Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ilya Sutskever "at the center" of Altman firing?

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 518 posts

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

#341

Post by jzl »

smharris65 wrote: post #239
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

Some insider details that seem to agree with this: https://www.reddit.com/user/Anxious_Bandicoot126/

Wow, all the comments and responses to that person's comments are a gold mine. Not saying anything should be taken as gospel, either from that poster or the people replying. But certainly a lot of food for thought.

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

#342

Post by bart_spoon »

andrewstuart wrote: post #197
dinobones wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam is not an engineer. He can't do it without Ilya or Ilya-lite. And there are like 4 of those in the world.

>>He can't do it without Ilya or Ilya-lite. The wrongest thing I've read on HN for a long while. The world has alot more smart people in it than you realise, and Sam's rockstar profile gives him direct access to them.

I agree that it’s far than a one man show at OpenAI, but on the other hand megacorps full of many of the smartest, best compensated research scientists and engineers haven’t been able to touch OpenAI at this point, even with much greater resources. There is a significant advantage that OpenAI has built for themselves with their research and development.

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

#344

Post by ipaddr »

smharris65 wrote: post #239
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

Some insider details that seem to agree with this: https://www.reddit.com/user/Anxious_Bandicoot126/

Based on the amount of comments in that time period that is probably a fake insider.

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

#345

Post by ryanSrich »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #17

Ilya is the center of Open AI. Everyone else is dispensable.

You think Karpathy is dispensable? I see him and Ilya both as important, and essentially the brains of the operation. Sam was always the VC guy (very Elon Musk in that sense), that came into the company as the non-founder CEO.

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

#346

Post by ryanSrich »

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?

I think Sam and Greg could build something similar to what ChatGPT is today, and maybe even get close to GPT-4, but going beyond that seems like a stretch. Ilya is really the one that’s needed, and clearly he does not see eye to eye with Sam. Another world-class AI researcher at the level of Ilya would have to step in, and I’m not even sure that person exists.

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

#347

Post by meepmorp »

andrewstuart wrote: post #306
rirarobo wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do those headlines assume readers know who Sam Altman is? All of them tell you the company he was fired from and half tell you he was CEO. If anything, they assume the reader doesn't know who he is.

If I asked my mom who Sam Altman was, she'd have no idea. Most of my friends wouldn't either, even some who work in tech. Having one's name in headlines isn't the same as being a household name.

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

#348

Post by rirarobo »

adastra22 wrote: post #315
rirarobo wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Agreed, both were critical for their success, the underlying LLM technology, and the vision and leadership to package the tech into ChatGPT.

However, my original comment on this thread was simply to point out that Ilya is not "unknown-to-anyone", but a world renowned AI researcher and a core part of OpenAI's team and their success. Your reply implied that Ilya "has very little to do with OpenAI’s success", which I thought undersells his importance.

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

#349

Post by eastbound »

cardine wrote: post #5

I wonder if Sam knew he was going to lose this power struggle and then started working on an exit plan with people loyal to him behind the boards back. The board then finds out and rushes to kick him out ASAP to stop him from using company resources to create a competitor.

So they are trying to burn him with the worst possible accusation for a Ceo to try to lessen the inevitable fundraising he’s going to win?

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

#350

Post by m-ee »

MVissers wrote: post #307
victor9000 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Huh? We absolutely have open source virus genome sequences and 3D printed gun plans.
Post reply on HN