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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

#621

Post by int_19h »

bayindirh wrote: post #562
g42gregory wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a piece of software. What would "totally amoral" even mean here? It's an inanimate object, it has no morals, feelings, conscience, etc... He gives it an amoral input, he gets an amoral output.

Then we should stop teaching Therac-25 incident to developers and remove envelope protection from planes and safety checks from nuclear reactors. Because, users should just input the moral inputs to these things. These are inanimate objects too. Oh, while we're at it, we should also remove battery charge controllers. Just do the moral and civic thing and unplug when your device charges.

In both of your examples, the result of "immoral inputs" is immediate tangible harm. In case of GPT-4 or any other LLM, it's merely "immoral output" - i.e. text. It does not harm anyone by itself.

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

#622

Post by int_19h »

ben_w wrote: post #550
g42gregory wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a piece of software. What would "totally amoral" even mean here? It's an inanimate object, it has no morals, feelings, conscience, etc... He gives it an amoral input, he gets an amoral output.

We don't want immoral output even for immoral input. (We do disagree about what constitutes "immoral", which makes this much harder).

We absolutely do, though, if we want those things to e.g. write books and scripts in which characters behave immorally.

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

#624

Post by chii »

dalbasal wrote: post #620

What makes this hard to read/follow is the grandiose moral vision... and the various levels of credulity it's met with. If it's words from Ilya, Sam, the board... the words are all about alignment, benefiting humanity and such. Meanwhile, all parties involved are super serious tycoons who are super serious about riding the AI wave, establishing moats, monopolies and the next AdWords, azure, etc. These are such extrem…

> the words are all about alignment, benefiting humanity and such.

that's why you only consider the actions taken, not the words spoken.

And in fact, i fail to believe that there are any real altruists out there. Esp. not rich ones. After all, if they're really altruistic, they would've given all their wealth away - before their supposed death (and even then, i doubt the money given to their "charitable foundations" count for real!).

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

#625

Post by IshKebab »

hackideiomat wrote: post #530
IshKebab wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He meant if they were to lose their jobs and then have to put actual effort in to get a new one, like most people.

I do not think it is hard for any of them to get a new job and they would be flooooooded with offers if the opened their linkedin

Exactly. Most people are not in that situation and therefore cannot threaten to leave so easily.

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

#626

Post by staunton »

octacat wrote: post #572
dacryn wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My take is that the board probably never had a chance no matter what they said or did. The company already "belonged" to Altman and Microsoft. The board was just there for virtue signaling and for quite a while already had no real power anymore beyond a small threat of creating bad publicity.

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

#627

Post by int_19h »

mikeg8 wrote: post #307
bmitc wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also isn't clear why Altman couldn't have been replaced by someone else with literally no change in operations and progress. It is just really confusing why people acted as if they fired Michael Jordan from the Bulls.

He is obviously a great leader and those that work there wanted to work with him. It’s very clear in this thread how undervalued exceptional leadership actually is, as evidence by comments thinking the top role in the most innovative company could be just plug-and-play.

There's exceptional leadership, and then there are charming sociopaths.

Unfortunately, it can sometimes be hard to tell those two apart when a sociopath is actively pushing your emotional buttons to make you feel like they care about the same things as you etc.

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

#628

Post by andy_ppp »

When the following works I'll be impressed: "ChatGPT can you explain possible ways to make fusion power efficient for clean free energy production given the known and inferred laws of physics?" and it actually produces a new answer and plans for a power plant.

It's very hard to know how close we are to this, but I do think it's possible these AI models end up being able to infer and invent new technology as they improve. Even if nearly 100% of the guesses at the above question are wrong it doesn't take many being useful for humans to benefit.

I wonder what humans will do when the AIs give us everything we could ever want materially.

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

#629

Post by welpo »

andy_ppp wrote: post #628

When the following works I'll be impressed: "ChatGPT can you explain possible ways to make fusion power efficient for clean free energy production given the known and inferred laws of physics?" and it actually produces a new answer and plans for a power plant. It's very hard to know how close we are to this, but I do think it's possible these AI models end up being able to infer and invent new technology as they impr…

That's a pretty high bar, no?

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

#630

Post by quickthrower2 »

chii wrote: post #624
dalbasal wrote: post #620

What makes this hard to read/follow is the grandiose moral vision... and the various levels of credulity it's met with. If it's words from Ilya, Sam, the board... the words are all about alignment, benefiting humanity and such. Meanwhile, all parties involved are super serious tycoons who are super serious about riding the AI wave, establishing moats, monopolies and the next AdWords, azure, etc. These are such extrem…

> the words are all about alignment, benefiting humanity and such. that's why you only consider the actions taken, not the words spoken. And in fact, i fail to believe that there are any real altruists out there. Esp. not rich ones. After all, if they're really altruistic, they would've given all their wealth away - before their supposed death (and even then, i doubt the money given to their "charitable foundations"…

Not necessarily. Money keeps you in the game. Giving it all away means you are at the bottom being not that effective. And you can donate money in your will.
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