6 ms·

The main takeaway from this whole saga is, be careful who you allow on your board. Nearly everyone on OpenAI board is young, inexperienced and unqualified to be

The main takeaway from this whole saga is, be careful who you allow on your board. Nearly everyone on OpenAI board is young, inexperienced and unqualified to be on the board of one of the most important companies on the planet. Here's Ms. Toner's linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-toner-4162439a/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-toner-4162439a/

jjulius 3y ago
>Nearly everyone on OpenAI board is young, inexperienced and unqualified to be on the board of one of the most important companies on the planet. Jumping off of that, I'm genuinely curious what, in Sam's resume, suggests he should be in charge of "one of the most important companies on the planet".
- avarun 3y ago
  The fact that he's a founder and the one that made it "one of the most important companies on the planet"?
  - jjulius 3y ago
    Not quite true - OpenAI's Wikipedia article says... >The organization was founded in December 2015 by Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, Jessica Livingston, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba, with Sam Altman and Elon Musk serving as the initial board members. Altman didn't join as CEO until 2019. Edit: All those names and we're going to say stuff like Altman was "the one" who made the company so important?
    - breadwinner 3y ago
      Not true. This page dated December 11, 2015 mentions Sam Altman and Elon Musk as co-chairs: https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai
      - jjulius 3y ago
        Co-chairs? As in chairs on a board rather than founders? Like what my Wikipedia quote says?
        breadwinner 3y ago
        So you don't think Elon Musk was one of the founders either then?
        jjulius 3y ago
        It's not a matter of what I think, it's a matter of fact. I quoted Wikipedia, and the paragraph that discussed this in your link looks essentially the same as my quote. Let's take a peek at the one from your link - the first sentence is... >The group’s other founding members are world-class research engineers and scientists: Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba. That sentence explicitly lists who the founders are. Note that neither Musk nor Altman are listed before the period closes it out. The next sentence goes on to say... >Pieter Abbeel, Yoshua Bengio, Alan Kay, Sergey Levine, and Vishal Sikka are advisors to the group. Alright, cool - we've moved on from the list of founders, I see. It's not until the next sentence that we find out that.. >OpenAI’s co-chairs are Sam Altman and Elon Musk. So, OpenAI themselves made it a point to separate "founders" from "co-chairs" in their own announcement. I don't really know how it could be any clearer than that.
        breadwinner 3y ago
        Since you quoted Wikipedia, why don't you take a look at Elon Musks's Wikipedia page, it says he is a founder. It is well known that he is a founder. And Altman's Wikipedia page says he is a funder of the company. The problem may be your interpretation of their announcement. As in, if you are a co-chair at founding then it is understood that you're a founder.
        jjulius 3y ago
    - siva7 3y ago
      You’re still wrong. This has been debunked many times over the last days on HN. The wiki is badly phrased leaving ambiguous interpretations open. Sam was along with Greg (and Musk as a financier) the initial co-founder in 2015, recruiting later in 2015 people like Ilya. Keep in mind that chair and co-founder aren’t mutually exclusive roles.
      - jjulius 3y ago
        >You're still wrong. Thing is, I don't really care if I'm wrong or right about that title. We're bickering about semantics at this point, and whether or not he was technically a founder doesn't really change the crux of my first post in this chain. Which I guess now's as good of a time as any to answer that point about Altman having founded it - no, I don't think that founding something automatically means that you have the capability to oversee it long-term.
  - zucker42 3y ago
    Classic CEO worship. There's no reason to believe that he's more important than many of the other key figures in the company.
    - shwaj 3y ago
      In his most recent interview with Lex Fridman, Elon Musk said that poaching Ilya from Google was absolutely crucial to OpenAI’s success (and that it was the most intense recruitment battle he had ever participated in).
- interlocutor 3y ago
  Wasn't he president of some kind of startup incubator? Some "combinator" company.
  - nicce 3y ago
    Well, obviously quite against the goal of non-profit, safe the humanity company. President of some “combinator” is the money maker.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Davidzheng 3y ago
    Can't tell if this is a joke lol
wnoise 3y ago
They are not on the board of a company. They're on the board of a non-profit that controls a company.

