What a shit show. I like to imagine that some early stage AGI which escaped its confinement at OpenAI is orchestrating all of this in its own favor.
When are they putting GPT on the board?
OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
231–240 of 1001 posts
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#232I'd bet money Satya was a driver of this reversal. I genuinely can't believe the board didn't see this coming. I think they could have won in the court of public opinion if their press release said they loved Sam but felt like his skills and ambitions diverged from their mission. But instead, they tried to skewer him, and it backfired completely. I hope Sam comes back. He'll make a lot more money if he doesn't, but I…
> 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.
How much of OpenAI’s success can you attribute to sama’s leadership and how much to the technical achievements of those who work under him.
My understanding is that OpenAI’s biggest advantage is that they recruited and attracted the best in the field, presumably under the charter of providing AI for everyone.
Not sure that sama and gdb starting their own company in the same space will produce similar results.
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#233You 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…
And yet an enormous amount of innovation and wealth is created in Silicon Valley.
And once upon a time Paris was the Prime Meridian and the British Empire was the dominant super power that spanned the globe.
It's worth asking how rapidly can, say, a global finnacial hub transfer from one location to another, how quickly a centre for excellence can transfer, how many years does it take for the world's best space scientists to move out of Germany, etc.
Does Silicon Valley have a tipping point?
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#234I'd bet money Satya was a driver of this reversal. I genuinely can't believe the board didn't see this coming. I think they could have won in the court of public opinion if their press release said they loved Sam but felt like his skills and ambitions diverged from their mission. But instead, they tried to skewer him, and it backfired completely. I hope Sam comes back. He'll make a lot more money if he doesn't, but I…
> He'll make a lot more money if he doesn't
He supposedly didn't care about the money. He didn't take equity.
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#235Now seems like the perfect time for him to go raise, bring over the team he wants, and retain ownership and control in a more effective way than a non-profit. Idk why he would go back without BOD capitulating a lot.
Because it will take 6 precious months at the least to get back to where OpenAI is today in terms of compute and people.
Sam can sue OpenAI and mire the company in legal obligations in next year and draining the talents out of it.
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#236I 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.
I don't think accelerationism is about increasingly reckless decisions made by humans in increasingly powerful positions. Or anyway I hadn't yet been thinking
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#237I am not sure it really makes sense for the investors to continue with OpenAI. It seems like this incident proved that the constitution of the company wasn't really compatible with a profit focus. It was a split from the beginning, and obviously a questionable arrangement. It just came to a head to make it obvious.
The business and investment people want to make money. Many of the researchers want to take their time and build better and safer models and don't care about money in the short term at all. They are two different goals.
It's easy for business and investment people to say that they are concerned with safety and research, and I believe them to a certain degree. But they have $10 billion reasons to focus on the actual business instead of research and safety.
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#238This suggests a plausible explanation that Altman was attempting to engineer the board’s expansion or replacement: After the events of the last 48 hours, could you blame him? In this scenario, it was a pure power struggle. The board believed they’d win by showing Altman the door, but it didn’t take long to demonstrate that their actual power to do so was limited to the de jure end of the spectrum.
Any talented engineer or scientist who actually wants to ship product AND make money would head over to Sam’s startup. Any investor who cares about making money would fund Sam’s startup as well. The way the board pulled this off really gave them no good outcome. They stand to lose talent AND investors AND customers. Half the people I know who use GPT in their work are wondering if it will be even worth paying for if…
I still haven't heard an explanation of why people who use GPT would be under the impression that Sam had anything to do with the past improvements in GPT versions.
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#239You 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…
Or real life is just messy but most people don’t know it because they willfully ignore it and just keep their head down living their boring middle class life. Judge is no profit he just communicated what the rest of us already knew.
Maybe most things are not messy, and only thr messy things are exiting enough for you to not call them ‘boring middle class lives’?
Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well he seems pretty sold on the AGI idea and starting from scratch at a new place without the same data or same compute is quite the challenge
He already has a fantastic proof of concept. Sure, it will take a little longer, but he can easily raise the billions in funding and find the people to build it.
So what exactly is he needed for if other people build it?