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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

#841

Post by vaxman »

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…

TBH, my primary concern is this will be the catalyst for another market crash by destroying the public trust in AI, which is currently benefiting from investor FOMO.

Bear in mind that the cause of an equity market crash and its trigger are two different things.

The 2000 crash in Tech was caused by market speculation in enthusiastic dot-com companies with poor management YES, but the trigger was simply the DOJ finally making Bill throw a chair (they had enough of being humiliated by him for decades as they struggled with old mainframe tech and limited staffing).

If the dot-com crash trigger had not arrived for another 12-18 months, I’m sure the whole mess could have been swept under the rug by traders during the Black Swan event and the recovery of the healthy companies would have been 5-6 months, not 5-6 years (or 20 years in MSFT’s case).

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

#842

Post by ChatGTP »

belugacat wrote: post #715
bmitc wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s a big deal because he’s extremely charismatic and well connected and that matters much, much more for a tech company’s success than some programmers like to think.

I don’t find him charismatic at all. I find Donald Trump more charismatic and I think he is the devil in disguise.

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

#843

Post by upwardbound »

hurryer wrote: post #818
upwardbound wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to current nuclear doctrine, no, they won’t wait. The current doctrine is called Launch On Warning which means you retaliate immediately after receiving the first indications of incoming missiles. This is incredibly dumb, which is why those of us who study the intersection of AI and global strategic stability are advocating a change to a different doctrine called Decide Under Attack. Decide Under Attack has…

I know about the doctrine. Yet everytime there was a "real" attack, somehow the doctrine was not followed (in US or USSR). It seems to me that the doctrine is not actually followed because leaders understand the consequences and wait for very solid confirmation? Soviets also had the perimeter system, which was also supposed to relieve pressure for an immediate response.

Agree wholeheartedly. Human skepticism of computer systems has saved our species from nuclear extinction multiple times (Stanislav Petrov incident, 1979 NORAD training tapes incident, etc.)

The specific concern that we in DISARM:SIMC4 have is that as AI systems start to be perceived as being smarter (due to being better and better at natural language rhetoric and at generating infographics), people in command will become more likely to set aside their skepticism and just trust the computer, even if the computer is convincingly hallucinating.

The tendency of decision makers (including soldiers) to have higher trust in smarter-seeming systems is called Automation Bias.

> The dangers of automation bias and pre-delegating authority were evident during the early stages of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Two out of 11 successful interceptions involving automated US Patriot missile systems were fratricides (friendly-fire incidents).

https://thebulletin.org/2023/02/keeping-humans-in-the-loop-i...

Perhaps Stanislav Petrov would not have ignored the erroneous Soviet missile warning computer he operated, if it generated paragraphs of convincing text and several infographics as hallucinated “evidence” of the reality of the supposed inbound strike. He himself later recollected that he felt the chances of the strike being real were 50-50, an even gamble, so in this situation of moral quandary he struggled for several minutes, until, finally, he went with his gut and countermanded the system which required disobeying the Soviet military’s procedures and should have gotten him shot for treason. Even a slight increase in the persuasiveness of the computer’s rhetoric and graphics could have tipped this to 51-49 and thus caused our extinction.

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

#845

Post by steakscience »

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…

Every SV CEO has a "Sam Altman saved my butt during crucial incident X" story

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

#846

Post by ChatGTP »

bayindirh wrote: post #778
alsodumb wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What idea are you talking about? They are not your classic founders coming up with an idea to join Y combinator. They build OpenAI for many years, they know what to do. It won't be hard for them to hire researchers and engineers, from OpenAI or other places. Questions like this makes me wonder if you are a troll. I won't continue this thread.

Being able to hire researchers and, even the top talent doesn't guarantee that they'll be the top company or even succeed at what they're building. This is what I referred as "Cargo Cult AI". You can get the money, but money is not the only ingredient needed to make things happen. edit: Looks like they won't have a brand new company next week, but joining an existing one.

Case in point: Google and Bard.

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

#847

Post by intellectronica »

deeringc wrote: post #679
reissbaker wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft doesn't "use" the APIs, they host them on their own servers and have a license to do so and re-license to Azure users. If something goes wrong with OpenAI (given that it sounds like many key employees are leaving), Azure will stay up and you can keep using the APIs from MS.

That may provide short term stability, but medium term (which in this field is a few months) how will Azure's offering move forward if OpenAI is in such crisis? I guess it really comes down to OpenAI's ability to continue without Altman and Co. I don't believe that Microsoft's license allows them to independently develop the models? Wouldn't this become a stale fork pretty quickly while the rest of the industry moves…

Or ... cut the middleman: Sam Altman and Greg Brockman joining MS to start a new AI unit - https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1726516824597258569

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

#848

Post by ChatGTP »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #792
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…

The new CEO, (Emmett, not Mura, who was CEO for two days I guess) has publicly stated on multiple occasions "we need to slow down from a 10 to a 1-2". Ilya is also in favor of dramatically "slowing down". That's who's left in this company, running it. In the field of AI, right now, "slowing down" is like deciding to stop the car and walk the track by foot in the middle of a Formula 1 race. It's like going backwards.…

Well many of the top researches in the world seem keen for a slow down so I’m not sure you’re right. You can’t force people to work on things at a pace they’re uncomfortable with.

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

#849

Post by BoorishBears »

xvector wrote: post #760
BoorishBears wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not enough people understand what OpenAI was actually built on. OpenAI would not exist if FAANG had been capable of getting out of it's own way and shipping things. The moment OpenAI starts acting like the companies these people left, it's a no brainer that they'll start looking for the door. I'm sure Ilya has 10 lifetimes more knowledge than me locked away in his mind on topics I don't even know exist... but the las…

I really hope this comes back around and bites Ilya and OAI in the ass. What an absurd decision. They will rightfully get absolutely crushed by the free market.

Looks like you got your wish earlier than anyone would have expected: https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1726509045803336122

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

#850

Post by xvector »

tempusalaria wrote: post #557
astrange wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a character in HPMOR named after the new CEO. (That's the religious text of the anti-AI cult that founded OpenAI. It's in the form of a very long Harry Potter fanfic.)

Imagine how bad a reputation EA would have if the general public knew about HPMOR

Even HP fanfiction lovers HATED HPMOR. It had a clowny reputation

It is wild to see how closely connected the web is though. Yudkowsky, Shear, and Sutskever. The EA movement today controls a staggering amount of power.

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