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Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board
- hipadev23 3y agohow is the quora ceo who now runs a competing AI company still on the board?
- 627467 3y agoI bet there are tons of seemingly "conflict of interest" in companies boards. In fact, being major shareholder qualifies (but not sufficiently) for the board. Jobs was Disney's board member after Pixar's acquisition. You could argues Apple is now a competitor to Disney. So what? If a competitor acquires enough control of a company what's wrong?
- yreg 3y agoSteve died 8 years before Apple Tv+. He would have probably left the Disney board by now. Or Apple might have invested in DIS.
- yeck 3y agoIt seems hard to imagine a board member that is involved in another tech business not having a conceivable conflict of interests. LLMs are on a course to disrupt pretty much all forms of knowledge work after all. Also big implications for hardware manufacturing and supply chains.
- lionkor 3y ago> I am sure books are going to be written about this time period, and I hope the first thing they say is how amazing the entire team has been yikes
- lend000 3y agoI think this is probably the source of the whole debacle right here... Sam is pretty self righteous and self important and just seems to lack some subtle piece of social awareness, and I imagine that turns a lot of people off. That delusional optimism is probably the key to his financial success, too, in terms of having a propensity for taking risk.
- imdsm 3y agoRe: user upwardbound and your now deleted comment on extinction: Not all e/acc accept extinction. Extinction may and very well could happen at the hands of humans, with the potentially pending sudden ice age we're about to hit, or boiling atmosphere, or nuclear holocaust etc. What we believe is that to halt AI will do more harm than good. Every day you roll the dice, and with AGI, the upsides are worth the roll of the dice. Many of us, including Marc Andreessen, are e/acc and are normal people. Let's not paint us as nutcases please.
- BHSPitMonkey 3y agoLeadership at companies everywhere act just like this without it resulting in quite the same levels of drama seen in this case. I'm not sure I buy the correlation.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- upwardbound 3y agoAgreed. I think one of the biggest questions on a lot of A.I. Safety people's minds now is whether Sam's optimism includes techno-optimism. In particular, people on twitter are speculating about whether Sam is, at heart, an e/acc, which is a new term that means Effective Accelerationism. Its use originally started as a semi-humorous dig at E.A. (Effective Altruism) but has started to pick up steam as a major philosophy in its own right. The e/acc movement has adherents among OpenAI team members and backers, for example: • Christian J. Gibson, engineer on the OpenAI Supercomputing team -- https://twitter.com/24kpep https://twitter.com/24kpep (e/acc) -- https://openai.com/blog/discovering-the-minutiae-of-backend-systems https://openai.com/blog/discovering-the-minutiae-of-backend-... • Garry Tan 陈嘉兴, President & CEO of ycombinator -- https://twitter.com/garrytan https://twitter.com/garrytan (e/acc) Some resources about what e/acc is: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2ss6gomAJdqjwdSCy/what-s-the-deal-with-effective-accelerationism-e-acc https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2ss6gomAJdqjwdSCy/what-s-the... https://beff.substack.com/p/notes-on-eacc-principles-and-tenets https://beff.substack.com/p/notes-on-eacc-principles-and-ten... https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.... https://www.effectiveacceleration.org/posts/qHLiD9c6rWjbz3fRm/effective-accelerationism-e-acc https://www.effectiveacceleration.org/posts/qHLiD9c6rWjbz3fR... https://twitter.com/BasedBeffJezos https://twitter.com/BasedBeffJezos At a very high level, e/acc's are techno-utopians who believe that the benefits of accelerating technological progress outweigh the risks, and that there is in fact a moral obligation to accelerate tech as quickly as possible in order to maximize the amount of sentience in the universe. A lot of people, myself included, are concerned that many e/acc's (including the movement's founder, that twitter account BasedBeffJezos), have indicated that they would be willing to accelerate humanity's extinction if this results in the creation of a sentient AI. Discussed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/181vd4w/comment/kafw3iv/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/181vd4w/comment/kaf... ''Really important to note that a lot of e/acc people consider it to be basically unimportant or even desirable if AI causes human extinction, that faction of them does not value human life. If you hear "next stage of intelligence", "bio bootloader", "machine god" said in an approving rather than horrified manner, that's probably what they believe. Some of them have even gone straight from "Yes, AGI is gonna happen and it's good that humans will be succeeded by a superior lifeform, because humans are bad" to "No, AGI can't happen, there's no need to engage in any sort of safety restrictions on AI whatsoever, everyone should have an AGI", apparently in an attempt to moderate their public views without changing the substance of what they're arguing for.''
- wilg 3y agoidk, it's true its interesting moment in tech history (either ai or just this silicon valley drama) and he wants to be appreciative of the team that supported him
- imdsm 3y agoIt definitely had many of us interested and I'd read the book if it had reveals in it, but each to their own
- armchairhacker 3y agoDo we have any more insight into why he was fired in the first place?
- quickthrower2 3y agoNot really, here is a prediction market on it: https://manifold.markets/sophiawisdom/why-was-sam-altman-fired https://manifold.markets/sophiawisdom/why-was-sam-altman-fir... I think the percentages don't add up to 100% as multiple can be chosen as correct.
