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

nytimes.com

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

#161

Post by jacquesm »

danenania wrote: post #158
letmevoteplease wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the paper, Anthropic's superior safety approach was deliberately delaying release in order to avoid “advanc[ing] the rate of AI capabilities progress." OpenAI is criticized for kicking off a race for AI progress by releasing ChatGPT to the public. [1] https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding...

It's important to remember that part of OpenAI's mission, apart from developing safe AGI, is to "avoid undue concentration of power". This is crucial, because safety is a convenient pretext for people whose real motivations are elitist. It's not that they want to slow down AI development; it's that they want to keep it restricted to a tight inner circle. We have at least as much to fear from elites who think only meg…

And so you strike a deal with Microsoft. That tracks.

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

#162

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

jacquesm wrote: post #143
comp_throw7 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Elsewhere in this thread you stated: "if OpenAI was 'the good guys' then any chance of the good guys getting a head start has just been blown out of the water"

So basically we have two cases here:

1. The charter is a deceptive fig leaf, OpenAI aren't the good guys. In which case blowing up OpenAI looks reasonable

2. The charter is not a fig leaf, Helen is doing the right thing by upholding it

I'd say upholding the charter is the right thing in intermediate situations as well. Basically, OpenAI are the good guys, in part, to the degree to which the board (and other stakeholders) actually uphold the charter instead of being purely profit-driven.

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

#163

Post by nomel »

brigadier132 wrote: post #33
PepperdineG wrote: post #3

>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

Amazing how these higher minded people always forget about the little people on the ground. All these employees losing their livelihoods for the greater good. Not surprised an ethicist thinks like this.

Given a choice between a paycheck and doing something questionable, and you have a looong history of what people will choose.

I’m not saying that’s the case here, but that can’t be used as a shield.

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

#164

Post by TerrifiedMouse »

ipaddr wrote: post #64
foobarqux wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

She has a mandate not to promote Anthropic on the back of OpenAI. Very unprofessional

This is something you don’t get. What happens to the for-profit arm of OpenAI is not her problem, her loyalty lies with the non-profit arm’s charter (and not even the organization itself).

She is doing her job to uphold the mission of the organization.

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

#165

Post by skygazer »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #95
greyface- wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This charter is doomed to be interpreted in radically different ways by people with differing AI-eschatological beliefs. It's no wonder it's led to so much conflict.

Sam wanted to restrict Helen's free expression on the topic of beneficial AI in order to boost OpenAI's position. That suggests he cares more about the success of OpenAI than he does upholding the charter.

He had dual overlapping roles, a duty to the promote safe AI to the world, and a duty to prevent own-goal sabotage to the LLC. Ideally those roles wouldn’t conflict. He probably didn’t care if such a paper was written, but to have a board member as author is beyond awkward. But as an academic, her own dual overlapping role, she has a need to publish. (“Uh, please voice your concerns before we develop it instead of sand bagging us with a damning critique in an academic journal after the fact!”) This seems like a recipe for disaster. I’m not certain either really was “wrong” in that conflict. It just seems like this structure was doomed to failure, throwing uncompromising zealots together all with launch codes and a big red button.

Safety isn’t binary, it’s degrees of risk assessment, mitigation and acceptance. Infinite safety is never progressing. But never progressing means failing the charity mission. And AI isn’t just being created at OpenAI, for them to succeed at the charity mission they need to stay ahead of risky competitors with a safer AI.

The charity can’t afford its GPU costs without the LLC, and the LLC can’t lead the industry if it’s behind all the competitors. To be relevant the safety side needs compute, and they need to be ahead of the curve, and they also need real world data from the LLC. If the charity nukes the LLC, it takes itself with it and fails its mission. They’re so intertwined they need compromise in the board. And they let that board dwindle to small entrenched factions, which sounded more like the Hatfield’s and the mcCoys. With such a fragile structure they needed mature adults with functional conflict resolution.

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

#166

Post by shrimpx »

maxlamb wrote: post #120
NoboruWataya wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO is generally accountable to the board. A CEO trying to silence criticism and oust critical board members may be typical behaviour in the world of megalomaniacal tech startup CEOs, but it is not generally considered good corporate governance. (And usually the megalomaniacal tech startup CEOs have equity to back it up.)

He said he wished she communicated her concerns to him beforehand. How can disagreements be delt with if never communicated directly? So the CEO has to first learn of a disagreement with a fellow board member through a NY Times article?

Hard to defend this level of flex, though:

> Mr. Altman, the chief executive, recently made a move to push out one of the board’s members because he thought a research paper she had co-written was critical of the company.

It's like your job is to fire me if I fail to fulfill the company mission, but I will fire you if you don't get my approval before saying stuff in public.

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

#167

Post by Manuel_D »

db-interface wrote: post #52
kragen wrote: post #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…

While I don't agree with all of the framing in the NYT story, it's worth noting that Scott Alexander was much friendlier to Moldbug et. al. than the anti-Metz camp argued at the time: https://twitter.com/ArsonAtDennys/status/1362153191102677001 I think Metz's motivation for that framing was his assumption that if SA was not at least sympathetic to NRx views, he would not allow them to be such a big voice in his comme…

This is straightforward guilt-by-association: because of the mere fact that Scott interacted with people espousing neo reactionary views, he must also be sympathetic to those views. Of course, this is completed wrong and easily known by reading Scotts writings on the topic: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-f...

There is zero way to say in good faith the Scott espouses or even agrees with neo reactionism.

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

#168

Post by kumarvvr »

CSMastermind wrote: post #4

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…

So, it could also be that she approached him on the subject multiple times, after-all, she is a member of a board whose job is to make AI safety a priority thing.

After his plans for rapid expansion and commercialization were in direct contrast to the company's aims, I guess she wrote the paper to highlight the issue.

It seems that, like in the case of Disney, the board has lower power and control than the CEO. Highly likely if you have larger than life people like Sam at the helm.

I would not trust the board, but I would also not trust Sam. When billions of dollars are at stake, its important to be critical of all the parties involved.

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

#170

Post by ryeights »

jacquesm wrote: post #156
JCM9 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge of all this is that while everything going on looks totally bonkers from any normal sense of business, it’s hard to argue that the board isn’t following their charter. IMHO the mistake was setting up the structure the way it is and expecting that to go well. Even with MSFT they are obviously annoyed but also they have shareholders too and one reasonable question here is what the heck was Microsoft’s lea…

When Microsoft came on board the charter effectively went out the window. It's like Idefix thinking he's leading Obelix around on a leash.

Apparently not…
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