6 ms·

So, Ilya is out of the board, but Adam is still on it. I know this will raise some eyebrows but whatever. Still though, this isn't something that will just go

So, Ilya is out of the board, but Adam is still on it. I know this will raise some eyebrows but whatever. Still though, this isn't something that will just go away with Sam back. OAI will undergo serious changes now that Sam has shown himself to be irreplaceable. Future will tell but in the long terms, I doubt we will see OAI as one of the megacorps like Facebook or Uber. They lost the trust.

gordon_freeman 3y ago
Facebook has lost trust so many times that I can’t even count but it’s still a Megacorp, isn’t it?
wilg 3y ago
I mean he's not irreplaceable so much as booting him suddenly for no good reason creates problems.
ayakang31415 3y ago
"I doubt we will see OAI as one of the megacorps like Facebook or Uber. They lost the trust." How is this the case?
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Scandal a minute Uber lol
jatins 3y ago
> I doubt we will see OAI as one of the megacorps like Facebook or Uber. They lost the trust Whose trust?
sverhagen 3y ago
Ah, yes, Facebook and Uber, brands known for consistent trustworthiness throughout their existences /s
ilikehurdles 3y ago
OAI looks stronger than ever. The untrustworthy bits that caused all this instability over the last 5 days have been ditched into the sea. Care to expand on your claim?
- neta1337 3y ago
  Please explain your claim as well. I don’t see how this company looks stronger than ever, more like a clown company
  - TapWaterBandit 3y ago
    They got rid of the clowns though. They went from having a board with lightweights and insiders to what at least initially is a strong initial 3.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - ilikehurdles 3y ago
    I may have been overly eager in my comment because the big bad downside of the new board is none of the founders are on it. I hope the current membership sees reason and fixes this issue. But I said this because: They've retained the entire company, reinstated its founder as CEO, and replaced an activist clown board with a professional, experienced, and possibly* unified one. Still remains to be seen how the board membership and overall org structure changes, but I have much more trust in the current 3 members steering OpenAI toward long-term success.
    - MVissers 3y ago
      If by “long-term-success” you mean a capitalistic lap-dog of microsoft, I’ll agree. It seems that the safety team within OpenAI lost. My biggest fear with this whole AI thing is hostile takeover, and openAI was best positioned to at least do an effort to prevent that. Now, I’m not so sure anymore.
TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
The OpenAI of the past, that dabbled in random AI stuff (remember their DotA 2 bot?), is gone. OpenAI is now just a vehicle to commercialize their LLM - and everything is subservient to that goal. Discover a major flaw in GPT4? You shut your mouth. Doesn’t matter if society at large suffers for it. Altman's/Microsoft’s takeover of the former non-profit is now complete. Edit: Let this be a lesson to us all. Just because something claims to be non-profit doesn't mean it will always remain that way. With enough political maneuvering and money, a megacorp can takeover almost any organization. Non-profit status and whatever the organization's charter says is temporary.
- karmasimida 3y ago
  > now just a vehicle to commercialize their LLM I mean it is what they want isn't it. They did some random stuff like, playing dota2 or robot arms, even the Dalle stuff. Now they finally find that one golden goose, of course they are going to keep it. I don't think the company has changed at all. It succeeded after all.
  - nextaccountic 3y ago
    But it's not exactly a company. It's a nonprofit structured in a way to wholly own a company. In that sense it's like Mozilla.
    - karmasimida 3y ago
      Nonprofit is a just a facade, it was convenient for them to appear as ethnical under that disguise, but they get rid of it when it is inconvenient in a week. 95% of them would rather join MSFT, than being in a non-profit. Did they company change? I am not convinced.
      - ravst3s 3y ago
        Agree that it's a facade. Iirc, the NP structure was implemented to attract top AI talent from FAANG. Then they needed investors to fund the infrastructure and hence gave the employees shares or profit units (whatever the hell that is). The NP now shields MSFT from regulatory issues. I do wonder how many of those employees would actually go to MSFT. It feels more like a gambit to get Altman back in since they were about to cash out with the tender offer.
nathanasmith 3y ago
On the contrary, this saga has shown that a huge number of people are extremely passionate about the existence of OpenAI and it's leadership by Altman, much more strongly and in larger numbers than most had suspected. If anything this has solidified the importance of the company and I think people will trust it more that the situation was resolved with the light speed it was.
- willdr 3y ago
  That's a misreading of the situation. The employees saw their big bag vanishing and suddenly realised they were employed by a non-profit entity that had loftier goals than making a buck, so they rallied to overturn it and they've gotten their way. This is a net negative for anyone not financially invested in OAI.
  - nathanasmith 3y ago
    What lofty goals? The board was questioned repeatedly and never articulated clear reasoning for firing Altman and in the process lost the confidence of the employees hence the "rally". The lack of clarity was their undoing whether there would have been a bag for the employees to lose or not.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - murakamiiq84 3y ago
      My story: Maybe they had lofty goals, maybe not, but it sounded like the whole thing was instigated by Altman trying to fire Toner (one of the board members) over a silly pretext of her coauthoring a paper that nobody read that was very mildly negative about OpenAI, during her day job. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-board-fight.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-... And then presumably the other board members read the writing on the wall (especially seeing how 3 other board members mysteriously resigned, including Hoffman https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/reid-hoffman-was-privately-unhappy-about-leaving-openais-board https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/reid-hoffman-was-...), and realized that if Altman can kick out Toner under such flimsy pretexts, they'd be out too. So they allied with Helen to countercoup Greg/Sam. I think the anti-board perspective is that this is all shallow bickering over a 90B company. The pro-board perspective is that the whole point of the board was to serve as a check on the CEO, so if the CEO could easily appoint only loyalists, then the board is a useless rubber stamp that lends unfair legitimacy to OpenAI's regulatory capture efforts.
lacker 3y ago
Let's see, Sam Altman is an incredibly charismatic founding CEO, who some people consider manipulative, but is also beloved by many employees. He got kicked out by his board, but brought back when they realized their mistake. It's true that this doesn't really pattern-match with the founding story of huge successful companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. But somehow, I think it's still possible that a huge company could be created by a person like this. (And of course, more important than creating a huge company, is creating insanely great products.)
- loveparade 3y ago
  I think people following Sam Altman is jumping to conclusions. I think it's just as likely that employees are simply following the money. They want to make $$$, and that's what a for-profit company does, which is what Altman wants. I think it's probably not really about Altman or his leadership.
  - kareaa 3y ago
    Given that over 750 people have signed the letter, it's safe to assume that their motivations vary. Some might be motivated by the financial aspects, some might be motivated by Sam's leadership (like considering Sam as a friend who needs support). Some might fervently believe that their work is crucial for the advancement of humanity and that any changes would just hinder their progress. And some might have just caved in to peer pressure.
    - strikelaserclaw 3y ago
      Most are probably motivated by money, some are motivated by stability and some are motivated by their loyalty to sam but i think most are motivated by money and stability.
- mkii 3y ago
  > It's true that this doesn't really pattern-match with the founding story of huge successful companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. You forgot about Apple.
cowthulhu 3y ago
I feel like history has shown repeatedly that having a good product matters way more than trust, as evidenced by Facebook and Uber. People seem to talk big smack about lost trust and such in the immediate aftermath of a scandal, and then quitely renew the contracts when the time comes. All of the big ad companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook) have, like, a scandal per month, yet the ad revenue keeps coming. Meltdown was a huge scandal, yet Intel keeps pumping out the chips.

