Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI's tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 26 posts

Re: OpenAI's tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others

#11

Post by johnisgood »

threatripper wrote: post #10
grugagag wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im more worried of bots flooding all kinds of social media pushing public oppinion in the direction their owners want. I feel that this is already happening.

I'm pretty sure that LLMs already overpower the average arguing abilities of users on many platforms. Not even low resolution video calls are safe anymore to verify somebody is a real person.

That is true, we must assume nothing is genuine or authentic, video or audio. It used to be photos before, but it is no longer limited to images or photos anymore.

Re: OpenAI's tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others

#12

Post by meiraleal »

"The goal of OpenAI is to make the future good and to avoid an AGI dictatorship. You are concerned that Demis could create an AGI dictatorship. So do we. So it is a bad idea to create a structure where you could become a dictator if you chose to, especially given that we can create some other structure that avoids this possibility."

Today I became a fan of Ilya Sutskever

Re: OpenAI's tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others

#14

Post by kordlessagain »

Let's analyze these specific emails for manipulation patterns while being clear we're doing so to understand and prevent harm, not to learn manipulation:

Key manipulative behaviors shown in the emails:

1. Using artificial urgency to force decisions: "Deepmind is going to give everyone massive counteroffers tomorrow to try to kill it"

2. Changing narratives to maintain control: Sam Altman's reasons for wanting CEO title kept shifting according to Greg/Ilya

3. Information control and selective disclosure: Sam being "bothered by how much Greg and Ilya keep the whole team in the loop"

4. Creating dependency through resource control: Elon using funding as leverage - "I will no longer fund OpenAI until..."

5. Double binds and no-win situations: Team had to choose between losing funding or accepting control terms

6. Triangulation between parties: Playing Greg/Ilya against Sam, Sam against Elon, etc.

The patterns use control, artificial urgency, shifting narratives, and manipulation of relationships to maintain power.

Re: OpenAI's tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others

#15

Post by melodyogonna »

meiraleal wrote: post #12

"The goal of OpenAI is to make the future good and to avoid an AGI dictatorship. You are concerned that Demis could create an AGI dictatorship. So do we. So it is a bad idea to create a structure where you could become a dictator if you chose to, especially given that we can create some other structure that avoids this possibility." Today I became a fan of Ilya Sutskever

Ilya is based. I totally became distrustful of Sam once it was known Ilya was part of the coup. He is the sort of person that tries to keep the company pointed in the right direction

Re: OpenAI's tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others

#16

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

meiraleal wrote: post #12

"The goal of OpenAI is to make the future good and to avoid an AGI dictatorship. You are concerned that Demis could create an AGI dictatorship. So do we. So it is a bad idea to create a structure where you could become a dictator if you chose to, especially given that we can create some other structure that avoids this possibility." Today I became a fan of Ilya Sutskever

It sounded like that was directed at Elon not Sam? Or is it the other way?

Ilya makes a good point, but I also wonder if he is also being naive. In order to get to the stage where AGI can be built outside of big tech, you probably do need a CEO with typical CEO powers. Maybe there can be some convoluted structure to avoid dictatorial control at the end but I also wonder if this is sort of an organizational distraction. There might explain the push to just move on and get past all this.

Of course this depends on who we’re talking about. I would trust Elon to share AGI as he did Tesla patents. But not Sam.

Re: OpenAI's tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others

#17

Post by juped »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #16
meiraleal wrote: post #12

"The goal of OpenAI is to make the future good and to avoid an AGI dictatorship. You are concerned that Demis could create an AGI dictatorship. So do we. So it is a bad idea to create a structure where you could become a dictator if you chose to, especially given that we can create some other structure that avoids this possibility." Today I became a fan of Ilya Sutskever

It sounded like that was directed at Elon not Sam? Or is it the other way? Ilya makes a good point, but I also wonder if he is also being naive. In order to get to the stage where AGI can be built outside of big tech, you probably do need a CEO with typical CEO powers. Maybe there can be some convoluted structure to avoid dictatorial control at the end but I also wonder if this is sort of an organizational distractio…

"is immune to firing by the board" is not a typical CEO power.

Re: OpenAI's tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others

#18

Post by meiraleal »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #16
meiraleal wrote: post #12

"The goal of OpenAI is to make the future good and to avoid an AGI dictatorship. You are concerned that Demis could create an AGI dictatorship. So do we. So it is a bad idea to create a structure where you could become a dictator if you chose to, especially given that we can create some other structure that avoids this possibility." Today I became a fan of Ilya Sutskever

It sounded like that was directed at Elon not Sam? Or is it the other way? Ilya makes a good point, but I also wonder if he is also being naive. In order to get to the stage where AGI can be built outside of big tech, you probably do need a CEO with typical CEO powers. Maybe there can be some convoluted structure to avoid dictatorial control at the end but I also wonder if this is sort of an organizational distractio…

> It sounded like that was directed at Elon not Sam? Or is it the other way?

It was to Elon at that moment. Elon wanted majority equity, board control, and to be CEO.

> Of course this depends on who we’re talking about. I would trust Elon to share AGI as he did Tesla patents. But not Sam.

I think Ilya is right to make it not possible in place of depending of trust Elon. Then he tried again with Sam but then he lost.

Re: OpenAI's tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others

#19

Post by simonswords82 »

kordlessagain wrote: post #14

Let's analyze these specific emails for manipulation patterns while being clear we're doing so to understand and prevent harm, not to learn manipulation: Key manipulative behaviors shown in the emails: 1. Using artificial urgency to force decisions: "Deepmind is going to give everyone massive counteroffers tomorrow to try to kill it" 2. Changing narratives to maintain control: Sam Altman's reasons for wanting CEO tit…

Yea. It’s called social dynamics and plays out in pretty much any situation.

Please don’t think I’m a fan of the people at play here, I’m not. But it’s pretty standard stuff.

Re: OpenAI's tumultuous early years revealed in emails from Musk, Altman, and others

#20

Post by bionhoward »

Just hope everyone takes a moment to consider: are the customer noncompete clauses at OpenAI, XAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft hypocritical?

If they learn from us, and we’re not allowed to learn from them, how is that good for safety? How much does that silo safety information?

Yes, I realize many folks just blow it off, and many more are normies who don’t know or care, but doesn’t it seem wrong to learn from humanity while telling humanity they can’t learn from you?

Thankful we have open AI models from Meta and Alibaba!

Post reply on HN