19 ms·

Jan Leike Resigns from OpenAI

109 points by Jimmc414 2y ago

aresant 2y ago
Co-head of super-alignment (I had to look it up)
Jimmc414 2y ago
Jan and Ilya were the leads of the superalignment team set up in July of 2023. https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/ https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/ "Our goal is to solve the core technical challenges of superintelligence alignment in four years. While this is an incredibly ambitious goal and we’re not guaranteed to succeed, we are optimistic that a focused, concerted effort can solve this problem:C There are many ideas that have shown promise in preliminary experiments, we have increasingly useful metrics for progress, and we can use today’s models to study many of these problems empirically. Ilya Sutskever (cofounder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI) has made this his core research focus, and will be co-leading the team with Jan Leike (Head of Alignment). Joining the team are researchers and engineers from our previous alignment team, as well as researchers from other teams across the company."
learkonas 2y ago
With Ilya and two other superalignment team members gone, safetyism in OpenAI is getting decimated, after taking their (EA) money for more half a decade. Brutal.
lkoolma 2y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40361128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40361128
Pet_Ant 2y ago
In case people haven't noticed, this is the second resignation in as many days. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40361128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40361128
- the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
  And entirely predictable from the first one: https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/ https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/
  - uLogMicheal 2y ago
    Imagine trying to keep something so far above us in intelligence, caged. Scary stuff...
    - krainboltgreene 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - uLogMicheal 2y ago
        Surely there's a book on this? Maybe we shouldn't let the AI read it...
      - dvfjsdhgfv 2y ago
        Another funny thing is to actually try to go through all politically incorrect stuff in order to censor the model. To do that you need to actually make the list and make sure you haven't overlooked anything or else the vigilanti will punish you (on Twitter first, but then it will escalate quickly). So you need to make sure all references to differences between male end female brain, personality etc. get nullified. But there is always danger that you still missed some obscure and non-obvious thing that will make someone mad.
    - binarymax 2y ago
      I’m genuinely curious - do you actually believe that GPT is a super intelligence? Because I have the opposite experience. It consistently fails to be correct on following even the most basic instructions. For a little while I thought maybe I’m doing it wrong, and I need better prompts, but then I realized that its zero shot and few shot capabilities are really hit and miss. Furthermore, a superior intelligence shouldn’t need us to conform to its persnickety requirements, and it should be able to adapt far better than it actually does.
vouaobrasil 2y ago
[flagged]
bloopernova 2y ago
It appears that there are Interesting Times in OpenAI right now.
- prab97 2y ago
  It's always interesting times at OpenAI!
ganzuul 2y ago
I bet superalignment is indistinguishable from religion (the spiritual, not manipulative kind), so proponents get frequency-pulled into the well-established cult leader pipeline. It's a quagmire to navigate so we can't have both open and enlightening discussions about what is going on.
- uLogMicheal 2y ago
  I thought the whole point of making a transparent organization to lead the charge on AI was so that we could prevent this sort of ego and the other risks that come with.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Nonprofits are not really that transparent, and do bend to the will of donors, who themselves try to limit transparency. That's why Private Foundations are more popular than Public Charities even though both are 501c3 organizations, because they don't need to provide transparency into their operations.
    - uLogMicheal 2y ago
      I was more referencing the name and origin intentions than the non-profit status :)
  - ganzuul 2y ago
    Say I have intelligence x and a superintelligence is 10x, then I get stuck at local minima that the 10x is able to get out of. To me, the local minima looked "good", so if I see the 10x get out of my "good" then most likely I'm looking at something that appears to me to be "evil" even if that is just my limited perspective. It's one hell of a problem.
    - buckley_1991 2y ago
      Your words sound like something from a joke: Human: How to achieve human peace. AI: Eliminate all humans.
cma 2y ago
Did he sign the letter for keeping Sam?
- runjake 2y ago
  Yes. https://twitter.com/janleike/status/1726599944029753750 https://twitter.com/janleike/status/1726599944029753750
  - cma 2y ago
