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OpenAI's Future and Viability - OpenAI has damaged their brand and lost trust, but may still become a hugely successful company if they build great products -

• qualifiedai 3y ago
  No structure or organization is stronger when their leader emerged as "irreplaceable".
  • rmbyrro 3y ago
    In this case, I don't see as a flaw, but really as Sam's abilities to lead a highly cohesive group and keep it highly motivated and aligned. I don't personally like him, but I must admit he displayed a lot more leadership skills than I'd recognize before. It's inherently hard to replace someone like that in any organization. Take Apple, after losing Jobs. It's not that Apple was a "weak" organization, but really Jobs that was extraordinary and indeed irreplaceable. No, I'm not comparing Jobs and Sam. Just illustrating my point.
    • prh8 3y ago
      What's the difference between leadership skills and cult of following?
      • spurgu 3y ago
        I think an awesome leader would naturally create some kind of cult following, while the opposite isn't true.
        • Popeyes 3y ago
          Just like former President Trump?
          • marcosdumay 3y ago
            There are two possible ways to read "the opposite" from the GP. "A cult follower does not make an exceptional leader" is the one you are looking for.
            • 0perator 3y ago
              While cult followers do not make exceptional leaders, cult leaders are almost by definition exceptional leaders, given they're able to lead the un-indoctrinated into believing an ideology that may not be upheld against critical scrutiny. There is no guarantee or natural law that an exceptional leader's ideology will be exceptional. Exceptionality is not transitive.
      • thedaly 3y ago
        Results
      • TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
        Leadership Gets Shit Done. A cult following wastes everyone's time on ineffectual grandstanding and ego fluffing while everything around them dissolves into incompetence and hostility. They're very orthogonal things.
  • osigurdson 3y ago
    Seriously, even in a small group of a few hundred people?
    • catapart 3y ago
      I dunno, seems like a pretty self-evident theory? If your leader is irreplaceable, regardless of group size, that's a single point of failure. I can't figure how a single point of failure could ever make something "stronger". I can see arguments for necessity, or efficiency, given contrivances and extreme contexts. But "stronger" doesn't seem like the assessment for whatever necessitating a single point of failure would be.
      • vipshek 3y ago
        "Stronger" is ambiguous. If you interpret it as "resilience" then I agree having a single point of failure is usually more brittle. But if you interpret it as "focused", then having a single charismatic leader can be superior. Concretely, it sounds like this incident brought a lot of internal conflicts to the surface, and they got more-or-less resolved in some way. I can imagine this allows OpenAI to execute with greater focus and velocity going forward, as the internal conflict that was previously causing drag has been resolved. Whether or not that's "better" or "stronger" is up to individual interpretation.
      • hughw 3y ago
        I guess though, a lot of organizations never develop a cohesive leader at all, and the orgs fall apart. They never had an irreplaceable leader though!
      • osigurdson 3y ago
        A company is essentially an optimization problem, meant to minimize / maximize some set of metrics. Usually a companies goal is simply to maximize NPV but in OpenAI's case the goal is to maximize AI while minimizing harm. "Failure" in this context essentially means arriving at a materially suboptimal outcome. Leaders in this situation, can easily be considered "irreplaceable" particularly in the early stages as decisions are incredibly impactful.
  • dimitrios1 3y ago
    This is false, and I see the corollary as a project having a BDIF, especially if the leader is effective. Sam is unmistakably effective.
    • acchow 3y ago
      Have you or anyone close to you ever had to take multiple years of leave from work from a car accident or health condition?
      • slingnow 3y ago
        Nope, I've never even __heard__ of someone having to take multiple years of leave from work for any reason. Seems like a fantastically rare event.
        • thingification 3y ago
          Not sure if that's intended as irony, but of course, if somebody is taking multiple years off work, you would be less likely hear about it because by definition they're not going to join the company you work for. I don't think long-term unemployment among people with a disability or other long-term condition is "fantasticaly rare", sadly. This is not the frequency by length of unemployment, but: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1219257/us-employment-rate-disabled-persons/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1219257/us-employment-ra...
        • yeck 3y ago
          In my immediate family I have 3 people that have taken multi-year periods away from work for health reasons. Two are mental health related and the other severe arthritis. 2 of those 3 will probably never work again for the rest of their lives. I've worked with a contractor that went into a coma during covid. Nearly half a year in a coma, then rehab for many more months. Guy is working now, but not shape. I don't know the stats, but I'd be surprised if long medical leaves are as rare as you think.
          • 3y ago
  • qez2 3y ago
    [dead]
  • rvnx 3y ago
    And correlation does not imply causality. Example: Put a loser as CEO of a rocket ship, and there is a huge chance that the company will still be successful. Put a loser as CEO of a sinking ship, and there is a huge chance that the company will fail. The exceptional CEOs are those who turn failures into successes. The fact this drama has emerged is the symptom of a failure. In a company with a great CEO this shouldn’t be happening.
