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Interesting that OpenAI has completely destroyed their reputation over the last year. For me, they've gone from an admirable company to cringe-worthy. I really

Interesting that OpenAI has completely destroyed their reputation over the last year. For me, they've gone from an admirable company to cringe-worthy. I really think that the best outcome here is for OpenAI to collapse and get absorbed by Microsoft, where adults can continue some of the good work that is being overshadowed by ego and cult-like vibes.

ctxc 2y ago
I think the ego and cult-like atmosphere will lead to more growth (maybe not in the "right" direction but in the technical prowess direction) which offsets all criticism. And then the lines will cross over the break even point and be absorbed into Microsoft who proceeds to enjoy the lunch for the foreseeable future.
- grayhatter 2y ago
  > (maybe not in the "right" direction but in the technical prowess direction) which offsets all criticism. Are you sure about that? Maybe you would like to think a bit harder about what exactly offsets "all criticism"? Being very good at one thing doesn't absolve you from consequences of your other shitty actions.
startupsfail 2y ago
It is not like Microsoft’s CEO was behaving very admirably or free of ego.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  For some reason people give Satya a pass. I guess because he comes off as a nice guy. Somehow no one associates all the anti competitive stuff MS does with him - like bundling Teams into Office, or forcing a Copilot button onto OEMs, or dark pattern nagging about default apps, or inserting ads into the start menu, or whatever. But that mode of operation is classic MS, and it makes sense they are still this way, since Satya was a long time MS veteran before he was CEO. All that said, he is probably actually nicer than previous MS executives. He has had a lot of difficulty in his personal life around his son, and that probably changed him for the better.
  - startupsfail 2y ago
    "We are below them, above them, around them." - doesn’t sound particularly ego free or nice. And it seems that between the choice of OpenAI reassembling at Microsoft and OpenAI continuing under Sam Altman, the nonprofit board had decided to go ahead with Sam Altman.
  - CuriouslyC 2y ago
    Satya is a canny player, he knows how to give with one hand and take away with the other like a magician so you don't see the trick. I wish he was pushing Microsoft to be a bit more ethical, but he has done good stuff and he's a good model CEO, since he hasn't done any one genius thing, but he's consistently positioned and executed well which is something the "average" leader can model.
rpastuszak 2y ago
Bear in mind that an average person who doesn’t frequent sites like HN might see this differently. Altman seems to be very aware of that, dropping short sound bites/bits like implying that he has no financial interest in OpenAI (congress hearings IIRC) or comparing GPT4-o to Her. It sounds like complete nonsense (if you know anything about tech) or cringe at best (Her), but what matters is quotability/catchiness because that what gets pumped by the media.
- pests 2y ago
  > he has no financial interest in OpenAI I think that's true though? He has an interest in HN, which has an interest in OAI.
  - jonathankoren 2y ago
    HN? Don’t you mean YC?
    - pests 2y ago
      Yeah yeah of course, the two blend into one in my mind. Apologies.
behnamoh 2y ago
> cult-like vibes. What cult-like vibes? The OpenAI employees wanted Sam back because of financial reasons and peer pressure. Sam has learnt how to keep employees on leash via money.
- mycologos 2y ago
  Having senior leadership and rank and file publicly proclaim their love for each other in identical ways, as happened during the leadership debacle, read cult-like to me.
- asadotzler 2y ago
  What you describe is precisely cult-like and so it gives off cult-like vibes.
aik 2y ago
I think this perspective is probably only true for 0.001% of people that actually follow Sam closely and are not optimistic about AGI and like to throw their opinions around. The superficial stuff. The rest don’t care to even know who Sam is and don’t care to assume motive. It’s very likely they’ll bounce back. I’d rather OpenAI continue to innovate and push the industry forward as they have been. Haven’t seen much of that from Microsoft, so heavily disagree with you there. Prefer to focus on the actual product of the company not the personalities of the people there or armchair assumptions on the vibes of the culture.
- rafram 2y ago
  > Haven’t seen much of that from Microsoft Microsoft is the de facto controlling shareholder in OpenAI. They provide all the money, compute, and backing, and have full access to the models. If OpenAI collapsed tomorrow, Microsoft would absorb its key employees (as they almost did during the board debacle) and everything would continue under the Microsoft umbrella. “OpenAI” is just a shinier name for work that is being done under the near-total control of Microsoft.
  - aik 2y ago
    The money and compute is not the innovation. The LLM models and associated tools are, which is work by OpenAI employees and teams, not Microsoft employees/teams.
    - danjl 2y ago
      In that vein, I'd say that most of the LLM research was done at Google. OpenAI productized faster.
      - aik 2y ago
        Confused here, is your argument here that OpenAI is not responsible for any innovation when it comes to LLM tech today? I’m curious about why you so strongly want to believe that? Nobody knew that scaling transformer architecture would lead to the emergent intelligence we see today. Among other things, OpenAI did R&D for years on that. Also the only situation where this could true is if Google knew that LLMs could lead to this intelligence and decided to not make it happen, (along with every other tech company now that is furiously trying to catch up to OpenAI), which is absurd.
bookaway 2y ago
I find this kind of hilarious because I had just been commenting that, "at the moment all the engineers at OpenAI, including gdb, who currently have their credibility in tact are nerd-washing Altman's tarnished reputation by staying there." And lo and behold, Altman chooses gdb's twitter account to make the first joint statement instead of his own, creepily signing off "Sam and Greg" instead of "Greg and Sam" on gdb's own personal twitter account. EDIT: The only reason to go to these weird lengths is if he is feeling especially vulnerable right now and feels the need to broadcast a "Greg is with me, I swear" message to signal he is not alone.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Invictus0 2y ago
  It would probably be against hacker news guidelines to call him a manipulative weasel, so I will refrain from that.
- wrsh07 2y ago
  Greg has some agency in this He also stuck by Altman in November. I'm surprised by how much credit and how much hate goes to the CEO when there are clearly other people making their own decisions, too. Say whatever you want, they've done something impressive. That credit goes to more than just Sam. Ilya & Jan aren't the only ones making decisions. Also, if you've ever been at a startup growing at the speed OpenAI is growing (think revenue, fundraising, headcount), it's not that unusual to see cofounders leave or to have other leadership changes. The reason why everybody thinks OpenAI looks particularly bad is because everybody is watching them (and public sentiment towards ai has shifted)
  - voiceblue 2y ago
    > The reason why everybody thinks OpenAI looks particularly bad is because everybody is watching them A reason, sure. The reason? Come on. There's a clue in their name about what part of their history is particularly controversial.
mindcrash 2y ago
If I remember correctly those "adults" offered Altman the opportunity to lead the AI efforts at Microsoft after he got fired. Make of that what you want.
intelVISA 2y ago
Don't hate the player, etc.
m3kw9 2y ago
I’m not getting how OpenAIs reputation is being tarnished from all of basically amounting to nothing but theatrical stuff that amounts to people saying Sam is out to destroy the world, none of which is even close to happening, with every entity in earth developing the same tech.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
  I remember early in the days of COVID when the authorities reassured us by telling us there was "no evidence of community spread in the United States". Sometimes it pays to look at the fundamentals. https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/ai-alignment-intro-materials https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/ai-alignment-intro-materials
tbrownaw 2y ago
> Interesting that OpenAI has completely destroyed their reputation over the last year. No, they're still the "name brand" option for commercial LLM stuff.