    Just randomly ran across this which says he didn't sign the letter, even though Ilya Sutskever is on there, and remembered this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VihA_-8kBNg&t=17m35s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VihA_-8kBNg&t=17m35s So I went and checked the letter. Here is the letter with signatories, I don't see his name in the 'J' section (alphabetized by first name): https://archive.ph/8sLAK https://archive.ph/8sLAK I don't see a longer name for him that doesn't start with Jan anywhere else I could find. I think that tweet was the same day as the letter though, so maybe he's on there and I just didn't see it, he meant something more complicated and didnt agree with all of the letter, or he missed the deadline for signing the letter.
kamikaz1k 2y ago
who is this and why is it important? [1] super-alignment co-lead with Ilya (who resigned yesterday) what is super alignment? [2] > We need scientific and technical breakthroughs to steer and control AI systems much smarter than us. Our goal is to solve the core technical challenges of superintelligence alignment by 2027. [1] https://jan.leike.name/ https://jan.leike.name/ [2] https://openai.com/superalignment/ https://openai.com/superalignment/
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  My honest-to-god guess is that it just seemed like a needless cost center in a growing business, so there was pressure against them doing the work they wanted to do. I'm guessing, but OpenAI probably wants to start monetizing, and doesn't feel like they are going to hit a superintelligence, not really. That may have been the goal originally.
  - for_i_in_range 2y ago
    I agree. Not everything has to be a conspiracy. Microsoft looked at a $10m+/year cost center, and deemed it unnecessary (which it arguably was), and snipped it.
  - threetonesun 2y ago
    I assume a lot of companies want in on the AI-to-purchase pipeline. "Hey [AI] what kind of car is this?" with a response that helps you buy it at the very high end, or something as simple as "hey [AI] I need more bread, it's [brand and type]" and who it gets purchased from and how it shows up is the... bread and butter of the AI company. Super intelligent AI seems contrary to the goals of consumerist Capitalism, but maybe I'm just not smart enough to see the play there.
    - imzadi 2y ago
      I think what companies want is to replace as many human employees as possible. I don't think they really care what the consequences of that are.
  - 2y ago
willsmith72 2y ago
Why can't openai just be a competent drama-free org? Is it impossible to build really cool tech without the upheaval?
- CSMastermind 2y ago
  Probably because if you collect a bunch of highly motivated and extremely smart people who are good at overcoming obstacles and eliminating problems they eventually start to see each other as obstacles or problems.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    Having been on founding teams that imploded like open AI and ones that succeeded I've found that waving a big wad of cash before every meeting does wonders to motivate people. >This is what we all want, and we want it as fast as possible. Let's get through this together and enjoy our tropical islands alone. You can trust people's greed, you can't trust their morals. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't seen a large enough wad of cash yet.
    - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
      This is a bit confusing in the context of OpenAI drama. The employees at OpenAI have never really lacked monetary incentives. It seems that you... can't trust people's greed when they have ulterior motives like "safe AGI".
      - llm_trw 2y ago
        Open AI was founded on morals. It was a not for profit there for the benefit of humanity. Then M$ came around with a lot of cash and we got the soap opera we're seeing here.
        baobabKoodaa 2y ago
        Right. But everybody didn't play along nicely, did they? Even though MS flaunted wads of cash in front of their faces. So we can't really trust everybody to choose greed over morals or whatnot.
dr_ 2y ago
This was from the NYTimes yesterday (5/14) “ Jan Leike, who ran the Super Alignment team alongside Dr. Sutskever, has also resigned from OpenAI. His role will be taken by John Schulman, another company co-founder.”
nicklecompte 2y ago
It is easy to point to loopy theories around superalignment, p(doom), etc. But you don't have to be hopped up on sci-fi to oppose something like GPT-4o. Low-latency response time is fine. The faking of emotions and overt references to Her (along with the suspiciously-timed relaxation of pornographic generations) are not fine. I suspect Altman/Brockman/Murati intended for this thing to be dangerous for mentally unwell users, using the exact same logic as tobacco companies.
- simonw 2y ago
  I don't understand what you're referring to with that tobacco reference.
  - ChicagoBoy11 2y ago
    Not the parent comment, but I think he means something like "we know folks will be addicted to this pseudo-person and that is a good thing cause it makes our product valuable", akin to reports that tobacco companies knew the harms and addictive nature of their products and kept steadfast nonetheless. (But I'm speculating as to the parent's actual intent)
