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Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

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Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#201
I'm still curious about what did Altman do that could've been so heinous as to prompt the board to remove him so swiftly, yet not bad enough to make his return a complete impossibility. Has there been any official word on what was Altman not being candid enough about?

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#202
post #14

Remaining curious how D’Angelo has escaped scrutiny over his apparent conflict of interests and as the “independent” board member with a clear commercial board background.

What is the conflict here? I do not know much about him but If he actually oversaw building Quora product he must be a POS guy.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38348995 ...

“GTPs” by the other board member's company last April:

https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/10/poes-ai-chatbot-app-now-le...

And OpenAI last week:

https://openai.com/blog/introducing-gpts

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. What customer wants to stick around if all that is left is the board?

If they actually believe that the thing burning to the ground is more closely aligned with the charter than keeping Altman around, maybe not. (And the letter everyone is signing says the board said that)

Except they won't be burning it to the ground; they'll just be handing it to Microsoft. Hard to see how that's better aligned with the charter (which simply ceases to exist under MS) than figuring out a compromise.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this whole saga is so unbelievable: what if... board member Tasha McCauley's husband Joseph Gordon-Levitt orchestrated the whole board coup behind the scenes so he could direct and/or star in the Hollywood adaptation?

That would at least make a more damned sense than "everyone is wildly incompetent." At some point Hanlon's razor starts to strain credulity.

> That would at least make a more damned sense than "everyone is wildly incompetent."

It seems to be one of many "everyone except one clever mastermind is wildly incompetent" explanations that have been tossed around (most of which center on the private interests of a single board member), which don't seem to be that big of an improvement.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know the mission got thrown out a window? The board still, after days of intense controversy, have yet to clearly explain how Altman was betraying the mission. Did he ignore safety? Did he defund important research? Did he push forward on projects against direct objections from the board? If there’s a good reason, then let everybody know what that is. If there isn’t, then what was the point of all this?

Because the mission is visibly abandoned. There's nothing "open" about OpenAI. We may not know how the mission was abandoned but we know Sam was CEO, hence responsible.

What as "open" about it before that?

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know the mission got thrown out a window? The board still, after days of intense controversy, have yet to clearly explain how Altman was betraying the mission. Did he ignore safety? Did he defund important research? Did he push forward on projects against direct objections from the board? If there’s a good reason, then let everybody know what that is. If there isn’t, then what was the point of all this?

Because the mission is visibly abandoned. There's nothing "open" about OpenAI. We may not know how the mission was abandoned but we know Sam was CEO, hence responsible.

There was never anything open about open ai. If there were I should have access to their training data, training infra setup and weights.

The only thing that changed is the reason why the unwashed masses aren't allowed to see the secret sauce: from alignment to profit.

A plague on both their houses.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#207
Anyone else hear this rumor about Sam OK'd in private the training of a dataset from a Chinese cyberwarfare unit? Or is that more insane theoretical stuff going on? Honestly I don't want Microsoft to own AGI, it'll mess up AI for a decade much the same it did to Nokia and mobile phones. Let's be real here too they don't have the capacity at Azure to do their main business of training new models. I think OpenAI got around requesting for data to train because it was 'non-profit' and not a for profit. Now getting the data is going to be expensive.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small amount of residual consequences? The employees are asking for the board to resign. So their jobs are literally on the line. That's not really a small consequence for most people.

Their board positions are gone either way. If they stay OpenAI is done.

I do think that's almost certainly going to happen. But they're probably still trying to find the one scenario (out of 16 million possibilities, like Dr. Strange in Endgame) that allows them to keep their power or at least give them a nice golden parachute.

Hence why they're not just immediately flipping the undo switch.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know the mission got thrown out a window? The board still, after days of intense controversy, have yet to clearly explain how Altman was betraying the mission. Did he ignore safety? Did he defund important research? Did he push forward on projects against direct objections from the board? If there’s a good reason, then let everybody know what that is. If there isn’t, then what was the point of all this?

Because the mission is visibly abandoned. There's nothing "open" about OpenAI. We may not know how the mission was abandoned but we know Sam was CEO, hence responsible.

What was "open" before ChatGPT?

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#210
post #126

The fact that these people aren't currently willing to "rewind the clock" about a week shows the dangers of human ego. Nothing permanent has been done that can't be undone fairly simply, if all parties agree to undo it. What we're watching now is the effect of ego momentum on decision making. Try it. It's not a crazy idea. Put everything back the way it was a week ago and then agree to move forward. It will be like h…

In general this can't work. People are notoriously ruthless to people who admit their mistakes. For example, if you are in an argument and you lose (whether through poor debate or your argument is plain wrong), and you *admit it*, people don't look back at it as a point of humility - they look at it as a reason to dog pile on you and make sure everyone knows you were wrong. In this case, it's not internet points - it…

Is this your opinion or is this something that’s an actual theory in sociology or psychology, or at least something people talk about in practice? Not trying to be mean, just to learn.

There’s a whole genre of press releases and videos for apologies, so I’m not sure it’s such a reputational risk to admit one is wrong. It might be a bigger risk not to, it would seem.

But what you say sounds interesting.

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