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Or the more cynical take that this is the natural course all parties take when they discover themselves atop a large pile of money. The board was just outmaneuv

Or the more cynical take that this is the natural course all parties take when they discover themselves atop a large pile of money. The board was just outmaneuvered.

tptacek 3y ago
What "maneuver"? They don't appear to have had to do anything to win.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  the non-profit board had nothing to win over the greed revolt? except revulsion.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Where by "greed" you mean "the prospect that anybody's equity would be worth anything".
    - Jensson 3y ago
      That is greed, everyone who works for OpenAI already had a ton of money since they pay so much, demanding more at the cost of the non-profit mission is greed. I am fine with people being greedy, but don't say it isn't greed.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        If you say so. I'm just saying: it's not surprising that labor beat ownership here.
        hef19898 3y ago
        So, almost like, gasp, union?
        Jensson 3y ago
        In this case the "union" plundered the non-profit. Just because workers did it doesn't make it good.
        stale2002 3y ago
        Non profits (or companies in general) are nothing with their workers. A non profit is subject to labor markets just as well. They can't just go back on their implicit payment deals, in this case the payment of equity, and expect that nobody will complain. Those employees worked under terms of employment that included the expectation that the equity would be worth something. If openAI didn't like that, then they should have paid them in cash, without the equity. Its not plundering to use your own labor and market power to collectively bargain for yourself.
      - apantel 3y ago
        “Greed” is one of those words where the definition doesn’t really tell you where the line is: “intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.” (Oxford via Google) Who doesn’t feel “intense and selfish desire” for money? Who doesn’t feel that going into a performance review? It’s human nature to feel this feeling, if that’s what we want to call “greed”.
        Jensson 3y ago
        > It’s human nature to feel this feeling, if that’s what we want to call “greed”. Yes, greed is human nature, just like lust etc. We value when people suppress such feelings, but we know everyone has them.
        apantel 3y ago
        It’s not that clear-cut. “Greed” as defined this way is one of the main drives making people do things. They go out into the world and exert themselves in order to acquire wealth, power, and renown. It’s a core part of what has produced civilization from out of the darkness of total animal-like ignorance. The inventors, makers, statesmen, pioneers, explorers of history… what do you think was motivating them? What do you think has kept life procreating on this planet in the face of overwhelming hardship? Lust. I think it’s one-eye-blind to demonize greed, lust, or any other part of human nature. Those drives are inseparable from us being here in our current state, living reasonably well, conversing over the internet on phones and computers.
        ants_everywhere 3y ago
        I agree that greed plays a role in civilization, but I think your read on human history is overly simplistic in an important way. A great deal of what has driven civilization forward are the people who are driven by curiosity. People like Archimedes, Plato, Newton, Einstein. Not to mention the millions of curious nameless folks who improved the boat, the spear, the wheel, the book. Folks like RMS without whom I doubt we'd have anything like the current open source ecosystem including Linux. These tend to be people who are not only curious, but whose sense of greed is lower than the average. Without these folks, it's not clear to me that humanity ratchets forward in progress. If you just have greed and lust, the steady state would be something like power politics of states warring against each other with swords for thousands of years. History has gotten stuck in those states many times, and when we finally break out it's typically the curiosity-driven folks who give the greed-driven folks a reason to invest their money in something other than raising an army for yet another war of honor.
- flatline 3y ago
  This is true, and yet, they played the opening move.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Yes, my point is that move seems so self-evidently bad --- it was against the interests of most of the employees there, Sam and Greg had huge amounts of leverage, etc --- that it makes the board seem more sus to me than Sam. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Sam stan or anything.
    - reducesuffering 3y ago
      > it was against the interests of most of the employees there I think you're forgetting what the entire mission of OpenAI is
      - tptacek 3y ago
        I have never taken any of that stuff seriously and don't know why anybody else does either. Certainly, labor at OpenAI does not seem to have, either. Look, the board could have held the line, and then died when every one of their employees jumped ship. But nobody can say OpenAI's labor owed anything to the mission. They're all free agents, just like us. Real easy to say that someone else should take a pay cut to serve a mission you care about. It's good to want things!
        reducesuffering 3y ago
