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

#551

Post by qnleigh » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 8:44 AM UTC

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.

Reading between the lines, I see "I harbor zero ill will towards [Ilya]... we hope to continue our working relationship." but no such comments directed at Helen and Tasha. Given how sanitized these kinds of releases usually are, I took that to mean "" in this context.

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

#552

Post by vikramkr » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 8:45 AM UTC

627467 wrote: post #347

slkdjfalzkdfj wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you guys considered that maybe he's there because he's extremely qualified and extremely well-respected by his peers? It's not some kind of weird power play, he's just lending a hand while they figure out the long-term board composition.

Did I - in any way - conveyed that Bret is NOT at the board for his qualifications?

Yes - see your previous message for reference. Qualifications were not mentioned as the likely reason for his selection to the board

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

#553

Post by SXX » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 8:46 AM UTC

esafak wrote: post #478

logicchains wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of planning an assassination is not the same thing as the cost (and risk) of carrying out an assassination, what a stupid take.

A would be assassin would obviously ask the algorithm to suggest a low risk and cost way of assassinating.

Except the reason why we dont all just killed each other yet have nothing to do with risk or cost of killing someone.

And everything LLM can come up with will be exactly the same information you can find in any fiction detective book or TV series about crime. Yeah very very dumb criminal can certainly benefit from it, but he can as well go on 4chan and ask about assassination there. Or on some detective book discussion club or forum.

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

#554

Post by upwardbound » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 8:46 AM UTC

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #434

althea_tx wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Michigan Post article is mostly speculation and that publication doesn’t have much depth/history to it. Check out their “advertise with us” page. This whole info dump feels like a mishmash of links to thoughtful things (Stratechery) with links to speculative articles that are clearly biased. Like how is “Influencer Magazine” breaking a story that Wall Street Journal and Kara Swisher are overlooking? I don’t mean…

I would guess that "WLW FUTURE PRESS RELEASE DISTRIBUTION" is a publicist service that was hired by the person making the whistleblower complaint. upwardbound claims there's a lot of money in being a successful whistleblower: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38388246 I don't know if I find the Microsoft/OpenAI favor trading allegation that persuasive (unless new information is uncovered, e.g. Microsoft letting Sa…

| if the SEC actually ends up enforcing the "fiduciary duty is to humanity" thing in OpenAI's charter at some point, that would be incredibly sweet.

Absolutely. It's 100% their job.

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

#555

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 8:48 AM UTC

rezonant wrote: post #467

jacquesm wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens to me frequently. When I report an obvious problem in some service it is always the very first time that they've heard of it and no other customers seem to have the issue.

This is a universal truth of feedback and customer service. Every user report is an iceberg: for every 1 person there's a much more significant number of people who experienced the problem but never reported it.

Yes, but the company may be as an ice breaker going across the pole in a straight line, and still when asked about hitting ice, the captain will say that this now is literally the first time it ever happened.

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

#556

Post by vikramkr » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 8:48 AM UTC

tsunamifury wrote: post #228

I have an insanely hard time believing that a CEO that copies his customers and competes directly with them with his own consumer product will be “doubling down” to help customers. Sam has shown he has no good will towards anyone but himself.

Ah yes, all those "customers" that build products that were a thin wrapper of chatgpt with an extra feature, truly the innovative powerhouses that will revive our economy /s. I mean seriously, if anyone thought they were going to build a business around a got based startup to parse documents when document parsing is already a specific goal with benchmarks in AI that openai was obviously going to be working towards - well, I'm glad it didn't take long to clear out those grifters.

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

#557

Post by unsupp0rted » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 8:49 AM UTC

wg0 wrote: post #141

There was a time when Google Translate was the only game in town but now every single time, I find DeepL to be far superior. This can happen to OpenAI? If not, why not? Is some of the research not open? Also, even if DeepL is subjectively better, how did they or someone can do that? I mean some key papers+data+cloud budget to train are the three main ingredients to replicate such a translation model? If yes, that's a…

I’ve seen deepl hallucinate a word into a sentence lately.

E.g translate this from Turkish to English:

> “Günaydın. Bunlar sahte tuğla paneller mi?”

>“Good morning. Uh-huh. Are those fake brick panels?”

Where is that “uh-huh” coming from?

Now same sentence, but remove an adjective:

> “Günaydın. Bunlar tuğla paneller mi?”

> “Good morning, ma'am. Are those brick panels?”

Ma’am? Where is there a “ma’am” in that sentence?

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

#558

Post by vikramkr » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 8:52 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #18

Aperocky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The board could have stayed, they (and OpenAI) just had to bear with the consequences (i.e. all the employees leave). There are no board that can prevent employees from leaving, nor should there.

That depends on whether the board was there to provide cover and protection against regulation/nationalization or whether it was supposed to have an actual role. Apparently some board members believed that they had an actual role and others understood that they were just a fig leaf and that ultimately money (and employees) hold the strings.

No, to the specific question of making employees stay, that's not a thing that you can do outside of prisons. If employees want to leave they can leave. If they want to start the nonprofit from scratch, they can do that but employees cannot be stopped from leaving

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

#559

Post by mattjaynes » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 8:54 AM UTC

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.

Yes, but helping these people save face smoothes the transition. My guess is that those folks were waaay out of their depth and they naturally made naive mistakes. It doesn't benefit anyone to stomp on them. I'm sure they learned hard lessons, and Sam's message is what we call "grace", which is classy.

Is it politics? Sure, but only in the best sense. By not dunking on the losers, he builds trust and opens the doors for others to work with him. If you work with Sam and make a mistake, he's not going to blast you. It's one reason that there was such a rallying of support around Sam, because he's a bridge-builder, not a bridge-burner. Over time, those bridges add up.

Silicon Valley has a long memory and people will be working with each other for decades. Forgiving youthful mistakes is a big part of why the culture works so well.

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

#560

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 8:56 AM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #526

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openais-86-billion-s... What if lots of employees stood to make "fuck you" money from that sale, and with Sam's departure, that money was in danger of evaporating?

If employees would have voted Sam out, you'd take that as a shiny example of the proletariat exercising the power for the good of human kind, hammer, sickle and all that. I always find it funny when people understand democracy to mean "other people that should vote my way, otherwise they are imoral and should be re-educated".

First, I'm actually quite libertarian and capitalist -- although not necessarily so when it comes to companies working on powerful AI (or fighter jets for that matter). Here are some comments of mine from other discussions if you don't believe me:

* Expressing skepticism about unions in Sweden -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38308184

* Arguing against central planning, with a link to a book detailing how socialism always fails -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38303195

* I often push back against the "greedy corrupt American plutocrats" narrative which you see all over HN. Here are a few examples -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37541805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37962796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38456106

And by the way, here is a comment I made the other day making essentially the point you are making, that in a democracy everyone is entitled to their opinion, even the dastardly Elon Musk: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38261265 And I also argue in favor of freedom of speech here, for whatever that's worth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37713086

Point being, I'm not sure our disagreement lies where you think it does.

The purpose of the board is that they're supposed to be disinterested representatives of humanity, supervising OpenAI. The employees aren't chosen for being disinterested, and it seems quite likely that they are, in fact, interested, per my link.

From the perspective of human benefit (or from the perspective of my own financial stake in OpenAI, given that their charter says their "primary fiduciary duty is to humanity"), I prefer a small group of thoughtful, disinterested people over a slightly larger group whose interest is systematically biased relative to the interest of me or the average person. Which is more likely to produce a fair trial: a jury of 12 randomly chosen citizens, or a jury of 1200 mafiosos?