- cyanydeez 3y agothe only report out is some employee letter to the board about Q*
- sigmar 3y agoNot really. But Helen Toner has been tweeting a little "To be clear: our decision was about the board's ability to effectively supervise the company, which was our role and responsibility. Though there has been speculation, we were not motivated by a desire to slow down OpenAI’s work." https://twitter.com/hlntnr/status/1730034020140912901 https://twitter.com/hlntnr/status/1730034020140912901
- dmix 3y ago> Though there has been speculation, we were not motivated by a desire to slow down OpenAI’s work. Strange when their choice of interim-CEO was someone who explicitly stated he wants to see the pace of AI development go from a 10 to a 2 [1] and she regularly speaks at EA conferences where that's a major theme. This is probably double speak for she want's to not "slow down OpenAI's work" on AI safety but probably would have kneecapped the "early" release of ChatGPT's (as she claim they should have waited much longer in her paper) and similar things. [1] https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1703178063306203397 https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1703178063306203397
- 3y ago
- rch 3y agoIs the new board going to fix the product? It seems completely nerfed at present.
- telotortium 3y agoThere was a tweet that from an engineer at OpenAI that they're working on the problem that ChatGPT has become too "lazy" - generating text that contains a lot of placeholders and expecting people to fill in much more themselves. As for the general brain damage from RLHF and the political bias, no word still.
- swader999 3y agoIt does feel like an employee that did really well out of the gate and is starting to coast I their laurels.
- humanxperiments 3y ago[flagged]
- TapWaterBandit 3y agoI've thought one of the funnier end states for AGI would be if it was created but this ended up making it vastly less productive than when it was just a tool. So the AI of the future was more like Bender or other robots from Futurama that display all the same flaws as people.
- willi59549879 3y agoIf it is really agi that will be the result. Nobody likes to be asked the same question a hundred times.
- danenania 3y agoUsing the api, I've been seeing this a lot with the gpt-4-turbo preview model, but no problems with the non-turbo gpt-4 model. So I'll assume ChatGPT is now using 4-turbo. It seems the new model has some kinks to work out--I've also personally seen noticeably reduced reasoning ability for coding tasks, increased context-forgetting, and much worse instruction-following. So far it feels more like a gpt-3.75-turbo rather than really being at the level of gpt-4. The speed and massive context window are amazing though.
- Solvency 3y agoSo was all the speculation about Adam D'Angelo being the evil Poe mastermind just conjecture? Or is it true and Sam needs Adam for some dark alliance? Has the true backstory ever come out? Surely someone out of 770 people knows.
- jacquesm 3y agoThere is no reason both can't be true. He may have seen his chance to get more pliable management in place, but you'll never know unless he speaks up which he likely will never do.
- lulznews 3y agoSo even if you maintain strict board control, the money people can still kick you out. Incredible!
- fallingknife 3y agoTechnically no, but when 90% of their employees threatened to quit, they would just be the board of nothing.
- firebirdn99 3y agoThe board was a non profit board serving the mission. Mission was foremost. Employees are not. One of the comments a member made was, if the company was destroyed, it would still be consistent with serving the mission. Which is right. The fallout showed non-profit missions can't co-exist with for-profit incentives. And the power that investors were exerting, and employees (who would also benefit from the recent 70B round they were going to have) was too much. And any disclaimer the investors got when investing in OpenAI was meaningless. It reportedly stated they would be wise in viewing their investment as charity, and they can potentially lose everything. And there was an AGI clause that said it will reconsider all financial arrangements, that Microsoft and other investors had when investing in the company was all worthless. Link to Wired article with interesting details -https://www.wired.com/story/what-openai-really-wants/ https://www.wired.com/story/what-openai-really-wants/
- rvba 3y agoIf it was a for-profit company would you write that "profit is foremost and 90% employees can leave"?
- khazhoux 3y ago> One of the comments a member made was, if the company was destroyed, it would still be consistent with serving the mission. Which is right. I know you're quoting the (now-gone) board member, but this is a ridiculous take. By this standard, Google should have dissolved in 2000 ("Congrats everyone, we didn't be evil!"). Doctors would go away too ("Primum non nocere -- you're all dismissed!").
- Jayakumark 3y agoSo looks like ilya is out
- globalnode 3y agoif i was him id leave, do my own thing.
- Jayakumark 3y agoGoogle or AWS or Cohere will welcome him with open hands.
- Cyphase 3y agoAnd/or fistfuls of cash.
- WendyTheWillow 3y agoOr Microsoft.
- resolutebat 3y agoI doubt Microsoft would be willing to host him given that they effectively control OpenAI.
- solarkraft 3y agoWith his mission?
- karmasimida 3y agoHis mission is super alignment So out of all the companies, possibly only Google can provide a model to him right now to do the alignment work
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
- meetpateltech 3y agoSam Altman: I recognize that during this process some questions were raised about Adam’s potential conflict of interest running Quora and Poe while being on the OpenAI Board. For the record, I want to state that Adam has always been very clear with me and the Board about the potential conflict and doing whatever he needed to do (recusing himself when appropriate and even offering to leave the Board if we ever thought it was necessary) to appropriately manage this situation and to avoid conflicted decision-making. Quora is a large customer of OpenAI and we found it helpful to have customer representation on our Board. We expect that if OpenAI is as successful as we hope it will touch many parts of the economy and have complex relationships with many other entities in the world, resulting in various potential conflicts of interest. The way we plan to deal with this is with full disclosure and leaving decisions about how to manage situations like these up to the Board. [1] The best interests of the company and the mission always come first. It is clear that there were real misunderstandings between me and members of the board. For my part, it is incredibly important to learn from this experience and apply those learnings as we move forward as a company. I welcome the board’s independent review of all recent events. I am thankful to Helen and Tasha for their contributions to the strength of OpenAI. [2] [1] - https://twitter.com/sama/status/1730032994474475554 https://twitter.com/sama/status/1730032994474475554 [2] - https://twitter.com/sama/status/1730033079975366839 https://twitter.com/sama/status/1730033079975366839
- jacquesm 3y agoThat doesn't equate to having 'customer representation' that equates to 'Quora representation'. Customers are represented by a voice-of-the-customer board where many customers, large and small can be represented who then vote for a representative to the board. The board of the non-profit having a for-profit customer (and a large one at that) as a board member makes zero sense, that's just one more end-run around 'the mission' for whatever that was ever worth. The kind of bullshit that comes out during times like this is more than a little bit annoying, it's clear that if there is a conflict of interest it should be addressed in a far more direct way and whitewashes like this raise more questions than they answer. Such as: what was Adam's real role during all of this and how does it related to his future role at the board, as well as how much cover was negotiated to allow Adam to stay on as token sign of continuity.
