tldr: The new part of the story this adds is that Altman’s firing was partly in response to him trying to kick out one of the other board members.
Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
141–150 of 625 posts
Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Non-profit or not, steering the company towards non-existence isnt in the interest of the company.
But that's the problem, the board's mission was doomed from the get-go. Their mission isn't to be "in the interest of the company" but "in the interest of humanity" i.e. if they believe OpenAI at its pace would destroy humanity, then their mission is literally to destroy OpenAI itself.
> if they believe OpenAI at its pace would destroy humanity, then their mission is literally to destroy OpenAI itself.
I'd say most people have as much faith in LessWrong eschatology as they do with Christian nationalist eschatology. I can understand how a true believer might want to destroy the company to stop the AI gods they believe in, or shut off ChatGPT every Sunday to avoid living in sin. But it can be an issue when you start viewing your personal beliefs as fundamental truths.
There's something nicely secular about profit motives. I'm not sure I want technological advancement to be under the control of any religious belief.
Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe that. What I believe is that the first party to create an AGI will likely end up being nationalized and that that AI will be weaponized the next day to the exclusion of the rest of the world.
That's fine, but the OpenAI founders (including Sam Altman![1]) explicitly had in mind "AI kills everyone" as one of the main problems they were attempting to tackle when they started the organization. (Obviously starting OpenAI as a solution to this problem was a terrible mistake, but given that they did so, having a board charged with pulling the plug is better than not having that.) [1] https://blog.samaltman.com/…
That whole charter is bullshit. You don't invite Microsoft to the party if you care about ethics and you don't disable your fail-safe by giving them full access to all of your stuff.
Hence my position that the charter was a fig leaf designed to throw regulators off.
Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
#144As an aside, I must say that I'm fascinated by this use of the word ouster. In British English I've not heard it used this way, we'd use ousting in that place and the ouster would be the one doing the ousting, i.e. the person doing the pushing.
I thought I'd check with a quick search of the Guardian, and on two different days it used both in the same sense:
From the 18th of November edition, technology section:[1]
> The crisis at OpenAI deepened this weekend when the company said Altman’s ousting was for allegedly misleading the board.
From 17th of November edition, also technology section[2]:
> The announcement blindsided employees, many of whom learned of the sudden ouster from an internal announcement and the company’s public facing blog.
I could only find one instance in the Telegraph prior to Altman's erm, ousting[3]:
> Johnson dropped into the COP27 UN climate change conference in October, joking unusual summer heat had played a part in his ouster, and has vowed to keep championing Ukraine.
They stick to ousting every other time.
I wonder if it may be an artefact of newspapers using news services to get copy from, or a stylistic rule for international editions, as the Guardian does use ouster several other times but always in stories regarding US news.
Also fascinating that we still don't know who that is. Neither do most of the staff, and even the board, apparently. A true mastermind!
Maybe it is GPT5 after all…
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/18/earthquak...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/17/openai-ce...
[3] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/27/boris-johnson-wi...
Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Her mandate is specifically to do what is good for society not to do what is good for OpenAI.
And how did this improve society? I only see negatives. Other entities with less of a brake on their ethics are gaining ground. Microsoft of all parties is strengthening their position and has full access to the core tech.
>Other entities with less of a brake on their ethics are gaining ground.
Did OpenAI actually have a meaningful brake though? Like, if all the employees apparently think that the success of the company is more important than the charter, can we be sure that OpenAI actually had a meaningful brake?
Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless she has equity in Anthropic (which would be major conflict of interest), I don't see how this is self promotion...?
I'm guessing the reasoning is something like this... As a CEO I'd want your concerns brought to me so they could be addressed. But if they were addressed, that is one less paper that could be published by Ms. Toner. As a member of the openai board, seeing the problem solved is more important to openai than her publishing career.
https://openai.com/our-structure
"Second, because the board is still the board of a Nonprofit, each director must perform their fiduciary duties in furtherance of its mission—safe AGI that is broadly beneficial. While the for-profit subsidiary is permitted to make and distribute profit, it is subject to this mission. The Nonprofit’s pzrincipal beneficiary is humanity, not OpenAI investors."
I see. I don't know whether she did discuss any issues with Sam before hand, but it really does not sound like she had any obligation to do so (this isn't your typical for-profit board so her duty wasn't to OpenAI as a company but to what OpenAI is ultimately trying to do).
Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
#147The 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
That seems dishonest given the last three years or so of conflict about these concerns that he’s been the center of. Of course he’s aware of those concerns. More likely, that statement was just him maneuvering to be the good guy when he tried to fire her, but it backfired on him.
Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Investors wanted to have a commercial enterprise while pretending it was a nonprofit acting for the good of humanity. This helps market something as scary and potentially destructive as AI. "It can't be that bad, they're a nonprofit with altruistic goals!" Then the investors get mad when the board they intended to be figureheads actually try to uphold some principles. Best to rip the band-aid off and stop pretending.
I think you have it backwards. OpenAI specifically sought out investors because they couldn't fulfill their mission without the infrastructure to do it. Investors don't just give money away -- it's in the name itself -- they're investing . The point is for the commercial enterprise to provide a return on their investment. OpenAI is a non-profit running this commercial enterprise but they are seemingly at odds with th…
Those investors were appropriately warned of this possibility:
> IMPORTANT
> *Investing in OpenAl Global, LLC is a high-risk investment*
> *Investors could lose their capital contribution and not see any return*
> *It would be wise to view any investment in OpenAI Global, LLC in the spirit of a donation, with the understanding that it may be difficult to know what role money will play in a post-AGI world*
> The Company exists to advance OpenAl, Inc.'s mission of ensuring that safe artificial general intelligence is developed and benefits all of humanity. The Company's duty to this mission and the principles advanced in the OpenAl, Inc. Charter take precedence over any obligation to generate a profit. The Company may never make a profit, and the Company is under no obligation to do so. The Company is free to re-invest any or all of the Company's cash flow into research and development activities and/or related expenses without any obligation to the Members.
I guess maybe they thought it was the same boilerplate every prospectus has?
Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
People with a child’s view of the world, in charge of $billions of other people’s money, is the common theme.
There's been a ton of criticism of Helen here in this thread and elsewhere, but I haven't seen anyone clearly articulate what Helen should have done. Everyone says she did the wrong thing, but no one has said what the right thing actually was. Here's my guess: I think OpenAI should have prioritized character more in its hiring. Ending up with an organization full of employees who cared more about making money than up…
I don't know nearly enough about the OpenAI situation to suggest what she should have done (apart from "not help to press the self-destruct button," with the benefit of hindsight). However, I've read a bit about EA since the SBF debacle, and a childlike naivete does seem to be baked into the DNA of many of its followers.
Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
#150https://openai.com/our-structure This whole thing was so, SO poorly executed, but the independent people on the board were gathered specifically to prioritize humanity & AI safety over OpenAI. It sounds like Sam forgot just that when he criticized Helen for her research (given how many people were posting ways to "get around" ChatGPT's guardrails, she probably had some firm grounds to stand on). Yes, Sam made LLMs ma…
> It sounds like Sam forgot just that when he criticized Helen for her research (given how many people were posting ways to "get around" ChatGPT's guardrails, she probably had some firm grounds to stand on).
Sam didn’t forget anything. He is a brilliant Machiavellian operator. Just look at the Reddit reverse takeover as an example; Machiavelli would be in awe.
> What this really shows us is that this "for-profit wrapper around a non-profit" shenanigans was doomed to fail in the first place.
No. It shows this structure is doomed to fail if you have a genius schemer as a CEO, playing the long game to gain unrestricted control.