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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?

#301

Post by MVissers »

capableweb wrote: post #112
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?

Is OpenAI's current success attributed more to its excellent business and startup management, or does it stem from its superior technology and research that surpasses what others have developed?

Both IMO.

The first leads to attractong world-class talent that can do the second. Until you go off the rails and the second kicks you out it seems.

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

#302

Post by blovescoffee »

cj wrote: post #108
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?

In other words, if SamA did it once, would $50 billion in funding enable him do it a 2nd time?

He's not going to get $50 billion in funding

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

#303

Post by adastra22 »

rirarobo wrote: post #102
andrewstuart wrote: post #61

If Ilya unknown-to-anyone thinks people prefer him to Altman, he has another thing coming. I'm not an Altman fanboy, but anyone can see Altman is a rockstar and richt or wrong, that matters HUGELY to OpenAI. If it's truly about a power play then this will be undone pretty quick, along with the jobs of the people who made it happen. Microsoft has put a vast fortune into this operation and if Satya doesn't like this th…

Sorry, what do you mean by "unknown -to-anyone"? Ilya is a co-founder of OpenAI, the Chief Scientist, and one of the best known AI researchers in the field. He has also been touring with Sam Altman at public events, and getting highlights such as this one recently: https://youtu.be/9iqn1HhFJ6c

Which has very little to do with OpenAI’s success. It’s not enough to make a new technology, as too many tech-focused entrepreneurs have found out. You have to find product-market fit, manage suppliers and customers, and negotiate deals.

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

#304

Post by morsecodist »

MVissers wrote: post #253
morsecodist wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These models can't even form new memories beyond the length of their context windows. It's impressive but it is clearly not AGI.

Neither can you without your short-term memory system. Or your long-term memory system in your hippocampus. People that have lost those abilities still have human level of intelligence.

Sure, people with aphasia lose the ability to form speech at all but if ChatGPT responded unintelligibly every time you wouldn't characterize it as intelligent.

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

#305

Post by lucubratory »

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…

One of the board members who was closely aligned with Ilya in this whole thing was Helen Toner, who's a NatSec person. Frankly, this action by the board could be the US government making its preference about something felt with a white glove, rather than causing global panic and an arms race by pulling a 1939 Germany and shutting down all public research + nationalising the companies and scientists involved. If they can achieve the control without the giant commotion, they would obviously try to do that.

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

#306

Post by andrewstuart »

rirarobo wrote: post #274
andrewstuart wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Altman is virtually a household name. Relative to that - Ilya is unknown.

I see, thanks for clarifying. I agree that Ilya is relatively lesser known publicly, but in the grander scheme of things I don't think Altman is really that well known either. I mean, anecdotally, most non-tech friends and family I know probably have heard of ChatGPT, but they don't know any of the founders or leadership team at OpenAI. On the other hand, since I work in the field, all of my AI research friends/colle…

>> in the grander scheme of things I don't think Altman is really that well known either.

Wall Street Journal front page, top item right this minute: "Sam Altman Is Out at OpenAI After Board Skirmish"

Times Of London front page, right this minute: "Sam Altman sacked by OpenAI after directors lose confidence in him"

The Australian front page, right now: "OpenAI pushes out co-founder Sam Altman as CEO"

MSNBC front page, right now: "OpenAI says Sam Altman exiting as CEO, was 'not consistently candid' with board"

That's his name right there, front page news around the world - they assume people know his name, that's why they put it there.

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

#307

Post by MVissers »

victor9000 wrote: post #260
tkgally wrote: post #75

I didn’t have much sense of who Ilya Sutskever is or what he thinks, so I searched for a recent interview. Here’s one from the No Priors podcast two weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft0gTO2K85A No clear clues about today’s drama, at least as far as I could tell, but still an interesting listen.

Judging from this interview, I wouldn't hold my breath hoping for more openness. Ilya seems to be against open sourcing models on the grounds that they may be too powerful. Good thing no one asked him to invent a wheel, after all people could travel too fast for their own safety.

Maybe. We’re also not open sourcing DNA from viruses, how to build nuclear weapons or 3D printing weapons.

I think there is an argument to be made that not every powerful LLM should be open source. But yes- maybe we’re worried about nothing. On the other hand, these tools can easily spread misinformation, increase animosity, etc, Even in todays world.

I come from the medical field, and we make risk-analyses there to dictate how strict we need to tests things before we release it in the wild. None of this exists for AI (yet).

I do think that focus on alignment is many times more important than chatgpt stores for humanity though.

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

#309

Post by oivey »

naremu wrote: post #270
oivey wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mak…

I’m sure he’s not a dumb guy, just disposable relative to OpenAI’s engineering team. I doubt he’s a Jobs-like, indispensable visionary, either.

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

#310

Post by mvkel »

015a wrote: post #293
mvkel wrote: post #158

Sam wanted to commercialize stuff to shoot for revenue. Ilya wants to keep pushing for gpt 4.5 and beyond, to hell with the revenue. Ilya won the argument, Sam out. Hell yeah. It's not safetyism vs accelerationism. It's commercialization vs innovation.

OpenAI's mission statement is "Creating safe AGI that benefits all of humanity". How does an LLM App Store advance OpenAI toward this goal? Like, even in floaty general terms? You can make an argument that ChatGPT does (build in public, prepare the world for what's coming, gather training data, etc). You can... maybe... make an argument that their API does... but I think that's a lot harder. The App Store product, th…

Exactly! Really excited about a realignment back to the mission. I hope Ilya knows what he's doing with so much pressure on him now
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