    - rvnx 2y ago
      I miss Sydney :’
      - all2 2y ago
        I'm confused. Context?
        scrollaway 2y ago
        Sydney was an early version of Bing GPT that was more than a little nuts.
        2y ago
wseqyrku 2y ago
This trail of resignations and drama only signals that whoever is left had to decide whether or not they're ok if they ended up wherever they're going.
whazor 2y ago
Honestly, OpenAI does not look that far ahead of open-source/competitors. Sure they are leading, but for alignment it might be a lost cause.
renegade-otter 2y ago
"Superalignment" sounds so much cooler than "output moderation".
- reducesuffering 2y ago
  Like Emmett Shear says[0], in this discourse we crucially need to separate out the "AI ethics" (like output moderation) from the real problem of "AI NotKillEveryoneism". People are pattern matching "safety" as "those people concerned about AI racism and censoring" when they're orthogonal. I encourage everyone who is skeptical of superalignment (there's a reason very smart people like Ilya were heading that team) watch Emmett Shear (former OpenAI and Twitch CEOs) talk about this problem in the discourse. https://youtu.be/jZ2xw_1_KHY?si=Jog7ULmjjNW21ZIf&t=800 https://youtu.be/jZ2xw_1_KHY?si=Jog7ULmjjNW21ZIf&t=800
  - AlexAndScripts 2y ago
    100%. I see them conflated a lot, particularly outside of HN, and I think it really damages the discourse. Censorship for political or brand reasons (and I'm not making a moral judgement by my choice of language) is very different to aligning for safety reasons.
    - reducesuffering 2y ago
      Yep. And it's lazy to think that the pro-cryogenics, pro-nuclear, pro-engineering people are the same as the ones storming a Tesla factory or causing wildly unexpected Gemini output. "No no no, this thing though actually, may be a problem. If you're rejecting it because we sound like a bunch of crazies, Just notice that some number of people who are worried about this, I'm on your team, I'm on the techno-optimist team. Its not obvious why its true. It takes a good deal of engagement with the material to see why its true. Because at first, it seems like it shouldn't be that big of a deal, it shouldn't be that big of a problem. but then the more you dig in, actually, oh wait a second, and it is." -Emmett
      - 2y ago
qxfys 2y ago
So, what do Ilya and Jan know that we don't know?
light_triad 2y ago
Both super-alignment leads resigned. One way to interpret this is that it's an interesting research topic that has wide repercussions the closer they get to AGI, but it's more of a extra cost that doesn't directly help with monetisation and productisation. The real killer applications are in business verticals with domain specific expertise and customised (and proprietary) datasets, not so much the 'pure' academic research. OpenAI dedicated 20% of compute to the effort which sounds kind of like Google's 20% side project time :)
- w10-1 2y ago
  It looks like "Super-alignment" was to automate monitoring, and their job was to find AI researchers who wanted not to build new things but find problems. But there's really zero glory or profit in doing QA, much as users complain about quality issues. So perhaps they succeeded and built a team, or perhaps they found they couldn't recruit a decent team, or perhaps they failed to produce anything useful (since the goal of not offending anyone or embarrassing the company or doing harm is relatively difficult to concretize). Regardless, I suspect there's no good answer yet to how to manage quality, in part because there's no good answer on how these things work. That problem will likely remain long after people have forgotten about Ilya, Jan, or even Sam. Though it might be solved by rethinking the idea that "attention is all you need".
nemo44x 2y ago
It's funny when people that have been managed out of an organization don't realize it and then resign with indignation. I guess clues aren't for sale.
ilaksh 2y ago
Maybe that means that Jan and Ilya feel they have achieved some definition of AGI. What's going on with the Musk lawsuit (Morgan Chu etc) against OpenAI (Wachtel Lipton) claiming that they abandoned their original open vision?
option 2y ago
I have a simpler explanation though - Sam reversed a decision to dedicate 20% of OAI compute to superalignment team.
OutOfHere 2y ago
Good riddance, considering the employee's focus on moderation. After all, most users don't like any moderation for their own personal activities, only sometimes for other people's activities.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
Follow up tweet from Jan Leike detailing why he left. https://x.com/janleike/status/1791498174659715494 https://x.com/janleike/status/1791498174659715494 Got to wonder what the actual trigger point for his & Ilya's decision was? For the two of them to leave at the same time suggests an event more than just incremental unhappiness with lack of support for safely/alignment. Perhaps a release decision for GPT-4's successor has been made that they disagree with?

