The important thing for the non-profit arm is the mission, its own existence is secondary. So OpenAI should just shut down because the charitable donations were not enough to keep the lights on.
0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
>We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome. >... >We commit to use any influence we obtain over AGI’s deployment to ensure it is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid enabling uses of AI or AGI that harm humanity or unduly concentrate power. >Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. >... >We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project. We will work out specifics in case-by-case agreements, but a typical triggering condition might be “a better-than-even chance of success in the next two years.” https://openai.com/charter https://openai.com/charter Seems to me like Helen is doing a better job of upholding the charter than Sam is.
- greyface- 3y ago
  This charter is doomed to be interpreted in radically different ways by people with differing AI-eschatological beliefs. It's no wonder it's led to so much conflict.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
    Sam wanted to restrict Helen's free expression on the topic of beneficial AI in order to boost OpenAI's position. That suggests he cares more about the success of OpenAI than he does upholding the charter.
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      No, Sam wanted to be the first recipient of Helen's expression. So -- if appropriate -- he could make changes. Or he could not change, and she publishes anyway.
      - for1nner 3y ago
        > So -- if appropriate -- he could make changes. Where are you drawing this conclusion from? Nothing in the text suggests that was his intent - certainly his actions thereafter suggest that he was in fact more concerned with the potential harm to the for-profit company.
NoboruWataya 3y ago
The CEO is generally accountable to the board. A CEO trying to silence criticism and oust critical board members may be typical behaviour in the world of megalomaniacal tech startup CEOs, but it is not generally considered good corporate governance. (And usually the megalomaniacal tech startup CEOs have equity to back it up.)
- maxlamb 3y ago
  He said he wished she communicated her concerns to him beforehand. How can disagreements be delt with if never communicated directly? So the CEO has to first learn of a disagreement with a fellow board member through a NY Times article?
  - foobarqux 3y ago
    The "disagreement" was never dealt with as far as I can tell --- OpenAI's safety approach hasn't become more conservative --- which means that the only effect of bringing it to the CEO beforehand was to try to have it suppressed.
  - shrimpx 3y ago
    Hard to defend this level of flex, though: > Mr. Altman, the chief executive, recently made a move to push out one of the board’s members because he thought a research paper she had co-written was critical of the company. It's like your job is to fire me if I fail to fulfill the company mission, but I will fire you if you don't get my approval before saying stuff in public.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      Keep in mind Altman was also a board member with senior tenure to Toner, and basically hired her to the board.
      - comp_throw7 3y ago
        No, she replaced Holden Karnofsky, who was almost certainly the one to pick her.
mupuff1234 3y ago
> I think he reacted the exact same way any CEO would Perhaps if you think of it as another YC startup, but not so much if you view OpenAI as a non-profit first and foremost.
eigenvalue 3y ago
I strongly suspect this whole thing is caused by an overinflated ego and a desire to feel like she is the main character and the chief “resistance” saving the world. The EA philosophy is truly poisonous. It leads people to betray those close to them in honor of abstract ideals that they are most likely wrong about anyway. Such people should be avoided like the plague if you’re building a team of any kind.
JCM9 3y ago
The challenge of all this is that while everything going on looks totally bonkers from any normal sense of business, it’s hard to argue that the board isn’t following their charter. IMHO the mistake was setting up the structure the way it is and expecting that to go well. Even with MSFT they are obviously annoyed but also they have shareholders too and one reasonable question here is what the heck was Microsoft’s leadership doing putting billions of capital at risk with this entity that has such a wacky structure and ultimately governed by this non-profit board with a bizarre doomsdayish charter. Seriously if you haven’t read it, read it. This whole thing has been wildly mishandled but there’s an angle here where the nonprofit is doing exactly what they always said they would do and the ones that potentially look like fools are Microsoft and other investors that put their shareholder capital into this equation thinking that would go well.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  When Microsoft came on board the charter effectively went out the window. It's like Idefix thinking he's leading Obelix around on a leash.
  - ryeights 3y ago
    Apparently not…
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    "It's like Idefix thinking he's leading Obelix around on a leash." I don't think I have seen Idefix being on a leash ever .. he just runs around free. And there are indeed many dogs on a leash, who lead their "masters" who just follow behind.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      I picked them for their difference in relative size and strength, not to suggest that Idefix would ever accept a leash or because there are other dogs that lead their masters around.
6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
> Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach That seems dishonest given the last three years or so of conflict about these concerns that he’s been the center of. Of course he’s aware of those concerns. More likely, that statement was just him maneuvering to be the good guy when he tried to fire her, but it backfired on him.
hindsightbias 3y ago
Not that I think there are many examples of technical people making great board members, we've entered an era where if I don't get my way on the inside I'll just tweet about it and damn any wider consequences. Management and stockholders beware.
- wnoise 3y ago
  The non-profit OpenAI has no stockholders.
kumarvvr 3y ago
So, it could also be that she approached him on the subject multiple times, after-all, she is a member of a board whose job is to make AI safety a priority thing. After his plans for rapid expansion and commercialization were in direct contrast to the company's aims, I guess she wrote the paper to highlight the issue. It seems that, like in the case of Disney, the board has lower power and control than the CEO. Highly likely if you have larger than life people like Sam at the helm. I would not trust the board, but I would also not trust Sam. When billions of dollars are at stake, its important to be critical of all the parties involved.