gordon_freeman 3y ago

Facebook has lost trust so many times that I can’t even count but it’s still a Megacorp, isn’t it?

wilg 3y ago

I mean he's not irreplaceable so much as booting him suddenly for no good reason creates problems.

ayakang31415 3y ago

"I doubt we will see OAI as one of the megacorps like Facebook or Uber. They lost the trust." How is this the case?

quickthrower2 3y ago
Scandal a minute Uber lol

jatins 3y ago

> I doubt we will see OAI as one of the megacorps like Facebook or Uber. They lost the trust Whose trust?

sverhagen 3y ago

Ah, yes, Facebook and Uber, brands known for consistent trustworthiness throughout their existences /s

ilikehurdles 3y ago

OAI looks stronger than ever. The untrustworthy bits that caused all this instability over the last 5 days have been ditched into the sea. Care to expand on your claim?

neta1337 3y ago
Please explain your claim as well. I don’t see how this company looks stronger than ever, more like a clown company
- TapWaterBandit 3y ago
  They got rid of the clowns though. They went from having a board with lightweights and insiders to what at least initially is a strong initial 3.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- ilikehurdles 3y ago
  I may have been overly eager in my comment because the big bad downside of the new board is none of the founders are on it. I hope the current membership sees reason and fixes this issue. But I said this because: They've retained the entire company, reinstated its founder as CEO, and replaced an activist clown board with a professional, experienced, and possibly* unified one. Still remains to be seen how the board membership and overall org structure changes, but I have much more trust in the current 3 members steering OpenAI toward long-term success.
  - MVissers 3y ago
    If by “long-term-success” you mean a capitalistic lap-dog of microsoft, I’ll agree. It seems that the safety team within OpenAI lost. My biggest fear with this whole AI thing is hostile takeover, and openAI was best positioned to at least do an effort to prevent that. Now, I’m not so sure anymore.

