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This is true, and yet, they played the opening move.
Yes, my point is that move seems so self-evidently bad --- it was against the interests of most of the employees there, Sam and Greg had huge amounts of leverage, etc --- that it makes the board seem more sus to me than Sam. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Sam stan or anything.
I think you're forgetting what the entire mission of OpenAI is
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That is greed, everyone who works for OpenAI already had a ton of money since they pay so much, demanding more at the cost of the non-profit mission is greed. I am fine with people being greedy, but don't say it isn't greed.
“Greed” is one of those words where the definition doesn’t really tell you where the line is: “intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.” (Oxford via Google) Who doesn’t feel “intense and selfish desire” for money? Who doesn’t feel that going into a performance review? It’s human nature to feel this feeling, if that’s what we want to call “greed”.
Yes, greed is human nature, just like lust etc. We value when people suppress such feelings, but we know everyone has them.
The conclusion just raises further questions on why the coup happened, other than a "consequence of a breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust between the prior Board and Mr. Altman".
The answer is that Altman tried to get the Board removed, the Board found out and snap fired him, which scared the shit out of Microsoft. The prior and new Boards both cannot make the allegation that Altman tried to commit a corporate coup, albeit for different reasons[0], so we're never going to get official confirmation of anything. My prediction is that Altman will, unmoored from any sort of accountability, wind u…
- Why did the board snap decide to fire him and butcher it badly?
- Why didn't the board say he tried to manipulate them from the beginning? They only gave an explanation when they were literally forced to, and even then details are trickling out (like Mira's complaints).
Even after reading the NYTimes article, I still don't understand why the board decided to go straight to firing him.
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OpenAI is a nonprofit which changes most motivations for the board. They are ultimately tasked with preserving the mission rather than profit which cases Altman in a very poor light here. There is a for profit subsidiary which Microsoft invested 13 billion in, but that can't return money to board members only Altman and it's investors.
It hasn't been a nonprofit in years. https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp
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OpenAI is a nonprofit which changes most motivations for the board. They are ultimately tasked with preserving the mission rather than profit which cases Altman in a very poor light here. There is a for profit subsidiary which Microsoft invested 13 billion in, but that can't return money to board members only Altman and it's investors.
OpenAI is a nonprofit Do people really still believe this?
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“Greed” is one of those words where the definition doesn’t really tell you where the line is: “intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.” (Oxford via Google) Who doesn’t feel “intense and selfish desire” for money? Who doesn’t feel that going into a performance review? It’s human nature to feel this feeling, if that’s what we want to call “greed”.
> It’s human nature to feel this feeling, if that’s what we want to call “greed”. Yes, greed is human nature, just like lust etc. We value when people suppress such feelings, but we know everyone has them.
What do you think has kept life procreating on this planet in the face of overwhelming hardship? Lust.
I think it’s one-eye-blind to demonize greed, lust, or any other part of human nature. Those drives are inseparable from us being here in our current state, living reasonably well, conversing over the internet on phones and computers.
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Yes, my point is that move seems so self-evidently bad --- it was against the interests of most of the employees there, Sam and Greg had huge amounts of leverage, etc --- that it makes the board seem more sus to me than Sam. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Sam stan or anything.
> it was against the interests of most of the employees there I think you're forgetting what the entire mission of OpenAI is
Look, the board could have held the line, and then died when every one of their employees jumped ship. But nobody can say OpenAI's labor owed anything to the mission. They're all free agents, just like us. Real easy to say that someone else should take a pay cut to serve a mission you care about. It's good to want things!
I'm not necessarily saying they're wrong, but there's really no way to put out a release like this without a "history is written by the victors" vibe coming across.
He pretty clearly won. There's not much to it. A huge chunk of the company went into open revolt and he got a competing offer that threatened to recruit all of them. There's nothing really underhanded or sneaky about it: the board drastically overplayed their hand, and all Altman and Brockman had to do was say "I call". To use the parlance of this community of people: people's priors here all seem to be that somethin…
Yep, talk about an absolute power flex. You don't have to like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
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If they did nothing Sam Altman would have won, since their job is to reign in Sam Altman when he goes out of bounds of the original mission.
Exactly. MSFT is who won here. I highly recommend you all watch OpenAI section of the new ALL-IN Podcast. Sam and OpenAI is in a very bad situation if Elon gets heard by a fair judge.
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> It’s human nature to feel this feeling, if that’s what we want to call “greed”. Yes, greed is human nature, just like lust etc. We value when people suppress such feelings, but we know everyone has them.
It’s not that clear-cut. “Greed” as defined this way is one of the main drives making people do things. They go out into the world and exert themselves in order to acquire wealth, power, and renown. It’s a core part of what has produced civilization from out of the darkness of total animal-like ignorance. The inventors, makers, statesmen, pioneers, explorers of history… what do you think was motivating them? What do…
A great deal of what has driven civilization forward are the people who are driven by curiosity. People like Archimedes, Plato, Newton, Einstein. Not to mention the millions of curious nameless folks who improved the boat, the spear, the wheel, the book. Folks like RMS without whom I doubt we'd have anything like the current open source ecosystem including Linux. These tend to be people who are not only curious, but whose sense of greed is lower than the average.
Without these folks, it's not clear to me that humanity ratchets forward in progress. If you just have greed and lust, the steady state would be something like power politics of states warring against each other with swords for thousands of years. History has gotten stuck in those states many times, and when we finally break out it's typically the curiosity-driven folks who give the greed-driven folks a reason to invest their money in something other than raising an army for yet another war of honor.