glitchc 3y ago
>... yet based on this account I think he reacted the exact same way any CEO would. Say what? The CEO serves at the behest of the board, not the other way around. For Sam to tell a board member that they should bring their concerns to him suggests that Sam thinks he's higher than the board. No wonder she told him to go fly a kite.
kmlevitt 3y ago
While this would be perfectly reasonable if OpenAI was for profit, it’s ostensibly a non profit. The entire reason they wanted her on the board in the first place was for her expert academic opinion on AI safety. If they see that as a liability, why did they pretend to care about those concerns in the first place? That said, if she objects to open AI’s practices, the common sense thing to do is to resign from the board out of protest, not take actions that lead to the whole operation being burned to the ground.
1024core 3y ago
> I'm much more interested in how Helen managed to get on this board at all. My gut says that she is the central figure in how this all went down. She and D'Angelo are the central figures, if my gut is right. It looks like Helen Toner was OK with destroying the company to make a point. FTA: > Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that could be consistent with its mission
- sudosysgen 3y ago
  That seems reasonable? The charter of the company could reasonably be furthered even if that means the end of the organization. If at some point the existence of the organization becomes antithetical to the charter, the board members have a responsibility to destroy it.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    But they didn't destroy it. And they handed the keys of the kingdom to Microsoft. So as a break-the-glass move it was about as ineffective as throwing a can of gasoline on a fire.
- 1024core 3y ago
  Replying to my own comment since I can't edit it anymore, but: It looks like Helen Toner is out of the board.
Rastonbury 3y ago
This is not any other company though? It's a non-profit with charter to make AI to benefit all of humanity Helen believed she was doing her job according to the non-profit charter, obviously this hurts the for-profit side of things but that is not her mandate. That is the reason OpenAI is structured the way it is, with the intention of preventing capitalist forces from swaying them away from the non-profit charter, in hindsight it didn't work, but that was the intention (with the independent directors, no equity stakes, etc) The board has all my respect for standing up to the capitalists of Altman, the VCs, Microsoft. Big feathers to ruffle - even though the execution was misjudged, turns out most of its employees are pretty capitalistic too
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  > The board has all my respect for standing up to the capitalists of Altman, the VCs, Microsoft. Big feathers to ruffle - even though the execution was misjudged, turns out most of its employees are pretty capitalistic too Exactly. This is a battle between altruistic principles and some of the most heavyweight greedy money in the world. The board messed up the execution, but so did OpenAI leadership when they offered million dollar pay packages to people in a non-profit that is supposed to be guided by selfless principles.
  - traject_ 3y ago
    One man's altruist is another man's fanatic. I, for one, would prefer an evil bandit over an evil fanatic because at least a bandit sleeps once in a while as that C.S Lewis quote goes.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      And the bandit likely is honest about their motives.
    - Rastonbury 3y ago
      I don't see why we have to paint these people with vagaries and reduction to analogy For the board, their job is to keep the mandate of the non-profit. The org is structured to prevent "bandits" from influencing their goals. Hence, I cannot fault non-profit directors for rejecting bandits, that is the reason they are there. It is like criticising a charity's directors for not bowing to the pressure of large donors to change their focus or mandate. Do we want to live in a world where the rich entrench control and enrich themselves and allies, and we just justify it as bandits being bandits? And anyone who stands up against them gets labelled a fanatic or pejorative altruist?
keepamovin 3y ago
So he criticized her and threatened her board position, and then she orchestrated a coup to oust him? Masterful. Moves and countermoves. You have to applaud her strategic acumen, and execution capability, perhaps surprising given her extensive background in policy/academia. Tho maybe it's as Thiel says (about academia: "The battles are so fierce because the stakes are so small") and that's where she developed her Machiavellian skills? Of course, it could also be that whatever interest groups she represents could not bare to lose a seat. Whether initiated by her or her backers (or other board forces), I can't see any of the board stepping down if these are the kind of palace intrigues that have been occurring. They are all clearly so desperate for power they will cling to the positions on this rocketship for dear life. Even if it means blowing up the rocketship so they can keep their seat. Microsoft can't spend good will erasing the entire board and replacing it, even tho it's near major shareholder because too much values the optics around its relationship to AI right now. A strong, effective leader in the first place would have prevented this kind of situation. I think the board should be reset and replaced with more level headed, less ideological, more experienced veterans...tho picking a good board is no easy task.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  > Microsoft can't spend good will erasing the entire board and replacing it, because they don't have the power to as they do not have any stake in the governing non-profit.
  - keepamovin 3y ago
    That’s a good point, but surely the significant shareholding, partnership and investment gives them power and influence.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      Given the news today, apparently so.
      - keepamovin 3y ago
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
GreedClarifies 3y ago
"I'm much more interested in how Helen managed to get on this board at all." Indeed. This is far more interesting. How the hell did Helen and Tasha get on, and stay on, the board.
- bigtones 3y ago
  Helen Toner through her association with Open Philanthropy donated $30 Million dollars to OpenAI early on. That's how she got on the board. https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
  - GreedClarifies 3y ago
    How did she stay on the board?
  - jdminhbg 3y ago
    This makes it sound like it was her money, which is not the case. She worked for an organization that donated $30M and they put her on the board.
bigtones 3y ago
Helen Toner through her association with Open Philanthropy donated $30 Million dollars to OpenAI early on. That's how she got on the board. https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  That's super insightful, thank you for sharing this.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 3y ago