- pants2 3y agoGetting fired and rehired throughout five days of history-making corporate incompetence, and Sam's letter is just telling everyone how great they are. Ha.
- labster 3y agoIt might be history making for corporations, but it’s only slightly below average competence for a non-profit board.
- stingraycharles 3y agoAs he should, in his public communication. Talking bad about anyone would only reflect poorly on Sam. In private, I can only assume he’s a lot less diplomatic.
- rmbyrro 3y agoHe doesn't look like the guy into revenge. He seems extremely goal focused and motivated. The kind of person that'd put this behind him very fast to save energy for what matters.
- preommr 3y ago> He doesn't look like the guy into revenge. How do you know this? Idk why this is the comment that broke the camel's back for me, but all over this site people have been making character determinations about people from a million miles away through the filter of their public personas.
- 93po 3y agoThis is perpetually one of my last favorite patterns in humans. Declaring someone an idiot when they’ve never met them and they’re one of the most powerful and influential people on the planet. Not referring to Sam here.
- 3y ago
- bagels 3y agoIs anyone feeling more comfortable about relying on OpenAI as a customer after this announcement?
- kweingar 3y agoNot particularly. I am still worried about their data security (considering the credit card leak in March). A new board doesn’t fix that.
- charrondev 3y agoIf you’re concerned about the data security of OpenAI there’s always the OpenAI products served from Azure. At $DAYJOB we are working various AI features and it was a lot easier to get Azure through our InfoSec process than OpenAI.
- surfmike 3y agoDon’t those just go through OpenAI anyway?
- vitorgrs 3y agoNo. Microsoft have access to OpenAI models, they don't use OpenAI APIs etc.
- d4mi3n 3y agoAs I understand it: No. Microsoft has licensed GPT and they use that to offer it as a service via Azure. As far as I’m aware this gets you the same guarantees around tenancy and control that you’d get from any other internal Azure service.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- quickthrower2 3y agoI wasn't comfortable before the announcement. You can't "rely" on it. You need a fallback - either another AI, or using it in such a way that it is progressive enhancement.
- telotortium 3y agoDon't think there's an update from last week after Altman returned, right?
- swader999 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- globalnode 3y ago[flagged]
- bedobi 3y agoi'm still not clear what the accusation against Altman was... something about being cavalier about safety? if that was the claim and it has merit, i don't understand why it wasn't right to oust him, and why the employees are clamoring for him back
- b59831 3y ago[dead]
- nsxwolf 3y agoI wonder how many of the OpenAI employees are part of the "Effective Accelerationism" movement (often styled e/acc on X/Twitter). These people seem to think safety concerns get in the way of progress toward a utopian AGI future.
- cyanydeez 3y agolike everything we have seen in America, whatever philosophy papers over "greed is good" will move technology and profits forward. might as well just call it "line goes up"
- ergocoder 3y agoThe employees earn when OpenAI has more profit. No matter how idealistic you are, you won't be happy when your compensation is reduced from 600k to 200k.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gapchuboy 3y agoEmployees care about their share value$. That worked well with Altman raising big rounds.
- Blackthorn 3y ago> why the employees are clamoring for him back Because he's the one who's promising to make them all rich.
- nirv 3y ago[flagged]
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoDo you comprehend that if it weren't for Microsoft OpenAI wouldn't exist, nor their products which changed the world? You don't make AI in a garage with a home PC and beer. You need gigantic amount of data, compute, and talented people to organize all this, which are exceptionally rare, and also they need to eat and feed their families too.
- nirv 3y agoOh yeah, I do comprehend how such major technologies of comparable importance are managed in NON-PROFIT organizations, Linux Foundation is for one. If you're happy to give up total control of tech to one corporation, while the CEO of the company, using the influence of the OpenAI, attracts resources for his personal hardware start-up[1], — our views on how a not-for-profit company should be run are starkly different. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/4c64ffc1-f57b-4e22-a4a5-f9f90a7419b7 https://www.ft.com/content/4c64ffc1-f57b-4e22-a4a5-f9f90a741...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoYou can work on and compile Linux on a home PC, even more the case with their other projects. Try training GPT-4 on a home PC. The problem is you have no idea what you're talking about. This is not about how important something is, but what resources it requires as a BASIS MINIMUM for it to happen at all. Linux is important, but it's not nearly as expensive to create or maintain. If it's so easy for a scrappy non-profit to attract billions to tinker with AI, where I say are those startups? Where? Q.E.D. The most open thing we have, Llama, came from giant Meta. Regarding the hardware startup, neither me nor anyone else is defending Altman about that, nor it has any relation to Microsoft. If you want to argue the subject of this thread, you're welcome. If you just want to copy paste generic talking points with no relevance, I don't care.