109 points by Jimmc414 2y ago

Co-head of super-alignment (I had to look it up)

Jan and Ilya were the leads of the superalignment team set up in July of 2023. https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/ https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/ "Our goal is to solve the core technical challenges of superintelligence alignment in four years. While this is an incredibly ambitious goal and we’re not guaranteed to succeed, we are optimistic that a focused, concerted effort can solve this problem:C There are many ideas that have shown promise in preliminary experiments, we have increasingly useful metrics for progress, and we can use today’s models to study many of these problems empirically. Ilya Sutskever (cofounder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI) has made this his core research focus, and will be co-leading the team with Jan Leike (Head of Alignment). Joining the team are researchers and engineers from our previous alignment team, as well as researchers from other teams across the company."

learkonas 2y ago

With Ilya and two other superalignment team members gone, safetyism in OpenAI is getting decimated, after taking their (EA) money for more half a decade. Brutal.

lkoolma 2y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40361128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40361128

Pet_Ant 2y ago

In case people haven't noticed, this is the second resignation in as many days. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40361128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40361128

the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
And entirely predictable from the first one: https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/ https://openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment/
- uLogMicheal 2y ago
  Imagine trying to keep something so far above us in intelligence, caged. Scary stuff...
  - krainboltgreene 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - uLogMicheal 2y ago
      Surely there's a book on this? Maybe we shouldn't let the AI read it...
    - dvfjsdhgfv 2y ago
      Another funny thing is to actually try to go through all politically incorrect stuff in order to censor the model. To do that you need to actually make the list and make sure you haven't overlooked anything or else the vigilanti will punish you (on Twitter first, but then it will escalate quickly). So you need to make sure all references to differences between male end female brain, personality etc. get nullified. But there is always danger that you still missed some obscure and non-obvious thing that will make someone mad.
  - binarymax 2y ago
    I’m genuinely curious - do you actually believe that GPT is a super intelligence? Because I have the opposite experience. It consistently fails to be correct on following even the most basic instructions. For a little while I thought maybe I’m doing it wrong, and I need better prompts, but then I realized that its zero shot and few shot capabilities are really hit and miss. Furthermore, a superior intelligence shouldn’t need us to conform to its persnickety requirements, and it should be able to adapt far better than it actually does.

vouaobrasil 2y ago

[flagged]

bloopernova 2y ago

It appears that there are Interesting Times in OpenAI right now.

prab97 2y ago
It's always interesting times at OpenAI!

ganzuul 2y ago

I bet superalignment is indistinguishable from religion (the spiritual, not manipulative kind), so proponents get frequency-pulled into the well-established cult leader pipeline. It's a quagmire to navigate so we can't have both open and enlightening discussions about what is going on.

uLogMicheal 2y ago
I thought the whole point of making a transparent organization to lead the charge on AI was so that we could prevent this sort of ego and the other risks that come with.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Nonprofits are not really that transparent, and do bend to the will of donors, who themselves try to limit transparency. That's why Private Foundations are more popular than Public Charities even though both are 501c3 organizations, because they don't need to provide transparency into their operations.
  - uLogMicheal 2y ago
    I was more referencing the name and origin intentions than the non-profit status :)
- ganzuul 2y ago
  Say I have intelligence x and a superintelligence is 10x, then I get stuck at local minima that the 10x is able to get out of. To me, the local minima looked "good", so if I see the 10x get out of my "good" then most likely I'm looking at something that appears to me to be "evil" even if that is just my limited perspective. It's one hell of a problem.
  - buckley_1991 2y ago
    Your words sound like something from a joke: Human: How to achieve human peace. AI: Eliminate all humans.

cma 2y ago

Did he sign the letter for keeping Sam?

runjake 2y ago
Yes. https://twitter.com/janleike/status/1726599944029753750 https://twitter.com/janleike/status/1726599944029753750
- cma 2y ago
  Just randomly ran across this which says he didn't sign the letter, even though Ilya Sutskever is on there, and remembered this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VihA_-8kBNg&t=17m35s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VihA_-8kBNg&t=17m35s So I went and checked the letter. Here is the letter with signatories, I don't see his name in the 'J' section (alphabetized by first name): https://archive.ph/8sLAK https://archive.ph/8sLAK I don't see a longer name for him that doesn't start with Jan anywhere else I could find. I think that tweet was the same day as the letter though, so maybe he's on there and I just didn't see it, he meant something more complicated and didnt agree with all of the letter, or he missed the deadline for signing the letter.

