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Reflections on OpenAI

calv.info

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Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#291

Post by teiferer »

>It's hard to imagine building anything as impactful as AGI,

Where is this AGI that you've built then? The reason for the very existence of that term is an acknowledgement that what's hyped today as AI isn't actually what AI used to mean, but the hype cycle VC money depends on using the term AI, so a new term was invented to denote the thing the old term used to denote. Do we need yet another term because AGI is about to get burned the same way?

> and LLMs are easily the technological innovation of the decade.

Sorry, what? I'm sure it feels that way from some corners of that particular tech bubble, but my 73 year old mom's life is not impacted by LLMs at all - well, except for when she opens her facebook feed once a month and gets blasted with tons of fake BS. Really something to be proud of for us as an industry? A tech breakthrough of the last decade that might have literally saved her life were mRNA vaccines though, and I could likely come up with more examples if I thought about it for more than 3 seconds.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#293

Post by neonbjb »

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?)

Also work at OpenAI. Every tender offer has made full payouts to previous employees. Sorry to ruin your witch hunt..

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#294

Post by Xenoamorphous »

m00x wrote: post #136
harmonic18374 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never post any criticism of an employer in public. It can only harm my own career (just as being positive can only help it). Given how vengeful Altman can reportedly be, this goes double for OpenAI. This guy even says they scour social media! Whether subconsciously or not, one purpose of this post is probably to help this guy’s own personal network along; to try and put his weirdly short 14-month stint in the…

Calvin cofounded Segment that had a $3.2B acquisition. He's not your typical employee.

So this guy is filthy rich and yet decided to grind for 14 months with a newborn at home?

I guess that's why he's filthy rich.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#295

Post by neonbjb »

maxnevermind wrote: post #215

What I really wanted to know if OpenAI(and other labs for that matter) actually use their own products and not just casually but make LLM a core of how they operate. For example: using LLM for coding in prod, training/fine-tuning internal models for aligning on the latest updates, finding answer etc. Do they put their money where their mouth is, do LLMs help with productivity? There is no mention of it in the article…

Yes we do. If you worked at Google you know moma. Our moma is an internal version of chat. It is very good.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#296

Post by mcosta »

a_bonobo wrote: post #263

>Thanks to this bottoms-up culture, OpenAI is also very meritocratic. Historically, leaders in the company are promoted primarily based upon their ability to have good ideas and then execute upon them. Many leaders who were incredibly competent weren't very good at things like presenting at all-hands or political maneuvering. That matters less at OpenAI then it might at other companies. The best ideas do tend to win.…

Are you implying that a top-down corporate structure is better?

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#297

Post by uh_uh »

lz400 wrote: post #185

Engineers thinking they're building god is such a good marketing strategy. I can't overstate it. It's even difficult to be rational about it. I don't actually believe it's true, I think it's pure hype and LLMs won't even approximate AGI. But this idea is sort of half-immune to criticism or skepticism: you can always respond with "but what if it's true?". The stakes are so high that the potentially infinite payoff sno…

> I don't actually believe it's true, I think it's pure hype and LLMs won't even approximate AGI.

Not sure how you can say this so confidently. Many would argue they're already pretty close, at least on a short time horizon.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#298

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

I agree with your points here, but I feel the need to address the final bit. This is not aimed personally at you, but at the pattern you described - specifically, at how it's all too often abused:

> Sure, some might object to X, but they miss the big picture: X is going to indirectly benefit the society because we're going to put the resulting money and power to good use. Without us, you could have the bad guys doing X instead!

Those are the easy cases, and correspondingly, you don't see much of those - or at least few are paying attention to companies talking like that. This is distinct from saying "X is going to directly benefit the society, and we're merely charging for it as fair compensation of our efforts, much like a baker charges you for the bread" or variants of it.

This is much closer to what most tech companies try to argue, and the distinction seems to escape a lot of otherwise seemingly sharp people. In threads like this, I surprisingly often end up defending tech companies against such strawmen - because come on, if we want positive change, then making up a simpler but baseless problem, calling it out, and declaring victory, isn't helping to improve anything (but it sure does drive engagement on-line, making advertisers happy; a big part of why press does this too on a routine basis).

And yes, this applies to this specific case of OpenAI as well. They're not claiming "LLMs are going to indirectly benefit the society because we're going to get rich off them, and then use that money to fund lots of nice things". They're just saying, "here, look at ChatGPT, we believe you'll find it useful, and we want to keep doing R&D in this direction, because we think it'll directly benefit society". They may be wrong about it, or they may even knowingly lie about those benefits - but this is not trickle-down economics v2.0, SaaS edition.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#299

Post by teiferer »

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…

There is lots of rationalizing going on in his article.

> I returned early from my paternity leave to help participate in the Codex launch.

10 years from now, the significance of having participated in that launch will be ridiculously small (unless you tell yourself that it was a pivotal moment of your life, even if it objectively wasn't) versus those first weeks with your newborn will never come back. Kudos to your partner though.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#300

Post by teiferer »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #294
m00x wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calvin cofounded Segment that had a $3.2B acquisition. He's not your typical employee.

So this guy is filthy rich and yet decided to grind for 14 months with a newborn at home? I guess that's why he's filthy rich.

Way to go to keep the boring chores of the first months with the partner and join the fun when the little one starts to be more fun after a year. With all that cash, I'm sure they could buy a bunch of help for the partner too.
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