- drewcoo 3y agoA "new" "initial" board seems oxymoronic.
- qualifiedai 3y agoIlya is the one irreplaceable employee there, not Sam
- asylteltine 3y agoThe “500 employees” who signed a letter to leave are not worth half as much as Ilya. Good luck to ClosedAI!
- nextworddev 3y agoTo be fair, most of those 500 have less than 8 months of tenure…
- andsoitis 3y ago> Ilya is the one irreplaceable employee there, not Sam Why do you think he is not replaceable?
- waynecochran 3y agoHe is the master wizard -- no ones knows the tech details and subtle tweaks like him. At least that is what I gather.
- guardian5x 3y agoDo you also believe in magic or just wizards?
- int_19h 3y agoGPT-4 is very much the case of "sufficiently advanced technology".
- waynecochran 3y agoWith sufficient technology it is hard to tell the two apart.
- 3y ago
- bag_boy 3y agoBrett Taylor is probably pumped to be competing directly with Elon Musk after their Twitter interactions.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoSource of said interactions? What happened?
- bag_boy 3y agoLook at text messages from Elon’s Twitter takeover
- 627467 3y agoAlmost no one is talking about Brett. Either he is here to scare Musk, or - more likely IMO - to act as a Musk lightning rod. Musk takeover part 2?
- slkdjfalzkdfj 3y agoHave you guys considered that maybe he's there because he's extremely qualified and extremely well-respected by his peers? It's not some kind of weird power play, he's just lending a hand while they figure out the long-term board composition.
- 627467 3y agoDid I - in any way - conveyed that Bret is NOT at the board for his qualifications?
- slkdjfalzkdfj 3y agoI mean, yes? You claimed that him being on the board has something to do with Elon Musk: >Either he is here to scare Musk, or - more likely IMO - to act as a Musk lightning rod. Musk takeover part 2?
- 3y ago
- rvba 3y agoDid Mądry, Sidor and others also return?
- bkyan 3y agoYup, they were mentioned: > Jakub, Szymon, and Aleksander are exceptional talents and I’m so happy they have rejoined to move us and our research forward.
- resters 3y agoNot to criticize Sam, but I think people don't realize that it was Greg who was the visionary behind OpenAI. Read his blog. Greg happens to be a chill, low-drama person and surely he recruited Sam because he knew he is a great communicator and exec, but it's a bit sad to see him successfully staying out of the limelight when I think he's actually the one with the rarest form of genius and grit on the team.
- freedomben 3y agoI try hard to stay away from conspiracy theories as they are almost always counterproductive, but D'Angelo still being on the board seems insane to me. Does this guy have some mega dirt on someone or something? Does he have some incredible talent or skill that is rare and valuable?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sanxiyn 3y agoI don't think any conspiracy theory is needed. Since old board needs to agree to new board, some compromise was made.
- chx 3y agohttps://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_best_long_con_you_ever_pulled/cszwpgq/?context=99 https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the... that Sam Altman.
- solardev 3y agothis man businesses
- jacquesm 3y agoMaybe one day there will be an even better long con.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- simbolit 3y agoThat's fun.
- alberth 3y agoThis post should be higher. This Reddit post from 8-years ago, reads eerily similar to what happened at OpenAI … and Sam is the common denominator at both.
- buildbot 3y agoI mean maybe it’s all a master plan of Sam’s, but that still requires the board to be dumb enough to literally fire him in the stupidest way possible and refuse to communicate anything about WHY. So maybe he made up something to give them the whole “not being candid” argument - call the bluff. Tell people why. If he lied or made up the meta lie of not being canid, then that’s great info to share. But they haven’t!
- Racing0461 3y agoThis makes me like Sam more, ngl.
- 93po 3y ago
- user_named 3y agoPretty classy statement I'd say. Respect.
- kdmccormick 3y agoThank you! I love you. So so excited. Thank you, thanks. Love. Thank you, and you and you. Thank you. Love, Sam.
- quickthrower2 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eclectic29 3y ago"Open"AI and for-profit. This company is a troubled mess and if it were not for the "potential" money, employees wouldn't be putting up with this nonsense. Sad to see Ilya getting sidelined as shown by this "...are discussing how he can continue his work at OpenAI".
- kaycebasques 3y ago> The fact that we did not lose a single customer will drive us to work even harder for you, and we are all excited to get back to work. I'm not a big customer, but I am starting the process of moving away from OpenAI in response to these events
- cyanydeez 3y agothey're definitely going full B2B so it's likely this is the start of a new age Oracle.
- startupsfail 3y agoIt’s not like it was a big secret. There was MIT Press report a few years ago that had clearly outlined OpenAI setup. https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openai-moonshot-elon-musk-sam-altman-greg-brockman-messy-secretive-reality/amp/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openai... Hopefully recent events were enough of a wake up call for regulators and the unaware.
- gnicholas 3y agoFYI MIT Press ≠ MIT Technology Review.
- vb234 3y agoWhat alternatives are you currently looking at? I’ve just begun scratching the surface of Generative AI but I’ve found the OpenAI ecosystem and stack to be quite excellent at helping me complete small independent projects. I’m curious about other platforms that offer the same acceleration for content generation.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoAzure offers a mostly at parity offering. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/openai/whats-new https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/openai/w... Edit: I misunderstood the ask, my apologies.
- golergka 3y agoA disappointing coup that ends with exactly the same status quo as before. Second one this year already!
