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Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

nytimes.com

11–20 of 625 posts

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#11

The only specific accusation made in the article is that Sam criticized Helen Toner for writing a paper: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/ That says Anthropic has a better approach to AI safety than OpenAI. Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he w…

It's interesting but it may well be they both have a point: Helen for telling him to get lost and Sam for attempting to remove her before she would damage the company.

But she could have made that point more forcefully by not comparing Anthropic to OpenAI, after all who better than her to steer OpenAI in the right direction. I noted in a comment elsewhere that all of these board members appear to have had at least one and some many more conflicts of interest. Helen probably believes that her loyalty is not to OpenAI but to something higher than that based on her remark that destroying the company would serve to fulfil its mission (which is a very strange point of view to begin with). But that doesn't automatically mean that she's able to place it in context, within OpenAI, within the USA, the Western world and the world as a whole.

It's like saying the atomic bomb would have never been invented if the people at Los Alamos didn't do it. They did it in three years after it became known that it could be done in principle. Others tried and failed but without the same resources. I suspect that if the USA had not done it that eventually France, the UK and Russia would have gotten there as well and later on China. Israel would not have had the bomb without the USA (willing or unwilling) and India and Pakistan would have achieved it but much later as well. So we'd end up with the same situation that we have today modulo some timing differences and with another last chapter on WWII. Better? Maybe. But it is also possible that the Russians would have launched a first strike on the USA if they were unopposed. It almost happened as it was!

The open question then is: does she really believe that no other entity has the resources to match OpenAI and does she believe that if such an entity does exist that it too will self destruct rather than to go through with the development?

And does she believe that this will hold true for all time? That they and their colleagues are so unique that they hold the key to something that can otherwise not be replicated.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#12

The only specific accusation made in the article is that Sam criticized Helen Toner for writing a paper: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/ That says Anthropic has a better approach to AI safety than OpenAI. Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he w…

> Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he was trying to navigate a tricky relationship with the FTC. She apparently told him to kick rocks and he started to look for ways to get her off the board.

Huh, this sounds pretty crazy to me. Like, it's assuming that a board member should act deceptively in order to help the for-profit arm of OpenAI avoid government scrutiny, and that trying to remove them from the board if they don't want to do that is reasonable. But in fact the entire purpose of the board is to advance the mission of the parent non-profit, which doesn't sound obviously compatible with "avoid giving the FTC (maybe legitimate) ammunition against the for-profit subsidiary, even if that means you should hide your beliefs".

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#13

>Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that mission would be fulfilled. Now we know where that came from

Interesting. This is the person who "holds comparable influence to a USAF Colonel." according to "a prominent researcher in AI safety" who "discovered prompt injection". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38330566

Well, I suppose this tells us something about the AI safety community and whether it makes sense to integrate safety into one's workflow. It seems that the best AI safetyists will scuttle your company from the inside at some moment not yet known. This does sort of imply that it is risky for an AI company to have a safetyist on board.

That does seem to be accurate. For instance, Google had the most formidable safety team, and they've got the worst AI. Meta ignored theirs and they've given us very good open models.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#14

>Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that mission would be fulfilled. Now we know where that came from

Non-profit or not, steering the company towards non-existence isnt in the interest of the company.

These true believers serve a higher calling. Only they can prevent an AIpocalpse.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#15
Ms. Toner’s motive is now clearer for being criticized about her research. Mr. D’Angelo had a competing commercialization product with Poe. Mr. Sutskever seems easy to manipulate emotionally and is in constant ideological battles. Mrs. McCauley AKA Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s wife, what’s her motive?

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#16

The only specific accusation made in the article is that Sam criticized Helen Toner for writing a paper: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/ That says Anthropic has a better approach to AI safety than OpenAI. Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he w…

> Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he was trying to navigate a tricky relationship with the FTC. She apparently told him to kick rocks and he started to look for ways to get her off the board. Huh, this sounds pretty crazy to me. Like, it's assuming that a board member s…

No, it means that you go outside only after you've exhausted all avenues inside. It's similar to a whistle blower situation, only most whistleblowers don't have their fingers on the self-destruct button. So to press that button before exhausting all other options seems a bit hasty. There is no 'undo' on that button.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-profit or not, steering the company towards non-existence isnt in the interest of the company.

These true believers serve a higher calling. Only they can prevent an AIpocalpse.

Lucky us that we have such enlightened people to save us. /s

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#19

The only specific accusation made in the article is that Sam criticized Helen Toner for writing a paper: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/ That says Anthropic has a better approach to AI safety than OpenAI. Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he w…

Who is being completely reasonable? Board member has a mandate and appears to be making a good faith effort to carry it out and the CEO tries to overthrow her. Whether that is standard behavior for CEOs is irrelevant.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#20
keep in mind that the lead reporter on this, cade metz, is the one who wrote the character assassination piece on scott alexander repeatedly insinuating he was a neo-nazi (and de-anonymizing him, costing him his job due to some kind of weird psychiatrist ethical code)

so while probably nothing in here is literally false, it's quite likely calculated to give false impressions; read with caution

(well, it's literally false that "Greg Brockman (...) quit his role[] as (...) board chairman" but only slightly; that was the role he was fired from, as explained in the next paragraph of the article; that's not the kind of lies to watch out for)

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