461–470 of 979 posts
This entire show will damage Altman and what remains of OpenAI equally - OpenAI because of its unprofessional way of dealing with internal problems, and Altman, well, there's apparently a reason they were unhappy with him.
The only thing it damages about Altman is the credibility of him using his purported concern for AI safety as a PR lever for regulatory capture.
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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 w…
Just as another perspective.
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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.
I like science fiction too, but all of these potential scenarios seem so far removed from the low level realities of how these systems work. I'm not suggesting we don't see ASI in some distant future, maybe 100+ years away. But to suggest we're even within a decade of having ASI seems silly to me. Maybe there's research I haven't read, but as a daily user of AI, it's hilarious to think people are existentially concer…
Maybe they don't seem that to others? I mean, you're not really making an argument here. I also use GPT daily and I'm definitely worried. It seems to me that we're pretty close to a point where a system using GPT as a strategy generator can "close the loop" and generate its own training data on a short timeframe. At that point, all bets are off.
Reality check for those who need it: Altman won't be starting a competing company. First, he may have contractual restrictions and second, OpenAI owns their IP. And even if Altman is somehow free to do what he wants because he was fired (doubtful), anyone who quits to go with him surely do have airtight non-competes. Besides, it's not like Sam and his few loyalists are just going to spin up a few servers and duplicat…
Want to bet? Altman has been building himself as the public face of AI and won't let that go so easily. It's not like his world coin is taking off... And non competes can be as airtight as you like.. they are completely unenforceable in California which is where OpenAI's HQ is based and where Sam Altman lives. First the loyal will jump ship. Followed quickly by the mercenaries who see the chance to join a new rocket…
California's non-compete laws don't cover "trade secrets", only your ability to use your expertise to pursue employment in your chosen field. In other words, if you're just a regular programmer, you can go work wherever you like or start a competing company. If you're a principal scientist or architect, you would be in danger of violating your contract. Anyone who went with Altman would presumably have deep inside knowledge of OpenAI's secret sauce and therefore be restricted.
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OpenAI has hundreds more employees, all of whom are incredibly smart. While they will definitely lose the leadership and talent of those two, it’s not as if a nuclear bomb dropped on their HQ and wiped out all their engineers! So questioning whether they will survive seems very silly and incredibly premature to me
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…
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I take it you have never made a pledge to someone. It’s a signal. The only meaning is the circumstances under which the signal is given: Sam made an ask. These were answers.
This is how one answers if they actually intend to quit: https://x.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559?s=46&t=Q5EXJgwO... There’s nothing wrong with not following, it’s a brave and radical thing to do. A heart emoji tweet doesn’t mean much by itself.
You can disagree. You can say only explicit non-emoji messages matter. That’s ok. We can agree to disagree.
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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.
But if we're seeing the existence of an unaligned superintelligence, surely it's squarely too late to do something about it.
Reality check for those who need it: Altman won't be starting a competing company. First, he may have contractual restrictions and second, OpenAI owns their IP. And even if Altman is somehow free to do what he wants because he was fired (doubtful), anyone who quits to go with him surely do have airtight non-competes. Besides, it's not like Sam and his few loyalists are just going to spin up a few servers and duplicat…
noncompetes are illegal in california
This entire show will damage Altman and what remains of OpenAI equally - OpenAI because of its unprofessional way of dealing with internal problems, and Altman, well, there's apparently a reason they were unhappy with him.
They were apparently unhappy with him because he's too good at business, so I think his reputation is intact.
If I am good at hacking computers, it does not mean that I should hack all of them and get to the jail.