This is no way to run an $80B company! This thread was detached. I was referring to https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725736242137182594
Do you imagine executives/board member dismissals have some elaborate ceremony?
Sutskever: OpenAI board doing its mission to build AGI that benefits all
91–100 of 181 posts
Re: Sutskever: OpenAI board doing its mission to build AGI that benefits all
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re right. It’s instead how you run a nonprofit built to further the the vision of a once-in-a-generation ML researcher, without having it stolen out from under you.
Ilya and the board are entitled to their opinions and to act on them, but the whole process strikes me as extremely unprofessional, and something out of the Game of Thrones!
Nothing about the story is unprofessional. Now, there's different process appropriate depending on the actual reason termination was being discussed, and we don't know enough to say whether this was appropriate fiven the cause, but its definitely in the scope of what is reasonable and orofessional for dismissing them.
Re: Sutskever: OpenAI board doing its mission to build AGI that benefits all
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re right. It’s instead how you run a nonprofit built to further the the vision of a once-in-a-generation ML researcher, without having it stolen out from under you.
It seems incredibly risky to give Microsoft’s lawyers $10bn worth of reason to take a close look at a novel corporate structure and surrounding case law. Why not cut a deal for a spin out?
> It seems incredibly risky to give Microsoft’s lawyers $10bn worth of reason to take a close look at a novel corporate structure and surrounding case law.
Presumably, Microsoft’s lawyers did that before they bought into the novel corporate structure. I mean, its Microsoft, not Elon Musk. Due diligence is a thing.
Re: Sutskever: OpenAI board doing its mission to build AGI that benefits all
#94It's mind-blowing that a company of this significance was left in the hands of four people, two of whom are complete unknowns in the field - or at least utterly unclear what credentials got them there.
Re: Sutskever: OpenAI board doing its mission to build AGI that benefits all
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
"it's interesting that someone with a 2014 bachelor's and a 2021 master's, with no experience other than a few years as a low-level employee at Open Philanthropy and then a strategy position at a Georgetown center, somehow leapfrogged onto the board of one of the most important organizations in the world." https://twitter.com/stuartbuck1/status/1725695721729380357
Helen Toner is brilliant. This dude has never met her, yet somehow has the gall to proclaim he'd be better at her job than he is. People shouldn't get board roles based on what degree they have, but based on how well they can do the job.
Please expand on that. Details would be helpful.
Re: Sutskever: OpenAI board doing its mission to build AGI that benefits all
#96Well, that answers if we should continue to build for the GPT platform Sam introduced 11 days ago. Sad. Thanks for posting.
The whole coup was very unprofessional. How can i trust such a leadership? It’s not clear if the path taken by sam will be discontinued regarding the GPT platform
Re: Sutskever: OpenAI board doing its mission to build AGI that benefits all
#97Tinfoil? Hat time. Everyone from Greg to Sam to Ilya keep hanging on "AGI for the benefit of humanity". According to OpenAI's constitution: AGI is explicitly carved out of all commercial and IP licensing agreements, including the ones with Microsoft. Nuclear. Well apparently, the board decides what will be AGI. But 3 (everyone now left except ilya) of those board members don't even work at Open AI and are only privy…
Anytime I hear someone even hypothesizing with a tin foil hat that some company has developed AGI today in 2023, I hear it the same way I hear someone speculating about UFOs. It's so absurd that all I can do is shake my head and look around the room hoping to make eye contact with someone sane who is wearing the same expression of raised eyebrows that I am. I could write an essay on why the existence of AGI in 2023 i…
Instead of writing an essay, just say concisely what you have in mind here
Re: Sutskever: OpenAI board doing its mission to build AGI that benefits all
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you told someone in 2020 that we would have DALL-E 3 and GPT4 today they would say you're talking about UFOs too. "Just an incredibly advanced Markov chain" doesn't mean anything. Humans writing text are also incredibly advanced Markov chains.
> If you told someone in 2020 that we would have DALL-E 3 and GPT4 today they would say you're talking about UFOs too. Depends if they were paying attention. Emerging creative behaviors were noticed in GPT-3 in 2020. Image generation was also getting pretty good by 2020 (with Dall-e coming out in early 2021). Very bullish 2020 post on GPT-3: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/10/the-obligatory-gpt-3-p...
I just said a random date, let's say 2010 then.
Re: Sutskever: OpenAI board doing its mission to build AGI that benefits all
#99This is no way to run an $80B company! This thread was detached. I was referring to https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725736242137182594
Do you imagine executives/board member dismissals have some elaborate ceremony?
Typically they try to work out something behind the scenes before making a public announcement. And usually major stakeholders like Microsoft are brought into the decision-making process.
The announcement affected Microsoft's stock price today.
Re: Sutskever: OpenAI board doing its mission to build AGI that benefits all
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This coup is badly executed though I've seen this language used a few times now. A company's CEO is appointed by, and serves the goals of the board. Not the other way around. When the board perceives that the CEO isn't doing this, they can fire him. That's neither metaphorically or literally a coup. Especially bad narrative in this case because openAI has given itself a charter (and legal structure that subjects the…
It will be viewed this way by the public, and media, and yes me. Unless they can bring solid evidence of Sam has some irredeemable misconduct to the table. Otherwise, this is exactly what a coup is, a grab of power, with the current power center, not knowing about it. The board needs to explain themselves immediately, if they think this is idealogical disagreement, they should come clean, and tell us so. Not some nef…
They said it in the statement, they quoted to chapter of the company that they should focus on AI for the betterment of humanity.
I can't say if this will work, but I think the message is pretty clear. No more random product launches like the GPT store, but rather focus on the core: building the AI, testing it and launching when it's safe.
To be honest, I've also found them getting too diluted in offerings. Why not let other startups focus on those things? Let Openai focus on the core models and give tools to others to build/finetune things. They can be the infrastructure of the AI world, they don't need to create every product.
Again, we will only know in the future if this is the right decision. But there is a strong case to be made here, especially with the company's original mission and non-profit status.