TerrifiedMouse 3y ago

The OpenAI of the past, that dabbled in random AI stuff (remember their DotA 2 bot?), is gone. OpenAI is now just a vehicle to commercialize their LLM - and everything is subservient to that goal. Discover a major flaw in GPT4? You shut your mouth. Doesn’t matter if society at large suffers for it. Altman's/Microsoft’s takeover of the former non-profit is now complete. Edit: Let this be a lesson to us all. Just because something claims to be non-profit doesn't mean it will always remain that way. With enough political maneuvering and money, a megacorp can takeover almost any organization. Non-profit status and whatever the organization's charter says is temporary.

karmasimida 3y ago
> now just a vehicle to commercialize their LLM I mean it is what they want isn't it. They did some random stuff like, playing dota2 or robot arms, even the Dalle stuff. Now they finally find that one golden goose, of course they are going to keep it. I don't think the company has changed at all. It succeeded after all.
- nextaccountic 3y ago
  But it's not exactly a company. It's a nonprofit structured in a way to wholly own a company. In that sense it's like Mozilla.
  - karmasimida 3y ago
    Nonprofit is a just a facade, it was convenient for them to appear as ethnical under that disguise, but they get rid of it when it is inconvenient in a week. 95% of them would rather join MSFT, than being in a non-profit. Did they company change? I am not convinced.
    - ravst3s 3y ago
      Agree that it's a facade. Iirc, the NP structure was implemented to attract top AI talent from FAANG. Then they needed investors to fund the infrastructure and hence gave the employees shares or profit units (whatever the hell that is). The NP now shields MSFT from regulatory issues. I do wonder how many of those employees would actually go to MSFT. It feels more like a gambit to get Altman back in since they were about to cash out with the tender offer.

nathanasmith 3y ago

On the contrary, this saga has shown that a huge number of people are extremely passionate about the existence of OpenAI and it's leadership by Altman, much more strongly and in larger numbers than most had suspected. If anything this has solidified the importance of the company and I think people will trust it more that the situation was resolved with the light speed it was.

willdr 3y ago
That's a misreading of the situation. The employees saw their big bag vanishing and suddenly realised they were employed by a non-profit entity that had loftier goals than making a buck, so they rallied to overturn it and they've gotten their way. This is a net negative for anyone not financially invested in OAI.
- nathanasmith 3y ago
  What lofty goals? The board was questioned repeatedly and never articulated clear reasoning for firing Altman and in the process lost the confidence of the employees hence the "rally". The lack of clarity was their undoing whether there would have been a bag for the employees to lose or not.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - murakamiiq84 3y ago
    My story: Maybe they had lofty goals, maybe not, but it sounded like the whole thing was instigated by Altman trying to fire Toner (one of the board members) over a silly pretext of her coauthoring a paper that nobody read that was very mildly negative about OpenAI, during her day job. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-board-fight.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-... And then presumably the other board members read the writing on the wall (especially seeing how 3 other board members mysteriously resigned, including Hoffman https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/reid-hoffman-was-privately-unhappy-about-leaving-openais-board https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/reid-hoffman-was-...), and realized that if Altman can kick out Toner under such flimsy pretexts, they'd be out too. So they allied with Helen to countercoup Greg/Sam. I think the anti-board perspective is that this is all shallow bickering over a 90B company. The pro-board perspective is that the whole point of the board was to serve as a check on the CEO, so if the CEO could easily appoint only loyalists, then the board is a useless rubber stamp that lends unfair legitimacy to OpenAI's regulatory capture efforts.

lacker 3y ago

Let's see, Sam Altman is an incredibly charismatic founding CEO, who some people consider manipulative, but is also beloved by many employees. He got kicked out by his board, but brought back when they realized their mistake. It's true that this doesn't really pattern-match with the founding story of huge successful companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. But somehow, I think it's still possible that a huge company could be created by a person like this. (And of course, more important than creating a huge company, is creating insanely great products.)

loveparade 3y ago
I think people following Sam Altman is jumping to conclusions. I think it's just as likely that employees are simply following the money. They want to make $$$, and that's what a for-profit company does, which is what Altman wants. I think it's probably not really about Altman or his leadership.
- kareaa 3y ago
  Given that over 750 people have signed the letter, it's safe to assume that their motivations vary. Some might be motivated by the financial aspects, some might be motivated by Sam's leadership (like considering Sam as a friend who needs support). Some might fervently believe that their work is crucial for the advancement of humanity and that any changes would just hinder their progress. And some might have just caved in to peer pressure.
  - strikelaserclaw 3y ago
    Most are probably motivated by money, some are motivated by stability and some are motivated by their loyalty to sam but i think most are motivated by money and stability.
mkii 3y ago
> It's true that this doesn't really pattern-match with the founding story of huge successful companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. You forgot about Apple.

cowthulhu 3y ago

I feel like history has shown repeatedly that having a good product matters way more than trust, as evidenced by Facebook and Uber. People seem to talk big smack about lost trust and such in the immediate aftermath of a scandal, and then quitely renew the contracts when the time comes. All of the big ad companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook) have, like, a scandal per month, yet the ad revenue keeps coming. Meltdown was a huge scandal, yet Intel keeps pumping out the chips.