  • Aunche 3y ago
    I don't think Sam is necessarily irreplaceable. It's just that Helen Toner and co were so detached from the rest of the organization they might as well been on Mars, as demonstrated by their interim CEO pick instantly turning against them.
• nurumaik 3y ago
  Gpt-generated summary?
  • Mistletoe 3y ago
    That was my first thought as well. And now it is the top comment on this post. Isn’t this brave new world OpenAI made wonderful?
    • nickpp 3y ago
      If it’s a good comment, does it really matter if a human or an AI wrote it?
      • makeworld 3y ago
        Yes.
        • nickpp 3y ago
          Please expand on that.
          • iamflimflam1 3y ago
            This is the most cogent argument against AI I've seen so far. https://youtu.be/iGJcF4bLKd4?si=Q_JGEZnV-tpFa1Tb https://youtu.be/iGJcF4bLKd4?si=Q_JGEZnV-tpFa1Tb
            • nickpp 3y ago
              I am sorry, I greatly respect and admire Nick Cave, but that letter sounded to me like the lament of a scribe decrying the invention of the printing press. He's not wrong, something is lost and it has to do with what we call our "humanity", but the benefits greatly outweigh that loss.
              • 3y ago
• miohtama 3y ago
  > Employees followed the money trail and Sam to preserve their equity and careers Would you not when the AI safety wokes decide the torch the rewards of your hard work of grinding for years? I feel there is less groupthink and everyone saw the board as it is and their inability lead, or even act rationally. OpenAI did not just become a sinking ship, but it was unnecessary sunk by someone not skin in the game and your personal wealth and success was tied to the ship.
  • brookst 3y ago
    Yeah, this is like using “groupthink” to describe people fleeing a burning building. There’s maybe some measure of literal truth, but it’s an odd way to frame it.
  • acjohnson55 3y ago
    How do you know the "wokes" aren't the ones who were grinding for years? I suspect OpenAI has an old guard that is disproportionately ideological about AI, and a much larger group of people who joined a rocket ship led by the guy who used to run YC.
• seydor 3y ago
  who would want to work for an irreplaceable CEO long term
  • rvnx 3y ago
    Desperate people who have no choice than to wait for someone to remove their golden handcuffs.
• paulddraper 3y ago
  > Peer pressure and groupthink likely also swayed employees more than principles What makes this "likely"? Or is this just pure conjecture?
  • mrfox321 3y ago
    What would you do if 999 employees openly signed a letter and you are the remaining holdout.
    • paulddraper 3y ago
      Is your argument that the 1 employee operated on peer pressure, or the other 999? Could it possibly be that the majority of OpenAI's workforce sincerely believed a midnight firing of the CEO were counterproductive to their organization's goals?
      • dymk 3y ago
        It's almost certain that all employees did not behave the same way for the exact same reasons. And I don't see anyone making an argument about what the exact numbers are, nor does it really matter. Just that some portion of employees were swayed by pressure once the letter reached some critical signing mass.
        • paulddraper 3y ago
          > some portion The logic being that if any opinion has above X% support, people are choosing it based on peer pressure.
          • mrfox321 3y ago
            The key is that the support is not anonymous.
      • mrfox321 3y ago
        Doing the math, it is extremely unlikely for a lot of coin flips to skew from the weight of the coin. To that end, observing unanimous behavior may imply some bias. Here, it could be people fearing being a part of the minority. The minority are trivially identifiable, since the majority signed their names on a document. I agree in your stance that a majority of the workforce disagreed with the way things were handled, but that proportion is likely a subset of the proportion who signed their names on the document, for the reasons stated above.
• orsenthil 3y ago
  > - Mission-driven employees may still leave for opportunities at places like Anthropic Which might have an oversight from AMZN instead of MSFT ?
• sam0x17 3y ago
  > Peer pressure and groupthink likely also swayed employees more than principles Chilling to hear the corporate oligarchs completely disregard the feelings of employees and deny most of the legitimacy behind these feelings in such a short and sweeping statement
  • DSingularity 3y ago
    Honestly he has a point — but the bigger point to be made is financial incentives. In this case it matters because of the expressed mission statement of OpenAI. Let’s say there was some non-profit claiming to advance the interests of the world. Let’s say it paid very well to hire the most productive people but they were a bunch of psychopaths who by definition couldn’t care less about anybody but themselves. Should you care about their opinions? If it was a for profit company you could argue that their voice matter. For a non-profit, however, a persons opinion should only matter as far as it is aligned with the non-profit mission.
• ensocode 3y ago
  Good points. Anyway I guess nobody will remember the drama in some months so I think the damage done is very manageable for OAI.