        > I have never taken any of that stuff seriously Sam, Ilya, Mira, Elon, and the rest of the founding team do. > Look, the board could have held the line, and then died when every one of their employees jumped ship. Wouldn't contribute towards the mission, again. > But nobody can say OpenAI's labor owed anything to the mission. Sure, they could leave, they're not slaves. But that's the entire problem here, and why the board attempted to fire him. He's subverting the mission by putting in the exact same $ mercenary incentives that cause the whole problem OpenAI's charter is trying to prevent. OpenAI is founded and led by a charter that profit-focused AGI arms race will lead to dangerous outcomes for all of society. If you wanted to be greedy and max your $ just go work for Meta. Don't be surprised when it's whole axis of control tries to do things that aren't "make my money go up."
- Jensson 3y ago
  If they did nothing Sam Altman would have won, since their job is to reign in Sam Altman when he goes out of bounds of the original mission.
  - aedon 3y ago
    Exactly. MSFT is who won here. I highly recommend you all watch OpenAI section of the new ALL-IN Podcast. Sam and OpenAI is in a very bad situation if Elon gets heard by a fair judge.
    - cowsandmilk 3y ago
      What, the podcast that is all of Elon’s best friends thinks he has a case? What a surprise!
      - Timber-6539 3y ago
        I don't see the problem here. Are you not able to discern different arguments/ideas and come to conclusions by yourself?
        marshray 3y ago
        I watched some on a recommendation and used to see some of their ideas on X-Twitter. One conclusion I came to was that I didn't respect those people's ability to discern or conclude.
        Timber-6539 3y ago
        Who cares whether you respect their ability to discern or conclude? Did you get the argument or not, and did it make sense to you in the situation? That's all that matters.
        ben_w 3y ago
        Only a lawyer can really do that in legal cases. You know how Hollywood gets computers, coding, and hacking wrong? That's how bad non-lawyers are with law. Or, pertinently to this case — who knows more law: one of us, or ChatGPT?
- huytersd 3y ago
  Several people on the board were all contribution-less tokens, they never stood a chance.
lettergram 3y ago
The board buckled. They could and should have done nothing. They would have then won. They’d have the contracts, the money, the IP and infrastructure. You can hire new engineers & they’d have proven they’re working to benefit humanity. Now it’s owned by Microsoft.
- Jensson 3y ago
  How is "doing nothing" winning? I don't see how giving all the reigns to the bad actor and capitulating is winning.
capybara_2020 3y ago
It will be curious to see how this pans out. Will it be like be like the boeing and mcdonnell douglas merger where the engineering dominated culture died and it became all about money or will it be like Steve Jobs returning to Apple to lead it to new heights.
wnc3141 3y ago
this is inevitable. Organizational design turns out to be critical in aligning interests and incentives from the outset across all organizations throughout history - from the Roman Empire to Open AI
- im3w1l 3y ago
  It's amazingly ironic that a charity focused on aligning AI couldn't even align its own CEO.
  - chii 3y ago
    because they aren't really a charity, and they aren't really interested in aligning AI. In the end, it's all an attempt to profit - with the initial marketing about charity/alignment that those with wishful thinking all bought into.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      I've been watching the Y Combinator YouTube channel recently, and people in the room when OpenAI was founded were saying "… until these big companies solve AGI, it's going to be their first, second, and third goal" — not that OpenAI or Anthropic would succeed, but that this is their goal. Before the industrial revolution, land was paramount; after, capital. AGI is likely to be as significant a change, and make money (as we understand it today) less important in a similar way.
      - chii 3y ago
        Money is just a unit of accounting. Land is still just as important, as is labour. And in any case, capital is accumulated money. In the end these all amount to power, and capability to direct that power towards a goal. Even if AGI becomes some form of new capital, it is still the same as capital as we know it today. Until the day humanity transcends and we no longer face the human condition of course.
        3y ago
hef19898 3y ago
Somehow, I lean more the Joker-way, on the pile of money question, not the terrorism stuff.
unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
It's self-defeating though. AI tools fundamentally require trust, because the tool functions as a colleague, editor, partner or friend. A good way to think of it is as the embodiment of its creator. That's OpenAI, and because Sam and the whole staff have publicly acted in what we'll call a "controversial" manner that is in serious tension with the common good of all humanity, folks rightly should view OpenAI's AI black box untrustworthy, a snake oil. Maybe the AI will habitually pit you against your trusted colleagues when doing so might be profitable to OpenAI staff, the way Sam did. Maybe the AI will claim to be altruistic and then once it's achieved a position of trust it will, when you are most vulnerable, function decisively against users' needs and goals the way OpenAI staff acted against their managers in the OpenAI board. These people are selling trust when they have decisively demonstrated they are unworthy of it. There are entire professions built on trust that demonstrate this is not a "natural" course, it is instead a path to long-term irrelevance.

