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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?

#351
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very unprofessional way to approach this disagreement.

If you know anything about Ilya, it's definitely not out of character.

Having read up on some background not sure I want this guy in charge of any kind of superintelligence.

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

#352
post #125

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.

That's a problem in all of science, and Chinese research is quite good in measures like citations as well, not just quantity of papers.

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

#353

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.

I think Karpathy could qualify

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

#354
Adam D’Angelo went through a lot of tumult at Facebook and is heavy on the commerce side of ChatGPT (e.g. trying to make Poe work now that Quora is mostly dead). He's the most experienced member of the OpenAI Board by far. It's curious that he evidently enabled Ilya to defend the charter versus something more diplomatic. He may have even been aware of deals Altman was making and volunteered the info, and then let the OpenAI founders fight it out themselves.

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

#355
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> OpenAI's mission statement is "Creating safe AGI that benefits all of humanity". Well an app store let's people... use it. Look at UNIX. UNIX systems are great. They have produced great benefit to the world. Linux, as the most common Unix-like OS, also does. However, most people do not run any of the academic 'innovative' distros. Most people run the most commercialized version you can possibly think of Android and…

The thing is custom gpts are not useful. They are repackaged system prompts meant for non techy people. They were a distraction from the mission of OpenAI (a non profit). The commercial arm is a capped profit company anyway

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

#356
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?

> 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?

If he was really doing it behind the boards back, the accusation is entirely accurate even if his motivations was an expectations of losing the internal factional struggle.

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

#357

This is genuinely frustrating. IF the stories are to be believed so far, the board of OpenAI, perhaps one of the most important tech companies in the world right now, was full of people who are openly hostile to the existence of the company. I don't want AI safety. The people talking about this stuff like it's a terminator movie are nuts. Strongly believe that this will be a lot like facebook/oculus ousting Palmer Lu…

Just because bigotry and misogyny and racism are views shared by half the country doesn't make them right.

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

#358
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no indication that any sort of discussion took place. Major stakeholders like Microsoft appear uninformed.

Basically half the point of this is that Microsoft isn’t a stakeholder. The board clearly doesn’t care or is actively hostile to the idea of growing “the business”. If they didn’t know then that they weren’t a stakeholder, they know now. MS owns a non controlling share of a business controlled by a nonprofit. MS should have prepared for the possibility that their interests aren’t adequately represented. I’m guessing…

Microsoft is a stakeholder. It’s absurd to suggest otherwise. The entire stakeholder concept was invented to encompass a broader view on corporate governance than just the people in the boardroom.

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

#359

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…

Like I said, I agree that Sam Altman, relatively speaking, is better known than Ilya Sutskever to the general public. Although, as other users have replied, this isn't necessarily the same as being a household name.

In any case, I feel like we largely agree, so I'm confused as to why your reply focused solely on this small detail, in a rather condescending manner, while missing my larger point about retaining and attracting AI talent.

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

#360
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.

> Ousting sama and gdb over something as petty as a simple strategy disagreement

A fundamental inability to align on what, on a fundamental level, the mission set out in the charter of a 501(c)(3) charity means in real world terms is not "a simple strategy disagreement"; moreover, the existence of a factional dispute over that doesn't mean that there weren't serious specific conduct that occurred in the context of that dispute over goals.

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