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OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

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Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#141

Post by [deleted] »

paulddraper wrote: post #104
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #54

You know, I always found Mike judge to probably be the most prescient of all of the science fiction authors. In Office Space, Idiocracy, and most relevant here in Silicon Valley; he accurately, and very precisely not only forecasts, but deconstructs the reasoning, and vapid lack of core philosophy behind each of the real life narratives he’s parodying. That serious people still consider Silicon Valley as some kind of…

SV... Like high tech companies? Venture capital? The TV show? What do you mean by that?

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#142

Post by [deleted] »

jstummbillig wrote: post #47
skygazer wrote: post #26

Man, the board already looked reckless and incompetent, but this solidifies the appearance. You can do crazy ill-advised things, but if you unwaveringly commit, we’ll always wonder if you’re secretly a genius. But when you immediately backtrack, we’ll know you were a fool all along.

That seems a lot be better than doubling down on a bad mistake to save face, but we do care quite a bit about about looking strong, don't we.

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#144

Post by ben_w »

I have long since held the idea that "singularity" is a misleading term, and "event horizon" is much more descriptive: if you're being constantly surprised — my original phrasing was about going to sleep each night and being surprised each morning by the developments while you slept — then The Change has happened.

Well, I'm being constantly surprised.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#145

Post by hnrodey »

paulddraper wrote: post #104
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #54

You know, I always found Mike judge to probably be the most prescient of all of the science fiction authors. In Office Space, Idiocracy, and most relevant here in Silicon Valley; he accurately, and very precisely not only forecasts, but deconstructs the reasoning, and vapid lack of core philosophy behind each of the real life narratives he’s parodying. That serious people still consider Silicon Valley as some kind of…

SV... Like high tech companies? Venture capital? The TV show? What do you mean by that?

Assuming the show since the reference is to Mike Judge, and he’s the creator of the SV tv show.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#146

Post by testfoobar »

I wonder what sort of proper insurance backstops are in place.

E.g. https://www.thehartford.com/management-liability-insurance/d...

"The Who, What & Why of Directors & Officers Insurance

The Hartford has agents across the country to help with your insurance needs. Directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance protects the personal assets of corporate directors and officers, and their spouses, in the event they are personally sued by employees, vendors, competitors, investors, customers, or other parties, for actual or alleged wrongful acts in managing a company.

The insurance, which usually protects the company as well, covers legal fees, settlements, and other costs. D&O insurance is the financial backing for a standard indemnification provision, which holds officers harmless for losses due to their role in the company. Many officers and directors will want a company to provide both indemnification and D&O insurance."

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#147

Post by ren_engineer »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #79
ren_engineer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

everything about it screams amateur hour, from the language and timing of the press release to the fact they didn't notify Microsoft. And how they apparently completely failed to see how employees and customers would react to the news, Ilya saying the circumstances for Altman's removal "weren't ideal" shows how naive they were. They had no PR strategy to control the narrative and let rumors run wild I doubt he return…

This story that they want him back turns it from amateur hour to peak clownshow. This is why you need someone with business experience running an organization. Ilya et al might be brilliant scientists, but these folks are not equipped to deal with the nuances of managing a ship as heavily scrutinised as OpenAI

actually wild to think about how something like this can even be allowed to happen considering OpenAI has(had) a roughly 90B valuation and it being important to the US from a geopolitical strategy perspective.

comical to imagine something like this happening at a mature company like FedEx, Ford, AT&T. All which have smaller market caps than OpenAI. You basically have impulsive children in charge of massively valuable company

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#148

Post by ilaksh »

no_wizard wrote: post #66

He was outed for a reason. Why in the world would the board backtrack this? I think this is rumor mill reporting, trying to get things out too fast.

The only reasons I can think of:

A. Core team members leaving (perhaps more threatening to leave).

B. (maybe more likely) Nadella told Sutskever that he might shut off funding or restrict compute resources if he didn't reverse course, or at least, wasn't able to retain talent (see A).

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#149

Post by btown »

janejeon wrote: post #71
Jensson wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope Sam comes back Why? We would have more diversity in this space if he leaves, which would get us another AI startup with huge funding and know how from OpenAI, while OpenAI would become less Sam Altman like. I think him staying is bad for the field overall compared to OpenAI splitting in two.

Honestly would be super interested to see what a hypothetical "SamAI" corp would look like, and what they would bring to the table. More competition, but also, probably with less ideological disagreements to distract them from building AI/AGI.

From what we've seen of OpenAI's product releases, I think it's quite possible that SamAI would adopt as a guiding principle that a model's safety cannot be measured unless it is used by the public, embedded into products that create a flywheel of adoption, to the point where every possible use case has the proverbial "sufficient data for a meaningful answer."

Of course, from this hypothetical SamAI's perspective, in order to build such a flywheel-driven product that gathers sufficient data, the model's outputs must be allowed to interface with other software systems without human review of every such interaction.

Many advocates for AI safety would say that models whose limitations aren't yet known (we're talking about GPT-N where N>4 here, or entirely different architectures) must be evaluated extensively for safety before being released to the public or being allowed to autonomously interface with other software systems. A world where SamAI exists is one where top researchers are divided into two camps, rather than being able to push each other in nuanced ways (with full transparency to proprietary data) and find common ground. Personally, I'd much rather these camps collaborate than not.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#150

Post by silenced_trope »

tfehring wrote: post #82
Jensson wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope Sam comes back Why? We would have more diversity in this space if he leaves, which would get us another AI startup with huge funding and know how from OpenAI, while OpenAI would become less Sam Altman like. I think him staying is bad for the field overall compared to OpenAI splitting in two.

My main concern is that a new Altman-led AI company would be less safety-focused than OpenAI. I think him returning to OpenAI would be better for AI safety, hard to say whether it would be better for AI progress though.

Okay, this is honestly annoying. What is this thing with the word "safety" becoming some weasel word when it comes to AI discussions?

What exactly do YOU mean by safety? That they go at the pace YOU decide? Does it mean they make a "safe space" for YOU?

I've seen nothing to suggest they aren't "being safe". Actually ChatGPT has become known for censoring users "for their own good" [0].

The argument I've seen is: one "side" thinks things are moving too fast, therefore the side that wants to move slower is the "safe" side.

And that's it.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvWmCndyp9A&t

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