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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?

#311

Post by davorak »

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…

> 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.

The board that made this decision to fire Altman and they are the captain of the ship.

> if Satya doesn't like this then it will be changed back real fast, Ilya fired and the entire board resign. That's my prediction.

MS does not own openAI if the board does not want Satya to have a say Satay does not have a say. MS/Satay could throw lawyers at the issue, try to find a crack where the board has violated the law and or their own rules. The key is they can try, but MS/Satay have no immediate levers of power to enforce their will.

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

#312

Post by reactordev »

manyoso wrote: post #243
reactordev wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Entire city blocks will be cleared for Sam. Anything he needs. Just give him a road.

Pure hero worship based on nothing. Dude got himself fired and the board accused him of lying.

I agree however he'll have no problem finding another vehicle.

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

#313

Post by davorak »

jdminhbg wrote: post #30
convexstrictly wrote: post #13

Sutskever: "You can call it (a coup), and I can understand why you chose this word, but I disagree with this. This was the board doing its duty to the mission of the nonprofit, which is to make sure that OpenAI builds AGI that benefits all of humanity." Scoop: theinformation.com https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1725707548106580255

So basically a confirmation, but with a slight disagreement on the vocabulary used to describe it.

I read it as Ilya Sutskever thinking the move is good non-profit governance grounds and that does not match what coup often means, unlawful seizure of power or maybe unprincipled/unreasonable seizure of power.

Ilya Sutskever seems to think this is a reasonable principled move to seize power that is in line with the non-profits goals and governance, but does not seem to care too much if you call it a coup.

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

#314

Post by rirarobo »

adastra22 wrote: post #303
rirarobo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Typically I would agree, but in the case of OpenAI, they were themselves blindsided when their free conversational LLM demo, ChatGPT, went viral less than a year ago now.

It is a rare counter case, where a tech-focused research demo, without any clear "product-market fit, suppliers, or customers" became a success almost overnight, to the surprise of it's own creators.

The early days were people playing around with ChatGPT just to see what it could do. All the market fit, fine tuning, and negotiation of deals came later.

Of course, OpenAI capitalized on that initial success very skillfully, but Ilya was the critical world renowned AI researcher who had a lot to do with enabling OpenAI's initial success.

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

#315

Post by adastra22 »

rirarobo wrote: post #314
adastra22 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Typically I would agree, but in the case of OpenAI, they were themselves blindsided when their free conversational LLM demo, ChatGPT, went viral less than a year ago now. It is a rare counter case, where a tech-focused research demo, without any clear "product-market fit, suppliers, or customers" became a success almost overnight, to the surprise of it's own creators. The early days were people playing around with Ch…

> Of course, OpenAI capitalized on that initial success very skillfully

That’s the key point there. Without leadership talent to capitalize on success, technical advances are for naught.

But also, GPT had been around for some years before ChatGPT. The model used in ChatGPT was an improvement in many ways and I don’t mean to diminish Ilya’s contribution to that, but it is the packaging of the LLM into a product that made ChatGPT a success. I see more of Sam’s fingerprints on that than Ilya’s.

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

#316

Post by dekhn »

lsaferite wrote: post #285
dekhn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One imagines in this case the current board discussed this in a non-board context, scheduled a meeting without inviting the chair, made quorum, and voted, then wrote the PR and let Sam, Greg, and HR know, then released the PR. Which is pretty interesting in and of itself, maybe they were trying to sidestep roko or something

Not inviting the full board would likely be against the rules. Every company I've been part of has it in the bylaws that all members have to be invited. They don't all have to attend, but they all get invited.

sure. he could have been invited, but also not attended.

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

#317

Post by mardifoufs »

reducesuffering wrote: post #130
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he seems like a more credible source than random people with no real ml experience

That’s the funny thing isn’t it? Hinton, Bengio, and Sutskever, chief scientist of the tech behind OpenAI, all have strong opinions one way, but HN armchair experts handwave it away as fear mongering. Reminds me of climate change deniers. People just viscerally hate staring down upcoming disasters.

And I can cite tons of other AI experts who disagree with that. Even the people you listed have a much more nuanced opinion compared to the batshit insane AI doomerism that is common in some circles. So why compare it to climate change that has an overwhelming scientific consensus? That's quite a dishonest way to frame the debate.

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

#318

Post by speedgoose »

dannykwells wrote: post #68

Said in the George Senior voice: And thats why you don’t use a non-profit to do world critical work: politics will always beat true value at a non-profit.

It depends on what you want true value to be.

If true value is monetary value, perhaps it’s true. If true value is scientific value or societal value, well, maybe seeking monetary profits doesn’t align with that.

Disclaimer: I currently work for a not for profit research organisation and I couldn’t care less about making some shareholders more wealthy. If the rumours are true, OpenAI going back to non-profit values and remembering the Open in their name is a good change.

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

#319

Post by solarkraft »

hilux wrote: post #125
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do you think one company will determine whether the us beats china in ai or not ? Like 75% of the authors i read on AI papers are Chinese, that should be far more alarming if you really are afraid of china getting ahead.

Research from PRC (across all of science, not specific to AI) has a terrible reputation. They are rewarded for sheer quantity. You can easily find many articles discussing this phenomenon. So the volume of Chinese AI papers says little to nothing about their advancements in the field.

Huh, that's exactly what I heard about western institutions as well.

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

#320

Post by lazide »

fsckboy wrote: post #176
vanjajaja1 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you suggesting they brought up a vote on a whim at a board meeting and acted on it same day

no, I was replying to a comment that said it was a power struggle in which the board needed to act quickly before they lost power. The board may very well have met for this very reason, or perhaps it was at this meeting that the lack of candor was found or discussed, but to hold a board meeting there is overhead, and if the board is already in agreement at the meeting, they vote. It only seems sudden to outsiders, an…

How would the board have lost power?
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