So the discussions are definitely happening it seems: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1726345564059832609
Bonus perspective: https://twitter.com/jasonkwon/status/1726348678116548979
Well played.
OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role
551–560 of 596 posts
Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is hard to negotiate when the investors and for-profit part basically has much more power. They tried to bring them in front of a fait accompli situation, as this was their only chance, but they seem to have failed. I do not think they had a better move in the current situation right now, sadly.
Why’d they smear Sam? Couldn’t they have released a statement saying they just don’t see eye to eye anymore?
You do not fire a CEO because you hold some personal grudges towards them. You fire them because they do something wrong. And I do not see any evidence or indication of smearing Altman, unless they lie about (ie I do not see any indication of them lying about it).
Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role
#553Altman is more powerful than I thought.
If he wins in this, it’ll mean he’d maneuvered himself into a position of controlling the whole thing—in fact, if not on paper—some time back. The “coup” people’ve been writing about will have been his actions over the last year or so, not the board’s. Big money on the line. Insane, life-changing payouts in the cards. Altman and MS on the side of those, the board on the side of the mission. Money’s likely to win.
Plot twist: Iliya, Altman and the orher guy fired planned all this to make the board look dumb, remove them, and take full control without being held back any longer.
Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is toatlly irrelevant to the board's initial decision though.
I think what people in this thread and others are trying to say is that to run a organization like OpenAI you need lots and lots funding. AI research is incredibly costly due to highly paid researchers and an ungodly amount of GPU resources. To put all current funding at risk by pissing off current investors and enterprise customers puts the whole mission of the organization at risk. That's where the perceived incomp…
I understand that. What is missing is the purpose of running such an organisation. OpenAI has achieved a lot, but is it going to the direction and towards the purpose it was founded on? I do not see how one can argue that. For a non-profit, creating value is a means to a goal, not a goal in itself (as opposed to a for-profit org). People thinking that the problem of this move is that it destroys value for openAI showcase the real issue perfectly.
Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are assuming he wouldn't steal t from OpenAI. He could have a low level employee steal it, and manage to keep it a secret until AGI is born then he takes over the world.
This is a pretty wild comment. That's a very safe assumption and no low level employee will do Sams bidding in an illegal enterprise. And keeping it a secret isn't going to work either and whether or not AGI is 'born' (who will bear it) is an open question to which I hope the answer is 'not for a while'. Because we haven't even figured out how to get humans to cooperate which I think should be a prerequisite.
> no low level employee will do Sams bidding in an illegal enterprise
Many people have betrayed their country to foreign governments in exchange for mere thousands of dollars. It is never safe to rule out the willingness of employees to engage in corporate espionage, even in exchange for truly pitiful rewards. It would be a stupid idea, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.
Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is board membership controlled? For a profit company, you buy shares and elect the board, right? If they turn the company into something nobody wants, the shares lose value, and maybe someone picks up the shares cheap and turns it around. So there's a feedback cycle. The profit motive is almost incidental. But here do the current board members just appoint the next board members and grow/shrink the total number?
You'd need to have access to the various legal docs of the OpenAI non-profit to be able to answer that question. But there was a move in the works to expand the board after a recent resignation. This is why - normally - the number of directors on the board is specified in those documents and a quorum of a minimum number of people is required to be able to make certain decisions, especially ones with potentially far r…
Isn't that the problem though? No outside feedback? Just whatever the current board thinks?
Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems somewhat clear that at the end of the day there are two camps, Ilya and Sam. Sam is backed by investors who are looking for returns, and are not sure if Ilya will get them the same juicy 100X. So, if Sam comes back, then I’m pretty sure Ilya will go on his own. Whether he will focus on GPT or AGI or ?, is anyone’s guess, as is how many from OpenAI will follow him as everyone loves money. EDIT: Ilya should ha…
Who would invest in Ilya, though, when he very publicly tried to oust one of his oldest allies and failed? Trust can’t be built that way
Why wouldn't I trust someone who took action to uphold their organizational charter, knowing there would be intense pressure to do otherwise?
Investment is only partially about trust. I agree Sam's a pretty investable guy. I expect Sam to pursue growth through fundraising, product commercialization, corporate partnerships, etc in exactly the YC mode. He's also clearly ok with letting the momentum of that growth overwhelm the original stated aims of OpenAI, especially given what the original firing press release said about Sam not being entirely forthright. I suspect Microsoft made their investment knowing that something like this might happen. It's not trustworthy that he tried to overwhelm nonprofit aims under for-profit momentum, but if you're an investor do you care?
Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role
#558This is why, when you claim to be running a non-profit to "benefit humankind," you shouldn't put all your resources into a for-profit subsidiary. Eventually, the for-profit arm, and its investors, will find its nonprofit parent a hindrance, and an insular board of directors won't stand a chance against corporate titans.
Yeah, but also remember that Altman and Musk started the non-profit to begin with (back when both their reputations were much different). They were explicitly concerned about Google's dominance in AI. It was always competitive, and always about power. Wikipedia gives these names: In December 2015, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Infosys,…
Thank-you. Not a lot of times remind me of this heady stuff, but the comment did. So here goes.
---
A Nobel Prize was awarded to Ilya Prigogine in 1977 for his contributions in irreversible thermodynamics. At his award speech in Stockholm, Ilya showed a practical application of his thesis.
He derived that, in times of superstability, lost trust is directly reversible by removing the cause of that lost trust.
He went on to show that in disturbed times, lost trust becomes irreversible. That is, in unstable periods, management can remove the cause of trust lost--and nothing happens.
Since his thesis is based on mathematical physics, it occupies the same niche of certainty as the law of gravity. Ignore it at your peril.
-- Design for Prevention (2010)
Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role
#559Many are speculating that Sam Altman could just move on and create another OpenAI 2.0 because he could easily attract talent and investors. What this misses is all the regulatory capture that he’s been campaigning for. All the platforms have now closed their gardens. Authors and artists are much more vigilant about copyright etc. So it’s now a totally different game compared to 3 years ago because the data is not jus…
There are massive numbers of archives.
Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role
#560Many are speculating that Sam Altman could just move on and create another OpenAI 2.0 because he could easily attract talent and investors. What this misses is all the regulatory capture that he’s been campaigning for. All the platforms have now closed their gardens. Authors and artists are much more vigilant about copyright etc. So it’s now a totally different game compared to 3 years ago because the data is not jus…
OpenAI has enough momentum and built enough moat that Sam Altman cannot replicate it. If he can actually replicate it and over take openai, then the business itself has no legs as it will be easily commoditized and any moat nullified in no time
...unless he takes half the key employees with him.