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OpenAI Committed to Buying $51M of AI Chips from a Startup Backed by Sam Altman
- hikingsimulator 3y agoUnfortunate but unsurprising, given all the discussions and suspicions that the [recent] power struggle at OpenAI was about conflict of interests. This deal goes back to 2019, so it can only throw more oil on the fire about what's been happening since.
- gwnywg 3y agoIf the article is based on facts then... is this not an example of corruption?
- gumballindie 3y ago[flagged]
- Uptrenda 3y ago[flagged]
- euazOn 3y agoSource?
- newsclues 3y agohttps://twitter.com/phuckfilosophy/status/1635704398939832321 https://twitter.com/phuckfilosophy/status/163570439893983232...
- artursapek 3y agoHer twitter
- dmurray 3y agoFirst I'd heard of this. But apparently true! But even publications treating the sister very sympathetically and hating on "cis white men" [0] make it clear that she seems to be mentally ill. [0] https://www.themarysue.com/annie-altmans-abuse-allegations-against-openais-sam-altman-highlight-the-need-to-prioritize-humanity-over-tech/ https://www.themarysue.com/annie-altmans-abuse-allegations-a...
- doodlebugging 3y ago> she seems to be mentally ill. Possibly due to her being 4 y.o. and being assaulted by someone in a position of trust, someone like her brother who clearly demonstrates the willingness to violate other people's trust as an adult. His actions today are probably a result of the absence of consequences for bad behavior earlier in life. He learned that he can do these things and get away with it so now he manipulates as a normal course of action.
- gumballindie 3y agoI am not surprised people havent heard about this. Altman’s being protected by the affiliated media until he does a final handover of openai to the right people. Naturally i havent been there, i dont know the facts. But people have went under for less than this, yet somehow altman’s being swept under the carpet.
- Culonavirus 3y agoI mean she said it (probably multiple times) and explicitly mentioned him. You can find these posts by looking her up. Or if you're lazy: https://www.themarysue.com/annie-altmans-abuse-allegations-against-openais-sam-altman-highlight-the-need-to-prioritize-humanity-over-tech/ https://www.themarysue.com/annie-altmans-abuse-allegations-a... These accusations are just another validation that the entire cancel culture thing is more about pushing politics than it is about punishing evil.
- ben_w 3y agoHis sister and the board. (I make no claim to veracity, how would I know).
- rvz 3y ago[flagged]
- Uptrenda 3y agoI assume he's referring to this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman-s-sister-annie-altman-claims-sam-has-severely https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...
- tsimionescu 3y agoHe has been accused on Twitter of "climbing in her bed non-consensually" when he was 13 (and she 4). She has also explicitly said she doesn't actually want legal action for "experiences between a baby child and a tween child", again suggesting that anything that happened only happened when he was a child. She also has a history of mental illness.
- doodlebugging 3y ago>She also has a history of mental illness. Was this diagnosed before he climbed into her bed when she was 4 y.o.? I'm no psychologist and I don't know what her own diagnosis involves but it seems that this diagnosis could be identifying a condition that resulted from abuse dealt by someone that she normally would trust. Overall from what I have read the last few weeks Altman seems to be an unethical sleeze who decides how to proceed on everything based on an analysis of what he can get for himself - the perfect type of person who would abuse someone who he saw as being in a weaker position, like his little sister with no thought to how that would affect her later in life.
- tsimionescu 3y agoThe point is that we don't know if what she is saying is true. I believe that she believes what she is saying, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. Per all that she has said, this is a memory from when she was 4 - it could be extremely distorted by now. Even if it is entirely true (her family denies it), he was a small child when doing it - it is very much believable that at 13 he wouldn't even fully understand what that means.
- mlazos 3y agoI don’t think it matters if he understands, imo if this is actually true (which we will never know) that’s definitely messed up. Most 13 year olds know that this is wrong.
- doodlebugging 3y ago
- louwrentius 3y agoWorldcoin Whoever thinks that was a good idea doesn’t seem to have any concept - nor care for - morality and ethics, in my view. Maybe the board firing him was exactly over this and look who prevailed.
- junofan 3y agoWorld ID is great. I like logging into stuff without verifying my email, linking my GitHub/Twitter/whatever, or solving a bunch of CAPTCHAs when I’m on a VPN.
- artursapek 3y agoBiometrics are a username, not a password
- rileymat2 3y agoThey are not a password, right, but they are not a username either. You can see this with the apple touch ID implementation when you have multiple accounts on the same computer.