It's interesting but it may well be they both have a point: Helen for telling him to get lost and Sam for attempting to remove her before she would damage the company. But she could have made that point more forcefully by not comparing Anthropic to OpenAI, after all who better than her to steer OpenAI in the right direction. I noted in a comment elsewhere that all of these board members appear to have had at least one and some many more conflicts of interest. Helen probably believes that her loyalty is not to OpenAI but to something higher than that based on her remark that destroying the company would serve to fulfil its mission (which is a very strange point of view to begin with). But that doesn't automatically mean that she's able to place it in context, within OpenAI, within the USA, the Western world and the world as a whole. It's like saying the atomic bomb would have never been invented if the people at Los Alamos didn't do it. They did it in three years after it became known that it could be done in principle. Others tried and failed but without the same resources. I suspect that if the USA had not done it that eventually France, the UK and Russia would have gotten there as well and later on China. Israel would not have had the bomb without the USA (willing or unwilling) and India and Pakistan would have achieved it but much later as well. So we'd end up with the same situation that we have today modulo some timing differences and with another last chapter on WWII. Better? Maybe. But it is also possible that the Russians would have launched a first strike on the USA if they were unopposed. It almost happened as it was! The open question then is: does she really believe that no other entity has the resources to match OpenAI and does she believe that if such an entity does exist that it too will self destruct rather than to go through with the development? And does she believe that this will hold true for all time? That they and their colleagues are so unique that they hold the key to something that can otherwise not be replicated.