Or the more cynical take that this is the natural course all parties take when they discover themselves atop a large pile of money. The board was just outmaneuvered.

tptacek 3y ago

What "maneuver"? They don't appear to have had to do anything to win.

fsckboy 3y ago
the non-profit board had nothing to win over the greed revolt? except revulsion.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Where by "greed" you mean "the prospect that anybody's equity would be worth anything".
  - Jensson 3y ago
    That is greed, everyone who works for OpenAI already had a ton of money since they pay so much, demanding more at the cost of the non-profit mission is greed. I am fine with people being greedy, but don't say it isn't greed.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      If you say so. I'm just saying: it's not surprising that labor beat ownership here.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        So, almost like, gasp, union?
        Jensson 3y ago
        In this case the "union" plundered the non-profit. Just because workers did it doesn't make it good.
        stale2002 3y ago
        Non profits (or companies in general) are nothing with their workers. A non profit is subject to labor markets just as well. They can't just go back on their implicit payment deals, in this case the payment of equity, and expect that nobody will complain. Those employees worked under terms of employment that included the expectation that the equity would be worth something. If openAI didn't like that, then they should have paid them in cash, without the equity. Its not plundering to use your own labor and market power to collectively bargain for yourself.
    - apantel 3y ago
      “Greed” is one of those words where the definition doesn’t really tell you where the line is: “intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.” (Oxford via Google) Who doesn’t feel “intense and selfish desire” for money? Who doesn’t feel that going into a performance review? It’s human nature to feel this feeling, if that’s what we want to call “greed”.
      - Jensson 3y ago
        > It’s human nature to feel this feeling, if that’s what we want to call “greed”. Yes, greed is human nature, just like lust etc. We value when people suppress such feelings, but we know everyone has them.
        apantel 3y ago
        It’s not that clear-cut. “Greed” as defined this way is one of the main drives making people do things. They go out into the world and exert themselves in order to acquire wealth, power, and renown. It’s a core part of what has produced civilization from out of the darkness of total animal-like ignorance. The inventors, makers, statesmen, pioneers, explorers of history… what do you think was motivating them? What do you think has kept life procreating on this planet in the face of overwhelming hardship? Lust. I think it’s one-eye-blind to demonize greed, lust, or any other part of human nature. Those drives are inseparable from us being here in our current state, living reasonably well, conversing over the internet on phones and computers.
        ants_everywhere 3y ago
        I agree that greed plays a role in civilization, but I think your read on human history is overly simplistic in an important way. A great deal of what has driven civilization forward are the people who are driven by curiosity. People like Archimedes, Plato, Newton, Einstein. Not to mention the millions of curious nameless folks who improved the boat, the spear, the wheel, the book. Folks like RMS without whom I doubt we'd have anything like the current open source ecosystem including Linux. These tend to be people who are not only curious, but whose sense of greed is lower than the average. Without these folks, it's not clear to me that humanity ratchets forward in progress. If you just have greed and lust, the steady state would be something like power politics of states warring against each other with swords for thousands of years. History has gotten stuck in those states many times, and when we finally break out it's typically the curiosity-driven folks who give the greed-driven folks a reason to invest their money in something other than raising an army for yet another war of honor.
flatline 3y ago
This is true, and yet, they played the opening move.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Yes, my point is that move seems so self-evidently bad --- it was against the interests of most of the employees there, Sam and Greg had huge amounts of leverage, etc --- that it makes the board seem more sus to me than Sam. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Sam stan or anything.
  - reducesuffering 3y ago
    > it was against the interests of most of the employees there I think you're forgetting what the entire mission of OpenAI is
    - tptacek 3y ago
      I have never taken any of that stuff seriously and don't know why anybody else does either. Certainly, labor at OpenAI does not seem to have, either. Look, the board could have held the line, and then died when every one of their employees jumped ship. But nobody can say OpenAI's labor owed anything to the mission. They're all free agents, just like us. Real easy to say that someone else should take a pay cut to serve a mission you care about. It's good to want things!
      - reducesuffering 3y ago
        > I have never taken any of that stuff seriously Sam, Ilya, Mira, Elon, and the rest of the founding team do. > Look, the board could have held the line, and then died when every one of their employees jumped ship. Wouldn't contribute towards the mission, again. > But nobody can say OpenAI's labor owed anything to the mission. Sure, they could leave, they're not slaves. But that's the entire problem here, and why the board attempted to fire him. He's subverting the mission by putting in the exact same $ mercenary incentives that cause the whole problem OpenAI's charter is trying to prevent. OpenAI is founded and led by a charter that profit-focused AGI arms race will lead to dangerous outcomes for all of society. If you wanted to be greedy and max your $ just go work for Meta. Don't be surprised when it's whole axis of control tries to do things that aren't "make my money go up."
Jensson 3y ago
If they did nothing Sam Altman would have won, since their job is to reign in Sam Altman when he goes out of bounds of the original mission.
- aedon 3y ago
  Exactly. MSFT is who won here. I highly recommend you all watch OpenAI section of the new ALL-IN Podcast. Sam and OpenAI is in a very bad situation if Elon gets heard by a fair judge.
  - cowsandmilk 3y ago
    What, the podcast that is all of Elon’s best friends thinks he has a case? What a surprise!
    - Timber-6539 3y ago
      I don't see the problem here. Are you not able to discern different arguments/ideas and come to conclusions by yourself?
      - marshray 3y ago
        I watched some on a recommendation and used to see some of their ideas on X-Twitter. One conclusion I came to was that I didn't respect those people's ability to discern or conclude.
        Timber-6539 3y ago
        Who cares whether you respect their ability to discern or conclude? Did you get the argument or not, and did it make sense to you in the situation? That's all that matters.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        Only a lawyer can really do that in legal cases. You know how Hollywood gets computers, coding, and hacking wrong? That's how bad non-lawyers are with law. Or, pertinently to this case — who knows more law: one of us, or ChatGPT?
huytersd 3y ago
Several people on the board were all contribution-less tokens, they never stood a chance.