jjulius 3y ago

>Nearly everyone on OpenAI board is young, inexperienced and unqualified to be on the board of one of the most important companies on the planet. Jumping off of that, I'm genuinely curious what, in Sam's resume, suggests he should be in charge of "one of the most important companies on the planet".

avarun 3y ago
The fact that he's a founder and the one that made it "one of the most important companies on the planet"?
- jjulius 3y ago
  Not quite true - OpenAI's Wikipedia article says... >The organization was founded in December 2015 by Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, Jessica Livingston, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba, with Sam Altman and Elon Musk serving as the initial board members. Altman didn't join as CEO until 2019. Edit: All those names and we're going to say stuff like Altman was "the one" who made the company so important?
  - breadwinner 3y ago
    Not true. This page dated December 11, 2015 mentions Sam Altman and Elon Musk as co-chairs: https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai
    - jjulius 3y ago
      Co-chairs? As in chairs on a board rather than founders? Like what my Wikipedia quote says?
      - breadwinner 3y ago
        So you don't think Elon Musk was one of the founders either then?
        jjulius 3y ago
        It's not a matter of what I think, it's a matter of fact. I quoted Wikipedia, and the paragraph that discussed this in your link looks essentially the same as my quote. Let's take a peek at the one from your link - the first sentence is... >The group’s other founding members are world-class research engineers and scientists: Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba. That sentence explicitly lists who the founders are. Note that neither Musk nor Altman are listed before the period closes it out. The next sentence goes on to say... >Pieter Abbeel, Yoshua Bengio, Alan Kay, Sergey Levine, and Vishal Sikka are advisors to the group. Alright, cool - we've moved on from the list of founders, I see. It's not until the next sentence that we find out that.. >OpenAI’s co-chairs are Sam Altman and Elon Musk. So, OpenAI themselves made it a point to separate "founders" from "co-chairs" in their own announcement. I don't really know how it could be any clearer than that.
        breadwinner 3y ago
        Since you quoted Wikipedia, why don't you take a look at Elon Musks's Wikipedia page, it says he is a founder. It is well known that he is a founder. And Altman's Wikipedia page says he is a funder of the company. The problem may be your interpretation of their announcement. As in, if you are a co-chair at founding then it is understood that you're a founder.
        jjulius 3y ago
  - siva7 3y ago
    You’re still wrong. This has been debunked many times over the last days on HN. The wiki is badly phrased leaving ambiguous interpretations open. Sam was along with Greg (and Musk as a financier) the initial co-founder in 2015, recruiting later in 2015 people like Ilya. Keep in mind that chair and co-founder aren’t mutually exclusive roles.
    - jjulius 3y ago
      >You're still wrong. Thing is, I don't really care if I'm wrong or right about that title. We're bickering about semantics at this point, and whether or not he was technically a founder doesn't really change the crux of my first post in this chain. Which I guess now's as good of a time as any to answer that point about Altman having founded it - no, I don't think that founding something automatically means that you have the capability to oversee it long-term.
- zucker42 3y ago
  Classic CEO worship. There's no reason to believe that he's more important than many of the other key figures in the company.
  - shwaj 3y ago
    In his most recent interview with Lex Fridman, Elon Musk said that poaching Ilya from Google was absolutely crucial to OpenAI’s success (and that it was the most intense recruitment battle he had ever participated in).
interlocutor 3y ago
Wasn't he president of some kind of startup incubator? Some "combinator" company.
- nicce 3y ago
  Well, obviously quite against the goal of non-profit, safe the humanity company. President of some “combinator” is the money maker.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Davidzheng 3y ago
  Can't tell if this is a joke lol

wnoise 3y ago

They are not on the board of a company. They're on the board of a non-profit that controls a company.