jltsiren 3y ago
I think the real issue is that OpenAI was doomed to fail from the beginning. AI is commercially too valuable to be developed by an organization with a mission like them. Eventually they had to make a choice: either become a for-profit without any pretensions about the good of humanity, or stay true to the mission and abandon ambitions of being at the cutting edge of AI development. A non-profit could not have beaten the superpowers in developing the atomic bomb, and a non-profit cannot beat commercial interests in developing AI.
- Davidzheng 3y ago
  I think it's different bc atomic bomb is pure cost and AI can have returns from products. But your overall point may stand
  - dboreham 3y ago
    There's definitely (very large) returns from having atomic weapons.
  - lazide 3y ago
    Having the bomb first has infinite ROI.
- adolph 3y ago
  > either become a for-profit without any pretensions about the good of humanity Not a day passes that I don't hear from some company that has pretensions about the good of humanity and how they are leading the way to it. Plenty of non-profits and government orgs have the same pretensions.
- jart 3y ago
  I always thought the structure was there to pull the wool over the eyes of the world's smartest researchers, to get them to agree to help them build a doomsday sort of technology. I never expected the board would be drinking their own kool aid.
3y ago

comp_throw7 3y ago

> Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he was trying to navigate a tricky relationship with the FTC. She apparently told him to kick rocks and he started to look for ways to get her off the board. Huh, this sounds pretty crazy to me. Like, it's assuming that a board member should act deceptively in order to help the for-profit arm of OpenAI avoid government scrutiny, and that trying to remove them from the board if they don't want to do that is reasonable. But in fact the entire purpose of the board is to advance the mission of the parent non-profit, which doesn't sound obviously compatible with "avoid giving the FTC (maybe legitimate) ammunition against the for-profit subsidiary, even if that means you should hide your beliefs".

jacquesm 3y ago
No, it means that you go outside only after you've exhausted all avenues inside. It's similar to a whistle blower situation, only most whistleblowers don't have their fingers on the self-destruct button. So to press that button before exhausting all other options seems a bit hasty. There is no 'undo' on that button.
- comp_throw7 3y ago
  We're talking about the publication of a relatively milquetoast report that has some lines which can be read as mild criticisms of OpenAI's release strategy for ChatGPT & GPT-4. Why exactly is publishing such a report controversial? It's totally compatible with Helen Toner's role on the board.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I wasn't aiming that at the report per-se but at the actions on Friday. He wanted to keep that kind of report inside or at a minimum to see it beforehand, she didn't, he tried to remove her and ended up being removed himself. Both are out of line. Sorry for the confusion.

letmevoteplease 3y ago

According to the paper, Anthropic's superior safety approach was deliberately delaying release in order to avoid “advanc[ing] the rate of AI capabilities progress." OpenAI is criticized for kicking off a race for AI progress by releasing ChatGPT to the public. [1] https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding-Intentions.pdf https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding...

himaraya 3y ago
The paper reads a lot more nuanced than that. It compares the "system card" released with GPT-4 to the delay of Claude and the merits of each approach vis a vis safety.
- Emma_Goldman 3y ago
  Not really, and your own description is little different from the person you're responding to anyway?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
danenania 3y ago
It's important to remember that part of OpenAI's mission, apart from developing safe AGI, is to "avoid undue concentration of power". This is crucial, because safety is a convenient pretext for people whose real motivations are elitist. It's not that they want to slow down AI development; it's that they want to keep it restricted to a tight inner circle. We have at least as much to fear from elites who think only megacorps and governments are responsible enough to be given access as we do from AI itself. The failures of our elite class have been demonstrated again and again in recent decades--from the Iraq War to Covid. These people cannot be trusted as stewards, and we can't afford to see such potentially transformative technology employed to further ossify and insulate the existing power structure. OpenAI had the right idea. Keep the source closed if you must, and invest heavily on safety, but make the benefits available to all. The last thing we need is an AI priesthood that will inevitably turn corrupt.

