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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

#701

Post by alsodumb »

bayindirh wrote: post #686
MattGaiser wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would workers immediately quit their job when he has no other company It is Sam Altman. He will have one in a week. > It seems like half of the people working at the non-profit were not actually concerned about the mission but rather just waiting out their turn for big bucks and fame. I would imagine most employees at any organization are not really there because of corporate values, but their own interests. >…

> It is Sam Altman. He will have one in a week. Welcome to Cargo Cult AI.

What's wrong with that statement though?

It's the AI era - VCs are going crazy funding AI startups. What makes you think Greg and Sam would have a hard time raising millions/billions and starting a new company in a week if they want to?

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

#702

Post by hobofan »

ComplexSystems wrote: post #630
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. It seems like OpenAI is ahead of the curve, but even some free open source projects have become really good. I am no expert, so take this with a grain of salt. It seems OpenAI has a lead, but only of a few months or so and others are racing behind. I guess it really sucks if you built something that relies on the OpenAI api, but even then one could replace the api layer.

For coding, at least, nothing out there is even close to as good as GPT-4. Not Claude, not Grok, and certainly not llama.

For coding tasks (without API access), especially in a conversational setting, Phind has been by far the best one for me. I sometimes still compare it to ChatGPT with GPT-4, but it almost always comes out on top (not missing the point of the questions + amount of required editing for integration into codebase), and it does produce the answers a lot faster.

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

#703

Post by flarg »

emodendroket wrote: post #585
wokwokwok wrote: post #458

Honest question: Other than 1) Microsoft and 2) anyone building a product with the OpenAI api 3) OpenAI employees… …is OpenAI crashing a burning a big deal? This seems rather over hyped… everyone has an opinion, everyone cares because OpenAI has a high profile. …but really , alternatives to chatGPT exist now, and most people will be, really… not affected by this in any meaningful degree. Isn’t breaking the strangle h…

In Twitter's case that's the main product getting worse without any of the wannabes getting that much traction.

IMHO Twitter drove its own need and now that it has pretty much gone no one wants the hassle of serving a new master.

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

#704

Post by Auracle »

idontwantthis wrote: post #554
dragonwriter wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When does it stop existing in boxes that require a continuous source of electricity and can’t survive water or fire? When someone runs a model in a reasonably durable housing with a battery? (I'm not big on the AI as destroyer or saviour cult myself, but that particular question doesn't seem like all that big of a refutation of it.)

But my point is what is it actually doing to reach out and touch someone in the doomsday scenario?

Nukes, power grids, planes, blackmail, etc. Surely you’ve seen plenty of media over the years that’s explored this.

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

#705

Post by bmitc »

WendyTheWillow wrote: post #662
bmitc wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read her recent Tweets on the matter? She was definitely editorializing quite subjectively in favor of Altman. That's not exactly unbiased journalism happening.

I read her Threads post and do not see the same advocacy you claim here. Just valuable information.

Well I wasn't referring to her Threads posts. I was referring to her recent Tweets.

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

#706

Post by [deleted] »

sanxiyn wrote: post #347
tempsy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Emmett Shear seems like an odd choice if they’re worried about retention because 1) Twitch was never known to be a particularly great place to work and 2) he stepped down for some reason and not because Twitch was in an amazing place or anything at the time

Emmett Shear is probably the person most friendly to OpenAI board's AI safety agenda among possible candidates. Source: have a look at his Twitter.

[deleted]

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

#707

Post by vintermann »

tempusalaria wrote: post #528
zoogeny wrote: post #358

I’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.

I'm also pretty suspicious of people in forums like these who say nothing can compare to GPT4 and they're miles ahead of everyone else etc. How much of that is venture capital speaking?

It's not quite where it is (or was) with Tesla, where it was hopeless to know what was sincere and what was just people talking up their investment/talking down their short, but it's getting there.

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

#708

Post by schleck8 »

qaq wrote: post #431
ilaksh wrote: post #74

Assuming that's the end of the story, what hardcore ML people do Altman and Brockman have now for their new AI startup? Or are they just going to focus on the hardware thing?

Jakub Pachocki - Director of Research, Aleksander Madry, Szymon Sidor.

Bunch more people have left since, I think including Karpathy

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

#709

Post by bmitc »

jmerz wrote: post #699
bmitc wrote: post #592

Through all of this, no one has cogently explained why Altman leaving is such a big deal. Why would workers immediately quit their job when he has no other company, and does he even know who these workers are? Are these people that desperate to make a buck (or the prospect of big bucks)? It seems like half of the people working at the non-profit were not actually concerned about the mission but rather just waiting ou…

I think he's not as known in the outside world but it's really difficult to understate the amount of social capital sama has in the inner circles of Silicon Valley. It sounds like he did a good job instilling loyalty as a CEO as well, but the SV thing means that the more connected someone at the company is to the SV ecosystem, the more likely they like him/want to be on his good side. This is kind of like the leaders…

So it's a big deal because he has a cult of personality?

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

#710

Post by tunesmith »

zoogeny wrote: post #358

I’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…

I read something a while ago: when trying to interpret the truth of what is happening, the value of public statements is only that it's an indication of what that source would like the public to believe. And when looked at that way, that signal does have value. Not as truth, but as motive.

So that helped cut through all the cruft with this. There was a lot of effort behind putting across the perception that the board was going to resign and that Altman was going to come back.

Looked at through that lens, it makes more sense: the existing board had little incentive to quit and rehire Sam/Greg. The only incentive was if mass resignations threatened their priorities of working on safety and alignment, and I get the sense that most of these resignations are more on the product engineering side.

So I don't really think this is a twist that no one saw coming.

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