• jxi 3y ago
  Was this really motivated by AI safety or was it just Helen Toner’s personal vendetta against Sam? It doesn’t feel like anything was accomplished besides wasting 700+ people’s time, and the only thing that has changed now is Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley are off the board.
  • hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    As someone who was very critical of how the board acted, I strongly disagree. I felt like this Washington Post article gave a very good, balanced overview. I think it sounds like there were substantive issues that were brewing for a long time, though no doubt personal clashes had a huge impact on how it all went down: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/22/sam-altman-fired-y-combinator-paul-graham/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/22/sam-alt...
  • cbeach 3y ago
    Curious how a relatively unknown academic with links to China [1] attained a board seat on America's hottest and most valuable AI company. Particularly as she openly expressed that "destroying" that company might be the best outcome. [2] > During the call, Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, said the board was endangering the future of the company by pushing out Mr. Altman. This, he said, violated the members’ responsibilities. Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission was 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. [1] https://www.chinafile.com/contributors/helen-toner https://www.chinafile.com/contributors/helen-toner [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-board-fight.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AU0.0Zli.ur35-H19FBLR&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-...
    • Zpalmtree 3y ago
      Wow, very surprised this is the first I'm hearing of this, seems very suspect
    • hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
• amalcon 3y ago
  >- Microsoft strengthened its power despite not appearing involved in the drama Depending on what you mean by "the drama", Microsoft was very clearly involved. They don't appear to have been in the loop prior to Altman's firing, but they literally offered jobs to everyone who left in solidarity with same. Do we really think things like that were not intended to change people's minds?
  • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >but they literally offered jobs to everyone who left in solidarity with same Offering people jobs is neither illegal nor immoral, no? And wasn't HN also firmly on the side of abolishing non-competes and non-soliciting from employment contracts to facilitate freedom of employment movement and increase industry wages in the process? Well then, there's your freedom of employment in action. Why be unhappy about it? I don't get it.
    • spankalee 3y ago
      > Offering people jobs is neither illegal nor immoral The comment you responded to made neither of those claims, just that they were "involved".
    • notahacker 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure there's a middle ground between recruiters for Microsoft should be banned from approaching other companies' staff to fill roles and Microsoft should be able to dictate decisions made by other companies' boards by publicly announcing that unless they change track it will attempt to hire every single one of their employees to newly created roles. Funnily enough a bit like there's a middle ground between Microsoft should not be allowed to create browsers or have license agreements and Microsoft should be allowed to dictate bundling decisions made by hardware vendors to control access to the Internet It's not freedom of employment when funnily enough those jobs aren't actually available to any AI researchers not working for an organisation Microsoft is trying to control.
  • malfist 3y ago
    The GP looks to me like an AI summary. Which would fit with the hallucination that microsoft wasn't involved.
• RationalDino 3y ago
  The one piece of this that I question is the employee motivations. First, they had offers to walk to both Microsoft and Salesforce and be made good. They didn't have to stay and fight to have money and careers. But more importantly, put yourself in the shoes of an employee and read https://web.archive.org/web/20231120233119/https://www.businessinsider.com/openais-employees-given-explanations-why-sam-altman-out-2023-11 https://web.archive.org/web/20231120233119/https://www.busin... for what they apparently heard. I don't know about anyone else. But if I was being asked to choose sides in a he-said, she-said dispute, the board was publicly hinting at really bad stuff, and THAT was the explanation, I know what side I'd take. Don't forget, when the news broke, people's assumption from the wording of the board statement was that Sam was doing shady stuff, and there was potential jail time involved. And they justify smearing Sam like that because two board members thought they heard different things from Sam, and he gave what looked like the same project to two people??? There were far better stories that they could have told. Heck, the Internet made up many far better narratives than the board did. But that was the board's ACTUAL story. Put me on the side of, "I'd have signed that letter, and money would have had nothing to do with it."
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • TheGRS 3y ago
    I was thinking the same. The letter symbolized a deep distrust with leadership over the mission and direction of the company. I’m sure financial motivations were involved, but the type of person working at this company can probably get a good paycheck at a lot of places. I think many work at OpenAI for some combination of opportunity, prestige, and altruism, and the weekend probably put all 3 into question.
• neonbjb 3y ago
  As an employee of OpenAI: fuck you and your condescending conclusions about my peers and my motivations.
  • jprete 3y ago
    I’m curious about your perceptions of the (median) motivations of OpenAI employees - although of course I understand if you don’t feel free to say anything.
  • alextheparrot 3y ago
    Users here often get the narrative and motivations deeply wrong, I wouldn’t take it too personally (Speaking as a peer)
  • iamflimflam1 3y ago
    "condescending conclusions" - ask anyone outside of tech how they feel when we talk to them...
• windowshopping 3y ago
  This comment bugs me because it reads like a summary of an article, but it's just your opinions without any explanations to justify them.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• scooke 3y ago
  Many are still going to use this; few will bother to ponder and break the event down like this.