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

#581

Post by BHSPitMonkey » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 9:40 AM UTC

lend000 wrote: post #577

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.

Leadership at companies everywhere act just like this without it resulting in quite the same levels of drama seen in this case. I'm not sure I buy the correlation.

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

#582

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 9:43 AM UTC

upwardbound wrote: post #575

nirv wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/micr…

And yet, they continue to exist and no CEO of MS ever stepped down because of any of these.

And I predict that even if Microsoft is going to be caught again that it will be a non-event in terms of actual repercussions. If Nadella exits MS HQ in Seattle in handcuffs I would be most surprised.

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

#583

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 9:44 AM UTC

lend000 wrote: post #577

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.

[deleted]

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

#584

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 9:44 AM UTC

mikeg8 wrote: post #411

jjtheblunt wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment made me look for a recent article about Paul Graham firing him from Ycombinator for being exactly not a great leader or trustworthy person. The article was just days ago but it’s eluding my search.

Would love to see it. Everything I’ve read/seen from PG regarding Sama has been nothing but high praise. My understand is Sam chose to leave YC president role to pursue other interests/ventures which eventually turned into OpenAI

I think PG is very, very subtle when it comes to his writings about Sam and what you think is high praise may well be faint damnation.

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

#585

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 9:47 AM UTC

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #450

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…

"Asset-backed securities" doesn't sound like corporate equity to me.

In a broad reading it could easily be just that.

Securities class contains stock

Stock = backed by the company balance sheet

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

#586

Post by imdsm » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 9:50 AM UTC

wilg wrote: post #580

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

It definitely had many of us interested and I'd read the book if it had reveals in it, but each to their own

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

#587

Post by imdsm » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 9:54 AM UTC

lend000 wrote: post #577

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: user upwardbound and your now deleted comment on extinction:

Not all e/acc accept extinction. Extinction may and very well could happen at the hands of humans, with the potentially pending sudden ice age we're about to hit, or boiling atmosphere, or nuclear holocaust etc. What we believe is that to halt AI will do more harm than good. Every day you roll the dice, and with AGI, the upsides are worth the roll of the dice. Many of us, including Marc Andreessen, are e/acc and are normal people. Let's not paint us as nutcases please.

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

#588

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 9:55 AM UTC

GreedClarifies wrote: post #312

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

They clearly had nothing. They had a couple of people on the board who had no right being there. Sam wanted them gone and they struck first by somehow getting Ilya on their side. They smeared Sam in hopes that he would slink away, but he had build so much goodwill with his employees that they wouldn't let it stand. They probably had smeared people before and it had worked. I'm thrilled it didn't work for them this ti…

This sounds like a lot of conjecture. Those people definitely had a right to be there: they were invited to and accepted board positions, in some cases it was Sam himself who asked them to join.

But an oversight board can be established easier than that it can be disbanded and that's for very good reasons. The only reason that it worked is not because the board made any decisions they shouldn't have made (though that may well be the case) but because they critically misjudged the balance of power. They could and maybe should have made their move, but they could not make it stick.

As for the last line of your comment: I think that explains your motivation of interpreting things creatively but that doesn't make it true.

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

#589

Post by irthomasthomas » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 9:56 AM UTC

Although we have, as yet, no idea what he was actually refering to, I believe the source of the tension may be related to the statements Sam made the night before he was fired.

"I think this is going to be the greatest leap forward that we've had yet so far, and the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions we've had so far. so i'm super excited, i can't imagine anything more exciting to work on. and on a personal note, like four times now in the history of openai, the most recent time was just in the last couple of weeks, i've gotten to be in the room when we sort of like push the front, this sort of the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward. and getting to do that is like the professional honor of a lifetime. so that's just, it's so fun to get to work on that."

Finally, when asked what surprises may be announced by the company next year, Sam had this to say

"The model capability will have taken such a leap forward that no one expected." - "Wait, say it again?" "The model capability, like what these systems can do, will have taken such a leap forward, no one expected that much progress." - "And why is that a remarkable thing? Why is it brilliant? " "Well, it's just different to expectation. I think people have in their mind how much better the model will be next year, and it'll be remarkable how much different it is. " - "That's intriguing."

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

#590

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 9:58 AM UTC

vasco wrote: post #528

dmix wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though there has been speculation, we were not motivated by a desire to slow down OpenAI’s work. Strange when their choice of interim-CEO was someone who explicitly stated he wants to see the pace of AI development go from a 10 to a 2 [1] and she regularly speaks at EA conferences where that's a major theme. This is probably double speak for she want's to not "slow down OpenAI's work" on AI safety but probably woul…

The way EA does donations is "I'll take a premise I believe in and will stretch the argument until it makes no sense". This is how they end up thinking that a massage for an AI researcher is money better spent than on hungry Yemeni children for example. Once you view it like this, I wouldn't put it past them to blatantly lie. Looking at the facts as you say, they tried to replace a guy that is moving ahead with a guy…

Essentially EA is a stretchable concept that allows adherents to act out their every fantasy with complete abandon whilst protecting their sensitive sense of self. It redefines their side to always be the good side, no matter what they get up to.