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Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

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Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#161

I'm expecting lawsuits in the next day or two from Altman for libel and defamation. I'd be surprised if OpenAI investors don't go to the courts also ASAP.

Surely, not being on the board you cannot just assume that you know all there is to simply assume that there is only one side to a story? Just because they aren't tweeting a storm does not mean they don't have reasons...

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every researcher I know at OpenAI who are on twitter re-tweeted Sam Atlman's heart tweet with their own heart or some other supportive message. I'm sure that's a sign that they are all team Sam - this includes a ton of researchers you see on most papers that came out of OpenAI. That's a good chunk of their research team and that'd be a very big loss. Also there are tons of engineers (and I know a few of t…

It's always been my observation that the actual heavyweights of any hardcore engineering project are the ones that avoid snarky lightweight platforms like twitter like the plague. I would imagine that if you based hiring and firing decisions on the metric of 'how often this employee tweets' you could quite effectively cut deadwood. With that in mind...

That's not the case with AI community. Twitter is heavily used by almost every professor/researcher/PhD student who is doing learning. Ilya has one. Heck even Jitendra Malik who's probably as old as my grand father joined twitter.

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#163

Can’t wait to see how many staffers who said they would quit sheep their way into the office tomorrow to collect their million dollar salaries Thanks Sam we bluffed but no way we quiting

Those few with million dollar salaries can start tomorrow for even much higher salaries in the current market.

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#165

Contrarian prediction: OpenAI will be just fine. The board will bring in an adult CEO who can balance the nonprofit charter with Microsoft and the commercial business, and who doesn't have a million side projects taking his or her focus away. Some employees will leave but the vast majority will stay for the usual reasons (i.e. inertia), the business will keep growing because ChatGPT is already a worldwide brand at th…

If they don't get Altman back, Altman starts a new company AkshuallyOpenAI and most talent moves there. They quickly get the funding and the contracts with MS. OpenAI is left in the dust.

Yes, but data for the training, model development and other things requires a lot of time and investment, with OpenAI having a huge head start.

It is to be seen if investors will likely pour another set of billions of dollars, just to catch up to speed with OpenAI, which, by that time, would have even further evolved.

There is a ray of hope that, as it so happens in this field, that old things are quickly obsolete and new things are the cutting edge, Sam Altman can convince investors to invest in the cutting edge with him. Then investors have a choice on an almost level field, to choose between people, companies and personalities, for a given outcome.

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every researcher I know at OpenAI who are on twitter re-tweeted Sam Atlman's heart tweet with their own heart or some other supportive message. I'm sure that's a sign that they are all team Sam - this includes a ton of researchers you see on most papers that came out of OpenAI. That's a good chunk of their research team and that'd be a very big loss. Also there are tons of engineers (and I know a few of t…

It's always been my observation that the actual heavyweights of any hardcore engineering project are the ones that avoid snarky lightweight platforms like twitter like the plague. I would imagine that if you based hiring and firing decisions on the metric of 'how often this employee tweets' you could quite effectively cut deadwood. With that in mind...

I have never used twitter but this strikes me as a strange take at best. Many of the most brilliant and passionate engineers I've had the pleasure to work with have been massive shitposters.

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#167
This saga highlights something that I found challenging when I was on the board of a startup, and which the board has completely misplayed. The difference between authority and autonomy. If you're on the board of OpenAI which is doing fantastically well etc you're a big deal. You have a great deal of authority.

You may well think that the structure of the company and how the votes on the board work etc means that any motion you can carry at the board is within the sphere of things you can achieve i.e. that you have autonomy to do anything you can secure the votes for, but that's rarely the case. In actual practise people like the investors and other stakeholders can change the rules if they need to, exercise soft pressure, bring legal suits and do other things. Your autonomy to act is effectively pretty narrow.

However this finally plays out, whether Sam comes back or not, whether openAI's board changes, the people who orchestrated this have seriously damaged themselves and they will most likely have less of both authority and autonomy in future.

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every researcher I know at OpenAI who are on twitter re-tweeted Sam Atlman's heart tweet with their own heart or some other supportive message. I'm sure that's a sign that they are all team Sam - this includes a ton of researchers you see on most papers that came out of OpenAI. That's a good chunk of their research team and that'd be a very big loss. Also there are tons of engineers (and I know a few of t…

> Pretty much every researcher I know at OpenAI who are on twitter Selection bias?

Not if it's a big sample set. There's a guy on twitter who make a list with every OpenAI researcher he could find on twitter and almost all of them did react to Sams tweet in a supportive way.
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