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

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

#571

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

SXX wrote: post #553
esafak wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 discussi…

>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.

As Nathan states:

>And further, I argued that the Red Team project that I participated in did not suggest that they were on-track to achieve the level of control needed

>Without safety advances, I warned that the next generation of models might very well be too dangerous to release

Seems like each generation of models is getting more capable of thinking, beyond just regurgitating.

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

#572

Post by octacat »

dacryn wrote: post #567
sanderjd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, their big mistake was being unwilling to be clear and explicit about this, but as I read it, the board's problem with him was that he wasn't actually acting as the executive of the non-profit that he was meant to be the executive of, but rather was acting entirely in the interests of a for-profit subsidiary of it (and in his own interests), which were in conflict with the non-profit's charter. I think where the…

so much this, he kept introducing clauses in contracts that tied investments to him, and not necessarily to openai. He more or less did it with microsoft, to a small degree. So his firing could have caused quite a lot of money to be lost. But ok no big deal. But then he tried to do it again with a saudi contract. OpenAI board said explicitly they didn't want the partnership, and especially not tied to Altman personal…

If they gave a reasonable reason to the public, they could get away with it. Shady CEO vs equally shady board.

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

#573

Post by ben_w »

SXX wrote: post #553
esafak wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 discussi…

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

Most of us don't want to.

Most of those who do, don't know enough to actually do it.

Sometimes such people get into power, and they use new inventions like the then-new-pesticide Zyklon B to industrialise killing.

Last year an AI found 40k novel chemical agents, and because they're novel, the agencies that would normally stop bad actors from getting dangerous substances, would generally not notice the problem.

LLMs can read research papers and write code. A sufficiently capable LLM can recreate that chemical discovery AI.

The only reasons I'm even willing to list this chain, is that the researchers behind that chemical AI have spent most of the intervening time making those agencies aware of the situation, and I expect the agencies to be ready before a future LLM reaches the threshold for reproducing that work.

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

#574

Post by krisoft »

m463 wrote: post #367
happytiger wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I don’t think it’s the truth. It happens with alarming frequency to our family. We seem to be some kind of stealth customer QA for companies. The other possibility is that they are lying to cover their ass, but they would never do that… right?

I had a friend who did call center stuff. It was kind of eye-opening - they took phone calls form late-night tv infomercials and there was a script. They would take down your name, take your order, and then... upsell, cross-sell, special offer sell, etc. If the person said anything like "I'm not interested in this, blah blah", they had responses for everything. "But other people have quite upset when they didn't rece…

> The only way OUT of the script was to say "I will cancel my order unless you stop"

Hanging up the phone is always an option. If you feel civilised you first say you are not interested and thank the sales person for their time, and then hang up no matter what they try to say. That is a way out of the script of course.

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

#575

Post by upwardbound »

nirv wrote: post #300
upwardbound wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the board's failure to make their case, recent news suggests that the SEC is going to investigate whether it is true that Altman acted in the manner you describe, which would be a violation of fiduciary duty. I agree that it seems like an open & shut case. Typical SEC timelines mean that this will go public in about 18 months from now. An anonymous person has already filed an SEC whistleblower complaint…

Very interesting, thanks for posting this.

Interestingly, it appears that Microsoft has been caught violating SEC regulations at least 6 previous times, and that's just what I turned up in a cursory search:

2023: https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/03/activision_sec_settle...

2019: https://techcentral.co.za/eoh-microsoft-ensnared-in-sec-corr...

2013-2019: https://fcpa.stanford.edu/investigation.html?id=156

2013-2016: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/ex-microsoft...

1999: https://www.itprotoday.com/windows-8/sec-investigating-micro...

2002: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2575713/microsoft-sec-...

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

#576

Post by vikramkr »

jacquesm wrote: post #570
vikramkr wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Was anyone arguing that or am I misunderstanding you? Of course they are free to leave, that's obvious. I think the point was: the employees have that power and nothing will take that away from them.

The gp said there's no way a board can stop employees from leaving and the one I was replying to started with "that depends" and suggested it was a question as to whether the board "believed" employees held all the strings. Though reading it again the parent does seem a bit non-sequitor from the gp which was strictly talking about what the board physically could have done, as in what options they had. The options they had don't really depend on any particular belief - they couldn't have made them stay thanks to the civil war and stuff

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

#577

Post by lend000 »

lionkor wrote: post #569

> I am sure books are going to be written about this time period, and I hope the first thing they say is how amazing the entire team has been yikes

I think this is probably the source of the whole debacle right here... Sam is pretty self righteous and self important and just seems to lack some subtle piece of social awareness, and I imagine that turns a lot of people off. That delusional optimism is probably the key to his financial success, too, in terms of having a propensity for taking risk.

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

#578

Post by jacquesm »

consp wrote: post #535
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there's a sense in which my mind is software that's being run by my brain, right? Yet that doesn't absolve me of moral responsibility. In any case, an F16 fighter jet is amoral in a certain sense, but it wouldn't be smart to make F16s available to the average Joe so he can conduct an airstrike whenever he wants.

Completely depends on your morality. I'm pretty sure there are some libertarians out there who think the most basic version of the second amendment includes owning F16 with live weapons.

Sure, but idiots are a thing and the intersection of the sets of libertarians who may believe that and idiots is hopefully empty but it may not be so such outsized power is best dealt with through a chain of command and accountability of sorts.

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

#579

Post by jacquesm »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #340
fastball wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't really make sense to be unwilling to divulge company secrets if you're willing to gut the company for this hill.

They weren't willing to gut the company. That's why Sam is back as CEO.

They were willing but failed, and mostly on account of not doing enough prepwork.

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

#580

Post by wilg »

lionkor wrote: post #569

> I am sure books are going to be written about this time period, and I hope the first thing they say is how amazing the entire team has been yikes

idk, it's true its interesting moment in tech history (either ai or just this silicon valley drama) and he wants to be appreciative of the team that supported him
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