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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

#781

Post by monkeywork »

epgui wrote: post #771
monkeywork wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that's not the decision the person in this thread was struggling with - they were struggling with the idea that they may invest $$ into something that 2,3,10 years down the road no longer works because a company went out of biz. Sounds like they would like to have the devices but have a hard time pulling the trigger for a fear of sinking money into to something temporary.

Yeah, and the operational stability of a company is a factor that goes straight to its ability to continue as a going concern. So it's reasonable for many people to base their decision on this kind of drama (even if not everyone agrees on the importance of this factor).

you may want to go back and re-read the thread you are replying to ... the person I replied to wasn't talking about drama they made a "IoT home devices all spy on you" argument.

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

#782

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

int_19h wrote: post #778
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The problem isn't that anyone can buy an F16. The problem is that some people use their F16 to conduct airstrikes nefariously or negligently."

You persist in using highly misleading analogies. A military F-16 comes with missiles and other things that are in and of themselves highly destructive, and can be activated at a push of a button. An LLM does not - you'd have to acquire something else capable of killing people first, and wire the LLM into it. The argument you're making is exactly like claiming that people shouldn't be able to own iPhones because they…

>The argument you're making is exactly like claiming that people shouldn't be able to own iPhones because they could be repurposed as controllers for makeshift guided missiles.

The reason this isn't an issue in practice is because such repurposing would require significant intelligence/electrical engineering skill/etc. The point is that intelligence (the "I" in "AI") will make such tasks far easier.

>Ten-year-old about to play chess for the first time, skeptical that he'll lose to Magnus Carlsen: "Can you explain how he'll defeat me, when we've both got the same pieces, and I move first? Will he use some trick for getting all his pawns to the back row to become Queens?"

https://nitter.net/ESYudkowsky/status/1660399502266871809#m

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

#783

Post by giardini »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #641
giardini wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of OpenAI's employees are actually developing the software they market? 700+ seems awfully high.

Not this again!

I just read

"Ego, Fear and Money: How the A.I. Fuse Was Lit"

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/technology/ai-openai-musk...

In discussing OpenAI the article reveals why OpenAI is the size it is:

OpenAI was created before LLMs were so popular, so OpenAI has a diverse employee pool of AI people. Many, if not most, were hired NOT for LLM or even NN knowledge but for knowledge of the more general field of AI.

Were you an OpenAI exec who fervently believed LLMs would take you to true AI then there would be every reason to dump the non-LLM employees (likely a majority and a financial burden) and hire new staff who are more LLM-knowledgeable. At the same time, current OpenAI staff not familiar with LLMs are undoubtedly cramming!8-))

So that satisfies my question as to why OpenAI has so many people: only a fraction of the company produced the current hot products.

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

#784

Post by sanderjd »

pms wrote: post #742
sanderjd wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I guess so. I keep waffling between thinking it's some 4d chess thing, and thinking it's just normal human fallibility, where the board just made a massive mistake in predicting how it would go. But I just struggle so much to imagine that, because everyone I know in the industry, regardless of their level of expertise or distance from OpenAI, immediately knew how big a deal it was going to be, when we heard he…

The board had the right non-profit long-term focus, but it didn't have the willpower to communicate and realize their vision. Ilya is a wonderful scientist, but not a great leader.

Yep, you nailed it, I think. Pity.

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

#785

Post by epgui »

monkeywork wrote: post #781
epgui wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and the operational stability of a company is a factor that goes straight to its ability to continue as a going concern. So it's reasonable for many people to base their decision on this kind of drama (even if not everyone agrees on the importance of this factor).

you may want to go back and re-read the thread you are replying to ... the person I replied to wasn't talking about drama they made a "IoT home devices all spy on you" argument.

It’s possible to make a more charitable reading of their comment as being on topic.

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

#786

Post by stefs »

crotchfire wrote: post #779
stefs wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

something like this is the premise in the peter watts novels of the sunflower cycle. the starship AIs intelligence is about the level of a chimp, because any higher and they start developing their own motives.

Why would that make any sense? Humans "have their own motives" because we're designed to reproduce. We're designed to reproduce because anything that didn't, over billions of years, no longer exists today. Why on earth would an artifact produced by gradient descent have its own motives? This is just an absurd consequence of extrapolating from a sample size of one. The only intelligent thing we know of is humans, huma…

i don't think the current generation of GPTs can develop "motives", but the question is if AGI is even possible without it having the ability to develop them.
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