- 93po 3y agoBiometrics are not used as a password with worldcoin. It's used to issue what is essentially a private key.
- ben_w 3y agoIf you already think cryptocurrency[0] and UBI[1] are good ideas, I can see why Worldcoin looks like a good idea. [0] I don't, he clearly does [1] I am not sure, I want to but suspect it will cause inflation unless done very carefully, but UBI needs biometrics to avoid Sybil attacks
- lawn 3y agoA cryptocurrency is supposed to be decentralized, but how do you verify that the biometrics that are registered in Worldcoin are genuine in a decentralized manner? The answer is that you don't, and Worldcoin is just another giant ball of shit.
- newsclues 3y agoI am not a lawyer, but not necessarily. I think it comes down to, is this good for this company. If not and you are directing sales to another company that benefits you, that would be bad, but if buying from the other company you invest in is good for OpenAI, then it's ok. You are allow to have other investments, it comes down to disclosure, and not making a bad deal for reasons that personally profit you.
- gwnywg 3y agoI thought about what you wrote, indeed it is probably difficult to prove either way (unless some other facts are known, like - were there any other companies supplying similar service) I was helping to implement ISO through small orgs (most likely overkill...) and remember one of important bits was that each purchase had to go through a process of selecting supplier. I wonder if this is also the case in OpenAI (I'd guess it is?). But I also can imagine, if there is only one supplier who provides given goods then the process is not very helpful.
- danenania 3y agoYeah and it's more or less a self-fulfilling prophecy that any company that gets a deal with OpenAI would also make for a good investment. The only way to avoid this kind of thing would be to say that leadership of a company isn't allowed to make investments in companies that are either in the same industry or have dealings with their employer. You could certainly make an argument for that, but it's not at all the standard practice currently, so I wouldn't say it's fair to single out Sam in this case unless there's other evidence of self-dealing.
- l33tman 3y agoYou're directly or indirectly making sure the company you've invested in will get boosted if you as CEO owns a stake. Therefore it's a conflict of interest - what if that particular company is only the second best to deal with? Either you as CEO or any middle-manager under you will probably give it some bonus points and it will end up getting the deal, news outlets will write about it, etc etc. At the very least you should let the board handle any potential dealings with the company and have 100% disclosure at all times (as you say)
- afavour 3y agoIt could be an example of Sam Altman making incredible investment choices. Or, yes, it could be corruption. Have to investigate to know one way or the other.
- belter 3y agoIt's called a conflict of interest. A smart or well advised CEO would seek approval from the board before such a deal. And maybe it was, when this specific CEO went looking for the approval or communicated it to the board, that soap opera got triggered.
- gwnywg 3y agoWhen I was reading the article it appeared like conflict of interest to my untrained eye too, though I was never on that level
- ramblerman 3y agoIt would have been so easy for them to raise that fact publicly though, and they would have massively won support. The problem was their complete silence on what lead to Altman's ousting
- timeon 3y agoWe called it 'tunneling' during 90s in my Eastern-European homeland. Like digging secret tunnel in one company where you have influence and transfer it's wealth into other company that you own.
- darkerside 3y agoI'm reminded of how Eskimos apocryphally have 30 different words for snow
- belter 3y agoApparently a hoax - http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/EskimoHoax.pdf http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/EskimoHoax.pdf But the main point of your comment still stands :-)
- Vt71fcAqt7 3y agohttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apocryphal https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apocryphal
- belter 3y agoThat is why I said the main point of the comment still stands, both in form and semantics...
- darkerside 3y agoIn defense of a point I wasn't making, I have to ask if you actually read the article you shared. It describes claims of people saying the Eskimos have 9, 48, 100, or 200 words for snow, and points out these are all in conflict. It then goes on to remar that even if it were true, it's understandable since snow is a huge part of their culture, which reinforces the point that I _was_ making. Hardly a debunking!
