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OpenAI board reappoints Altman and adds three other directors

reuters.com

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Re: OpenAI board reappoints Altman and adds three other directors

#261

Post by layer8 »

armchairhacker wrote: post #153
kmeisthax wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But - 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.

They probably thought Altman's character was unsalvageable and better move quick before he gets wind of it. They didn't expect the OpenAI employees and Microsoft to back Altman that strongly. They also seem to have misjudged Brockman and Muriati in particular.

Re: OpenAI board reappoints Altman and adds three other directors

#262

Post by erinnh »

nextaccountic wrote: post #231
erinnh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story was that Altman lied to specific board members to have other removed.

Where did you see this? Do you have any links? Why didn't the board member(s) in question reveal the story in full when they had the chance?

I read it here on Hacker News. I dont have any links of it at hand, there were way too many threads about the drama for me to go looking for it now.

Cant answer your last question. As said, that was just the story that I heard here on HN.

Re: OpenAI board reappoints Altman and adds three other directors

#263

Post by ben_w »

chii wrote: post #257
ben_w wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been watching the Y Combinator YouTube channel recently, and people in the room when OpenAI was founded were saying "… until these big companies solve AGI, it's going to be their first, second, and third goal" — not that OpenAI or Anthropic would succeed, but that this is their goal. Before the industrial revolution, land was paramount; after, capital. AGI is likely to be as significant a change, and make money…

Money is just a unit of accounting. Land is still just as important, as is labour. And in any case, capital is accumulated money. In the end these all amount to power, and capability to direct that power towards a goal. Even if AGI becomes some form of new capital, it is still the same as capital as we know it today. Until the day humanity transcends and we no longer face the human condition of course.

> Land is still just as important

"Important", but not "just as important". Land used to be synonymous with wealth, because you needed land to support the peasants who grew the surplus that fed your army. Now? Now we have enough spare land to have national parks and substantial re-wilding programs.

Labour is still important, but also not "just as important" — all the improvements from each of the three industrial revolutions to date have been about getting more stuff done per person, and we're starting to get "lights out" factories[0].

My comparison is to say money will be "relatively less", rather than "not" — to the extent that money is a fungible token of power, sure, that's probably still going to be useful to someone at some point — but if we've all got our own personal yachts[1] with all the on-board hydroponics, bioreactors[2], and CNC manufactories needed to meet our material needs, even if money is still around, it becomes no more important to our personal experience of life than it is for people today to be personally concerned that the harvest is brought in on time or that the ore veins in the mine might run out[3].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_(manufacturing)

[1] Snow-Crash style: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)

That said, given we've already got some lights-out factories making more robots, it's a reasonable assumption they'd actually look more like this even without human-level AGI: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/265026/why-dont-th...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aMo2jVKmeoY

[3] Which isn't to say that nobody will worry, just that most won't. Me 15 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

Re: OpenAI board reappoints Altman and adds three other directors

#264

Post by mycologos »

m3kw9 wrote: post #109

The only thing that matters is Sam Altman at the helm gives us the fastest path to actual useful AGI. Don’t listen to doomer logic

Where are people getting all the confidence they place in Sam Altman as a leader of a science/engineering effort? From my understanding, he has been a successful fundraiser and investor and that's kind of it. Those are real and valuable skills, but they don't seem so relevant to the task at hand. Or is the statement that Sam Altman will keep OpenAI funded (so somebody else can lead the work)?

Re: OpenAI board reappoints Altman and adds three other directors

#265

Post by asadotzler »

jorl17 wrote: post #78
nostrademons wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, Steve Jobs would need to be alive for that, and they haven't come out with iResurrection yet. The public hasn't really thrown themselves into reverence for Apple since the last Jobs product announcement. Even the Apple Watch's reception was kinda lukewarm. They make good hardware, but they aren't cool hype machines the way they were a decade+ ago.

What about Apple Silicon? Not a product per se, but...

what about Coke's move from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup? isn't that revolutionary and didn't that get the public excited?

Re: OpenAI board reappoints Altman and adds three other directors

#266

Post by username332211 »

juliusdavies wrote: post #206
mr_toad wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt there’s a precedent for a CEO of a “non-profit” effectively answerable to no-one and able to use it as their personal fiefdom. It’s basically a company without shareholders. I’m curious how this will play out legally. Certainly, no one with any sense will be “donating” any money in OpenAI without some strong and specific guarantees of what they’re going to be getting in return. So it can in no way can be cons…

Does the pope count as a precedent? Lots of donations head the pope’s way every day.

Well, the donations the pope collects aren't gathered trough entirely rational arguments, so that helps get away with lots of issues.

And the pope is quite bound by ancient texts and the the pronouncements of previous popes. While no way exists to depose him if he disregards them, having the cardinals declare the current pope was illegitimately appointed and appointing a new one was fairly common back in the days.

Re: OpenAI board reappoints Altman and adds three other directors

#268

Post by username332211 »

yieldcrv wrote: post #241
mr_toad wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt there’s a precedent for a CEO of a “non-profit” effectively answerable to no-one and able to use it as their personal fiefdom. It’s basically a company without shareholders. I’m curious how this will play out legally. Certainly, no one with any sense will be “donating” any money in OpenAI without some strong and specific guarantees of what they’re going to be getting in return. So it can in no way can be cons…

> I doubt there’s a precedent for a CEO of a “non-profit” effectively answerable to no-one and able to use it as their personal fiefdom this is actually already why non profits have difficulty raising money many people view charities as unaccountable scams most non profits are funded solely by the board and the endowment is managed to grow tax free. If you start reading the IRS forms 990 you’ll see pretty wild and in…

That's not actually very common in non-profits. In the Apache foundation, there's membership that elects the board.

While the membership is determined by the executives appointed by the board, there's at least some thought given to the idea of holding the people on the top accountable.

Re: OpenAI board reappoints Altman and adds three other directors

#269

Post by jprete »

mgraczyk wrote: post #112
croddin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The review and findings should have at least attempted to answer the question: "What did Ilya see?"

They said that nothing related to safety or capabilities affected the decision

Nothing in that report should be taken at face value.

Re: OpenAI board reappoints Altman and adds three other directors

#270

Post by ben_w »

willcipriano wrote: post #259
ben_w wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing apples (openness) to oranges (doing stuff). It would be weird to even ask "How much open source code and research does the Catholic Church publish?" The church does stuff away for free, sure, but then so too does ChatGPT have this shockingly powerful free tier.

> How much open source code and research does the Catholic Church publish? The Catholic church has not only engaged in centuries of religious scholarship, it has given the knowledge freely to anyone. They even set up buildings where you can go and they will teach you what they have found, most people go on Sunday. That isn't to mention their patronizing of the arts supported the greatest painters and composers that h…

> The Catholic church has not only engaged in centuries of religious scholarship, it has given the knowledge freely to anyone. They even set up buildings where you can go and they will teach you what they have found, most people go on Sunday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Apostolic_Archive

Also, one of the biggest issues that Martin Luther had with Catholicism was that it put the clergy between the faithful and god.

*The Thirty Years' War enters, stage left*.

> Now how many hungry has OpenAI fed?

Around as many as the number of Python programs that the Catholic Church has written with Hindi comments, which was one of the first things I tried on ChatGPT.

There's also a reason why I said "apples (openness) to oranges (doing stuff)".

OpenAI also didn't send nine crusades to liberate the holy lands from the Muslims. Someone probably thinks that makes them "woke" or something.

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