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Ilya Sutskever "at the center" of Altman firing?

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Re: Ilya Sutskever "at the center" of Altman firing?

#261

Post by chpatrick »

brigadier132 wrote: post #230
chpatrick wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rapidly turning into science fact, unless you've been living under a rock the last year.

Science fiction or not, saying this person's opinion matters more because they have a better understanding of how it works is like saying automotive engineers should be considered experts on all social policy regarding automobiles. Also it's not "rapidly turning into fact". There are still massive unsolved problems with AGI.

I think the guy running the company that's got the closest to AGI, one of the top experts in his field, knows more about what the dangers are, yes. Especially if they have something even scarier that they're not telling people.

Re: Ilya Sutskever "at the center" of Altman firing?

#262

Post by MVissers »

gizmo wrote: post #20

Ousting sama and gdb over something as petty as a simple strategy disagreement is totally unprofessional. sama got accused of serious misconduct. Even if he was too eager to commercialize OpenAIs tech that doesn't come close to justifying this circus act.

This is not petty, it’s the integral mission of the company, the reason it was founded, the reason it got investors and the reason that many of the most brilliant scientists in the world work there.

They started as a non-profit ffs.

Re: Ilya Sutskever "at the center" of Altman firing?

#263

Post by xwdv »

rmwaite wrote: post #213
xwdv wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Altman was pushing that narrative because he’s a ladder kicker . He doesn’t give a shit about “safety”. He just wants regulation that will make it much harder for new AI upstarts to reach or even surpass the level of OpenAI’s success, thereby cementing OpenAI’s dominance in the market for a very long time, perhaps forever. He’s using a moral high ground as a cover for more selfish objectives, beware of this tactic in…

I think this is what the parent meant by regulatory capture.

True, I didn’t read the whole comment.

Re: Ilya Sutskever "at the center" of Altman firing?

#264

Post by manyoso »

Eji1700 wrote: post #247
malwarebytess wrote: post #196

Ilya Sutskever really seems to think AGI's birth is impending and likely to be delivered at OpenAI. From that perspective it makes sense to keep capital at arms length. Is there anything to his certainty? It doesn't feel like it's anywhere close.

My money, based on my hobby knowledge and talking to a few people in the field, is on "no fucking way". Maybe he believes his own hype or is like that guy who thought ChatGPT was alive. Maybe he's legit to be worried and has good reason to know he's on the corporate manhattan project. Honestly though...if they were even that close I would find it super hard to believe that we wouldn't have the DoD shutting down EVERY…

I think there is a good reason for you to be skeptical and I too am skeptical. But if there were a top five of the engineers in the world with the ability to really gauge the state of the art in AI and how advanced it was behind closed doors: Ilya Sutskever would be in that top five.

Re: Ilya Sutskever "at the center" of Altman firing?

#265

Post by clnq »

ribosometronome wrote: post #211
clnq wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite gauche for a company to burn bridges with their upper management. This bodes poorly for ever hoping to attract executives in the future. Even Bobby Kotick got a more graceful farewell from Activision Blizzard, where they tried to clear his name. It is only prudent business. Certainly, this is very immature. It wouldn't be out of context in HBO's Succession. Whether what happened is right or just in some s…

> Whether it's right or just in some sense is a different conversation. The same conversation if it's "mature", surely? I'm failing to see how one thinks turning a blind eye to like, decades of sexual impropriety and major internal culture issues to the point the state takes action against your company is "mature". Like, under what definition?

Mature, as in the opposite of ingenuous. It does no good to harm a company further. Kotick did enough damage, he left, all that needed to be said about him was said, tirelessly. Every effort to get him to offer some reparations - expended.

So what was there to gain from the company speaking ill of their past employee? What was even left to say? Nothing. No one wants to work in an organization that vilifies its own people. It was prudent.

I will emphasize again that the morality of these situations is a separate matter from tact. It is very well possible that doing what is good for business does not always align with what is moral. But does this come as a surprise to anyone?

