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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

#261

Post by frabcus »

seanhunter wrote: post #189
valine wrote: post #97

Not a word from Ilya. I can’t wrap my mind around his motivation. Did he really fire Sam over “AI safety” concerns? How is that remotely rational.

No he didn't fire Sam over AI safety concerns. That's completely made up by people in the twittersphere. The only thing we know is that the board said the reason was that he lied to the board. The guardian[1] reported that he was working on a new startup[1] and that staff had been told it was due to a breakdown in communication and not to do with anything regarding safety, security, malfeasance or a bunch of other th…

The Atlantic Article makes it pretty clear that the fast growth of the commercial business was giving Ilya too few resources and too little time to do the safety work he wanted to do: https://archive.ph/UjqmQ

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

#262

Post by theptip »

TechnicolorByte wrote: post #57

I still cannot process what’s happened to one of the most prominent and hyped companies of the past year in just one weekend. If it’s true that Altman won’t return to OpenAI (or alternatively: that the current board won’t step down) then where does that leave OpenAI? Microsoft can’t be happy, as evidenced by reporting that Nadella was acting as mediator to bring him back. Does OpenAI survive this? Will be super inter…

The big question in my mind is the reported threat from MSFT to withhold cloud credits (i.e. the actual currency of their $10B investment). Is this true? And are they going to follow through?

I don't buy for a second that enough employees will walk to sink the company (though it could be very be disruptive). But for OpenAI, losing a big chunk of their compute could mean they are unable to support their userbase and that could permanently damage their market position.

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

#263

Post by tdubhro1 »

valine wrote: post #97

Not a word from Ilya. I can’t wrap my mind around his motivation. Did he really fire Sam over “AI safety” concerns? How is that remotely rational.

If it really was about “safety” then why wouldn’t Ilya have made some statement about opening the details of their model at least to some independent researchers under some tight controls. This is what makes it look like a simple power grab, the board has said absolutely nothing about what actions they would take to move toward a safer model of development.

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

#264

Post by bnralt »

threeseed wrote: post #178
alsodumb wrote: post #120

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…

Team Sam = Team Money. If you're an employee at OpenAI there is a huge opportunity to leave and get in early with decent equity at potentially the next giant tech company. Pretty sure everyone at OpenAI's HQ in San Francisco remembers how many overnight millionaires Facebook's IPO created.

There's a financial incentive. And there will be more opportunity for funding if you jump ship as well (it seems like OpenAI will have difficulty with investors after this).

But also, if you're a cutting edge researcher, do you want to stay at a company that just ousted the CEO because they thought the speed of technology was going too fast (it's sounded like this might be the reason)? You don't want to be shackled when by the organization becoming a new MIRI.

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

#265

Post by tatrajim »

hliyan wrote: post #122
_lvbh wrote: post #44

I’m glad people in this thread are supporting the OpenAI board in this decision. There seems to be too much celebrity worship around Altman from all the tech/crypto bros. Also, any new competition started by Altman would be good for the ecosystem in general.

I think in the long run, the board doing (even though somewhat clumsily) what it's supposed to do, which is to ensure the Charter, will emerge as the prevailing view. Apart from that, OpenAI was becoming too dominant, and a new entrant led by Altman would be a gift thing in the long run.

And, for joy: Baidu, Alibaba, Samsung et al. have a golden chance to close the current gap. Loud cheers and high-fives from the ea/decel camp at helping hobble the U.S. leader.

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

#267

Post by qwertox »

haldujai wrote: post #148
alsodumb wrote: post #120

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?

Which would mean that he specifically selected who to follow due to their closeness to / alignment with Sam, pre-ousting? How would he do that?

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

#269

Post by ethbr1 »

alsodumb wrote: post #170
haldujai wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How childish are employees to publicly get involved with this on Twitter?

If the CEO of my company got shitcanned and then he/she and the board were feuding?

... I'd talk to my colleagues and friends privately, and not go anywhere near the dumpster fire publicly. If I felt strongly, hell, turn in my resignation. But 100% "no comment" in public.

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