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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?

#381

Post by rdtsc »

kcb wrote: post #123
rdtsc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was actually a great move. Unusual, but it goes with the mission and nonprofit idea. I think it was designed to draw attention and stir controversy on purpose.

Is it a winning move though? The biggest loser in this seems to be the company that was bankrolling their endeavor, Microsoft.

At this stage, no publicity is bad publicity. If they really believe they are in it to change the future of humanity, and the kool-aid got to their heads, might as well show it off by stirring some controversy.

Microsoft is bankrolling them but OpenAI probably can replace Microsoft easier than Microsoft can replace OpenAI.

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

#382

Post by dragonwriter »

krembanan wrote: post #16

This seems like a trifle not justifying the unusually harsh wording in the press release, combined with the hasty decision. Doesn't really add up.

Well, its a couple of short tweets that of a very terse anonymous claim about background and turning point of the conflict (but without any details of the conduct related to the internal tension it reports), and a journalists predictions prediction of Altman landing on his feet.

It doesn't justify anything because it doesn't tell you much of anything about what happened, even if you assume that it is entirely accurate as far as it goes.

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

#383

Post by threestar3 »

icelancer wrote: post #246
user432678 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and then they will do what? Type the model learning data by memory? Run stolen python scripts? How exactly this hardware supposed to be used?

What do you think Brockman did as co-founder of OpenAI, exactly?

Things have changed a lot. Companies have locked down their data a lot in the last year. E.g. reddit, twitter

Even if things hadn't changed, OpenAI has been building their training set for years. It is not something they can just whip up overnight.

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

#384

Post by mi3law »

nickv wrote: post #218
Cacti wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did compromise. The creation of the for-profit and Sam being brought in WAS the compromise. Sam eventually decided that was inconvenient for him, so he stopped abiding by it, because at the end of the day he is just another greedy VC guy and when push came to shove he chose the money, not OpenAI. And this is the result.

Sam literally has 0 equity in OpenAI. How did he “choose money”?

Not quite accurate.

OpenAI is set up in a weird way where nobody has equity or shares in a traditional C-Corp sense, but they have Profit Participation Units, an alternative structure I presume they concocted when Sam joined as CEO or when they first fell in bed with Microsoft. Now, does Sam have PPUs? Who knows?

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

#385

Post by threestar3 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #124
gkanai wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if sama and gdb raised $10B by early 2024, all of the GPU production capacity is already allocated years out. They'd have to buy some other company's GPUs at insane markups. And that's only on the hardware side.

Jensen will take Sam's calls in a heartbeat and personally ensure he has what he needs.

He can't. That capacity is sold. He is not going to get his company sued for a breach of contract for a personal favor.

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

#386

Post by edgyquant »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #366

Here's my preferred theory, it's a tale as old as time. Sam Altman, like Icarus, flew too close to Microsoft's giant pot of money. He pivoted the company away from it's founding mission, unleashing the very djinn they originally set out to harness. Turns out there were people at OpenAI who really believed in the original vision.

I hope this is the truth, it would give me a little more faith in humanity than I currently have

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

#387

Post by ALittleLight »

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…

Actually the genome for viruses, and bacteria, does seem to be open. Here is an FTP server where you can download a bunch of different diseases.

https://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/genomes/genbank/

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

#388

Post by edgyquant »

brysonreece wrote: post #324
MVissers wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not petty, it’s the integral mission of the company, the reason it was founded, the reason it got investors and the reason that many of the most brilliant scientists in the world work there. They started as a non-profit ffs.

And they still are. OpenAI consists of two parts; a non-profit entity which owns the IP, along with the obvious commercialization-focused subsidiary of the company. My question is: what was stopping both parties here from pursuing parallel paths? — have the non-profit/research oriented arm continue to focus on solving AGI, backed by the funds raised on from their LLM offerings? Were potential roadmaps really that div…

Because it really seems like the for profit side was building towards a Microsoft acquisition

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

#389

Post by two_in_one »

The main question is what to expect from OpenAI now? No changes very unlikely, that would mean it was just a power grab. So two options remain: more open, more closed. How about slow down and open up? Hope they wouldn't dumb down GPT4. If they allow to use their models to generate training sets (which is prohibited now, AFAIK), that would be nice.

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

#390

Post by ryandrake »

clnq wrote: post #134
janejeon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wording is very clearly hostile and aggressive, especially for a formal statement, and the wording, again, makes it very clear that they are burning all bridges with Sam Altman, and it is very clear that 1. it was done extremely suddenly, 2. with very little notice or discussion with any other stakeholder (e.g. Microsoft being completely blindsided, not even waiting 30 minutes for the stock market to close, doing…

It is quite gauche for a company to burn bridges with their upper management. This bodes poorly for ever hoping to attract executives in the future. Even Bobby Kotick got a more graceful farewell from Activision Blizzard, where they tried to clear his name. It is only prudent business. Certainly, this is very immature. It wouldn't be out of context in HBO's Succession. Whether what happened is right or just in some s…

People get fired all the time: suddenly, too. If I got fired by my company tomorrow, they wouldn't treat me with kid gloves, they'd just end my livelihood like it was nothing. I'd probably find out when I couldn't log in. Why should "upper management" get a graceful farewell? We don't have royalty in the USA. One person is not inherently better than another.
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