lettergram 3y ago

The board buckled. They could and should have done nothing. They would have then won. They’d have the contracts, the money, the IP and infrastructure. You can hire new engineers & they’d have proven they’re working to benefit humanity. Now it’s owned by Microsoft.

Jensson 3y ago
How is "doing nothing" winning? I don't see how giving all the reigns to the bad actor and capitulating is winning.

capybara_2020 3y ago

It will be curious to see how this pans out. Will it be like be like the boeing and mcdonnell douglas merger where the engineering dominated culture died and it became all about money or will it be like Steve Jobs returning to Apple to lead it to new heights.

wnc3141 3y ago

this is inevitable. Organizational design turns out to be critical in aligning interests and incentives from the outset across all organizations throughout history - from the Roman Empire to Open AI

im3w1l 3y ago
It's amazingly ironic that a charity focused on aligning AI couldn't even align its own CEO.
- chii 3y ago
  because they aren't really a charity, and they aren't really interested in aligning AI. In the end, it's all an attempt to profit - with the initial marketing about charity/alignment that those with wishful thinking all bought into.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I've been watching the Y Combinator YouTube channel recently, and people in the room when OpenAI was founded were saying "… until these big companies solve AGI, it's going to be their first, second, and third goal" — not that OpenAI or Anthropic would succeed, but that this is their goal. Before the industrial revolution, land was paramount; after, capital. AGI is likely to be as significant a change, and make money (as we understand it today) less important in a similar way.
    - chii 3y ago
      Money is just a unit of accounting. Land is still just as important, as is labour. And in any case, capital is accumulated money. In the end these all amount to power, and capability to direct that power towards a goal. Even if AGI becomes some form of new capital, it is still the same as capital as we know it today. Until the day humanity transcends and we no longer face the human condition of course.
      - 3y ago

hef19898 3y ago

Somehow, I lean more the Joker-way, on the pile of money question, not the terrorism stuff.

unyttigfjelltol 3y ago

It's self-defeating though. AI tools fundamentally require trust, because the tool functions as a colleague, editor, partner or friend. A good way to think of it is as the embodiment of its creator. That's OpenAI, and because Sam and the whole staff have publicly acted in what we'll call a "controversial" manner that is in serious tension with the common good of all humanity, folks rightly should view OpenAI's AI black box untrustworthy, a snake oil. Maybe the AI will habitually pit you against your trusted colleagues when doing so might be profitable to OpenAI staff, the way Sam did. Maybe the AI will claim to be altruistic and then once it's achieved a position of trust it will, when you are most vulnerable, function decisively against users' needs and goals the way OpenAI staff acted against their managers in the OpenAI board. These people are selling trust when they have decisively demonstrated they are unworthy of it. There are entire professions built on trust that demonstrate this is not a "natural" course, it is instead a path to long-term irrelevance.