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OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

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Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#91

Post by dchichkov »

CSMastermind wrote: post #83
appplication wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Ilya’s problem with Sam was that he was acting out on his own and deviating from founding principles, he’s not going to have a good time under Elon.

From everything I can piece together the underlying problem is that Sam defunded Ilya's alignment research because they only have so much compute and they needed all of it to keep up with the demand for ChatGPT and the APIs, especially after dev day. Ilya losing access to the GPUs he needs to do his research so that the company can service a few more customers seemed like a fundamental betrayal to him and a sign that…

More likely that the WorldCoin project is doing poorly. With crypto and NFTs going down it could be a house of cards. And in a need of an urgent injection of money.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#92

Post by sashank_1509 »

breadwinner wrote: post #57

The key question in my mind is not who is going to be on the new board, but whether Ilya Sutskever will stay if Altman comes back. I worry that OpenAI without Ilya is not going to produce groundbreaking innovations at the same pace. Hopefully Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever can patch things up. That's more important than who they add or remove to the board.

I don’t know if Ilya contributed anything technically to OpenAI in the recent 2-3 years. He is broadly thanked along with Sam in GPT4 List of contributors, he is not mentioned in ChatGPT list of contributors, he is again thanked for advice in the GPT-3 list of contributors. The folks who resigned upon Sams ouster, Jacub Pachocki is credited as lead of GPT-4 , Greg Brockmann is credited for multiple things in GPT-4 ( he was the lead for training infra setup).

All of them would have left if Sam left, if anything letting Sam go would significantly hamstring OpenAI than letting Ilya go.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#93

Post by alecco »

layer8 wrote: post #68
nothrowaways wrote: post #41

Altman is more powerful than I thought.

I think he’s lucky that apparently many OpenAI employees support him, as otherwise there would be less leverage over the board. Investors can threaten the board, but where would they go if the brainpower stays with OpenAI?

> I think he’s lucky that apparently many OpenAI employees support him

This claim on the press had zero substance. It could well be, but there were no wide resignations or anything. Just 4 execs.

OTOH, Altman going for the high score could bump employee TCO 10x. So who knows. Passion vs greed.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#94

Post by nothrowaways »

layer8 wrote: post #68
nothrowaways wrote: post #41

Altman is more powerful than I thought.

I think he’s lucky that apparently many OpenAI employees support him, as otherwise there would be less leverage over the board. Investors can threaten the board, but where would they go if the brainpower stays with OpenAI?

It's not luck

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#95

Post by alecco »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #86
cedws wrote: post #5

The only power MS has is soft power as a backer. Will that win over the board's actual power? If MS pulls investment it will be a catastrophic blow.

That's actually hard power. MS is in a position to destroy OpenAI

Any other FAANG would happily fill that position if MS drops the ball.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#96

Post by spookthesunset »

dchichkov wrote: post #91
CSMastermind wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From everything I can piece together the underlying problem is that Sam defunded Ilya's alignment research because they only have so much compute and they needed all of it to keep up with the demand for ChatGPT and the APIs, especially after dev day. Ilya losing access to the GPUs he needs to do his research so that the company can service a few more customers seemed like a fundamental betrayal to him and a sign that…

More likely that the WorldCoin project is doing poorly. With crypto and NFTs going down it could be a house of cards. And in a need of an urgent injection of money.

The worldcoin thing really bugs me too. Any time there is crypto, somebody is scamming somebody else. Worldcoin is no different in this regard.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#97

Post by letmevoteplease »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #74
kranke155 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any way he can even stay if Altman returns? Seems like one of them is out and making their own AI venture soon.

He’d probably be better off going to Meta or HuggingFace and working on getting open source as close to OpenAI’s offerings as possible. I expect that real innovation (vs. commercialization) is now fully dead at OpenAI, with them instead focusing on ROÍ for Microsoft.

Ilya is not a champion of open source: "We were wrong. Flat out, we were wrong. If you believe, as we do, that at some point, AI — AGI — is going to be extremely, unbelievably potent, then it just does not make sense to open-source. It is a bad idea... I fully expect that in a few years it’s going to be completely obvious to everyone that open-sourcing AI is just not wise."

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/15/23640180/openai-gpt-4-lau...

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#98

Post by mrtksn »

breadwinner wrote: post #57

The key question in my mind is not who is going to be on the new board, but whether Ilya Sutskever will stay if Altman comes back. I worry that OpenAI without Ilya is not going to produce groundbreaking innovations at the same pace. Hopefully Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever can patch things up. That's more important than who they add or remove to the board.

Currently, it’s very unclear who operates under what motives. How much is it about ego? How much is it about money and how much is it due to intellectual positions? Maybe there’re are no heroes and maybe there’re no antiheroes? With the recent news about other investments and deals, the facade doesn’t seem to even resemble the OpenAI’s reality.

I can’t wait to read the autobiography of involved parties.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#99

Post by zeven7 »

jmckib wrote: post #67
brookst wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems clear that there weren’t specific reasons, just a kind of final straw in the product announcements that made the board realize how far from the original mission the company had drifted. Turning it into an emergency and surprise coup with innuendo of wrongdoing looks to have been a huge mistake, and may result in total loss of control where a more measured course correction could have succeeded.

Does the board not have final control? Why have they agreed (in principle) to step down? I wish more of the reporting around this was specific about who has the power to do what.

My guess is it’s hard to say exactly who has the power and where the power comes from. I bet Sam and his side don’t have any direct power, but their power in the negotiation comes from other sources, like the ability of more Sam loyalists to resign, and Microsoft legal threats which don’t have to be legitimate to be effective since they have such powerful lawyers. So on paper the board has all the power, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to the real world.
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