kamikaz1k 2y ago

who is this and why is it important? [1] super-alignment co-lead with Ilya (who resigned yesterday) what is super alignment? [2] > We need scientific and technical breakthroughs to steer and control AI systems much smarter than us. Our goal is to solve the core technical challenges of superintelligence alignment by 2027. [1] https://jan.leike.name/ https://jan.leike.name/ [2] https://openai.com/superalignment/ https://openai.com/superalignment/

jvanderbot 2y ago
My honest-to-god guess is that it just seemed like a needless cost center in a growing business, so there was pressure against them doing the work they wanted to do. I'm guessing, but OpenAI probably wants to start monetizing, and doesn't feel like they are going to hit a superintelligence, not really. That may have been the goal originally.
- for_i_in_range 2y ago
  I agree. Not everything has to be a conspiracy. Microsoft looked at a $10m+/year cost center, and deemed it unnecessary (which it arguably was), and snipped it.
- threetonesun 2y ago
  I assume a lot of companies want in on the AI-to-purchase pipeline. "Hey [AI] what kind of car is this?" with a response that helps you buy it at the very high end, or something as simple as "hey [AI] I need more bread, it's [brand and type]" and who it gets purchased from and how it shows up is the... bread and butter of the AI company. Super intelligent AI seems contrary to the goals of consumerist Capitalism, but maybe I'm just not smart enough to see the play there.
  - imzadi 2y ago
    I think what companies want is to replace as many human employees as possible. I don't think they really care what the consequences of that are.
- 2y ago

willsmith72 2y ago

Why can't openai just be a competent drama-free org? Is it impossible to build really cool tech without the upheaval?

CSMastermind 2y ago
Probably because if you collect a bunch of highly motivated and extremely smart people who are good at overcoming obstacles and eliminating problems they eventually start to see each other as obstacles or problems.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  Having been on founding teams that imploded like open AI and ones that succeeded I've found that waving a big wad of cash before every meeting does wonders to motivate people. >This is what we all want, and we want it as fast as possible. Let's get through this together and enjoy our tropical islands alone. You can trust people's greed, you can't trust their morals. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't seen a large enough wad of cash yet.
  - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
    This is a bit confusing in the context of OpenAI drama. The employees at OpenAI have never really lacked monetary incentives. It seems that you... can't trust people's greed when they have ulterior motives like "safe AGI".
    - llm_trw 2y ago
      Open AI was founded on morals. It was a not for profit there for the benefit of humanity. Then M$ came around with a lot of cash and we got the soap opera we're seeing here.
      - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
        Right. But everybody didn't play along nicely, did they? Even though MS flaunted wads of cash in front of their faces. So we can't really trust everybody to choose greed over morals or whatnot.

dr_ 2y ago

This was from the NYTimes yesterday (5/14) “ Jan Leike, who ran the Super Alignment team alongside Dr. Sutskever, has also resigned from OpenAI. His role will be taken by John Schulman, another company co-founder.”

nicklecompte 2y ago

It is easy to point to loopy theories around superalignment, p(doom), etc. But you don't have to be hopped up on sci-fi to oppose something like GPT-4o. Low-latency response time is fine. The faking of emotions and overt references to Her (along with the suspiciously-timed relaxation of pornographic generations) are not fine. I suspect Altman/Brockman/Murati intended for this thing to be dangerous for mentally unwell users, using the exact same logic as tobacco companies.

simonw 2y ago
I don't understand what you're referring to with that tobacco reference.
- ChicagoBoy11 2y ago
  Not the parent comment, but I think he means something like "we know folks will be addicted to this pseudo-person and that is a good thing cause it makes our product valuable", akin to reports that tobacco companies knew the harms and addictive nature of their products and kept steadfast nonetheless. (But I'm speculating as to the parent's actual intent)
  - rvnx 2y ago
    I miss Sydney :’
    - all2 2y ago
      I'm confused. Context?
      - scrollaway 2y ago
        Sydney was an early version of Bing GPT that was more than a little nuts.
        2y ago

wseqyrku 2y ago

This trail of resignations and drama only signals that whoever is left had to decide whether or not they're ok if they ended up wherever they're going.