ctxc 2y ago

I think the ego and cult-like atmosphere will lead to more growth (maybe not in the "right" direction but in the technical prowess direction) which offsets all criticism. And then the lines will cross over the break even point and be absorbed into Microsoft who proceeds to enjoy the lunch for the foreseeable future.

grayhatter 2y ago
> (maybe not in the "right" direction but in the technical prowess direction) which offsets all criticism. Are you sure about that? Maybe you would like to think a bit harder about what exactly offsets "all criticism"? Being very good at one thing doesn't absolve you from consequences of your other shitty actions.

startupsfail 2y ago

It is not like Microsoft’s CEO was behaving very admirably or free of ego.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
For some reason people give Satya a pass. I guess because he comes off as a nice guy. Somehow no one associates all the anti competitive stuff MS does with him - like bundling Teams into Office, or forcing a Copilot button onto OEMs, or dark pattern nagging about default apps, or inserting ads into the start menu, or whatever. But that mode of operation is classic MS, and it makes sense they are still this way, since Satya was a long time MS veteran before he was CEO. All that said, he is probably actually nicer than previous MS executives. He has had a lot of difficulty in his personal life around his son, and that probably changed him for the better.
- startupsfail 2y ago
  "We are below them, above them, around them." - doesn’t sound particularly ego free or nice. And it seems that between the choice of OpenAI reassembling at Microsoft and OpenAI continuing under Sam Altman, the nonprofit board had decided to go ahead with Sam Altman.
- CuriouslyC 2y ago
  Satya is a canny player, he knows how to give with one hand and take away with the other like a magician so you don't see the trick. I wish he was pushing Microsoft to be a bit more ethical, but he has done good stuff and he's a good model CEO, since he hasn't done any one genius thing, but he's consistently positioned and executed well which is something the "average" leader can model.

rpastuszak 2y ago

Bear in mind that an average person who doesn’t frequent sites like HN might see this differently. Altman seems to be very aware of that, dropping short sound bites/bits like implying that he has no financial interest in OpenAI (congress hearings IIRC) or comparing GPT4-o to Her. It sounds like complete nonsense (if you know anything about tech) or cringe at best (Her), but what matters is quotability/catchiness because that what gets pumped by the media.

