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Some members of the OpenAI board had found Altman an unnervingly slippery operator. For example, earlier this fall he’d confronted one member, Helen Toner, a di
by upwardbound 3y ago
Some members of the OpenAI board had found Altman an unnervingly slippery operator. For example, earlier this fall he’d confronted one member, Helen Toner, a director at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, at Georgetown University, for co-writing a paper that seemingly criticized OpenAI for “stoking the flames of AI hype.” Toner had defended herself (though she later apologized to the board for not anticipating how the paper might be perceived). Altman began approaching other board members, individually, about replacing her. When these members compared notes about the conversations, some felt that Altman had misrepresented them as supporting Toner’s removal. “He’d play them off against each other by lying about what other people thought,” the person familiar with the board’s discussions told me. “Things like that had been happening for years.”
- kranke155 3y agoSounds like a manipulative individual.
- m_fayer 3y agoSounds like a CEO of a hyped tech company.
- upwardbound 3y agoYes. And that type of person is not usually the type of trustworthy or selfless person whom we as a species critically need, in a role like OpenAI leader that has final say over the ethical value system of the artificial superintelligence which OpenAI is building towards. This concern (that a profit-maximizing CEO like Sam is not the type of person who should decide the ethical fate of humanity) was and is the whole point of having a non-profit as the owner of the for-profit tech company, so that ethically-driven people who value human well-being over growth can be in charge of the non-profit board and exercise final say over the AI's ethical constraints. The fact that Microsoft now has a board observer seat seems highly corrupting, and contrary to the board's fiduciary purpose. This is discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38471990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38471990 Basically, Microsoft now has an enormous, and indecent, insider information advantage (allowing them to conduct software development industry market front-running, which would be illegal but it will be impossible to prove that the source of their ideas is the "forbidden fruit" of what they hear in board meetings). Details may be found in that link.
- cactusplant7374 3y agoSuperintelligence is a hypothetical. They can say whatever they want and make claims as to future performance. It doesn’t make it so.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 29athrowaway 3y agoSo, the guy was gaslighting the board.
- demosthanos 3y agoEh, gaslighting specifically refers to trying to make someone question their own perception and judgement of reality. Sounds more like he was presenting different versions of reality to different people, which is manipulative and dishonest but not gaslighting.
- baking 3y agoThis was a very long piece that really buried the lead. Seems like most of the people commenting on this here never got to this passage. While I'm at it, most of the references to the paper co-authored by Toner missed the two pages of praise for OpenAI before the single paragraph with the somewhat negative comparison to Anthropic.