foobarqux 3y ago

Who is being completely reasonable? Board member has a mandate and appears to be making a good faith effort to carry it out and the CEO tries to overthrow her. Whether that is standard behavior for CEOs is irrelevant.

ipaddr 3y ago
She has a mandate not to promote Anthropic on the back of OpenAI. Very unprofessional
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  This is something you don’t get. What happens to the for-profit arm of OpenAI is not her problem, her loyalty lies with the non-profit arm’s charter (and not even the organization itself). She is doing her job to uphold the mission of the organization.
  - sumedh 3y ago
    > What happens to the for-profit arm of OpenAI is not her problem Who pays the bill for the non profit arm, wasnt that the for profit arm?
    - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
      The for-profit arm was always meant to be subservient to the non-profit arm - the latter practically owns the former. The important thing for the non-profit arm is the mission, its own existence is secondary.
      - sumedh 3y ago
        > The important thing for the non-profit arm is the mission, its own existence is secondary. So OpenAI should just shut down because the charitable donations were not enough to keep the lights on.

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago

>We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome. >... >We commit to use any influence we obtain over AGI’s deployment to ensure it is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid enabling uses of AI or AGI that harm humanity or unduly concentrate power. >Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. >... >We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project. We will work out specifics in case-by-case agreements, but a typical triggering condition might be “a better-than-even chance of success in the next two years.” https://openai.com/charter https://openai.com/charter Seems to me like Helen is doing a better job of upholding the charter than Sam is.

greyface- 3y ago
This charter is doomed to be interpreted in radically different ways by people with differing AI-eschatological beliefs. It's no wonder it's led to so much conflict.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  Sam wanted to restrict Helen's free expression on the topic of beneficial AI in order to boost OpenAI's position. That suggests he cares more about the success of OpenAI than he does upholding the charter.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    No, Sam wanted to be the first recipient of Helen's expression. So -- if appropriate -- he could make changes. Or he could not change, and she publishes anyway.
    - for1nner 3y ago
      > So -- if appropriate -- he could make changes. Where are you drawing this conclusion from? Nothing in the text suggests that was his intent - certainly his actions thereafter suggest that he was in fact more concerned with the potential harm to the for-profit company.

NoboruWataya 3y ago

The CEO is generally accountable to the board. A CEO trying to silence criticism and oust critical board members may be typical behaviour in the world of megalomaniacal tech startup CEOs, but it is not generally considered good corporate governance. (And usually the megalomaniacal tech startup CEOs have equity to back it up.)

maxlamb 3y ago
He said he wished she communicated her concerns to him beforehand. How can disagreements be delt with if never communicated directly? So the CEO has to first learn of a disagreement with a fellow board member through a NY Times article?
- foobarqux 3y ago
  The "disagreement" was never dealt with as far as I can tell --- OpenAI's safety approach hasn't become more conservative --- which means that the only effect of bringing it to the CEO beforehand was to try to have it suppressed.
- shrimpx 3y ago
  Hard to defend this level of flex, though: > Mr. Altman, the chief executive, recently made a move to push out one of the board’s members because he thought a research paper she had co-written was critical of the company. It's like your job is to fire me if I fail to fulfill the company mission, but I will fire you if you don't get my approval before saying stuff in public.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Keep in mind Altman was also a board member with senior tenure to Toner, and basically hired her to the board.
    - comp_throw7 3y ago
      No, she replaced Holden Karnofsky, who was almost certainly the one to pick her.

mupuff1234 3y ago

> I think he reacted the exact same way any CEO would Perhaps if you think of it as another YC startup, but not so much if you view OpenAI as a non-profit first and foremost.

eigenvalue 3y ago

I strongly suspect this whole thing is caused by an overinflated ego and a desire to feel like she is the main character and the chief “resistance” saving the world. The EA philosophy is truly poisonous. It leads people to betray those close to them in honor of abstract ideals that they are most likely wrong about anyway. Such people should be avoided like the plague if you’re building a team of any kind.

