Live data from Hacker News

Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

theverge.com

551–560 of 985 posts

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

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> Innocent until proven guilty though is the standard for legal punishment, not for public outrage.

It's still a useful barometer to calibrate one's own, individual participation in said public outrage.

For our own mental health, for our relationships with people around us, and to avoid being manipulated by dishonest people, it would behoove each and every one of us to adopt "innocent until proven guilty" regardless of whether we're legally compelled to do so.

Our required burden of proof can be lower than a court's but it should be higher than "unsubstantiated accusation by mentally ill family member that is uniformly denied by the rest of the family".

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

#552
post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thing a sad, understated ongoing is that so many people are throwing vitriol at Ilya right now. If the speculation here is true, then he just chased by a mob over pure nonsense (well, at least purer than the nonsense premise beforehand). Gotta love seeing effective altruists take another one on the chin this year though.

Does this whole thing remind anyone else of the tech community’s version of celebrity gossip?

Absolutely. It is borderline salacious. Honestly didn't feel too good watching so many people opine on matters they had no real data on and insult people; also the employees of openai announcing matters on twitter or wtv in tabloid style.

I hope people apologize to Ilya for jumping to conclusions.

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

#553

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

The board might assume they don't need those employees now they have AI

Not a chance. Nobody can drink that much Kool-Aid. That said, the mere fact that people can unironically come to this conclusion has driven some of my recent posting to HN, and here's another example.

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

#554

Boosting this deeply nested interesting comment from @alephnerd to the top level: > 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-pro…

> Boosting this deeply nested interesting comment from @alephnerd to the top level

Please don't do this - for many reasons, including that it makes merging the comments a pain.

If you or anyone notices a comment that deserves to be at the top level (and doesn't lose context if moved), let us know at hn@ycombinator.com and we'll move it.

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

#555

Boosting this deeply nested interesting comment from @alephnerd to the top level: > 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-pro…

[deleted]

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

#556

Boosting this deeply nested interesting comment from @alephnerd to the top level: > 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-pro…

And these are the people who have great say over AI safety. Jesus. Whoever thought that egomaniacs and profiteers would guide us to a bright AI future?

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

#557

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…

More confusion - Emmett Shear is a close friend of Sam Altman. He was part of the original 2005 YCombinator class alongside Altman, part of the justin.tv mafia, and later a part-time partner at YCombinator. I don't think he has any such close ties to Dustin Moskovitz. Why would the Dustin-leaning OpenAI board install him as interim CEO?

This whole thing still seems to have the air of a pageant to me, where they're making a big stink for drama but it might be manufactured by all of the original board, with Sam, Ilya, Adam, and potentially others all on the same side.

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

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, regular employees have little to gain by staying at Open AI at this point. They would be taking a huge gamble, earn less money, and lose a lot of colleagues.

Why earning less money? Isn’t openai comp huge while MS is famous for peanuts?

Most of OpenAI comp is in equity… which is worth much less now

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

#559
post #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.

> while he was very fast to welcome Ilya back

Was he? I must have missed that in all this chaos.

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

#560
Rebalance the board and it’s important that Ilya stays. But Ilya goes as collateral damage to save face, they have to, by whatever means necessary, secure Geoffrey Hinton.

It may turn out that the unusual governance model is the only way to bring about a desired outcome here without fully selling out to MS.

Post reply on HN