- 3y ago
- anonym0us88 3y ago[dead]
- henry_viii 3y ago- You make a lot of money, do you? - I make, no, I paid enough for health insurance. I have no equity in OpenAI. - Really? That's interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7FsL6GPesY&t=19s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7FsL6GPesY&t=19s
- artursapek 3y agoDoes anyone actually believe Altman has no financial incentive in his OpenAI work?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- belter 3y agoBill Gates has been pledging to give away all his money for the last 20 years.. :-) In 2008: "Bill Gates pledges to leave his £30billion fortune to charity... rather than his children" - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1027878/Bill-Gates-pledges-58-billion-fortune-charity--children.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1027878/Bill-Gates-... In 2022: "Bill Gates pledges to donate ‘virtually all’ of $113bn fortune to his foundation" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/15/bill-gates-billions-fotune-donate-foundation https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/15/bill-gates-b... In the meanwhile in 2023 is still the 6th richest. Giving money away is such a hard job :-))
- darkerside 3y agoIt actually is, if you care about where it goes
- dchftcs 3y agoAnd also if you care if it's sustainable.
- galleywest200 3y agoWith that much money you can just pay an entire team to find places to send it for you.
- boeingUH60 3y ago> nonbiding agreement.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoSo it's not an actual sale, he's just using OpenAI to give his startup publicity?
- 93po 3y agoI mean it's a letter of intent from 2018 when OpenAI was barely even known, and he owns at most 5% of the chip startup, so probably not
- flagrant_taco 3y agoYears out from an expected production run, I would be surprised to see any binding agreement. A letter of intent to buy is plenty for the chip manufacturer to be able to shop that around for funding if needed.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoIn the past, some semiconductor manufacturers themselves were happy to finance part of the cost of the run if you had a letter of intent, also. It used to frequently be a 50/50 split - half upfront, half after you have the money your customer(s) promised.
- blitzar 3y agoI too write and distrubute globally a press releases for all nonbinding agreements that I enter into.
- prvc 3y agoIf true, would anything about this even be untoward or unusual?
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoIt's a conflict of interest.
- 93po 3y agoConflicts of interest happen all the time. You recuse yourself from voting or decisions where applicable. Someone on the board of OpenAI is literally leading a direct competitor.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 0xbadc0de5 3y agoGoogle has their own chips. Amazon do... Meta as well... Vertical integration is a competitive advantage worth pursuing for OpenAI. The spin is just that - spin.
- timmg 3y agoBut this isn't OpenAI making their own chips, right? It's the CEO of OpenAI creating a separate company to make chips and then selling them to OpenAI.
- pavlov 3y agoThe difference is that Meta's chips are not developed by a separate company that just happens to be owned by Zuckerberg and charges Meta a ton of money for the R&D work. That would leave Meta's other shareholders paying the bill while missing out on the gains if the project becomes a success. In other words, the risk is shared but the potential rewards are reaped by just one shareholder.
- cma 3y agoElon is richer and used NASA money at SpaceX to buy bad SolarCity bonds, then used Tesla to bail out SpaceX and SolarCity when SolarCity were going to default on them. But, Zuckerberg has done some stuff maybe somewhat similar to the WeWork trademark thing: the "Meta" trademark came from his quasi-charity's investment into some kind of meta-study medical research company. I'm not sure there was any conflict there though as I think Chan-Zuckerberg initiative fully owned it and didn't have other shareholders.
- maizeq 3y agoThis news is not about vertical integration or competitive advantage but of potential conflicts of interest. Meta/Amazon/Alphabet chips are made in house or from acquisitions (presumably with the CEO having no financial stake in the acquired companies) This is instead a question of whether Sama preferentially made a contract with Rain, perhaps despite better alternatives. (Which would benefit him but might not be in the best interests of stake holders). It’s possible it was the correct decision though, and his stake is just a fortunate side-effect, after all Sam is also invested in other chip companies (Cerebras I believe?).
- throwawayemp 3y ago[flagged]
- edent 3y agoAdam Neumann of WeWork owned the trademark to "We" and a whole bunch of buildings which he leased back to "WeWork". That worked out very well for him.
- SXX 3y agoWhile Adam Neumann did something fishy it's much different from Altman conflict of interest. OpenAI is a non-profit and Altman is hired CEO not the owner of the company.
- sergiotapia 3y agoThe Adam Neumann playbook
- Eumenes 3y ago[flagged]
- Culonavirus 3y agoCome on. A guy mentions Sam's sister in his post and it's immediately flagged and hidden xD this site sometimes, seriously, the techbro team picking and worshipping is something else haha
- rvz 3y agoAlso, I don't think the employees would also "Listen and believe" those claims given the offer that Sam is giving to them on a golden plate. I mean, one can just say, I don't know and don't care about this and that is their personal problem to deal with while I receive millions of dollars in shares. The whole point is stay away and don't play the "MeToo" game.
