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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

#481

As of 10am PT, 700 of 770 employees have signed the call for board resignation. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/joannejang/status/1726667504133808242

Many of those employees will be dissapointed. MS says they extend a contract to each one but how many of those 700 are really needed when MS already have a lot of researchers in that field. Myabe the top 20% will have an assured contract but th rest is doubtfull will pass the 6 month mark.

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

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the arrangement of the new entity inside Microsoft, and whether the new entity is a temporary gig before Sam & co. move to a new goal. If the board had just openly announced this was about battling Microsoft's control, there would probably be a lot more employees choosing to stay. But they didn't say this was about Microsoft's control. In fact they didn't even say anything to the employees. So in this c…

> So in this context following Sam to Microsoft actually turns out to be the more attractive and sensible option. Maybe. Microsoft is a particular sort of working environment, though, and not all developers will be happy in it. For them, the question would be how much are they willing to sacrifice in service to Altman?

Condition might be that it is hands-off.

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "cancel culture" to ask that your leaders address salacious allegations brought against them by their own family. The question of his firing is way less serious from a ethical standpoint, and yet this is what OpenAI employees are willing to stick their necks out for? That is some telling prioritization.

Burden of evidence for accusations is always on the accuser, the accused could flat out ignore and take them to a court of law and that would be perfectly reasonable. I have no idea nor do I care about what Altman's sister accuses him of, but until it's conclusively proven in a court of law it's not something that should be used as a basis for anything of consequence. Remember: Innocent until proven guilty beyond a s…

I'll start by saying that these particular claims seem to mean absolutely nothing per everything I've heard. It seems to be a mentally ill person accusing someone of something that may very well have never happened.

Innocent until proven guilty though is the standard for legal punishment, not for public outrage. It's a standard meant to constrain the use of violence against an individual, not to prevent others from adjusting their association to them.

Also, the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt". Nothing outside perhaps of mathematical truths could be proven "beyond a shadow of a doubt". There's always some outside chance one can imagine.

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

#484
post #108

Given the general lack of useful communication, it would be funny if Sam Altman returns to OpenAI at the same time all the employees are quitting. ;)

You’d think smart people at OpenAI would know how to prevent a race condition

They don't all seem to be keen on safety anymore.

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

#485
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given 90%, including leadership, seems a bad career move for remaining people not to sign, even if you agreed with the board's action.

I think the board did the right thing, just waaaay too late for it to be effective. They’d been cut out long ago and just hadn’t realized it yet. … but I’d probably sign for exactly those good-career-move reasons, at this point. Going down with the ship isn’t even going to be noticed, let alone change anything.

Agreed. Starting from before the anthropic exodus, I suspect the timeline looks like:

(2015) Founding: majority are concerned with safety

(2019) For profit formed: mix of safety and profit motives (majority still safety oriented?)

(2020) GPT3 released to much hype, leading to many ambition chasers joining: the profit seeking side grows.

(2021) Anthropic exodus over safety: the safety side shrinks

(2022) chatgpt released, generating tons more hype and tons more ambitious profit seekers joining: the profit side grows even more, probably quickly outnumbering the safety side

(2023) this weeks shenanigans

The safety folks probably lost the majority a while ago. Maybe back in 2021, but definitely by the time the gpt3/chatgpt motivated newcomers were in the majority.

Maybe one lesson is that if your cofounder starts hiring a ton of people who aren’t aligned with you, you can quickly find yourself in the minority, especially once people on your side start to leave.

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

#486
post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> suck wealth from the poor and Smaug the money away like What does that even mean? They buy up factories and let them sit idle?

Smaug is a dragon from The Hobbit who sits on a pile of gold and plunder, not smog.

Hah didn’t even realize my comment could be read that way (yeah I do know who Smaug is)

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

#487
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I know this is a very naive question, but anyways: might Dustin /the board be onto something regarding AI safety which was not there before?

If there was there are 700 people motivated to leak it and none did. What could they be aware of that the rest of OpenAI would not be aware of? How did the learn about it?

I agree it's probably not something new. But I will observe that OpenAI rank and file employees, presumably mostly working on making AI more effective, are very strongly selected against people who are sympathetic to safety/x-risk concerns.

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

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have equity in openai though right. You mean from reputation loss?

For starters about 700 employees seem to think their livelihood matters and that the board didn't exercise their duty of care towards them.

Neither for-profit corporations nor charities have a general legal duty of care for the livelihood of their employees.

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

#489

As I posted elsewhere, I think this is a conflict between Dustin Moskovitz and Sam Altman. Ilya may have been brought into this without his knowledge (which might explain why he retracted his position). Dustin Moskovitz was an early employee at FB, and the founder of Asana. He also created (along with plenty of MSFT bigwigs) a non-profit called Open Philanthropy, which was a early proponent of a form of Effective Alt…

That would explain why Sam wants the whole board gone and not one or two members, while he was very fast to welcome Ilya back.

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

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Have those been substantiated in any manner? I was interested in the details, and all I discovered were a few articles from non mainstream outlets (may still be valid) and a message from the larger family that the sister was having severe mental health issues. I am not saying this didn’t happen, but I would like to understand if there has been follow up confirmation one way or another.

A lot the accusations sound like those "organized gang stalking" groups you see on social media which are mostly people with what sounds like paranoid schizophrenia confirming each others delusion.

I don't mean to sound pejorative with the word delusion here: But they all tend to have one fixed common belief that everyone or almost everyone around them, neighbors , family , random people on the street are all colluding against them usually via electronic means.

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