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Reflections on OpenAI

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Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#321

Post by sensanaty »

lucianbr wrote: post #85
dagorenouf wrote: post #2

Maybe I’m paranoid but this sounds too good to be true. Almost like something planted to help with recruiting after meta poached their best guys.

> It's hard to imagine building anything as impactful as AGI, and LLMs are easily the technological innovation of the decade. I really can't see a person with at least minimal self-awareness talking their own work up this much. Give me a break dude. Plus, you haven't built AGI yet. Can't believe there's so little critique of this post here. It's incredibly self-serving.

Reading through the thread, it seems like half of the commenters work for OpenAI, so it'd make sense people aren't critiquing it much :p

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#323

Post by pyman »

blitzar wrote: post #273
ls-a wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a YC startup. If you know anything about YC it's the network of founders supporting each other no matter what.

> no matter what except if you publicly speak in less than glowing terms their leaders

Some books do a good job of documenting the power struggles that happen behind closed doors, big egos backed by millions clashing over ideas and control.

Not gonna lie, the entire article reads more like a puff piece than an honest reflection. Feels like something went down on Slack, some doors got slammed, and this article is just trying to keep them unlocked. Because no matter how rich you are in the Valley, if you're not on good terms with Sam, a lot of doors will close. He's the prodigy son of the Valley, adopted by Bill Gates and Peter Thiel, and secretly admired by Elon Musk. With Paul Graham's help, he spent 10 years building an army of followers by mentoring them and giving them money. Most of them are now millionaires with influence. And now, even the most powerful people in tech and politics need him. Jensen Huang needs his models to sell servers. Trump needs his expertise to upgrade defence systems. I saw him shaking hands with an Arab sheikh the other day. The kind of handshake that says: with your money and my ambition, we can rule the world.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#324

Post by ben_w »

sensanaty wrote: post #318
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's no Bond villain at the helm We're talking about Sam Altman here, right, the dude behind Worldcoin? A literal bond-villainesque biological data harvesting scheme?

It might be one of the cover stories for a Bond villain, but they have lots of mundane cover stories. Which isn't to say you're wrong, I've learned not to trust my gut in the category (rich business leaders) to which he belongs.

I'd be more worried about the guy who tweeted “If this works, I’m treating myself to a volcano lair. It’s time.” and more recently wore a custom T-shirt that implies he's like Vito Corleone.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#326

Post by Mordisquitos »

Timwi wrote: post #290
kaashif wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also don't believe AGI is a thing Why not? I don't think we're anywhere close, but there are no physical limitations I can see that prevent AGI. It's not impossible in the same way our current understanding indicates FTL travel or time travel is.

I also believe that AGI is not a thing, but for different reasons. I notice that almost everybody seems to implicitly assume, without justification, that humans are a GI (general intelligence). I think it's easy to see that if we are not a GI, then we can't see what we're missing, so it will feel like we might be GI when we're really not. People also don't seem interested in justifying why humans would be GI but othe…

> I notice that almost everybody seems to implicitly assume, without justification, that humans are a GI (general intelligence). I think it's easy to see that if we are not a GI, then we can't see what we're missing, so it will feel like we might be GI when we're really not.

That's actually a great point which I'd never heard before. I agree that it's very likely that us humans do not really have GI, but rather only the intelligence that evolved stochastically to better favour our existence and reproduction, with all its positive and negative spandrels[0]. We can call that human intelligence (HI).

However, even if our "general" intelligence is a mirage, surely what most people imagine when they talk about 'AGI' is actually AHI, as in an artificial intelligence that has the same characteristics as human intelligence that in their own hubris they believe is general. Or are you making a harder argument, that human intelligence may not actually have the ability to create AHI?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#328

Post by edanm »

tptacek wrote: post #7

This was good, but the one thing I most wanted to know about what it's like building new products inside of OpenAI is how and how much LLMs are involved in their building process.

Yes, same, that's a fascinating question that people are pretty tight-lipped about.

Note he was specifically on the team that was launching OpenAI's version of a coding agent, so I imagine the numbers before that product existed could be very different to the numbers after.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#329

Post by ben_w »

stickfigure wrote: post #250
yoyohello13 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure people working for cigarette companies are doing the best they can too. People can be good individuals and also work toward evil ends.

I am of the opinion that the greatest evils come from the most self-righteous.

I disagree. The health burden from smoking is approximately the same as death toll as the sum of all in the Holocaust, but smoking does it every nine months. And 1.3 million/year of those are non-smokers who are dying because they are exposed to second-hand smoke: https://ourworldindata.org/smoking

Even when the self-righteous are at their most dangerous, they have to be self-righteous and in power, e.g.:

  Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caedite_eos._Novit_enim_Dominu....

or:

  រក្សាន្នកគ្មានប្រយោជន៍ខាត។ បំផ្លាញអ្នកគ្មានការខាតបង់
- https://km.wikipedia.org/wiki/ប្រជាជនថ្មី

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#330

Post by 47282847 »

teiferer wrote: post #300
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You do know that early bonding experiences of newborns are crucial for their lifelong development? It reads like satire, or, if serious, plain child maltreatment.
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