251–260 of 596 posts
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-leadership-hangs-in-balan...
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I've only seen support for Altman from the press. (guess who spends ads on the press and has more political connections) The board was naive, to say the least.
The Bloomberg article about Altman seeking funding for a conflicting venture seems like a plant by the other side: https://archive.is/3LaJF
This is the most important quote: "We can say definitively that the board’s decision was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices. This was a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board."
If it were a plant by the other camp how would this make it there? Also the whole article sounds like "You don't want him as a CEO? He is going to get sooo much money, and going to out compete you sooo hard. He is already in talks for his new venture." Which is obviously what Sam's side would like to project.
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The most logical outcome would be for Microsoft to buy the for-profit OpenAI entity off its non-profit parent for $50B or some other exorbitant sum. They have the money, this would give the non-profit researchers enough play money that they can keep chasing AGI indefinitely, all the employees who joined the for-profit entity chasing a big exit could see their payday, and the new corporate parent could do what they wa…
The new investors entered at a ~90B USD valuation for info. Microsoft I don't think they need it: Assuming they have the whole 90B USD to spend: it doesn't really make sense; they have full access to the source-code of OpenAI and datasets (because the whole training and runtime runs on their servers already). They could poach employees and make them better offers, and get away with a much more efficient cost-basis, +…
Sure, Microsoft has physical access to the source code and model weights because it's trained on their servers. That doesn't mean they can just take it. If you've ever worked at a big cloud provider or enterprise software system, you'll know that there's a big legal firewall around customer data that is stored within the company's systems, and you can't look at it or touch it without the customer's consent, and even then only for specific business purposes.
Same goes for the board. Legally, the non-profit board is in charge of the for-profit OpenAI entity, and Microsoft does not get a vote. If they want the board gone but the board does not want to step down, too bad. They have the option of poaching all the talent and trying to re-create the models - but they have to do this employee-by-employee, they can't take any confidential OpenAI data or code, etc. Microsoft may have OpenAI by the balls economically, but OpenAI has Microsoft by the balls legally.
A buyout solves both of these problems. It's an exchange of economic value (which Microsoft has in spades) for legal control (which the OpenAI board currently has). Straightens out all the misaligned incentives and lets both parties get what they really want, which is the point of transactions in the first place.
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That defeats the purpose of having a board. Which is sometimes the desired outcome, of course, but if I were Microsoft I am not sure I’d want Sam in there with zero checks and balances. I also wouldn’t want Ilya in there without checks and balances, to be clear. So the challenge is identifying the right adults. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that negotiation to complete successfully in the eyes of all parties…
If Sam returns he doesn't want to risk getting ousted again? So presumably he'll appoint people 100% loyal to him. Plenty of precedent for tech founders to have total board control. It will take a little while for Sam to consolidate power, but he won't forget what happened this weekend and he'll play the long game accordingly.
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Did you figure out the motives behind Bitcoin too while doing your research?
despite being invented for non-scam purposes, it turns out to be a productivity multipler for scammers more than anyone else. and also Bitcoin might be the exception that proves the rule - every other chain or token is managed by a few insiders taking get-rich-quick marks for a ride.
Wild that there can be various factions with apparently only three relevant people (yes I know 3 choose 2 is three, but c’Mon…).
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Ilya is the stereotypical genius mind that is extremely passionate yet disconnected from the real world. He got way too worked up about abstract issues, failed to see the bigger picture and had a meltdown that other board members took seriously because he's a cofounder. He is instrumental in the research but he shouldn't be running the business.
He seems to have gone the way of Eliezer Yudkowsky (but with actual technical chops).
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> Microsoft has certain rights to OpenAI’s intellectual property so if their relationship were to break down, Microsoft would still be able to run OpenAI’s current models on its servers. https://archive.is/jUJEH
And in exchange for those rights, OpenAI has certain rights to compute credits. Microsoft doesn't get to break contract and keep what they got out of the deal while ceasing to supply what provided as part of the deal. That's called theft.
This seems to me like an example of how difficult it is to organize a company around a goal other then making money. As a non-profit, OpanAI was not supposed to be a profit maximizing enterprise. But how is a board supposed to opperate, and set objectives without a clear goal like profit maximization? Usually a boards represents the owners of the business and their interested. The OpenAI board does not represent the…
Hard in sense that for-profit part has actual power here?
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> They can replicate the tech internally without any doubt and without OpenAI. Would they be also able to keep up with development?
Would a 2.75 trillion dollar software company that has been around since the inception of the modern computer be able to keep up? Probably. If the people running it and the shareholders were committed to keeping up and spending money to do so.