JCM9 3y ago

The challenge of all this is that while everything going on looks totally bonkers from any normal sense of business, it’s hard to argue that the board isn’t following their charter. IMHO the mistake was setting up the structure the way it is and expecting that to go well. Even with MSFT they are obviously annoyed but also they have shareholders too and one reasonable question here is what the heck was Microsoft’s leadership doing putting billions of capital at risk with this entity that has such a wacky structure and ultimately governed by this non-profit board with a bizarre doomsdayish charter. Seriously if you haven’t read it, read it. This whole thing has been wildly mishandled but there’s an angle here where the nonprofit is doing exactly what they always said they would do and the ones that potentially look like fools are Microsoft and other investors that put their shareholder capital into this equation thinking that would go well.

jacquesm 3y ago
When Microsoft came on board the charter effectively went out the window. It's like Idefix thinking he's leading Obelix around on a leash.
- ryeights 3y ago
  Apparently not…
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "It's like Idefix thinking he's leading Obelix around on a leash." I don't think I have seen Idefix being on a leash ever .. he just runs around free. And there are indeed many dogs on a leash, who lead their "masters" who just follow behind.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I picked them for their difference in relative size and strength, not to suggest that Idefix would ever accept a leash or because there are other dogs that lead their masters around.

6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago

> Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach That seems dishonest given the last three years or so of conflict about these concerns that he’s been the center of. Of course he’s aware of those concerns. More likely, that statement was just him maneuvering to be the good guy when he tried to fire her, but it backfired on him.

hindsightbias 3y ago

Not that I think there are many examples of technical people making great board members, we've entered an era where if I don't get my way on the inside I'll just tweet about it and damn any wider consequences. Management and stockholders beware.

wnoise 3y ago
The non-profit OpenAI has no stockholders.

kumarvvr 3y ago

So, it could also be that she approached him on the subject multiple times, after-all, she is a member of a board whose job is to make AI safety a priority thing. After his plans for rapid expansion and commercialization were in direct contrast to the company's aims, I guess she wrote the paper to highlight the issue. It seems that, like in the case of Disney, the board has lower power and control than the CEO. Highly likely if you have larger than life people like Sam at the helm. I would not trust the board, but I would also not trust Sam. When billions of dollars are at stake, its important to be critical of all the parties involved.

glitchc 3y ago

>... yet based on this account I think he reacted the exact same way any CEO would. Say what? The CEO serves at the behest of the board, not the other way around. For Sam to tell a board member that they should bring their concerns to him suggests that Sam thinks he's higher than the board. No wonder she told him to go fly a kite.

kmlevitt 3y ago

While this would be perfectly reasonable if OpenAI was for profit, it’s ostensibly a non profit. The entire reason they wanted her on the board in the first place was for her expert academic opinion on AI safety. If they see that as a liability, why did they pretend to care about those concerns in the first place? That said, if she objects to open AI’s practices, the common sense thing to do is to resign from the board out of protest, not take actions that lead to the whole operation being burned to the ground.

1024core 3y ago

> I'm much more interested in how Helen managed to get on this board at all. My gut says that she is the central figure in how this all went down. She and D'Angelo are the central figures, if my gut is right. It looks like Helen Toner was OK with destroying the company to make a point. FTA: > Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that could be consistent with its mission

sudosysgen 3y ago
That seems reasonable? The charter of the company could reasonably be furthered even if that means the end of the organization. If at some point the existence of the organization becomes antithetical to the charter, the board members have a responsibility to destroy it.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  But they didn't destroy it. And they handed the keys of the kingdom to Microsoft. So as a break-the-glass move it was about as ineffective as throwing a can of gasoline on a fire.
1024core 3y ago
Replying to my own comment since I can't edit it anymore, but: It looks like Helen Toner is out of the board.

