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Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

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Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#112
post #76
post #3

This suggests that Greg Brockman wasn't in the board meeting that made the decision, and only "learned the news" that he was off the board the same way the rest of us did.

He was chairman of the board, no? surely he was in the meeting? More likely it's some kind of schism and he was on Sam's side.

Just guessing here, but I think the board can form a quorum without the chair, and vote, and as long as they have a majority, i think they can proceed with a press release based on their vote.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#113
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the way the board announcement ended on the commitment to the original charter of AI for everyone and the way this mention of safety is being thrown in, I suspect it may have been strong disagreements over continuing to be closed with research in the name of safety or open with the research community in the sake of advancement for all.

GPT4 has been closed for a long long time, nothing technical was ever released. The board can't suddenly one day wake up from a long sleep and decide that things have to become open right this minute.

Maybe it didn't. Maybe it's been pushing on this for a bit and Altman kept paying lip service to it or made commitments in their eyes, and those weren't being followed through on

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#114
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe non-profits are just frontends of some three letter agencies :)

Are we going to start speculating about insane conspiracy theories now?

That doesn't seem insane to me in this case. OpenAI is easily the most important non profit for any Government in the whole world.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#115
post #66
post #3

This suggests that Greg Brockman wasn't in the board meeting that made the decision, and only "learned the news" that he was off the board the same way the rest of us did.

Since he was chair of the board... I'm curious how the rest of the board implemented this.

In the board I served on in the past we had an agreed quorum where we could make binding decisions if ~2/3rds of the members were present.

Probably a similar situation.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#116
post #30

His last sentence is the main hint. Disagreement over dangers of AGI discoveries and how to handle I’d guess.

I think claiming to quit over AGI danger is more believable to outsiders than “I want to spend time with family, totally coincidentally after my boss was fired”

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#117

What an unbelievable turn of events! To the outside observer, OpenAI is one of the most successful, well-oiled machines, shipping nearly weekly and doing an unbelievably good job marketing itself. Clearly, there's a lot of turmoil going on behind the scenes.

We don't really know anything about the internal finances at this point. The product is solid but who knows how fucked up things are. Maybe they were on track to run out of money. GPU compute ain't cheap.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#118

This all seems so weird, and the list of Board members doesn't make this any easier to understand. Apart from the 3 insiders, there are 3 other board members. 2 of them seem complete no names and might not qualify for any important corporate board. In a for profit shareholders in theory control the board, in a non profit I am not even sure of who really has control over things.

Three other people have left the board this year: Reid Hoffman, Will Hurd and the person from Neuralink.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#119
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe non-profits are just frontends of some three letter agencies :)

Are we going to start speculating about insane conspiracy theories now?

Knowing what some of those three letter agencies have gotten caught doing, I'm not so sure this particular one would be so insane.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#120
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe non-profits are just frontends of some three letter agencies :)

Are we going to start speculating about insane conspiracy theories now?

yes. this is a very strange event and given the relationship to what we may call "cutting edge applied DL" technology, right after DevDay, with two key players dropping out. GDB leaving is pretty wild, IMO. indicates something maybe on the engineering level wasn't above board. Anyways, we shall see. I think some conspiratorial thinking is fine, especially if its backed up with some evidence. This comment isn't, but the fact remains this is pretty weird and people should let their minds wander and connect dots that maybe they half-remember. IMO
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