- infecto 3y agoRegardless if you like or dislike Altman, it is just a constant distraction to bring up his sister. I think most/all have heard it 10x by now. It’s very old, there has never been more evidence and his sister is mentally unwell. It serves no purpose to a a thread about OpenAI buying chips from a company he is invested in. Does anyone get tired by the tech bros label always being thrown out when people disagree. Can we not all grow up and if we are to have disagreements, actually discuss it constructively?
- 93po 3y agoDo you feel this way when people mention Elon any time Tesla is discussed?
- infecto 3y agoYes. I don’t like Elon but I get tired of the way discussions devolve into tech bros are bad. Maybe life has always been like this but I find it harder and harder to have meaningful discourse. If you disagree with someone then all of a sudden you get put into a generalized bucket. Edit: I don’t like how Elon always handles himself in public and I don’t always agree with everything Altman does but we as humans are very different and that’s ok. The moment Tesla comes up all the Elon hate comes out of their holes. In this case if the article was about some kind of misconduct or worse towards another person ok great let’s talk about his sister.
- qaq 3y agowasn't he fired by Paul Graham for self dealing at one point?
- quantum_state 3y agoInteresting… the mere impression of conflict of interest or corruption would kill OpenAI … very unfortunate
- jaggederest 3y agoI'm as skeptical of OpenAI's dealings as anyone, but a $1m investment in a chip startup doesn't sound like he's a material owner. They've raised $33 million so far, minus the whole Prosperity7 divestiture kerfluffle (national security made a saudi-backed fund sell), so I'd be surprised if he owned in excess of 5%. It looks to me like exactly the kind of investment I would expect a wealthy angel to make in startups related to their interests, not undue bias.
- belter 3y agoAgain the argument: "I am so rich I would not possibly be dishonest for such a small amounts..." ?
- jaggederest 3y agoNot exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that it doesn't look like he has undue influence over the deal, rather than that he's not trying to make a buck. No claim about his honesty or lack thereof, but it doesn't look like a puppet constructed solely to enrich himself.
- ekabod 3y agoHow do you know this startup didn't need this deal to survive or advertise itself?
- jaggederest 3y agoI definitely don't. I just read the article and went "Whoah is he just openly cutting himself a check?" and it does not seem that way. If I were him, I would recuse myself from the whole process due to my investment, but we have no insider knowledge of how it went down. I've really been unhappy with the transition from nonprofit to for-profit subsidiary, so obviously I disagree pretty thoroughly, but fundamentally this deal isn't immediately disqualifying. I do wonder if this kind of thing was related to his ouster-and-return, but it happened in 2019 so it would need to be a pattern of behavior beyond what we see in the article.
- fredgrott 3y agoNow key question is not is it corruption but on the Elon scale what this might be as Elon himself has done worse self-interest dealings but in Elon's defense he does ask his corporate boards to weigh in...
- voska 3y agoLetter of intent != committed to buying
- tinyhouse 3y agoThe guy doesn't even hold personal shares at OpenAI, which could've been worth billions if he did (he's a cofounder and CEO to remind you, so it's unheard of), and you're blaming him for buying chips from a startup he made a small investment in? Seriously. Maybe go after the CEOs who rob their employees and take all the money to themselves. Just to be clear, I never met the guy and have no affiliation with OpenAI.
- terminous 3y agoI don't understand your argument. So corruption is OK because he isn't getting paid as much as he could be? That's like saying embezzlement is OK if you're underpaid.
- FireBeyond 3y agoAnd quite commonly in white collar crime, this is used as a defense. Volunteer associations, HOAs, where someone decided they were entitled to use the association credit card, or self-deal, etc., as some form of compensation for their efforts being (in their eyes) insufficiently rewarded.
- tinyhouse 3y agoHe isn't insufficiently rewarded. He chose not to hold shares. He's already wealthy and holds shares in many tech startups.
- tinyhouse 3y agoAll I'm saying is that he doesn't seem like a corrupt person given all the money he gave up on. Maybe that startup gave the best deal to OpenAI and was the right move regardless of his investment in them.
- nabla9 3y agoThis kind of stuff is the reason why Altman was fired. The board lost trust for his honesty from many small things that kept accumulating. Altman is back on condition that there is a investigation.