Rastonbury 3y ago

This is not any other company though? It's a non-profit with charter to make AI to benefit all of humanity Helen believed she was doing her job according to the non-profit charter, obviously this hurts the for-profit side of things but that is not her mandate. That is the reason OpenAI is structured the way it is, with the intention of preventing capitalist forces from swaying them away from the non-profit charter, in hindsight it didn't work, but that was the intention (with the independent directors, no equity stakes, etc) The board has all my respect for standing up to the capitalists of Altman, the VCs, Microsoft. Big feathers to ruffle - even though the execution was misjudged, turns out most of its employees are pretty capitalistic too

reducesuffering 3y ago
> The board has all my respect for standing up to the capitalists of Altman, the VCs, Microsoft. Big feathers to ruffle - even though the execution was misjudged, turns out most of its employees are pretty capitalistic too Exactly. This is a battle between altruistic principles and some of the most heavyweight greedy money in the world. The board messed up the execution, but so did OpenAI leadership when they offered million dollar pay packages to people in a non-profit that is supposed to be guided by selfless principles.
- traject_ 3y ago
  One man's altruist is another man's fanatic. I, for one, would prefer an evil bandit over an evil fanatic because at least a bandit sleeps once in a while as that C.S Lewis quote goes.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    And the bandit likely is honest about their motives.
  - Rastonbury 3y ago
    I don't see why we have to paint these people with vagaries and reduction to analogy For the board, their job is to keep the mandate of the non-profit. The org is structured to prevent "bandits" from influencing their goals. Hence, I cannot fault non-profit directors for rejecting bandits, that is the reason they are there. It is like criticising a charity's directors for not bowing to the pressure of large donors to change their focus or mandate. Do we want to live in a world where the rich entrench control and enrich themselves and allies, and we just justify it as bandits being bandits? And anyone who stands up against them gets labelled a fanatic or pejorative altruist?

keepamovin 3y ago

So he criticized her and threatened her board position, and then she orchestrated a coup to oust him? Masterful. Moves and countermoves. You have to applaud her strategic acumen, and execution capability, perhaps surprising given her extensive background in policy/academia. Tho maybe it's as Thiel says (about academia: "The battles are so fierce because the stakes are so small") and that's where she developed her Machiavellian skills? Of course, it could also be that whatever interest groups she represents could not bare to lose a seat. Whether initiated by her or her backers (or other board forces), I can't see any of the board stepping down if these are the kind of palace intrigues that have been occurring. They are all clearly so desperate for power they will cling to the positions on this rocketship for dear life. Even if it means blowing up the rocketship so they can keep their seat. Microsoft can't spend good will erasing the entire board and replacing it, even tho it's near major shareholder because too much values the optics around its relationship to AI right now. A strong, effective leader in the first place would have prevented this kind of situation. I think the board should be reset and replaced with more level headed, less ideological, more experienced veterans...tho picking a good board is no easy task.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> Microsoft can't spend good will erasing the entire board and replacing it, because they don't have the power to as they do not have any stake in the governing non-profit.
- keepamovin 3y ago
  That’s a good point, but surely the significant shareholding, partnership and investment gives them power and influence.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    Given the news today, apparently so.
    - keepamovin 3y ago

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

GreedClarifies 3y ago

"I'm much more interested in how Helen managed to get on this board at all." Indeed. This is far more interesting. How the hell did Helen and Tasha get on, and stay on, the board.

bigtones 3y ago
Helen Toner through her association with Open Philanthropy donated $30 Million dollars to OpenAI early on. That's how she got on the board. https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
- GreedClarifies 3y ago
  How did she stay on the board?
- jdminhbg 3y ago
  This makes it sound like it was her money, which is not the case. She worked for an organization that donated $30M and they put her on the board.

bigtones 3y ago

Helen Toner through her association with Open Philanthropy donated $30 Million dollars to OpenAI early on. That's how she got on the board. https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board

CSMastermind 3y ago
That's super insightful, thank you for sharing this.