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Reflections on OpenAI

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Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#171

Post by tedsanders »

gwern wrote: post #150
tedsanders wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI never enforced this, removed it, and admitted it was a big mistake. I work at OpenAI and I'm disappointed it happened but am glad they fixed it. It's no longer hanging over anyone's head, so it's probably inaccurate to suggest that Calvin's post is positive because he's trying to protect his equity from being taken. (though of course you could argue that everyone is biased to be positive about companies they o…

> It's no longer hanging over anyone's head, The tender offer limitations still are, last I heard. Sure, maybe OA can no longer cancel your vested equity for $0... but how valuable is (non-dividend-paying) equity you can't sell? (How do you even borrow against it, say?)

Nope, happy to report that was also fixed.

(It would be a pretty fake solution if equity cancellation was halted, but equity could still be frozen. Cancelled and frozen are de facto identical until the first dividend payment, which could take decades.)

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#172

Post by harmonic18374 »

m00x wrote: post #161
harmonic18374 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is still manipulatable and driven by incentive like anyone else.

What incentives? It's not a very intellectual opinion to give wild hypotheticals with nothing to go on other than "it's possible".

I am not trying to advance wild hypotheticals, but something about his behavior does not quite feel right to me. Someone who has enough money for multiple lifetimes, working like he's possessed, to launch a product minimally different than those at dozens of other companies, and leaving his wife with all the childcare, then leaving after 14 months and insisting he was not burnt out but without a clear next step, not even, "I want to enjoy raising my child".

His experience at OpenAI feels overly positive and saccharine, with a few shockingly naive comments that others have noted. I think there is obvious incentive. One reason for this is, he may be in burnout, but does not want to admit it. Another is, he is looking to the future: to keep options open for funding and connections if (when) he chooses to found again. He might be lonely and just want others in his life. Or to feel like he's working on something that "matters" in some way that his other company didn't.

I don't know at all what he's actually thinking. But the idea that he is resistant to incentives just because he has had a successful exit seems untrue. I know people who are as rich as he is, and they are not much different than me.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#173

Post by bigiain »

hinterlands wrote: post #52

It is fairly rare to see an ex-employee put a positive spin on their work experience. I don't think this makes OpenAI special. It's just a good reminder that the overwhelming majority of "why I left" posts are basically trying to justify why a person wasn't a good fit for an organization by blaming it squarely on the organization. Look at it this way: the flip side of "incredibly bottoms-up" from this article is that…

> It is fairly rare to see an ex-employee put a positive spin on their work experience.

Sure, but this bit really makes me wonder if I'd like to see what the writer is prepared to do to other people to get to his payday:

"Nabeel Quereshi has an amazing post called Reflections on Palantir, where he ruminates on what made Palantir special. I wanted to do the same for OpenAI"

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#175

Post by solarized »

> As I see it, the path to AGI is a three-horse race right now: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Each of these organizations are going to take a different path to get there based upon their DNA (consumer vs business vs rock-solid-infra + data).

Grok be like. okey. :))

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#176

Post by pyman »

matco11 wrote: post #135
torginus wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's what I think - while Altman was busy trying to convince the public the AGI was coming in the next two weeks, with vague tales that were equaly ominous and utopistic, he (and his fellow leaders) have been extremely busy at trying hard to turn OpenAI into a product company with some killer offerings, and from the article, it seems they were rather good and successful in that. Considering the high stakes, money,…

> remember how they mentioned they built multiple Codex prototypes, it must've sucked to see some other people's version chosen instead of your own Well it depends on people’s mindset. It’s like doing a hackathon and not winning. Most people still leave inspired by what they have seen other people building, and can’t wait to do it again. …but of course not everybody likes to go to hackathons

> OpenAI is perhaps the most frighteningly ambitious org I've ever seen.

That kind of ambition feels like the result of Bill Gates pushing Altman to the limit and Altman rising to the challenge. The famous "Gates demo" during the GPT‑2 days comes to mind.

Having said that, the entire article reads more like a puff piece than an honest reflection.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#177

Post by bagxrvxpepzn »

dang wrote: post #151
bagxrvxpepzn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I removed the personal attack.

I appreciate the edit, but "sopping wet with cynicism" still breaks the site guidelines, especially this one: " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Understood, in the future I will refrain from questioning motives in featured articles. I can no longer edit my post but you may delete or flag it so that others will not be exposed to it.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#178

Post by bagxrvxpepzn »

tptacek wrote: post #167
bagxrvxpepzn wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that he leaves OpenAI almost immediately after hitting his 25% vesting cliff, it seems like his employment at OpenAI and this blog post (which makes him and OpenAI look good while making the reader feel good) were done cynically. I.e. primarily in his self-interest. What makes it even worse is his stated reason for leaving: > It's hard to go from being a founder of your own thing to an employee at a 3,000-perso…

There's nothing cynical about leaving a job after cliffing. If a company wants a longer commitment than a year before issuing equity, it can set a longer cliff. We're all adults here.

> There's nothing cynical about leaving a job after cliffing

My criticism is that that's a detail that is being obscured and instead other explanations for leaving are being presented (cynically IMO).

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#179

Post by david_shi »

paxys wrote: post #87

> An unusual part of OpenAI is that everything, and I mean everything, runs on Slack. Not that unusual nowadays. I'd wager every tech company founded in the last ~10 years works this way. And many of the older ones have moved off email as well.

I wonder how much of this data Salesforce can use, a literal goldmine of information

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#180

Post by tptacek »

bagxrvxpepzn wrote: post #178
tptacek wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing cynical about leaving a job after cliffing. If a company wants a longer commitment than a year before issuing equity, it can set a longer cliff. We're all adults here.

> There's nothing cynical about leaving a job after cliffing My criticism is that that's a detail that is being obscured and instead other explanations for leaving are being presented (cynically IMO).

I don't see anything interesting about that detail; you keep trying to make something out of it, but there's nothing there to talk about.

There might be some marginal drama to scrape up here if the post was negative about OpenAI (I'd still be complaining about trying to whip up drama where there isn't any), but it's kind of glowing about them.

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