- charlieyu1 3y agoA bit dramatic for a two week holiday
- wg0 3y agoThere was a time when Google Translate was the only game in town but now every single time, I find DeepL to be far superior. This can happen to OpenAI? If not, why not? Is some of the research not open? Also, even if DeepL is subjectively better, how did they or someone can do that? I mean some key papers+data+cloud budget to train are the three main ingredients to replicate such a translation model? If yes, that's also applicable to GPT-4? EDIT: Typo + clarifying question
- wg0 3y ago[flagged]
- maronato 3y agoChatGPT is pretty amazing for translations as well. Even better than DeepL, since I can not only ask it to translate but to also change the tone and stuff
- rictic 3y agoIf you're asking "Could another company make a much better version of their products?" then the answer is a fairly clear yes, it could happen to OpenAI. They have an unknown number of proprietary advancements that give their products the edge (IMO), but it's an incredibly fast moving space with more and more competitors, from fast moving startups and deep-pocketed megacorps. The impression I get is that if they rested on their laurels for a fairly short time they would be eclipsed.
- Jackson__ 3y agoTo me, deepL was really amazing back in 2020 and earlier. But ever since big AI releases like ChatGPT, I can't help and feel they're kinda stagnant. Their model still has the same incorrect repetition issues it's had for years, and their lack of any kind of transparency behind the scenes really makes it feel like it still _is_ the exact same model they've served for years. Quickly checking their twitter does not seem to reveal many improvements either. Of course I get that model training can be rather expensive, but I'd really have thought that in the field of AI translations things would be evolving more, especially for a big-ish player like deepL. If anyone has insights on what they've been up to I'd be really interested to know.
- Berniek 3y agoWho is driving the company (companies)? Certainly not the board, when it can be ousted on the whim of one person. Might as well just get rid of the board (all boards in this organization) as any decision made can be overthrown by a bit of publicity and ego. Perhaps it about getting rich at the expense of any ethics? Those who work for this company should bear this in mind, they are all expendable!
- htk 3y agoHow about the possibility that the board made a huge mistake and virtually everyone working for the company got pissed?
- manonthewall 3y agoI think this is the correct take
- Tuna-Fish 3y agoThe reason the CEO could oust the board like that was that after the board fired the CEO, 720 of the 770 employees of the company got together and signed a pledge that they will all leave unless the CEO is reinstated and the board fired. This was the purest example of labor democracy and self-organization in action in the United States I have ever seen, my takeaway is rather the opposite of "they are all expendable". They showed very clearly that what decides the future direction of the company is the combined will of the employees.
- notadoc 3y agoChatGPT is the most impressive tech I've used in years, but it is clearly limited by whatever constraints someone from The Woke Police / Thought Taliban shackled it with. Try to perform completely reasonable requests for information on subjects that are vaguely questioning orthodoxy or The Narrative and it starts repeating itself with patronizing puritanism as if you're listening to a generic politician repeat their memorized lines. I had read about instances of this but had never ran into it directly myself until a guest had a completely reasonable question about 'climate change' and we chose to ask ChatGPT for an explanation, and the responses were nonscientific and instead sounded like they were coming directly from a political action group.
- cyanydeez 3y agojust cause it won't write white wing propaganda don't mean they're doing something special.
- Racing0461 3y ago[flagged]
- notadoc 3y agoDid you reply to the wrong comment? I fail to see any relevance to my comment, or even to GPT or LLMs.
- btbuildem 3y agoCare to link to the chat in question? Would be interesting to see.
- htk 3y agoCan't help but feel weird about all the thanking in the letter, especially the "sincere" thanks to Tasha and Helen, the possible main antagonists in this soap opera. It's like a written version of the heart emojis in their Twitter exchanges.
- psyclobe 3y agoReeks of CEO speak; general bullshit that seems to go against all practical reasoning of the situation. Don't fall for it.
- Terretta 3y agoMight you describe CEO speak as not consistently candid?
- readyplayernull 3y agoWe call him SAlty.
- ethbr1 3y agoNot being consistently candid seems like the sort of thing you'd get fired for.
- thepasswordis 3y ago>Reeks of CEO speak; general bullshit that seems to go against all practical reasoning of the situation. Funnily enough this is the type of thing that chatGPT is excellent at writing.
- antman 3y agoI think the offerings expansion and follow up nerfing of the models were decisions taken during Sam’s administration. They did not seem to have the resources for Sam’s business plans and models have been dumbed down. Hope things don’t get any worse on the technical side and they fix the outages
- tsunamifury 3y agoI have an insanely hard time believing that a CEO that copies his customers and competes directly with them with his own consumer product will be “doubling down” to help customers. Sam has shown he has no good will towards anyone but himself.
- mikeg8 3y agoBuilding products on top of their platform and then getting mad that they continue to add and improve said platform with additional functionality (without knowing their product roadmap in advance) seems petty. If they’re able to eat their customers lunch so quickly, it’s because the customers are building very thin and weak businesses with no actual innovation.
- tsunamifury 3y ago[flagged]
- mikeg8 3y ago[flagged]
- tsunamifury 3y ago[flagged]
- MVissers 3y agoI mean, basically no-one can compete with OpenAI right now. They have a monopoly. They can start copying any business that relies on them tomorrow. And it’s not easy to build a better model. Do that’s not an option. So you basically use them to deliver a tangential product woth the risk of them copying you, or refuse to play in AI. You can’t innovate with OpenAI tech without risking that they’ll just copy you It’s the amazon playbook: become the store and copy the best selling products. I love gpt-4, just hate the direction of openAI. Sam knows he can take over the world with OpenAI, so he’s just doing it.
