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We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

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Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#251

Post by Dylan16807 »

pug_mode wrote: post #246
shubhamjain wrote: post #162

At the end of the day, we still don't know what exactly happened and probably, never will. However, it seems clear there was a rift between Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the Original Principles (Team Helen/Ilya). I think the tensions were brewing for quite a while, as it's evident from an article written even before GPT-3 [1]. > Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting pressu…

I'm convinced there is a certain class of people who gravitate to positions of power, like "moderators", (partisan) journalists, etc. Now, the ultimate moderator role has now been created, more powerful than moderating 1000 subreddits - the AI safety job who will control what AI "thinks"/says for "safety" reasons. Pretty soon AI will be an expert at subtly steering you toward thinking/voting for whatever the "safety"…

Personally, I expect the opposite camp to be just as bad about steering.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#252

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

Gud wrote: post #61

Once we develop an actual, fully functional AGI, it’s going to steamroll us isn’t it. If these are the stewards of this technology, it’s time to be worried now.

The only way "we develop an actual, fully functional AGI" is by dumbing down humans enough so that even something as stupid as ChatGPT seems intelligent.

(Fortunately we are working on this very hard and making incredible progress.)

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#253

Post by veec_cas_tant »

nickpp wrote: post #135
r721 wrote: post #29

Quote tweets by main participants: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1727206691262099616 (+ follow-up https://twitter.com/sama/status/1727207458324848883 ) https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1727206609477411261 https://twitter.com/miramurati/status/1727206862150672843 UPD https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1727208843137179915 https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1727210329560756598 https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/17272076…

On a side tangent, absolutely amazing how all this drama unfolded on Twitter/X. No Threads, no Mastodon, no Truth Social or Blue whatever. Say what you want about Elon’s leadership but his instinct to buy Twitter was completely right. To me it seemed like any social network crap but he realized it was important .

Not trying to be a dick but:

1. He tried to not buy Twitter very hard and OpenAI’s new board member forced his hand

2. It hasn’t been a good financial decision if the banks and X’s own valuation cuts are anything to go by.

3. If his purpose wasn’t to make money…all of these tweets would have absolutely been allowed before Elon bought the company. He didn’t affect any relevance changes here.

Why would one person owning something so important be better than being publicly owned? I don’t understand the logic.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#255

Post by huytersd »

auggierose wrote: post #204

So, the only two women were removed from the board, and two ultra-alpha males were brought on. And everybody is cheering it on as the right thing to do! Not judging, just observing.

It’s definitely the right thing to do. Those women had “qualifications” in a made up field with no real world relevance that aimed to halt progress on AI work. We are no where close to a paradigm where AI takes over the world or whatever.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#256

Post by antupis »

silenced_trope wrote: post #194
shubhamjain wrote: post #162

At the end of the day, we still don't know what exactly happened and probably, never will. However, it seems clear there was a rift between Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the Original Principles (Team Helen/Ilya). I think the tensions were brewing for quite a while, as it's evident from an article written even before GPT-3 [1]. > Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting pressu…

Honestly "Safety" is the word in the AI talk that nobody can quantify or qualify in any way when it comes to these conversations. I've stopped caring about anyone who uses the word "safety". It's vague and a hand-waive-y way to paint your opponents as dangerous without any sort of proof or agreed upon standard for who/what/why makes something "safety".

I like alignment more it is pretty quantifiable and sometimes it goes against 'safety' because Claude and Openai are censoring models.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#257

Post by yosame »

turndown wrote: post #7

From the outside none of this makes much sense. So the old board just disliked him enough to oust him but apparently didn’t have a good pulse on the company and overplayed their hand?

As far as I can tell, Sam did something? to get fired by the board, who are meant to be driven by non-profit ideals instead of corporate profits (probably from Sam pushing profit over safety, but there's no real way to know). From that, basically the whole company threatened to quit and move to Microsoft, showing the board that their power is purely ornamental. To retain any sort of power or say over decision making whatsoever, the board made concessions and got Sam back.

Really it just shows the whole non-profit arm of the company was even more of a lie then it appeared.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#258

Post by fsloth »

silenced_trope wrote: post #194
shubhamjain wrote: post #162

At the end of the day, we still don't know what exactly happened and probably, never will. However, it seems clear there was a rift between Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the Original Principles (Team Helen/Ilya). I think the tensions were brewing for quite a while, as it's evident from an article written even before GPT-3 [1]. > Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting pressu…

Honestly "Safety" is the word in the AI talk that nobody can quantify or qualify in any way when it comes to these conversations. I've stopped caring about anyone who uses the word "safety". It's vague and a hand-waive-y way to paint your opponents as dangerous without any sort of proof or agreed upon standard for who/what/why makes something "safety".

Exactly this. The ’safety’ people sound like delusional quacks.

”But they are so smart…” argument is bs. Nobody can be presumed to be super good outside their own specific niche. Linus Pauling and vitamin C.

Until we have at least a hint of a mechanistic model if AI driven extinction event, nobody can be an expert on it, and all talk in that vein is self important delusional hogwash.

Nobody is pro-apocalypse! We are drowning in things an AI could really help with.

With the amount of energy needed for any sort of meaningfull AI results, you can always pull the plug if stuff gets too weird.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#260

Post by jkaplan »

shubhamjain wrote: post #162

At the end of the day, we still don't know what exactly happened and probably, never will. However, it seems clear there was a rift between Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the Original Principles (Team Helen/Ilya). I think the tensions were brewing for quite a while, as it's evident from an article written even before GPT-3 [1]. > Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting pressu…

I feel like the "safety" crowd lost the PR battle, in part, because of framing it as "safety" and over-emphasizing on existential risk. Like you say, not that many people truly take that seriously right now.

But even if those types of problems don't surface anytime soon, this wave of AI is almost certainly going to be a powerful, society-altering technology; potentially more powerful than any in decades. We've all seen what can happen when powerful tech is put in the hands of companies and a culture whose only incentives are growth, revenue, and valuation -- the results can be not great. And I'm pretty sure a lot of the general public (and open AI staff) care about THAT.

For me, the safety/existential stuff is just one facet of the general problem of trying to align tech companies + their technology with humanity-at-large better than we have been recently. And that's especially important for landscape-altering tech like AI, even if it's not literally existential (although it may be).

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