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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

#591

Post by tsunamifury »

nullptr_deref wrote: post #281
tsunamifury wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and Adam Curtis need to spend some time together I’d suggest watching “Can’t get You out of my head” Why does capital win? Because we have no other narrative. And it killed all our old ones and absorbs all our new ones.

i was really naive believing there was any another option. if it is about capital and if it is the game, then i am ready to play now. can't wait to steal so many open source project out there and market it. obviously it will be hard but hey, it is legal and doable. just stating this fact because i never had the confident to pull it off. but after recent events, it started making sense. so whatever people do is now mi…

This in the theory of the lizard. Bugs do all the hard work of collecting food and water and flying around and lizards just sit and eat the ones that fly by.

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

#592

Post by ar_lan »

philistine wrote: post #396
ar_lan wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The case here is not about admitting mistakes and showing humility. Admitting your mistake does not immediately mean that you get a free pass to go back to the way things were without any consequence. You made a mistake, something was done or said. There are consequences to that. Even if you admit your mistake, you have to act with the present facts. Here, the consequences are very public, very clear. If the board wa…

The context of my response was to rewinding the clock - admitting not being enough, it would be them bringing Altman back on, essentially.

As you said:

> [it's] absolutely reasonable of the board to deny him that.

My argument is essentially that there is minimal, if any, benefit for the board to doing this _unless_ they were able to keep their positions. Seeing as it doesn't seem to be a possible end, why not at least try, even if it results in a sinking ship? For them, personally, it's sinking anyway.

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

#593

Post by piuantiderp »

nostrademons wrote: post #557
alephnerd wrote: post #84

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 ma…

Could be a way to get a clean break and go full MSFT.

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

#594

Post by ar_lan »

clnq wrote: post #210
ar_lan wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Definitely anecdotal - I'm not sure on actual statistics as I'm sure that would be somewhat hard to measure.

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

#595

Post by alephnerd »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #539
alephnerd wrote: post #84

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…

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.

This is why I detest YC (despite taking part in salicious gossip on here due to my social media addiction). A couple YC friends of mine have been very explicit about how they detest the conspiratorial YC hivemind.

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

#596

Post by Solvency »

gumballindie wrote: post #572
paulddraper wrote: post #18

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

Cant openai just use chatgpt instead of workers? I am hearing ai is intelligent and can take over the world, replace workers, cure disease. Why doesn't the board buy a subscription and make it work for them?

Because AI isn't here to take away wealth and control from the elite. It's to take it away from general population.

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

#597

Post by kmlevitt »

jacquesm wrote: post #518
hotnfresh wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I should rephrase that as if they did it because they perceived that Altman was maneuvering to be untouchable within the company and moving against the interests of the nonprofit, they did the right thing. Just, again, way too late because it seems he was already untouchable.

According to the letter they consistently refused to go on the record why they did it and that would be as good a reason as any so then they should make it public. I'm leaning towards there not being a good reason that doesn't expose the board to immediate liability. And that's why they're keeping mum.

That might also explain why they don’t back down and reinstate him. If they double down with this and it goes to court, they can argue that they were legitimately acting in what they thought was openAI’s best interests. Even if their reasoning looks stupid, they would still have plausible deniability in terms of a difference of opinion/philosophical approach on how to handle AI, etc. But if they reinstate him it’s basically an admission that they didn’t know what they were doing in the first place and were incompetent. Part of the negotiations for reinstating him involved a demand from Sam that they release a statement absolving him of any criminal wrongdoing, etc., And they refused because that would expose them to liability too.

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

#598

Post by ben_w »

jacquesm wrote: post #473
ssgodderidge wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hey everyone ... what did I miss?"

That would be one very rude awakening, probably to the point where you initially would think you're being pranked.

I feel pranked despite having multiple independent websites confirming the story without a single one giving me an SSL certificate warning.

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

#599

Post by westcort »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #579
westcort wrote: post #573

Maybe he will learn to capitalize words at the beginning of sentences. In all seriousness, I find the habit of “higher ups” to answer emails like teenagers texting on a T9 phone worthy of a sociology paper. Perhaps it is the written equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodies. I found his return to office ideas early on in COVID sickening.

> Maybe he will learn to capitalize words at the beginning of sentences. I think you may be confusing him with Greg Brockmann.

Specifically referring to: https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/6557e6...

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

#600

Post by s1artibartfast »

ealexhudson wrote: post #534
bagels wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Sam let the board get so far out of his control?

No board is ever controlled by a CEO by virtue of the title/office. Boards are controlled by directors, who are typically nominated by shareholders. They may control the CEO, although again, in many startups the founder becomes the CEO and retains some significant stake (possibly controlling) in the overall shareholding. The top org was a 501(c)3 and the directors were all effectively independent. The CEO of such an…

That isnt relevant to the question. Sam was on the board prior to all of these other directors, and responsible for selecting them.

The post asks how/why Sam ended up with a board full of directors so far out of alignment with his vision.

I think a big part of that is that the board was down several members, from 9 to 6. Perhaps the problem started with not replacing departing board members and this spiraled out of control as more board members left.

Here is a timeline of the board:

https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board

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