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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

#301
post #108

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…

What I think is funny is how the whole "we're just doing this to make sure AI is safe" meme breaks down, if you have OpenAI, Anthropic, and Altman AI all competing, which seems likely now. Do you really need all 3? Is each one going to claim that they're the only ones who can develop AGI safely? Since Sam left, now OpenAI is unsafe? But I thought they were the safe ones, and he was being reckless. Or is Sam just goin…

[dead]

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

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Survive as existing? They will. But this is a disaster that can't be sugarcoated. Working in an AI company with a doomer as head is ridiculous. It will be like working in a tobacco company advocating for lung cancer awareness. I don't think the new CEO can do anything to get back trust in record short amount of time. The sam loyalists will leave. The question remain, how is the new CEO going to hire new people, and w…

Surely the employees knew before joining that OpenAI is a non-profit aiming to develop safe AGI?

OpenAI's recruiting pitch was 5-10+ million/year in the form of equity. The structure of the grants is super weird by traditional big-company standards, but it was plausible enough that you could squint and call it the same. I'd posit that many of the people jumping to OpenAI are doing it for the cash and not the mission.

https://the-decoder.com/openai-lures-googles-top-ai-research....

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said Adam should've never been on board. I was arguing about the part after Poe was competing with OpenAI after DevDay. That's where he has a clear, very strong conflict of interest and to be honest that's where the board/Adam took the most impactful decision that OpenAI board ever made.

On the other hand, Sam & Greg had the opportunity to confront Adam about the obvious conflict and likely could have forced him to step down if they wanted him to. They made their choice. Zero mention about Adam & Poe in the leaks from Sam's camp also suggests Sam doesn't fault Adam's character here.

I didn't read OpenAI's company charter, but forcing Adam down would probably require a board majority. It's not like they would have made Adam step down if they wanted to.

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

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Survive as existing? They will. But this is a disaster that can't be sugarcoated. Working in an AI company with a doomer as head is ridiculous. It will be like working in a tobacco company advocating for lung cancer awareness. I don't think the new CEO can do anything to get back trust in record short amount of time. The sam loyalists will leave. The question remain, how is the new CEO going to hire new people, and w…

Surely the employees knew before joining that OpenAI is a non-profit aiming to develop safe AGI?

They thought so. Now, they know that instead they work for one aiming to satisfy the ego of a specific group of people - same as everywhere else.

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

#307

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…

No, OpenAI will not survive as a company with more than one shareholder. At the end of the day, MSFT has a fiduciary duty to its own shareholders. MSFT has set certain expectations for its own financial performance based on its agreements with OpenAI and MSFT shares traded based on those expectations. Now OpenAI has sustained a hemorrhage of its leadership that negotiated those agreements, including a public admission by OpenAI of deception in their boardroom and private talk of a potential competitor involving employees. The only question is if OpenAI will capitulate or the lawyers and supply chain will be leveraged to compel their cooperation with protecting the MSFT shareholders. MSFT has deep enough pockets to retain all of the workers. One way or another, the IP and their ops are now the property of the bank, in this case MSFT shareholders. Let’s hope nobody goes to jail by resisting what is a standard cleanup operation at this point.

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

#308

For a change, maybe it'd be a good idea to get a CEO who at least has faint idea about how ML works on a technical level? Would you like a company that builds rockets to be led by some salesman who doesn't understand basic Physics? Probably not. You don't need to be Hinton or Schmidhuber, but come on, who thinks it's a good idea to have these typical "Silicon Valley VC CEOs" lead an AI company?

[flagged]

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

#309
post #289
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death. The default consequence of AGI's arrival is doom. Aligning a super intelligence with our desires is a problem that no one has solved yet. "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else." ---- Listen to Dwarkesh Podcast with Eliezer or Carl Shulman to know more about this.

> Aligning a super intelligence with our desires is a problem that no one has solved yet. It's a problem that we haven't seen the existence of yet. It's like saying no one has solved the problem of alien invasions.

No, the problem with AGI is potential exponential growth.

So less like an alien invasion.

And more like a pandemic at the speed of light.

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

#310

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…

Don’t have twits on the board. Lesson learnt.
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