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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

#881

Post by slim »

tempsy wrote: post #145
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

Apparently Sam isn't in the Microsoft employee directly yet, so he isn't technically hired at all. Seems like he loses a bit of leverage over the board if they think he & Microsoft are actually bluffing and the employment announcement was just a way to pressure the board into resigning.

you serously think being on the employee directory beats being announced publicly by the ceo ?

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

#882

Post by dang »

tedmiston wrote: post #575
dang wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Thanks for the quick fix, Dan! So do you have the ability to pin deeply nested comments or do you have to remove it from the existing thread for this to work? Someone else proposed this first but didn't think pinning worked on nested comments. Edit: The original author asked not to be pinned in a subcomment, so I don't know now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I didn't pin it; I just detached it, which allowed it to get ranked at the toplevel. After that it's just the algorithm doing its thing.

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

#883

Post by dang »

alephnerd wrote: post #502
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can ask dang to pin comments, though I am not sure if it only works for top level comments.

Please don't. I'm too close to comfort to this shitshow. I don't want to make yet another alt account.

If there's a problem, let me know at hn@ycombinator.com and we'll take care of it.

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

#884

Post by busterarm »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #880
busterarm wrote: post #874

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to deter military action involving your country, contributing to its defense is probably the best thing that you can do. Unless you're not actually the best and brightest that your country can offer. If you believe that your country offers value (compared to the rest of the world), you should take any opportunities you can to serve.

Defense and offense don’t seem easily separated when it comes to military technology.

That's always an issue with weapons, but if you opt out then you don't have them when you might need them.

It's a dangerous world out there.

Luckily for us, technology is still more-often used for good. Explosives can kill your enemies, but they can also cut paths through mountains and bring together communities.

IMO, the virtue signal where people refuse to work on defense technology is just self-identifying with the worst kind of cynicism about human beings and signaling poor reasoning skills.

The Manhattan Project, which had the stated purpose of building and deploying nuclear _weapons_, employed our most brilliant minds at the time and only two people quit -- and only one because of an ethics concern. Joseph Rotblat left the project after the Nazis were already defeated and because defeating the Nazis was the only reason he'd signed on. Also this is disputed by some who say that he was more concerned about finding family members who survived the Holocaust...

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

#885

Post by nonethewiser »

abakker wrote: post #670
SpaceManNabs wrote: post #539

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.

The dude voted to fire Altman. He could have not done that. Actions have consequences.

At best he doesn’t have much integrity and caves to peer pressure. I would respect him more if he stood by his actions. Abandoning them just shows how frivolously his decision making was.

Perhaps more info will come out that casts a different light, but as of now it seems obvious that he decided to vote to fire Altman for reasons that he’s not willing to clarify and which he abandoned as soon as he saw the overwhelmingly negative reaction. He didnt even say he regrets firing Altman - just that he doesn’t want OpenAI to fall apart.

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

#886

Post by jacquesm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #852
jacquesm wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, ok, I was under the distinct impression that some of the early employees of OpenAI were stock holders in the entity in the middle. I base that on the graph on this page: https://openai.com/our-structure Specifically this graph: https://images.openai.com/blob/f3e12a69-e4a7-4fe2-a4a5-c63b6... Now it may be that I got this completely wrong but it looks to me as though there is an ownership relationship (implying sto…

> Hm, ok, I was under the distinct impression that some of the early employees of OpenAI were stock holders in the entity in the middle. That's the entity I discuss in GP as “the holding company above the LLC”. I'm reasonably certain it is OpenAI LP, a limited partnership (but it is odd that its the one organization not identified in the document—the name of the entity used by OpenAI to control it, and separate infor…

No way to be sure without seeing the paperwork but that word 'owner' is a strong tell that this is stock, not just a profit share (note the direction of the arrow, but even if it is just a profit share that profit share still is a function of the stock held by the entity and if that stock loses its value because the underlying company is destroyed then so do the profits). So with that as a base I hope you can understand why I think the fiduciary duties of the board extend to the employees affected by their decisions because it directly impacts the value of the stock held in that company to which they - and the other investors mentioned - hold (possibly indirect) title.

