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OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

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Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#271

Post by jacquesm »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #40

I woke up and the first thing on my mind was, "Any update on the drama?" Did not expect to see this whole thing still escalating! WOW! What a power move by MSFT. I'm not even sure OpenAI will exist by the end of the week at this rate. Holy moly.

It's not over until the last stone involved in the avalanche stops moving and it is anybody's guess right now what the final configuration will be.

But don't be surprised if Shear also walks before the week is out, if some board members resign but others try to hold on and if half of OpenAI's staff ends up at Microsoft.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#272

Post by Kye »

boringg wrote: post #123
tedivm wrote: post #17

This was handled so very, very poorly. Frankly it's looking like Microsoft is going to come out of this better than anyone, especially if they end up getting almost 500 new AI staff out of it (staff that already function well as a team). > In their letter, the OpenAI staff threaten to join Altman at Microsoft. “Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAI employees at this new subsidiary should we…

I think the board needs to come clean on why they fired Sam Altman if they are going to weather this storm.

They might not be able to if the legal department is involved. Both in the case of maybe-pending legal issues, and because even rich people get employment protections that make companies wary about giving reasons.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#274

Post by armcat »

ncann wrote: post #203
bertil wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got the impression that the most valuable models were not published. Would Microsoft have access to those too according to their contract?

Don't they need access to the models to use them for Bing?

Not necessarily, it would be just RAG, the use the standard Bing search engine to retrieve top K candidates, and pass those to OpenAI API in a prompt.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#275

Post by buro9 »

slipheen wrote: post #76
fny wrote: post #20

At this point, I think it’s absolutely clear no one has any idea what happened. Every speculation, no matter how sophisticated, has been wrong. It’s time to take a breath, step back, and wait until someone from OpenAI says something substantial.

Absolutely agreed This is the point where I've realized I just have to wait until history is written, rather than trying to follow this in real time. The situation is too convoluted, and too many people are playing the media to try to advance their version of the narrative. When there is enough distance from the situation for a proper historical retrospective to be written, I look forward to getting a better view of…

Written history is usually a simplification that has lost a lot of the context and nuance from it.

I don't need to follow in real-time, but a lot of the context and nuance can be clearly understood at the moment and so it stills helps to follow along even if that means lagging on the input.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#276

Post by sharemywin »

spinningslate wrote: post #120
tedivm wrote: post #17

This was handled so very, very poorly. Frankly it's looking like Microsoft is going to come out of this better than anyone, especially if they end up getting almost 500 new AI staff out of it (staff that already function well as a team). > In their letter, the OpenAI staff threaten to join Altman at Microsoft. “Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAI employees at this new subsidiary should we…

> Microsoft is going to come out of this better than anyone Exactly. I'm curious about how much of this was planned vs emergent. I doubt it was all planned: it would take an extraordinary mind to foresee all the possible twists. Equally, it's not entirely unpredictable. MS is the easiest to read: their moves to date have been really clear in wanting to be the primary commercial beneficiary of OAI's work. OAI itself i…

"it would take an extraordinary mind to foresee all the possible twists."

How far along were they on GPT-5?

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#277

Post by fredgrott »

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes

1. Board decides to can Sam and Greg. 2. Hides the real reasons. 3. Thinks that they can keep the OpenAI staff in the dark about it. 4. Crashes future 90b stock sale to zero.

What have we learned: 1. If you hide reasons for a decision, it may be the worst decision in form of the decision itself or implementation of the decision via your own lack of ownership of the actual decision. 2. Title's, shares, etc. are not control points. The control points is the relationships of the company problem solvers with the existential threat stakeholders of the firm.

The board itself absent Sam and Greg never had a good poker hand, they needed to fold sometime ago before this last weekend. Look at this way for 13B in cloud credits MS is getting team to add 1T to their future worth....

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#278

Post by dmix »

breadwinner wrote: post #51

If they join Sam Altman and Greg Brockman at Microsoft they will not need to start from scratch because Microsoft has full rights [1] to ChatGPT IP. They can just fork ChatGPT. Also keep in mind that Microsoft hasn't actually given OpenAI $13 Billion because much of that is in the form of Azure credits. So this could end up being the cheapest acquisition for Microsoft: They get a $90 Billion company for peanuts. [1]…

OpenAI's upper ceiling in for-profit hands is basically Microsoft-tier dominance of tech in the 1990s, creating the next uber billionaire like Gates. If they get this because of an OpenAI fumble it could be one of the most fortunate situations in business history. Vegas type odds.

A good example of how just having your foot in the door creates serendipitous opportunity in life.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#279

Post by Philpax »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #166

Sam already signed up with Microsoft. A move that surprised me, I figured he would just create OpenAI². Joining a corporate behemoth like Microsoft and all the complications it brings with it will mean a massive reduction in the freedom and innovation that Sam is used to from OpenAI (prior to this mess). Or is Microsoft saying: Here is OpenAI², a Microsoft subsidiary created juste for you guys. You can run it and do…

It looks like it's OpenAI²: https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1726516824597258569

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#280

Post by z7 »

sesutton wrote: post #75

Ilya posted this on Twitter: "I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company." https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1726590052392956028

>"I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions."

Wasn't he supposed to be the instigator? That makes it sound like he was playing a less active role than claimed.

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