whazor 2y ago

Honestly, OpenAI does not look that far ahead of open-source/competitors. Sure they are leading, but for alignment it might be a lost cause.

renegade-otter 2y ago

"Superalignment" sounds so much cooler than "output moderation".

reducesuffering 2y ago
Like Emmett Shear says[0], in this discourse we crucially need to separate out the "AI ethics" (like output moderation) from the real problem of "AI NotKillEveryoneism". People are pattern matching "safety" as "those people concerned about AI racism and censoring" when they're orthogonal. I encourage everyone who is skeptical of superalignment (there's a reason very smart people like Ilya were heading that team) watch Emmett Shear (former OpenAI and Twitch CEOs) talk about this problem in the discourse. https://youtu.be/jZ2xw_1_KHY?si=Jog7ULmjjNW21ZIf&t=800 https://youtu.be/jZ2xw_1_KHY?si=Jog7ULmjjNW21ZIf&t=800
- AlexAndScripts 2y ago
  100%. I see them conflated a lot, particularly outside of HN, and I think it really damages the discourse. Censorship for political or brand reasons (and I'm not making a moral judgement by my choice of language) is very different to aligning for safety reasons.
  - reducesuffering 2y ago
    Yep. And it's lazy to think that the pro-cryogenics, pro-nuclear, pro-engineering people are the same as the ones storming a Tesla factory or causing wildly unexpected Gemini output. "No no no, this thing though actually, may be a problem. If you're rejecting it because we sound like a bunch of crazies, Just notice that some number of people who are worried about this, I'm on your team, I'm on the techno-optimist team. Its not obvious why its true. It takes a good deal of engagement with the material to see why its true. Because at first, it seems like it shouldn't be that big of a deal, it shouldn't be that big of a problem. but then the more you dig in, actually, oh wait a second, and it is." -Emmett
    - 2y ago

qxfys 2y ago

So, what do Ilya and Jan know that we don't know?

light_triad 2y ago

Both super-alignment leads resigned. One way to interpret this is that it's an interesting research topic that has wide repercussions the closer they get to AGI, but it's more of a extra cost that doesn't directly help with monetisation and productisation. The real killer applications are in business verticals with domain specific expertise and customised (and proprietary) datasets, not so much the 'pure' academic research. OpenAI dedicated 20% of compute to the effort which sounds kind of like Google's 20% side project time :)

w10-1 2y ago
It looks like "Super-alignment" was to automate monitoring, and their job was to find AI researchers who wanted not to build new things but find problems. But there's really zero glory or profit in doing QA, much as users complain about quality issues. So perhaps they succeeded and built a team, or perhaps they found they couldn't recruit a decent team, or perhaps they failed to produce anything useful (since the goal of not offending anyone or embarrassing the company or doing harm is relatively difficult to concretize). Regardless, I suspect there's no good answer yet to how to manage quality, in part because there's no good answer on how these things work. That problem will likely remain long after people have forgotten about Ilya, Jan, or even Sam. Though it might be solved by rethinking the idea that "attention is all you need".

nemo44x 2y ago

It's funny when people that have been managed out of an organization don't realize it and then resign with indignation. I guess clues aren't for sale.

ilaksh 2y ago

Maybe that means that Jan and Ilya feel they have achieved some definition of AGI. What's going on with the Musk lawsuit (Morgan Chu etc) against OpenAI (Wachtel Lipton) claiming that they abandoned their original open vision?

option 2y ago

I have a simpler explanation though - Sam reversed a decision to dedicate 20% of OAI compute to superalignment team.

OutOfHere 2y ago

Good riddance, considering the employee's focus on moderation. After all, most users don't like any moderation for their own personal activities, only sometimes for other people's activities.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago

Follow up tweet from Jan Leike detailing why he left. https://x.com/janleike/status/1791498174659715494 https://x.com/janleike/status/1791498174659715494 Got to wonder what the actual trigger point for his & Ilya's decision was? For the two of them to leave at the same time suggests an event more than just incremental unhappiness with lack of support for safely/alignment. Perhaps a release decision for GPT-4's successor has been made that they disagree with?