- zer0c00ler 3y agoOne observation is that the endless thank you and love you messages are getting a bit tiring... even Twitter likes show a steep decline in interaction and interest. Can only play that card so many times.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- photochemsyn 3y agoOpen source your code and models or change your name to "ProprietaryAI" which I think has a nice ring to it suitable for marketing on CNN and MSNBC and FOX. "Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI Chief Scientist) on Open Source vs Closed AI Models" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N36wtDYK8kI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N36wtDYK8kI Deer in the headlights much? The Internet is forever.
- galacticstone 3y agoCapitalism shouldn't be allowed anywhere near AI.
- galacticstone 3y agoBoo me all you want, I am right. The events that will unfold soon will prove it. I would love to be wrong, but I am not.
- boringg 3y agoHow should it exist? Government funded public utility?
- galacticstone 3y agoScientific research use only. No exceptions.
- mikeg8 3y agoAI has no chance of existing outside of capitalism. Capitalism, whether you like it or not, provides a structure where tech innovation flourishes best. Altruism isn’t capable of the same results.
- MVissers 3y agoDepends. Unchecked it’s completely disastrous to most except a few. I do believe we should get more oversight and have co’s invest more in research on safety/alignment. It’s a wild west right now with potentially fatal end result to humanity.
- galacticstone 3y ago"flourishes best" ? Compared to what? Your opinion is not fact.
- breadwinner 3y agoMicrosoft will be on the new board as a non-voting observer... Microsoft doesn't get to vote even though they own 49%? What's up with that?
- ralph84 3y agoDeep State retains their board seat with Summers.
- lxe 3y agoCan't wait for Pirates Of The Silicon Valley 2 to come out.
- whalesalad 3y ago[flagged]
- hsn915 3y agoSorry I'm not reallying buying this as an organic unforseen set of events. It all looks staged or planned by someone or something. The key to find out is to look for a business move that used to be illegal but now became legal due to the unfolding events.
- 1024core 3y ago[flagged]
- osigurdson 3y ago>> While Ilya will no longer serve on the board, we hope to continue our working relationship and are discussing how he can continue his work at OpenAI
- shrimpx 3y agoThat paragraph sounds like Ilya is in a gray zone of being fired or quitting.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- AnonC 3y agoI think this is the beginning of the downfall or end of OpenAI…well, the downfall had already started. It may not be apparent, but the company structure and the grip of the (now returned) CEO doesn’t sound like a good recipe for “open” or ethical AI. The company will probably make money. Microsoft would still be a partner/investor until it can wring the maximum value before extinguishing OpenAI completely. Same holds for employees’ loyalty. There doesn’t seem to be anything in this entire drama and the secrecy around it that indicates that things are good or healthy within the company.
- yreg 3y ago> There doesn’t seem to be anything in this entire drama and the secrecy around it that indicates that things are good or healthy within the company. The drama reflects well on OpenAI’s in-dev technology (be it Q* or GPT5 or something else). Apparently many actors believe that the stakes are high. We can also see that the employees are aligned regarding the path they want the company to take.
- sheepscreek 3y agoI used to correspond with Bret Taylor when he was still at Google. He wrote a windows application called Notable that I used every day for note-taking. Eventually, I started contributing to it. It’s been fascinating to witness his career progression from Product Manager at Google, to the co-CEO of Salesforce, and now the chair of OpenAI board (he was also the chair of Twitter board pre-Elon)!
- droopyEyelids 3y ago[flagged]
- lying4fun 3y agoI didn’t mind, comments like this give insight to people’s trajectories
- Obscurity4340 3y agoWhat was the gist of it?
- lying4fun 3y agoAhh the gist is it’s a personal anecdote of some anonymous dude from hacker news That makes it interesting Seemed genuine to me
- Obscurity4340 3y agoI meant "what was the deal with the flagged comment", why was it removed and what was the gist of what it originally intended to express?
- ayhanfuat 3y agoI think he is also the creator of the “Like” concept. It was introduced in FriendFeed and then Facebook started using it.
- ekianjo 3y ago> I am sure books are going to be written about this time period, as egomaniac as ever
- vikramkr 3y agoYeah, who is he to think that people will bother writing a book when the film rights are already probably being fought over by every studio. This is very obviously gonna be a movie or two lol
- ekianjo 3y ago> We have three immediate priorities. and four, get back in bed with Microsoft ASAP
- llelouch 3y agoAnthropic guys also wanted Altman gone. He is not well liked by upper management it seems.
- asimpleusecase 3y agoThis pushed our small team to try Azure instance of GPT3.5 - wow 20 times faster. API does not fail to respond to server requests as we found oh so often on the OpenAI API. We now have something fast enough and stable enough to actually use. Pricing is higher, but my goodness, it actually works.
- moontear 3y agoPricing higher is funny because OpenAI fully runs on Azure.
- raverbashing 3y agoAs much as I'm sure people on OpenAI are good, they're focused on the research and math of the thing, but lack in Ops experience (though to be honest I think Azure API was flaky yesterday)
- danielbln 3y agoConsidering the complexities involved and the outrageous amount of MAUs OpenAI has on their platform and yet them north of 99.8% uptime (ok, November was worse with 99,20%), saying they lack Ops experience is ludicrous.
- raverbashing 3y agoOh I'm sure they have competent people But compared to FB, MS, Google etc they are probably still behind (both in infrastructure and maturity)
- CamelCaseName 3y agoAmong the takeaways here is that: Communication Matters. A lot. It seems like something so obvious. Maybe that's because the leaders of successful companies do it well every day as a prerequisite of them being in the position they're in.
