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OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

bloomberg.com

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

#181

Post by slavetologic »

thepasswordis wrote: post #123
mrtksn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Ego I can absolutely empathize with Ilya here, though. As far as I know the tech making openai function is largely his life’s work. It would be extremely frustrating to have Sam be the face of it, and be given the credit for it. Sam is clearly a very accomplished businessman and networker. Those people are super important, I wish I had a person like him on my team. I’ve had the experience of other people tacitly tak…

I can personally understand this, and am currently struggling with it. It's hard that the world works this way.

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

#182

Post by g42gregory »

From the article: "...but Microsoft hasn’t decided whether it wants board representation..."

This is not a good sign. Microsoft the largest $10Bn investor, who is in the middle of pushing through the restructuring of the company, hasn't decided if they want board representation? The only reason you would do that if they want to keep their options open, in the future, to hit OpenAI hard (legally and/or to raid the personnel).

Board representation would come with a fiduciary responsibility and it looks like they may not want that. I could only imagine the intensity of Microsoft senior engineers screaming that they could replicate all of this in-house (not saying whether it's justified or not).

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

#183

Post by belter »

As of this moment the website still says under: https://openai.com/our-structure

Our board "OpenAI is governed by the board of the OpenAI Nonprofit, comprised of OpenAI Global, LLC employees Greg Brockman (Chairman & President), Ilya Sutskever (Chief Scientist), and Sam Altman (CEO), and non-employees Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner."

There is also a prominent red notice that seems made for somebody in Seattle...

IMPORTANT

*Investing in OpenAI Global, LLC is a *high-risk investment*

*Investors could lose their capital contribution and not see any return*

*It would be wise to view an investment in OpenAI Global,LLC in the spirit of a donation, with the understanding that it may be difficult to know what role money will play in a post-AGI world*

I am going to grab more popcorn...

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

#184

Post by jart »

ioulaum wrote: post #127
mrtksn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Given that nothing criminal happened, canning Sam with no chance for discussion was just overkill. It's probably more of an intellectual / philosophical position, given that they just did not think through the real impact on the business (and thus the mission itself) I'm inclined to assume that something stupid was done. It happens. They should resolve it, fix the rules for how the board can behave, and move on. Desp…

Is this the kind of alignment we can expect from superintelligence? Gossiping, surprise trials, and purges?

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

#185

Post by Solvency »

g42gregory wrote: post #182

From the article: "...but Microsoft hasn’t decided whether it wants board representation..." This is not a good sign. Microsoft the largest $10Bn investor, who is in the middle of pushing through the restructuring of the company, hasn't decided if they want board representation? The only reason you would do that if they want to keep their options open, in the future, to hit OpenAI hard (legally and/or to raid the per…

Microsoft is looking amateur. Even I the layman can take one look at OpenAI's ridiculously convoluted structure and it's laughably threadbare and ill-equipped board members and know something is wrong. Microsoft should have looked at this and forced them to clean up their act before getting in bed with them. Now they're embroiled in the bush league shenanigans.

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

#187

Post by lucubratory »

foobarqux wrote: post #102
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.

The other question is what happens to the pretense of "safety". The CEO explicitly said multiple times that he does not have unilateral control, that he is subordinate to the board and that the board's job was to remove him if it he was pursuing an unsafe course. Assuming he gets re-instated that would all be shown to be false.

Yeah, a $2.8Tn tech company and a venture capitalist's network managing to overturn the non-profit Board's completely legal action (legally required of the Board, even) they took in furtherance of their Charter would be the ultimate practical demonstration that no legal structure, not even those specifically designed to do so, is above what capital wants. It's their world, we're just living in it, and they want to make sure they make the next world subservient to them too.

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

#188

Post by Tenoke »

someperson wrote: post #152
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.

Elon Musk has been very critical of OpenAI's switch from a non-profit focused on AI safety to a for-profit competing with Tesla. It's why he fell out and left OpenAI despite investing $100 million to start it. I'd say he's well aligned with Ilya's position. Early on I wondered if he was an instigator of the entire board coup.

The problem is Elon's approach to alignment as presented during x.ai launch is pretty different to what Ilya says and as far as I can tell pretty naive on top of that.

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

#189

Post by eganist »

staticautomatic wrote: post #155
tw04 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Elon is able to promise him the resources he needs to do his research then I think it could work out. Who on earth would ever trust an Elon promise at this point? The guy literally can’t open his mouth without making a promise he can’t keep. Unless Ilya is getting something in a bulletproof contract and is willing to spend a decade fighting for it in court, he’s an idiot doing anything with Elon.

Contract wherein Musk pays all legal fees would be pretty trustworthy

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/24/musks-twitter-has-been-sued-...

He's pretty bad at honoring contracts too

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

#190

Post by whyenot »

trashtester wrote: post #79
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.

A rough guess is that Elon will pick up Ilya, with a promise to really aim for safe AGI.

I apologize in advance for this snarky comment, but with Elon’s track record when it comes to safety at Twitter and Tesla, I would doubt his sincerity or follow-through on AI safety.
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