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Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

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531–540 of 979 posts

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

#531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain to me what they mean by "safe" AGI? I've looked in many places and everyone is extremely vague. Certainly no one is suggesting these systems can become "alive", so what exactly are we trying to remain safe from? Job loss?

[flagged]

So what? Humans only practice the arts? Humans go back to flinging poop? This meadow sounds awful, it seems like it’s asking for the end of thought and to be fed nutrient gel from a machine. Richard Brautigan has a terrible dream.

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

#532
post #448

The 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 depends on what "talks" consisted of. If it was Altman throwing arguments at them, and them just replying "no thank you", I don't see a problem.

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

#533

HN! 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?

theverge and theinformation have tip lines/e-mails, and you can message them, or write to one of the reporters writing about that directly. I would trust them to keep the confidentiality

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

#534
post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not difficult. I've not heard of anyone who asked and _didn't_ get the waiver. It's just a responsible stop-gap in case a user does something questionable or dangerous.

The waiver still allows for logging of prompts for the specific purpose of abuse monitoring for some limited retention period, right? How difficult is it to have this waived as well?

I work in academia and with somewhat protected data so YMMV but it wasn't hard for me at all (I just filled out the form and MS approved it).

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

#535

TheInformation: Dozens of Staffers Quit OpenAI After Sutskever Says Altman Won’t Return >Dozens of OpenAI staffers internally announced they were quitting the company Sunday night, said a person with knowledge of the situation, after board director and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever told employees that fired CEO Sam Altman would not return. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/dozens-of-staffers-q...

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).

GPT on Azure has become incredibly slow for us in the past few weeks.

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

#536

Earlier 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.

Yes, the model weights were developed by OpenAI. They are licensed exclusively and irrevocably to Microsoft, and operated by Microsoft, not OpenAI. If you are building with these APIs and concerned that consuming them from OpenAI (which also runs them on Azure, but managed by OpenAI staff) because of the drama there, you can de-risk by consuming from Azure directly.

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

#537
post #448

The 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…

The board demonstrated their incompetency in how they fired Sam without communicating this decision to their biggest stakeholder, Microsoft, or with any clear transition plan in place.

The board governs a mission-driven nonprofit, not a profit-focused enterprise where Microsoft has board-level influence as investor. This tension (operating as if it is a startup when it is not) is why Altman was fired.

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

#538

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 fully believe this, but the only rational explanation I can see is that Ilya knows they have AGI. - Nuke employee morale: massive attrition, not getting upside (tender offer), - Nuke the talent magnet: who's going to want to work there now? - Nuke Microsoft relationship: all those GPUs gone, - Nuke future fundraising: who's going to fund this shit show? Just doesn't make sense.

burnout and sleep deprivation can lead to some pretty bad choices; thats why you want to surround yourself with people that will stand up to you when your ideas and plans suffer from too much tunnel vision. sounds like the other 3 board members were yes-men/women; the house of cards was there for a while, it seems.

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

#539
post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://archive.is/yjOmt

For what it's worth, the MIT Technology Review these days is considered to be closer to a "tech tabloid" than an actual news source. I personally would find it hard to believe (on gut instinct, nothing empirical) that AGI has been achieved before we have a general playbook for domain-specific SotA models. And I'm of the 'faction' that AGI can't come soon enough.

> hard to believe (on gut instinct, nothing empirical) that AGI has been achieved before we have a general playbook for domain-specific SotA models

Ilya is pretty serious about alignment (precisely?) due to his gut instinct: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft0gTO2K85A (2 Nov 2023)

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

#540

TheInformation: Dozens of Staffers Quit OpenAI After Sutskever Says Altman Won’t Return >Dozens of OpenAI staffers internally announced they were quitting the company Sunday night, said a person with knowledge of the situation, after board director and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever told employees that fired CEO Sam Altman would not return. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/dozens-of-staffers-q...

Isn't this expected? Nearly everyone who joined post ChatGPT was primarily financially motivated. What is more interesting is how many of the core research team stays.
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