Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO • Hacker News Board

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

#751

Post by pault » Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 11:16 PM UTC

hsavit1 wrote: post #742

paradite wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't attribute to greed for something sufficiently explained by emotions and loyalty. Their CEO who was doing well as far as anyone can tell, was removed forcibly. It is natural to feel strongly about it.

who in their right mind has "emotions" and even "loyalty" for a CEO? and so much to the point that they'd quit their jobs over the CEO's departure? the reality is that people didn't join OpenAI because of sam altman. they joined the company because they got paid (handsomely) to do some interesting work.

It’s just an anecdote but I quit a job because the CEO fired an extremely good manager that I worked with. If a company has issues, a good person getting fired can lead to a mass exodus. In my case about half of the developers followed closely after me.

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

#752

Post by murakamiiq84 » Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 11:16 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #717

DalasNoin wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you find this so surprising? You make it sound as if OpenAI is already outrageously safety focused. I have talked to a few people from anthropic and they seem to believe that OpenAI doesn't care at all about safety.

Because GPT-4 is already pretty neutered, to the point where it removes a lot of its usefulness.

Might be more for PR/regulatory capture/SF cause du jour reasons than the "prepare for later versions that might start killing people, or assist terrorists" reasons.

Like one version of the story you could tell is that the safety people invented RLHF as in a chain of steps eventual AGI safety, but corporate wanted to use it as a cheaper content filter for existing models.

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

#753

Post by meiraleal » Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 11:16 PM UTC

iteratethis wrote: post #705

I wish we could all just admit that this is a capital run, rather than some moralistic crusade. The employees want to get their big payday, so will follow Altman wherever he goes. Which is the smart thing to do anyway as he runs half the valley. The public discourse in which Sam is the hero is further cemented by the tech ecosystem, which nowadays is circling around AI. Those in the "OpenAI wrapper" game. Nobody has…

> The public discourse in which Sam is the hero is further cemented by the tech ecosystem, which nowadays is circling around AI. Those in the "OpenAI wrapper" game.

This brings me crypto vibes, the worst outcome possible for AI

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

#754

Post by COAGULOPATH » Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 11:16 PM UTC

Arson9416 wrote: post #61

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…

> Nothing permanent has been done that can't be undone fairly simply, if all parties agree to undo it.

Sam views this as a stab in back. He doesn't want to work with backstabbers.

The board has put down too many chips to back out now. Microsoft (and the public) already regards this as a kind of coup. Rehiring Sam won't change that and will make the optics worse: instead of traitors, they'll look like spineless traitors.

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

#755

Post by senderista » Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 11:16 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #612

kmlevitt wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ba…

Exactly. This is all consistent and why I think they are in contact with their legal advisors (and if they aren't by now they are beyond stupid).

There's no reason Sam and the board can't come to a mutual agreement that indemnifies the board from liability if they publicly exonerate Sam.

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

#756

Post by jmccaf » Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 11:17 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #725

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what the board did in this instance was completely idiotic, even if you assign nothing but "good intentions" to their motives (that is, they were really just concerned about the original OpenAI charter of developing "safe AI for all" and thought Sam was too focused on commercialization), and it would have been idiotic even if they had done it a long time ago. There are tons of "Safe AI" think tanks and orgs that…

> the "safe AI" people at OpenAI were in a unique position to help guide AI dev in as safe a direction as possible Is it also the case that the anti-war Germans who joined the Nazi regime were in a unique position to help guide Germany in as benign direction as possible? If not, what is the difference between the "safe AI" person who decides to join OpenAI and the anti-war, anti-racist German who decides to get a job…

That went quickly to Godwin's law .

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

#757

Post by bartread » Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 11:17 PM UTC

iteratethis wrote: post #705

I wish we could all just admit that this is a capital run, rather than some moralistic crusade. The employees want to get their big payday, so will follow Altman wherever he goes. Which is the smart thing to do anyway as he runs half the valley. The public discourse in which Sam is the hero is further cemented by the tech ecosystem, which nowadays is circling around AI. Those in the "OpenAI wrapper" game. Nobody has…

> The employees want to get their big payday

Many of them will have invested years of their life, during which they will have worked incredibly hard, and probably sacrificed life outside of work for their jobs in hopes of that payday to give them the freedom to do what they want to do next: you can hardly blame them.

True riches isn't money, but discretionary time. Unfortunately that discretionary time often costs quite a lot of money to realise.

If it were me I'd be seething with the board at their antics since Friday (and, obviously, for some time before that). They've gone from being one of the most successful and valuable startups in history to an absolute trash fire in the span of four days because of some ridiculous power struggle. They've snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Yeah, you bet I'd be pissed, and of course I'd follow the person who might help me redeem the future I'd hoped for.

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

#758

Post by i_have_an_idea » Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 11:17 PM UTC

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…

> part of the justin.tv mafia

Side question, but why is that a "mafia". Is any tech entrepreneur starting a 2nd company after having one mildly successful exit now a "mafia" move?

Soon enough, I will probably read about the "skibidi toilet mafia" on this site..

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

#759

Post by alvah » Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 11:17 PM UTC

hsavit1 wrote: post #742

paradite wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't attribute to greed for something sufficiently explained by emotions and loyalty. Their CEO who was doing well as far as anyone can tell, was removed forcibly. It is natural to feel strongly about it.

who in their right mind has "emotions" and even "loyalty" for a CEO? and so much to the point that they'd quit their jobs over the CEO's departure? the reality is that people didn't join OpenAI because of sam altman. they joined the company because they got paid (handsomely) to do some interesting work.

So in every possible scenario it’s wrong to have emotions and loyalty for a CEO, who’s also a human, and may have had a profound, even life-changing effect on you?

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

#760

Post by kmlevitt » Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 11:17 PM UTC

iteratethis wrote: post #705

I wish we could all just admit that this is a capital run, rather than some moralistic crusade. The employees want to get their big payday, so will follow Altman wherever he goes. Which is the smart thing to do anyway as he runs half the valley. The public discourse in which Sam is the hero is further cemented by the tech ecosystem, which nowadays is circling around AI. Those in the "OpenAI wrapper" game. Nobody has…

People are jumping on this narrative that the openAI board is a force of good working against the evils of profit, but the truth is none of us really know why they fired him because they still refuse to say. There’s a non-trivial chance D’Angelo just fired him because of a conflict of interest with Poe or some nonsense like that.

Until a few hours ago, everybody was holding up Ilya as a noble idealist. But now even he has recanted this firing! People don’t seem to be Taking that new information on board to reevaluate how good a decision this was. I would say at best they had noble intentions but still went about this completely incompetently, and are now refusing to back down out of a mixture of stubborn pride and fear of legal liability.

If I was an openAI employee I would be frustrated too. It’s one thing to give up lucrative stock options etc. for a good, idealistic reason. But as of now they are still expected to give those things up for no stated reason at all.

Edit: just saw a plausible theory that D’Angelo led the charge on this because Sam scooped Poe on Dev day. I don’t know if this is true, but if it was it would explain why he still refuses to explain the reason to anybody, even san when he was fired: it would put him in serious legal jeopardy.

https://twitter.com/scottastevenson/status/17267310228620087...