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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?

#391

Post by dragonwriter »

two_in_one wrote: post #389

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.

> So two options remain: more open, more closed.

All kinds of changes are possible that would not, in net, be more open or more closed, either because there primary change would not be about openness, or because it would be more open in some ways and less in others.

So, no, there are more than two options.

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

#392

Post by TeMPOraL »

dragonwriter wrote: post #370
junofan wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, I definitely wouldn't want Altman in charge of any superintelligence, so "I'm not sure" would be an improvement, if I expected an imminent superintelligence.

What if - hear me out - what if the firing is the doing of an AGI? Maybe OpenAI succeeded and now the AI is calling the shots (figuratively, though eventually maybe literally too).

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

#393

Post by TeMPOraL »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #41
junofan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very unprofessional way to approach this disagreement.

When two people have different ideologies and neither is willing to backdown or compromise, one person must "go".

You've summed AI X-risk in a single sentence.

(I.e. an AGI would be one of the two people here.)

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

#394

Post by two_in_one »

dragonwriter wrote: post #391
two_in_one wrote: post #389

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.

> So two options remain: more open, more closed. All kinds of changes are possible that would not, in net, be more open or more closed, either because there primary change would not be about openness, or because it would be more open in some ways and less in others. So, no, there are more than two options.

It's hard to imagine more closed. They have opened only "whisper" and old stuff. Neither is a problem from moral standpoint. Whisper 'helps people' and is very in line with the 'mission'. One thing they can do is end MS exclusivity. Google would like it. At the same time opening too much would mean giving access to 'unfriendly' governments.

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

#395

Post by astrange »

bushbaba wrote: post #224
lotsofpulp wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and pissing off Microsoft by tanking their stock price When did Microsoft’s stock price tank? https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MSFT/

See after hours. Looks like down ~1.5%

Doesn't matter unless it lasts a lot longer than a day.

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

#396

Post by two_in_one »

dwd wrote: post #375
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.

Nicely put. The original vision is pretty clear, and a compelling reason to not screw around and get sidetracked, even if that has massive commercialisation upside. Thankfully M$ didn't have control of the board.

> Thankfully M$ didn't have control of the board

You never know. Remember Nokia?

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

#397

Post by leobg »

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/

> This was about stopping a runaway train before it flew off a cliff with all of us on board. Believe me, the board and I gave him tons of chances to self-correct. But his ego was out of control.

> Don't let the media hype fool you. Sam wasn't some genius visionary. He was a glory-hungry narcissist cutting every corner in some deluded quest to be the next Musk.

That does align with Ilya’s tweet about ego being in the way of great achievements.

And it does align with Sam’s statements on Lex’s podcast about his disagreements with Musk. He compared himself to Elon’s SpaceX being bullied by Elon’s childhood heroes. But he didn’t seem sad about it - just combative. Elon’s response to the NASA astronauts distrusting his company’s work was “They should come visit and see what we’re doing”. Sam’s reaction was very different. Like, “If he says bad things about us, I can say bad things about him too. It’s not my style. But maybe I will, one day”. Same sentiment as he is showing now (“if I go off the board can come after me for the value of my shares”).

All of that does paint a picture where it really isn’t about doing something necessary for humanity and future generations, and more about being considered great. The odd thing is that this should get you fired, especially in SF, of all places.

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

#398

Post by smoldesu »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #216
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry. Robust research says no. Remember, people thought Eliza was AGI too. https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.03762 If it was really AGI, there won't even be ambiguity and room for comments like mine.

As if most humans would do any better on those exercises. This thing is two years old . Be patient.

Transformer-based LLMs are almost a half-decade old at this point, and GPT-4 is the least-efficient model of it's kind ever produced (that I am aware of).

OpenAI's performance is not and has never been proportional to the size of their models. Their big advantage is scale, which lets them ship unrealistically large models by leveraging subsidized cloud costs. They win by playing a more destructive and wasteful game, and their competitors can beat them by shipping a cheaper competitive alternative.

What exactly are we holding out for, at this point? A miracle?

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

#399

Post by smilespray »

two_in_one wrote: post #396
dwd wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nicely put. The original vision is pretty clear, and a compelling reason to not screw around and get sidetracked, even if that has massive commercialisation upside. Thankfully M$ didn't have control of the board.

> Thankfully M$ didn't have control of the board You never know. Remember Nokia?

That still pisses me off.
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