Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board • Hacker News Board

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#391

Post by ekianjo » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 4:50 AM UTC

psyclobe wrote: post #227

htk wrote: post #212

Can't help but feel weird about all the thanking in the letter, especially the "sincere" thanks to Tasha and Helen, the possible main antagonists in this soap opera. It's like a written version of the heart emojis in their Twitter exchanges.

Reeks of CEO speak; general bullshit that seems to go against all practical reasoning of the situation. Don't fall for it.

this is probably a chatgpt prompt starting with "I am VC Bro, write a letter as I come back as CEO and thank everyone who was involved in the stabbing, and dont forget to use cliche stuff like turn a crisis into an opportunity"

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#392

Post by TulliusCicero » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 4:51 AM UTC

gopher_space wrote: post #209

cyanydeez wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they're B2B now, that means only political correctness. and I'm not sure why anyone dances around it but these models are built by unfiltered data intake. if they actually want to harness bias, they need to do what every capitalist does to a social media platform and curate the content. lastly, bias is an illusion of choice. choosing color over colour is a byproduct of culture and you're not going to eradicate that b…

What does political correctness and bias mean in this context? edit: I'm asking because to my eye most of these conversations revolve around jargon mismatch more than anything else.

IIRC they've put in guard rails to try and make sure ChatGPT doesn't say anything controversial or offensive, but doing so hampers its utility and probably creativity, I'm guessing.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#393

Post by danbmil99 » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 4:52 AM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #277

bedobi wrote: post #35

i'm still not clear what the accusation against Altman was... something about being cavalier about safety? if that was the claim and it has merit, i don't understand why it wasn't right to oust him, and why the employees are clamoring for him back

The best explanation I've read is https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KXHMCH7wCxrvKsJyn/openai-fac... and https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KXHMCH7wCxrvKsJyn/openai-fac... along with Zvi's overview in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sGpBPAPq2QttY4M2H/openai-the...

Or, just go to the source:

"The Prince", Machiavelli

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#394

Post by wraptile » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 4:53 AM UTC

civilized wrote: post #155

Berniek wrote: post #142

Who is driving the company (companies)? Certainly not the board, when it can be ousted on the whim of one person. Might as well just get rid of the board (all boards in this organization) as any decision made can be overthrown by a bit of publicity and ego. Perhaps it about getting rich at the expense of any ethics? Those who work for this company should bear this in mind, they are all expendable!

Hacker News represents hackers, not Boards of Directors. The hackers of OpenAI overwhelmingly demanded Sam back. Everyone here should be happy.

Yes that's why the hackers got a seat on the board now! Oh wait it was the $$$ that got a seat instead...

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#395

Post by chrismartin » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 4:53 AM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #258

solardev wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if -- and that's a big if -- it really was just a dispute over alignment (nonprofit vs for-profit, safety, etc.), the board executed it really poorly and completely misjudged their employees' response. They saw the limits of their power / persuasiveness compared to [Altman/the allure of profit/the simple stability and clarity of day-to-day work without a secretive activist board/etc] Or maybe they already knew t…

Let's also keep in mind that if the AI doomers are right and spicy autocomplete is just a few more layers away from taking over the world, OpenAI has completely failed at building anything that could keep it under control. Because they can't even keep Sam Altman under control. ...actually, now that I think of it... Any creative work - even a computer program - tends to be a reflection of the organizational hierarchie…

Not sure if I agree with the conclusion, but the phenomenon you're referring to is Conway's Law (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law)

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#396

Post by hakdbha » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 4:54 AM UTC

aantix wrote: post #332

djbusby wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These internal drama can play out in the service. Frame the question as: do you want to build on an unstable/unsteady platform?

Do you want to build on subpar technology? Nothing beats OpenAI at the moment. Nothing is even close.

[dead]

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#397

Post by bdhe » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 4:54 AM UTC

93po wrote: post #268

preommr wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He doesn't look like the guy into revenge. How do you know this? Idk why this is the comment that broke the camel's back for me, but all over this site people have been making character determinations about people from a million miles away through the filter of their public personas.

This is perpetually one of my last favorite patterns in humans. Declaring someone an idiot when they’ve never met them and they’re one of the most powerful and influential people on the planet. Not referring to Sam here.

If you refer to Trump, when people say idiot, I don't think they refer to his intelligence in the sense of appealing to people's base instincts - he clearly has good political intelligence. It refers to his understanding of subjects, his clarity of thought and expression, and often a judgment of his morals, principles, and ethics.

If you don't - there was no need to be coy. And you act as if failing up never happens in real life.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#398

Post by itronitron » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 4:57 AM UTC

Denzel wrote: post #222

kaycebasques wrote: post #121

> The fact that we did not lose a single customer will drive us to work even harder for you, and we are all excited to get back to work. I'm not a big customer, but I am starting the process of moving away from OpenAI in response to these events

That’s a strange statement because I definitely canceled my subscription as a result of the happenings. This very public battle confirmed for me how misaligned OpenAI is with the originating charter and mission of its nonprofit. And I didn’t want to financially contribute towards that future anymore. I guess my subscription didn’t count as a customer.

They didn't lose any of their current customers... /s

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#399

Post by lying4fun » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 5:00 AM UTC

droopyEyelids wrote: post #380

sheepscreek wrote: post #366

I used to correspond with Bret Taylor when he was still at Google. He wrote a windows application called Notable that I used every day for note-taking. Eventually, I started contributing to it. It’s been fascinating to witness his career progression from Product Manager at Google, to the co-CEO of Salesforce, and now the chair of OpenAI board (he was also the chair of Twitter board pre-Elon)!

[flagged]

I didn’t mind, comments like this give insight to people’s trajectories

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#400

Post by upwardbound » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 5:04 AM UTC

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #378

willis936 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one interpretation, and I'm sure it is the one they had. In my opinion they failed to enforce the charter. Had they been effective at enforcing the charter they would have not folded all of their power to someone they view does not enforce the charter. There is nothing they could have done to fail more.

>Had they been effective at enforcing the charter they would have not folded all of their power to someone they view does not enforce the charter. There is nothing they could have done to fail more. How specifically do you suggest they should have "not folded all of their power"? Are you saying they should have stuck to their guns when it came to firing Sam? In any case, it's not obvious to me that the board actually…

> that press release could make a big difference -- to the SEC and other federal regulators, for example.

They might even have already done this confidentially via the SEC Whistleblower Protection route. We don't yet know who filed this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38469149

I guess this might have seemed like their best option if a public statement would be a breach of NDA's. That said, I still wish they'd just have some backbone and issue a public statement, NDA's be damned, because the question of upholding a fiduciary duty to be beneficial to all of humanity is super important, and the penalties for a violation of an NDA would be a slap on the wrist compared to the boost in reputation they would have gotten for being seen to publicly stick to their principles.