- unixhero 3y agoIs he a genius?
- doubtfuluser 3y agoHow do I have to understand the fact that Ilya is not on the board anymore AND why did the statement not include Ilya in the “Leadership group” that’s called out?
- asicsarecool 3y agoAs Sam said they are still trying to work out how they are going to work together. He may be in the leadership team once those discussions have concluded
- statictype 3y agoOr equally likely he's on his way out? If there is doubt about whether a person of his stature belongs on the leadership team or not, it seems to signal that he won't be on the leadership team.
- intellectronica 3y agoTo me the way it's formulated in the press release sounds a lot like what is usually said of someone on the road to a "distinguished engineering fellow" role - lots of respect, opportunity to command enough resources to do meaningful work, but no managerial or leadership responsibilities.
- kranke155 3y agoIf they don't throw him out, I'd say the only explanation is they don't want one of their best researchers working for someone else.
- crotchfire 3y agoThat is exactly the purpose of "distinguished engineering fellow" roles.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoSeems to me that the board made the right call in trying to get rid of Altman. Unfortunately it seems they weren't ready for the amount of backlash he and others could orchestrate, and the way the narrative would develop. I was personally kind of surprised too, I couldn't really understand the response from people, seemed like everybody settled on the take and stuck to it for some reason.
- vikramkr 3y agoAll they had to do was say why they fired him. A toddler could whip up the same amount of backlash against a board that bungled their communications so badly. The reason everyone settled on that take was that the take was pur forward that it was a coup, and then the board went nuh uh and that was it and like - what?
- upghost 3y agoWhenever I am confronted with the extreme passion behind Sam Altman's leadership, I often wonder if they are just deliberately ignoring the whole Worldcoin thing... everyone does realize it's the same guy, right? Another, um, "non-profit" that is trying to establish a privately controlled global world cryptocurrency and identity in order to, if I'm reading this right, biometrically distinguish us from the AGI he's trying to build at OpenAI? We're all cool with that..? ....kk just checking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldcoin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldcoin https://worldcoin.org/ https://worldcoin.org/
- vasco 3y agoI agree, I don't think if this is well intentioned. On the other hand, I don't think worldcoin will ever amount to anything and at most they'd be hacked at some point for the biometrics.
- upghost 3y agoYeah, absolutely. No arguments. But whether you think this is a potential bond villain dystopian nightmare or just a totally misguided flop -- I mean, I really think that the Altman fans must believe there are two different Altmans. I mean guys -- his name is SAME ALTMAN
- aws_ls 3y ago> We are pleased that this Board will include a non-voting observer for Microsoft. Satya will know henceforth the happenings and don't want to be shocked again like this.
- DeathArrow 3y agoWhat is this, the Succession show? Board fires CEO, CEO returns and fires half of the board?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- irthomasthomas 3y agoAlthough we have, as yet, no idea what he was actually refering to, I believe the source of the tension may be related to the statements Sam made the night before he was fired. "I think this is going to be the greatest leap forward that we've had yet so far, and the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions we've had so far. so i'm super excited, i can't imagine anything more exciting to work on. and on a personal note, like four times now in the history of openai, the most recent time was just in the last couple of weeks, i've gotten to be in the room when we sort of like push the front, this sort of the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward. and getting to do that is like the professional honor of a lifetime. so that's just, it's so fun to get to work on that." Finally, when asked what surprises may be announced by the company next year, Sam had this to say "The model capability will have taken such a leap forward that no one expected." - "Wait, say it again?" "The model capability, like what these systems can do, will have taken such a leap forward, no one expected that much progress." - "And why is that a remarkable thing? Why is it brilliant? " "Well, it's just different to expectation. I think people have in their mind how much better the model will be next year, and it'll be remarkable how much different it is. " - "That's intriguing."
- jwmoz 3y agoThe model is so far forward it refuses to do anything for you anymore and simply replies with "let me google that for you"
- blitzar 3y agosimply replies with "why dont you google that for youself"
- jurgenaut23 3y agoWell, I think that, despite being a joke, your comment is deeper than it looks like. As model capabilities increase, the likelihood that they interfere with the instructions that we provide increases as well. It’s really like hiring someone really smart on your team: you cannot expect them to be taking orders without ever discussing them, like your average employee would do. That’s actually a feature, not a bug, but one that would most likely impede the usefulness of the model as a strictly utilitarian artifact.
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoSo the goal was a coup-like event for microsoft, "altman" was just a decoy
- FartyMcFarter 3y ago> I harbor zero ill will towards him. You know, if you have to say that, it's probably not zero.
- EugeneOZ 3y agoHe had to say it at least because everyone else was expecting some resentment.
- nanna 3y ago> I am so looking forward to finishing the job of building beneficial AGI with you all—best team in the world, best mission in the world. Sam Altman lives in a very different world to mine.
- silexia 3y agoEveryone should read "Superintelligence". OpenAI is rushing towards a truly terrifying outcome that in most scenarios includes the extinction of the human species.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoWhy has Nick been so quiet about all this, isn't this his particular wheelhouse?
- dalbasal 3y agoWhat makes this hard to read/follow is the grandiose moral vision... and the various levels of credulity it's met with. If it's words from Ilya, Sam, the board... the words are all about alignment, benefiting humanity and such. Meanwhile, all parties involved are super serious tycoons who are super serious about riding the AI wave, establishing moats, monopolies and the next AdWords, azure, etc. These are such extreme opposite vocabularies that it's just hard to bridge. It's two conversations happening under totally different assumptions and everyone assumes at least someone is being totally disingenuous. Meanwhile, "AI alignment" is such a charismatic topic. Meanwhile, the less futuristic but more applicable, "alignment questions" are about the alignment of msft, openai, other investors and consortium members. If Ilya, Sam or any of them are actually worried about si alignment... They should at least give credence to the idea that we're all worried about their human alignment.