pests 2y ago
> he has no financial interest in OpenAI I think that's true though? He has an interest in HN, which has an interest in OAI.
- jonathankoren 2y ago
  HN? Don’t you mean YC?
  - pests 2y ago
    Yeah yeah of course, the two blend into one in my mind. Apologies.

behnamoh 2y ago

> cult-like vibes. What cult-like vibes? The OpenAI employees wanted Sam back because of financial reasons and peer pressure. Sam has learnt how to keep employees on leash via money.

mycologos 2y ago
Having senior leadership and rank and file publicly proclaim their love for each other in identical ways, as happened during the leadership debacle, read cult-like to me.
asadotzler 2y ago
What you describe is precisely cult-like and so it gives off cult-like vibes.

aik 2y ago

I think this perspective is probably only true for 0.001% of people that actually follow Sam closely and are not optimistic about AGI and like to throw their opinions around. The superficial stuff. The rest don’t care to even know who Sam is and don’t care to assume motive. It’s very likely they’ll bounce back. I’d rather OpenAI continue to innovate and push the industry forward as they have been. Haven’t seen much of that from Microsoft, so heavily disagree with you there. Prefer to focus on the actual product of the company not the personalities of the people there or armchair assumptions on the vibes of the culture.

rafram 2y ago
> Haven’t seen much of that from Microsoft Microsoft is the de facto controlling shareholder in OpenAI. They provide all the money, compute, and backing, and have full access to the models. If OpenAI collapsed tomorrow, Microsoft would absorb its key employees (as they almost did during the board debacle) and everything would continue under the Microsoft umbrella. “OpenAI” is just a shinier name for work that is being done under the near-total control of Microsoft.
- aik 2y ago
  The money and compute is not the innovation. The LLM models and associated tools are, which is work by OpenAI employees and teams, not Microsoft employees/teams.
  - danjl 2y ago
    In that vein, I'd say that most of the LLM research was done at Google. OpenAI productized faster.
    - aik 2y ago
      Confused here, is your argument here that OpenAI is not responsible for any innovation when it comes to LLM tech today? I’m curious about why you so strongly want to believe that? Nobody knew that scaling transformer architecture would lead to the emergent intelligence we see today. Among other things, OpenAI did R&D for years on that. Also the only situation where this could true is if Google knew that LLMs could lead to this intelligence and decided to not make it happen, (along with every other tech company now that is furiously trying to catch up to OpenAI), which is absurd.

bookaway 2y ago

I find this kind of hilarious because I had just been commenting that, "at the moment all the engineers at OpenAI, including gdb, who currently have their credibility in tact are nerd-washing Altman's tarnished reputation by staying there." And lo and behold, Altman chooses gdb's twitter account to make the first joint statement instead of his own, creepily signing off "Sam and Greg" instead of "Greg and Sam" on gdb's own personal twitter account. EDIT: The only reason to go to these weird lengths is if he is feeling especially vulnerable right now and feels the need to broadcast a "Greg is with me, I swear" message to signal he is not alone.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Invictus0 2y ago
It would probably be against hacker news guidelines to call him a manipulative weasel, so I will refrain from that.
wrsh07 2y ago
Greg has some agency in this He also stuck by Altman in November. I'm surprised by how much credit and how much hate goes to the CEO when there are clearly other people making their own decisions, too. Say whatever you want, they've done something impressive. That credit goes to more than just Sam. Ilya & Jan aren't the only ones making decisions. Also, if you've ever been at a startup growing at the speed OpenAI is growing (think revenue, fundraising, headcount), it's not that unusual to see cofounders leave or to have other leadership changes. The reason why everybody thinks OpenAI looks particularly bad is because everybody is watching them (and public sentiment towards ai has shifted)
- voiceblue 2y ago
  > The reason why everybody thinks OpenAI looks particularly bad is because everybody is watching them A reason, sure. The reason? Come on. There's a clue in their name about what part of their history is particularly controversial.

mindcrash 2y ago

If I remember correctly those "adults" offered Altman the opportunity to lead the AI efforts at Microsoft after he got fired. Make of that what you want.

intelVISA 2y ago

Don't hate the player, etc.

m3kw9 2y ago

I’m not getting how OpenAIs reputation is being tarnished from all of basically amounting to nothing but theatrical stuff that amounts to people saying Sam is out to destroy the world, none of which is even close to happening, with every entity in earth developing the same tech.

0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
I remember early in the days of COVID when the authorities reassured us by telling us there was "no evidence of community spread in the United States". Sometimes it pays to look at the fundamentals. https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/ai-alignment-intro-materials https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/ai-alignment-intro-materials

tbrownaw 2y ago

> Interesting that OpenAI has completely destroyed their reputation over the last year. No, they're still the "name brand" option for commercial LLM stuff.