We can recognize that the situation is not one dimensional and not reduce it to such. The same applies to the press release from Open AI - it is graceless, that much can be observed. But we do not yet know whether it is reprehensible, exemplary, or somewhere in between in the sense of morality and justice. It will come out, in other channels rather than official press releases, like in Bobby's case.

Re: Ilya Sutskever "at the center" of Altman firing?

#266

Post by manyoso »

lucubratory wrote: post #219
malwarebytess wrote: post #196

Ilya Sutskever really seems to think AGI's birth is impending and likely to be delivered at OpenAI. From that perspective it makes sense to keep capital at arms length. Is there anything to his certainty? It doesn't feel like it's anywhere close.

We can't see inside, so we don't know. Their Chief Scientist and probably the best living + active ML scientist probably has better visibility into the answer to that question than we do, but just like any scientist could easily fall into the trap of believing too strongly in their own theories and work. That said... in a dispute between a silicon valley crypto/venture capitalist guy and the chief scientist about any…

Well said and I work in AI on LLM's as an engineer and am very skeptical in general that we're anywhere close to AGI, but I would listen to what Ilya Sutskever had to say with eager ears.

Re: Ilya Sutskever "at the center" of Altman firing?

#267

Post by solardev »

charcircuit wrote: post #255
solardev wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we just accept it for what it is, a career journalist using anonymous sources a few hours after a major event? She's staking her reputation on this, and that means something. It doesn't mean it's absolute truth. It doesn't mean it's a lie. Can we just appreciate her work, accept that maybe it's only 70% vetted right now, more likely true than not, but still subject to additional vetting and reporting later on? It…

>Can we just appreciate her work, accept that maybe it's only 70% vetted right now, more likely true than not, but still subject to additional vetting and reporting later on? I do not respect journalists so no. >It's still more information than we had earlier today. It is okay to not have the full information. More information is not neccessarily better. >but it's still work that she's doing Even if something took wo…

Oh, that's fine. We just have different world views, and that's okay.

Re: Ilya Sutskever "at the center" of Altman firing?

#269

Post by 015a »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #142
hilux wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading between lots of lines, one possibility is that Sam was directing this "insanely good thing" toward making lots of money, whereas the non-profit board prioritized other goals higher.

Sure, I get that, but to handle a disagreement over money in such a consequential fashion just doesn't make sense to me. They must have understood that to arrive in a position where they have to fire the CEO with little warning is going to have profound consequences, perhaps even existential ones.

AGI is existential. That's the whole point, I think. If they can get to AGI, then building an LLM app store is such a distraction along the path that any reasonable person would look back and laugh at how cute an idea it was, despite how big or profitable it feels today.

Re: Ilya Sutskever "at the center" of Altman firing?

#270

Post by naremu »

oivey wrote: post #151
SilverSlash wrote: post #87

My biggest question is: If Sam Altman starts a new company by next month, and him and Greg Brockman know all details of how GPT4/5 works, then what what will this mean for OpenAI's dominance and lead?

Wasn’t he more of a business guy while Ilya was the engineer? I really doubt a random VC guy is going to really know much about the specific, crucial details the engineering team knows.

You know, I'm sure Sam Altman is a really smart guy for real.

But to be honest the impression I've gathered is that he's largely a darling to big ycombinator names which lead him quite rapidly dick first into the position he's found himself in today, which is a self proclaimed prepper who starts new crypto coins post-dogecoin even, talking about how AI that aren't his AI should be regulated by the government, and making vague analogies about his AI being "in the sky" while he takes a formerly announced to be non-profit goal into a for-profit LLC that overtly reminds everyone at every turn how it takes no liability, do not sue.

I'm not really sure to be surprised, or entirely unsurprised.

I mean, he probably knows more code than Steve Jobs? But I suppose GPT probably knows more code than he does. Maybe he really is using the GeniePT as his guide throughout life on the side.

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