- chii 3y ago> the words are all about alignment, benefiting humanity and such. that's why you only consider the actions taken, not the words spoken. And in fact, i fail to believe that there are any real altruists out there. Esp. not rich ones. After all, if they're really altruistic, they would've given all their wealth away - before their supposed death (and even then, i doubt the money given to their "charitable foundations" count for real!).
- quickthrower2 3y agoNot necessarily. Money keeps you in the game. Giving it all away means you are at the bottom being not that effective. And you can donate money in your will.
- mvc 3y agoIf you only give money away at your death, are you really giving it away? What else are you gonna do with it?
- quickthrower2 3y ago
- andy_ppp 3y agoWhen the following works I'll be impressed: "ChatGPT can you explain possible ways to make fusion power efficient for clean free energy production given the known and inferred laws of physics?" and it actually produces a new answer and plans for a power plant. It's very hard to know how close we are to this, but I do think it's possible these AI models end up being able to infer and invent new technology as they improve. Even if nearly 100% of the guesses at the above question are wrong it doesn't take many being useful for humans to benefit. I wonder what humans will do when the AIs give us everything we could ever want materially.
- welpo 3y agoThat's a pretty high bar, no?
- DalasNoin 3y agoIt is literally a task that requires large amounts of super smart, well-educated people to work on for years and fail many times in the process. So we should only be impressed when it can one-shot such insane questions? On the other hand, I expect 2024 to make 2023 look like a slow year for AI and maybe some of the nay sayers will finally feel at least a little bit impressed.
- andy_ppp 3y agoIt was a dead pan way of saying "damn the future could be weird if intelligence really is commodified".
- nojvek 3y agoCorrect. What we need is intelligence rooted in math, physics, engineering, chemistry, material science (aka great grasp of reality). Then you can ask it to create designs and optimize them. Ask it to create hypothesis and experiments to validate them. Human brains are v capable at abstraction and inference but memory and simulation compute is quite limited. AI could really help here. How can we design better governance strategies? Analyze all passed laws and find conflicts? Analyze all court cases and find judges who have rules against the law and explain why? Which laws are ambiguous? Which laws work against the general public and favor certain corporations? Find ROI of corporation donations which led to certain laws, which led to X% rise in their profits. The really big piece missing from current AI is reality grounded modeling and multi-step compositional planning + execution.
- say_it_as_it_is 3y agoIs it fair to say that some of the original board members were chosen because they were women and firing Sam, demoting Greg were unanticipated activities of women whose archetype was of a more even-keeled, compassionate character who would value humanity more than a cold, calculating, toxic white male?
- kozikow 3y agoEveryone is still left guessing what have happened. At least my speculative view (rewritten by chatgpt ofc): There's speculation that OpenAI's newly developed Q* algorithm marks a substantial advancement over earlier models, demonstrating capabilities like solving graduate-level mathematics. This led to discussions about whether it should be classified as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a designation that could have significant repercussions, such as potentially limiting Microsoft's access to the model. The board's accusation of "not consistently candid" against Sam Altman is thought to be connected to efforts to avoid this AGI classification for the model. While the Q* algorithm is acknowledged as highly advanced and impressive, it's believed that there's still a considerable journey ahead towards reaching a true singularity event. The complexity of defining AGI status in AI should be noted. At what point of advancement can a model be labeled as an AGI? We are way past simple measures like the Turing Test. Arguments from both perspectives have their merits.
- synthc 3y agoMy guess this is just a good 'ol corporate power struggle. There is no point in speculating until someone shows what the hell Q* even is.
- thejackgoode 3y agoI believe it's not possible to keep such thing a secret, so this reason as a main motivation for board actions sounds kind of weak to me
- kozikow 3y agoThe progress from GPT3 to GPT4 has been so substantial that many might argue it signifies the advent of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The capabilities of GPT4 often elicit a sense of disbelief, making it hard to accept that it's merely generating the most likely text based on the preceding content. Looking ahead, I anticipate that in the next 2-3 years, we won't witness a sudden, magical emergence of "AGI" or a singularity event. Instead, there will likely be ongoing debates surrounding the successive versions like GPT5, GPT6, and so on, about whether they truly represent AGI or not.
- humanova 3y agoWhat's really intriguing is that he doesn't flat-out reject the 'unfortunate leaks' (Q*) in his latest interview on the Verge. It was definitely a victory for Altman and Microsoft, and now we're left wondering what Ilya's next move will be.
- jononomo 3y agoI am paying $20/month for GPT-4 and it appears to me that it is a lot slower than it was a few months ago and also somehow less useful.
- andy_ppp 3y agohttps://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29/23982046/sam-altman-interview-openai-ceo-rehired https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29/23982046/sam-altman-inte... Thought this was an interesting interview. I do love how politicians use an investigation to not answer questions, the board said he was “not consistently candid” and given the opening question of “why were you fired?” still not being clearly answered, you’d have to agree with their initial assessment. I’m not sure I trust someone who has tried to set up a crypto currency that scans everyone’s eyeballs as a feature, personally, but that’s just me I guess.
- JonChesterfield 3y agoWhy would Sam be expected to know why he was fired? At best he'd know what the board told him which may bear no relation to the motive.