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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

#231

Post by [deleted] »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit naive, to put it mildly. It presumes that nobody else would be able to replicate the effort and that the parties that are able to replicate it would also destroy theirs after proving that it could be done. Fat chance.

The actions of other organisations are not in the scope of the board's mission. The actions of the company the board controls are in that scope. "The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,”" We can't control other's actions, but we can control our own. If we feel that our actions are diverging from our own sense of what we ought to be doing we can…

[deleted]

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

#232

Post by Fomite »

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.

I mean, if you're worried about what these higher minded people are worried about, the number of employees at OpenAI is dwarfed by the number of other, more vulnerable employees threatened by this in the economy as a whole.

That's one of the issues with both this and effective altruism as a concept - it's a series of just-so stories with a veneer of math.

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

#233

Post by hutzlibu »

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…

"OpenAI had the right idea. Keep the source closed if you must, and invest heavily on safety, but make the benefits available to all."

Well, you see the result. Apart from this drama, lots of debate and speculation whether we are already in AGI territory, because it is all just a black box and no one knows what exactly was in the training data to be able to judge the quality of the output.

That is way too much AI priesthood for me, just open it for real, if you don't want concentration of power.

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

#234

Post by winenbug »

QuantumGood wrote: post #172
winenbug wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"The board's mission became to destroy OpenAI itself" is ... less sane? ... than everything else that has happened.

But not that insane if they (the board) think the other side of the scale is "AGI that will destroy humanity"

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

#235

Post by abi »

gwern wrote: post #203

None of the comments thus far seem to clearly explain why this matters. Let me summarize the implications: Sam Altman expelling Toner with the pretext of an inoffensive page ( https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding... ) in a paper no one read* would have given him a temporary majority with which to appoint a replacement director, and then further replacement directors. These directors would, nat…

I mean it's not cool for board members to publicly criticize the company.

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

#236

Post by jafitc »

Sam Altman's Actions

- Sam complained that Helen Toner's research paper criticized OpenAI's safety approach and praised Anthropic's, seeing it as dangerous for OpenAI

- He reprimanded her for the paper, saying as a board member she should have brought concerns to him first rather than publishing something critical right when OpenAI was in a tricky spot with the FTC

- He then began looking for ways to remove her from the board in response to the paper

---

Helen Toner's Perspective

- She believes the board's mission is to ensure OpenAI makes AI that benefits humanity, so destroying the company would fulfill that mission

- This suggests she prioritizes that mission over the company itself, seeing humanitarian concerns as more important than OpenAI's success

---

Microsoft Partnership

- The Microsoft partnership concentrated too much power in one company and went against the mission of OpenAI being "open"

- It gave Microsoft full access to OpenAI's core technologies against the safety-focused mission

---

Governance Issues

- The conflict shows the adversarial tensions inherent in OpenAI's structure between nonprofit and for-profit sides

- The board's mandate to act as a check and balance on OpenAI seems to be working as intended in this case

---

Criticisms of Players

- Altman appears reckless in his actions, while Toner seems naive about consequences of destroying OpenAI

- Their behavior calls into question whether anyone should have this kind of power over the development of AI

---

Future of AI Development

- Attempts at alignment and safeguards by companies like OpenAI may be ineffective if other actors are developing AI without such considerations

- Who controls advanced AI is more important than whether the AI is friendly.

- Nationalization of AI projects may occur

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

#237

Post by hutzlibu »

jacquesm wrote: post #11
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…

It's interesting but it may well be they both have a point: Helen for telling him to get lost and Sam for attempting to remove her before she would damage the company. But she could have made that point more forcefully by not comparing Anthropic to OpenAI, after all who better than her to steer OpenAI in the right direction. I noted in a comment elsewhere that all of these board members appear to have had at least on…

"But it is also possible that the Russians would have launched a first strike on the USA if they were unopposed. It almost happened as it was!"

When did a first strike of the Sowjetunion allmost happened? I rather think it was the other way around, first strike was evaluated, to hit them before they got the bomb.

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

#238

Post by lucubratory »

jacquesm wrote: post #104
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I noted in a comment elsewhere that all of these board members appear to have had at least one and some many more conflicts of interest. From the perspective of avoiding an AI race, conflict of interest could very well be a good thing. You're operating under a standard capitalist model, where we want the market to pick winners, may the most profitable corporation win.

I subscribe to capitalism, but not to that degree. I see it the same way I see democracy: flawed but I don't have anything better. > From the perspective of avoiding an AI race, conflict of interest could very well be a good thing. On the American subcontinent: yes. But the world is larger than that.

Helen Toner has done a huge amount of work slowing down capabilities research in China. That's why she lived in Beijing for a year, she is a big part of why there are a lot of Chinese researchers from various AI labs signed onto the CAIS statement, and it's what her relationship to the Pentagon is all about. I think she is probably the individual person who knows the most in the world about the relative AI capabilities of China and the US, and her career is about working with the Pentagon, AI companies in the USA, and AI companies in China to prevent an arms race scenario around AI. It's the sort of work that really, really doesn't benefit from a lot of publicity, so it's unfortunate that this whole situation has put her in the spotlight and means someone else will probably need to backchannel between the US and China on AI safety now.

I don't know why she chose to publicly execute Altman, there just isn't enough information to say for sure. It probably wasn't a specific, imminent safety concern like "Our new frontier model was way more capable than we were expecting and attempted a breakout that nearly succeeded during internal red teaming", according to the new CEO it wasn't anything like that. The new CEO has heard their reason, but is putting a lot of pressure on them to put that reason in writing for some reason. I don't know why, we just don't have enough information.

But basically, she is a very qualified person on the exact topic you are concerned about and has devoted her career to solving that problem. I wouldn't write off what she's doing or has done here as "She didn't consider that China exists".

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

#239

Post by pama »

winenbug wrote: post #146
snapwood wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whethe…

It does not sound like what she did helps advance the development of AGI that is broadly beneficial. It simply helps slow down the most advanced current effort, and potentially let a different effort take the lead.

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

#240

Post by atombender »

ac2u wrote: post #214
lll-o-lll wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wrap…

> Just look at the Reddit reverse takeover as an example; Machiavelli would be in awe. What were the details on that? (Sorry it’s not an easy story to find on Google given how much the keywords overlap with OpenAI topics)

Yishan Wong's comment here [1] explains it. (He's the unnamed "young up-and-coming" CEO of the story.)

In short, the plan was to reduce Condé Nast's ownership of Reddit by hiring a new CEO, and convincing that person to demand, as a condition for their hiring, that CN reduce their ownership share. Further VC funding and back-room machinations let them further reduce CN's share of the company, thus eventually wresting control over Reddit back to the original founders. Yishan was subsequently pushed out and Ellen Pao promoted to CEO, which didn't go so well either.

Both Altman and Pao are responding in that thread.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/comment/c...

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