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OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

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Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#561

Many are speculating that Sam Altman could just move on and create another OpenAI 2.0 because he could easily attract talent and investors. What this misses is all the regulatory capture that he’s been campaigning for. All the platforms have now closed their gardens. Authors and artists are much more vigilant about copyright etc. So it’s now a totally different game compared to 3 years ago because the data is not jus…

He should make ClosedAI and then publish all the work as open source

Do BoringAI or LibreAI and it's just a fork but you ripped out all the old, bad stuff. (This joke doesn't really work because OpenAI is not really old enough for legacy cruft and isn't actually open enough to just be forked)

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#562

Many are speculating that Sam Altman could just move on and create another OpenAI 2.0 because he could easily attract talent and investors. What this misses is all the regulatory capture that he’s been campaigning for. All the platforms have now closed their gardens. Authors and artists are much more vigilant about copyright etc. So it’s now a totally different game compared to 3 years ago because the data is not jus…

There are still huge vaults of untapped data. I'm building a magazine encyclopedia and I would estimate that 99.9% of all magazines ever published are not available electronically. And that the content in magazines probably exceeds the content in books by an order of magnitude.

Orders of magnitude require at least 3 data points, and you have only 2.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subcontracting out your crimes isn’t going to fly in court.

Really? It's done pretty regularly to limit liability.

They make a point out of not directly asking for the crime when they do that. Just increasing pressure on subcontractors that leads to cutting corners including the law.

It is harder to prove to a "should have known" standard compared to say buying stolen speakers from the back of a truck for 20% of the list price.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#564
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They represent the charter. That is literally the metric.

The problem is not the lack of "metric" itself, its just how vague and subjective that metric is.

Vague and subjective metrics are how you get cults or worse, politics.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an enormous YC bias here. ShowHN posts from new YC startups are upvoted instantly whilst most from outside are ignored - the ones you see are the exception. The HN rules state you are not meant to play the game of asking people to boost your post but it seems like time and time again they co-ordinate, or allow it, for the insiders.

I think Show HN posts from YC startups are actually boosted by the system. Same with the hiring posts for YC startups. So it's not people, but explicitly coded in. But I don't know if this is truly the case.

Well that hardly seems ethical...

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still huge vaults of untapped data. I'm building a magazine encyclopedia and I would estimate that 99.9% of all magazines ever published are not available electronically. And that the content in magazines probably exceeds the content in books by an order of magnitude.

Orders of magnitude require at least 3 data points, and you have only 2.

I know this is getting off-topic, but as a non-native speaker, I'm interested in hearing how a third data point would be needed to judge whether things differ "by an order of magnitude". I was under the impression that "an order of magnitude" meant "one more digit", meaning very roughly a 10x difference. "a >= 10*b" can be determined without the need of a third data point. Is there some other meaning to the phrase I haven't come across?

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#567
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, a $2.8Tn tech company and a venture capitalist's network managing to overturn the non-profit Board's completely legal action (legally required of the Board, even) they took in furtherance of their Charter would be the ultimate practical demonstration that no legal structure, not even those specifically designed to do so, is above what capital wants. It's their world, we're just living in it, and they want to ma…

Just because something is legal does not mean it is right. If they’d spent a week talking with him and ultimately couldn’t resolve their differences and then fired him that would be one thing.

This has been going on for months. Sam sidelined Ilya out of his job a month ago, after a long time of Ilya trying to convince him he was going down the wrong course.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He left because they didn't allow him to be in charge.

Musk left in 2018 after disagreements over the future of the company. In 2019 OpenAI started their 'OpenAI LP' for-profit entity. It seems entirely reasonable that the profit vs mission motive that seems to be driving this issue, is also what drove Musk to leave.

https://www.semafor.com/article/03/24/2023/the-secret-histor...

> And Musk proposed a possible solution: He would take control of OpenAI and run it himself.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need to have access to the various legal docs of the OpenAI non-profit to be able to answer that question. But there was a move in the works to expand the board after a recent resignation. This is why - normally - the number of directors on the board is specified in those documents and a quorum of a minimum number of people is required to be able to make certain decisions, especially ones with potentially far r…

Isn't that the problem though? No outside feedback? Just whatever the current board thinks?

Being a board member is something you normally take quite serious. I've been asked a couple of times but didn't see myself as qualified to fulfill that role in a responsible manner. Board members are free to search for outside feedback but they're supposed to be wise enough to know their own limits because they have some residual liability for any mistakes they make.

Depending on where you live you will open yourself up for at least the consequences of your own actions (negligence, errors of judgment) and possibly even for the errors of other board members because you are not only there to oversee the company, you also oversee the other board members. That's why on the spot board resignations are usually a pretty bad sign unless they are for health or other urgent personal reasons. It is a very strong signal that a board member feels that they have not been able to convince their colleagues that they are off the straight and narrow path and that their choices exceed their own thresholds for ethics or liability (or both...). And that in turn is one of the reasons why a board would normally be very upset if they feel that they have not been given all information they require to do their job and that was the very first line that the board trotted out as to why Altman was let go. But even then they should have built their case rather than just to take a snap poll at a point in time when they had a quorum to get rid of him because it seems that that and not Altman's behavior (which as far as I can see was fairly consistent from day #1) was the real reason they did what they did. In the original board (9 people) the four didn't have the vote but in the shrunk board (6) they did.

Re: OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role

#570
post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ilya doesn’t want to be known as the Steve Wozniak in this relationship while Sam is perceived as the Steve Jobs. Unless you’re technically inclined no one remembers or praises the contributions of the Woz.

I think there is a lot to be said for being remembered as the Steve Wozniak. I'd much rather be remembered as Wozniak than as Jobs.

Also Wozniak is relatively known, maybe Gates/Allen works better as an analogy.
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