- keep_reading 3y agoYou don't know that for a fact, you're speculating
- loceng 3y agoIronically you're making an assumption, speculating, and maybe they do know that for a fact - but we just don't simply know why they'd know, or if it's true. The best you can say is we don't know for sure. But considering the board initially fired him for being dishonest/lying in an ongoing fashion, and the board wouldn't do the firing without evidence they could back it up with, it's not so hard to extrapolate that a return would be conditional on a deeper investigation and "full" cooperation.
- keep_reading 3y ago> and the board wouldn't do the firing without evidence they could back it up with Where's the evidence then? Why did they reinstate him if they had such amazing evidence of wrongdoing?
- FireBeyond 3y agoI didn't think the board reinstated him. Or not that board. That board was completely replaced.
- nabla9 3y agoThe firing was about "Altman not being honest with the board." Since then, journalists have talked to both sides on and off the record and confirmed that the only reason for firing was distrust for Altman's honesty. Altman's history seems to match. 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... >Four years ago, one of Altman’s mentors, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, flew from the United Kingdom to San Francisco to give his protégé the boot, according to three people familiar with the incident, which has not been previously reported. .... he flew across the Atlantic with concerns that the company’s president put his own interests ahead of the organization — worries that would be echoed by OpenAI’s board. >A separate concern, unrelated to his initial firing, was that Altman personally invested in start-ups he discovered through the incubator using a fund he created with his brother Jack — a kind of double-dipping for personal enrichment that was practiced by other founders and later limited by the organization. “It was the school of loose management that is all about prioritizing what’s in it for me,”
- jgalt212 3y agoSelf-dealing is endemic to valley business culture. It's just a question of how much should one tolerate (if any).
- gmerc 3y agoAh the old Wework gambit.
- meltyness 3y agoI wonder how the ping-pong tables are there.
- twodave 3y agoI find it interesting that so many people here are quick to defend a person’s right to moonlight on whatever they want, and the right of a person not to have their IP stolen by the company they work for. But when it’s a public figure suddenly we are on the side of the plantation owners.. Good for Sam, I say. Money aside he should be allowed to keep his interests separate. Just because this other company is AI related doesn’t mean it’s working in an area OpenAI was even interested in pursuing.
- xondono 3y agoThere’s a world of difference between moonlighting and having the company you’re leading buy a product from another one of your ventures.
- twodave 3y agoPeople keep saying this is true, but I haven’t seen it well-explained. So what? Maybe they have a good reason to go with this company he’s got a tiny stake in. Actually, having an inside track on how that other company operates could be a compelling reason _to_ buy its product.
- dzink 3y agoA nonbinding letter of intent in 2018? That is a limited downside unlimited upside kind of risk you take to fund extreme moon shots. Boom Supersonic did the same approach with United airlines, to fund a still undeveloped supersonic Airplane. A 1M investment like this is a hedge that has capped downside, restricted to Altman's personal money, and an infinite upside that gives an incentive to the founders to succeed. At the time the value of the investment is paper zero for Altman, but gives the founders, who were probably the most promising he has seen in the space, large help with fundraising, hiring, and credibility with future sales. OpenAI does not have to buy the chips unless they meet the criteria, In 2018 OpenAI was one of many startups plucking at a problem that seemed insurmountable. If you are trying to push into a problem and can't afford to do what Apple did to build both the hardware and software to solve it, you focus on the one and try to help the other however you can. In WeWork, the CEO took a trademark that costs a couple of thousand dollars, and charged himself millions for it from company money - that's personal enrichment. Incubating a thing considered highly risky and expensive 5 years is not personal enrichment, its personal risk that helps more the likelihood of it being less impossible instead of a chance at enrichment from two companies you don't even know would be viable (OpenAI) 5 years from then.
- Angostura 3y agoYes - the 2018 date was buried, rather disingenuously, I think.
- 93po 3y agoAgreed, the headline is massively misleading. Journalism at its finest
- infecto 3y agoHope this makes it to the top. So much artificial outrage.
- cbsmith 3y agoSeems fitting that there'd be artificially generated outrage about generative AI. ;-)
- dbuser99 3y agoOpenAI is nothing without its people!
- Lamad1234 3y ago[dead]
- philip1209 3y agoAs a VC, isn't "Somebody wants to buy our stuff, we just need money to deliver on it" the ideal pitch? The alternative was that OpenAI prepaid for these chips, and took on a lot of risk. From Altman's position, he's personally taking on risk instead of having OpenAI (and its investors) take it on.
- johnwheeler 3y agoHere come the scrutiny