Crazy how a 4 person board staved off pressure from a behemoth like Microsoft
What can Microsoft do? Tell OpenAI they break their long-term agreement just because?..
This is what happens...
Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down
521–530 of 979 posts
Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down
#522The contrast between the media's depiction of today's events with this outcome demonstrates how much Sam and his aligned interests can influence a narrative. The vast majority of reporting indicated that Sam held all the leverage, the board members were about to be fired, and a new board would be appointed which would be much better aligned with Sam. These accounts took special care to portray the current board as in…
If this were true they never would have had talks to bring him back. That's the opposite of steadfast commitment to principles. If Sam wronged them or the company in a significant way they never should have let him back in the building. The board's decisions may or may not turn out to be correct in hindsight. But it's very difficult to say that this was a good example of leadership or decision making.
That is just current narrative, we don't know the details right? There was immense pressure from investors/Microsoft and board had to have that meeting. But the board probably already made their mind and did not balk under pressure.
Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down
#523Emmett is a self-proclaimed AI doomer. Given some of his Tweets from the past, it's likely the board indeed wants someone who will takes things slower: https://archive.is/tuf3s https://archive.is/sNvvs This is probably not something you want to hear as a researcher who is motivated by pushing the frontiers of our capabilities, nor as a researcher who is motivated by pushing their compensation.
Those researchers should be met with restraint.
One can ultimately still push the frontiers while also showing restraint - stop acting like it's either-or.
Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Mostly for professional purposes such as networking and promoting academic activities. Sometimes for their side startups.
I rarely see a professor or PhD student voicing a political viewpoint (which is what the Sam Altman vs Ilya Sutskever debate is) on their Twitter.
Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down
#525"We fired the CEO for being too profit-driven" is a terrible message to send to your employees when you've lured them in with $1m comp packages that mostly consist of "Profit Participation Units" that are only worth anything when you actually make money.
Maybe the executive management shouldn't have used "Profit Participation Units" to attract staff to join a non-profit organisation.
Seems like a way to put the incentives and motivations of the staff at odds with the charter of the organisation.
Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down
#526Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tip for builders: you can use the GPT APIs on Microsoft Azure. Managed reliably, nobody's quitting, no drama. Same APIs, just with better controls, global availability, and a very stable, reliable, and trustworthy provider. (disclosure: I work at Azure, but this is just my own observation).
I don't understand what point you're trying to make. Yes Microsoft uses OpenAI APIs. What is the point you're trying to make beyond that? It's still OpenAI software.
The current models would presumably be accessible for customers regardless of OpenAI’s state. If OpenAI were to hypothetically somehow vanish into thin air, products and features built on their products could still be supported by Azure’s offering.
Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down
#528I’m genuinely surprised that they stuck to their guns. The PR push behind Altman’s return was convincing enough that I had my doubts. Altman will be more than fine, he’ll get a bucket of money and the chance to prove he is the golden boy he’s been sold to the world. He will get to recruit a team that believes in his vision of accelerating AI for commercial use. This will lead to a more diverse market. I hope for the…
The whole situation should make it clear that SV media is beholden to VCs and will print anything they tell them to.
Bloomberg, the verge and the information all went to bat for Altman in a big way on this.
Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down
#529Earlier 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…
Also, serious investors won't touch OpenAI with a ten foot pole after these events. There's an idealistic bunch of people that think this was the best thing to happen to OpenAI, time will tell but I personally think this is the end of the company (and Ilya). Satya must be quite pissed off and rightly so, he gave them big money, believed in them and got backstabbed as well; disregarding @sama, MS is their single large…
But OpenAI is a non for profit that was exploring a goal that it saw financial incentives as misaligned.
It's what kind of got it achieved. Because every other company didn't really see the benefit of going straight to AGI, instead working on incremental addition and small iteration.
I don't know why the board decided to do what it did, but maybe it sees that OpenAI was moving away from R&D and too much into operations and selling a product.
So my point is that, OpenAI started as a charity and literally was setup in a way to protect that model, by having the for-profit arm be governed by the non-for-profit wing.
The funny thing is, Sam Altman himself was part of the people who wanted it that way, along with Elon Musk, Illya and others.
And I kind of agree, what kind of future is there here? OoenAI becomes another billion dollar startup that what? Eventually sells out with a big exit?
It's possible to see the whole venture as taking away from the goal set out by the non for profit.
Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down
#530HN! If I had a recorded phone call, emails and chats I thought it would be the better for the public to know about, how would I go ahead and share such in the best and most anonymous way?
First of all know that California is a two party consent state. You’d be putting yourself in grave legal danger if your identity could be inferred from a leaked recorded phone call.