These arrangements are pretty common in fact (though not the non-profit bit, just the separate entity for smaller shareholders and investors), and the other stand out is that they label the other party in there as 'investors', not 'donors' or some other party to which you are not required to answer.

So to me it is far from clear cut that they only have the mission of the non profit to guide themselves by and they set themselves up for that by wanting too much control (also over all of the other entities). Control is good when you want to have your way, but too many hats on your head with too many different labels can constrain you or open you up to liability or conflicts of interest. It's one of the reasons why I try to limit my engagement with various companies to a single role.

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

#887

Post by richardw »

hotnfresh wrote: post #447
neilv wrote: 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.

This board doesn't own the global state of play. They own control over the decisions of one entity at a point in time. This thing moves too fast and fluidly, ideas spread, others compete, skills move. Too forceful a move could scatter people to 50 startups. They just catalysed a massive increase in fluidity and have absolutely zero control over how it plays out.

This is an inkling, a tiny spark, of how hard it'll be to control AI, or even the creation of AI. Wait until the outcome of war depends on the decisions made by those competing with significant AI assistance.

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

#888

Post by jdthedisciple »

westcort wrote: post #599
jdthedisciple wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

oh interesting, i was referring to this by greg who did the same:

https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725667410387378559

my bad then, seems to be a thing with these guys ig

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

#889

Post by blobbers »

TexanFeller wrote: post #833
blobbers wrote: post #822

Am I the only one who thinks all this looks like fairly childish behavior by the board, the employees, microsoft, and Sam Altman? It s a non-profit, it's for profit, Microsoft is investing, board is firing Sam, Ilya thinks Sam needs to be removed, Ilya thought about it more is sorry for firing Sam and wants him back, Sam's part of microsoft, now he's still trying to be CEO of OpenAI.

> childish behavior “childish” is a poorly defined term mainly used to manipulate. You should specify what you actually mean.

I basically mean poorly thought out, first order thinking. Immediate gratification, not examining consequences, etc.

Like Sam Altman needs to start a company on Saturday because he was fired on Friday? The board firing him without informing or discussing with investors...

Or Microsoft has to hire him on Monday (they have the most to win/lose tbh, so maybe it's justified).

I just meant the decisions seemed to not think of the longer term / downstream ramifications, the way children often behave.

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

#890

Post by Obscurity4340 »

marjipan200 wrote: post #870
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #864

I genuinely believe, based on my experiences with ChatGPT, that it doesn't seem all that threatening or dangerous. I get we're in the part of the movie at the start before shit goes down but I just don't see all the fuss. I feel like it has enormous potential in terms of therapy and having "someone" to talk to that you can bounce ideas off and maybe can help gently correct you or prod you in the right direction. A lo…

Agree on LLMs being effective for nudging therapy like CBT. I built an obsidian plugin "ChatCBT" with chatgpt 3.5 that has really helpful for pulling me out of episodes I start to spiral in negative thinking. I'm shocked how effective this is with a basic prompt (you can see the prompt in the codebase) https://github.com/clairefro/obsidian-chat-cbt-plugin

This is the problem I have when there's so many saying "no we need to wait, wait, wait, what about safety"...people are dying and in horrible states now. This needs to be available, at least the functionality that allows it to engage with you in a therapeutic context.

To the extent they try to prevent or block everyone from having access to this kind of profound outlet/tool/conversation partner, I consider it a great evil (like the opposite of what the Jewish folks call "mitzvahs") and they need to take consideration of this and either find a way to align their views to allow space for it or they need to step aside and find another gate to keep.

I will not tolerate their message or influence or allow them to prevail to this end. The biggest dangers of LLMs like for therapy and such is everyone not being able to easily access and "have" it forever to keep and use to help grow and heal and for free—no bullshit temporary access or subscriptions. This is profound on the level of the whatever the psychological or psychiatric equivalent of the printing press is or moveable type or whatever

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