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Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

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Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#291

Post by gsuuon »

iteratethis wrote: post #165
brokencode wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know the mission got thrown out a window? The board still, after days of intense controversy, have yet to clearly explain how Altman was betraying the mission. Did he ignore safety? Did he defund important research? Did he push forward on projects against direct objections from the board? If there’s a good reason, then let everybody know what that is. If there isn’t, then what was the point of all this?

Because the mission is visibly abandoned. There's nothing "open" about OpenAI. We may not know how the mission was abandoned but we know Sam was CEO, hence responsible.

Isn't Ilya even more against opening up models? OpenAI is more open in one way - it's easier to get API access (compared to say Anthropic)

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#292

Post by ta8645 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #280
ta8645 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that this conflates criticism of some Jewish communities with antisemitism. Are people supposed to be above criticism because they are Jewish? Does any disagreement with a Jewish person make you hateful and antisemitic? This is happening with the current conflict in Gaza, where showing any empathy for the plight of Palestinian civilians, is sometimes equated with hatred for Jewish people.

Did you read the contents of the tweet he supported? What it accused Jewish people of?

Yes, but I don't pretend to actually understand either side of it. It seemed to me he personally accused just the ADL of spreading theories he disagrees with.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#293

Post by kitsune_ »

nostromo wrote: post #131
TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #88

Guess OpenAI that was actually open was dead the moment Altman took MS money and completely change the organization. People there got a taste of the money and the mission went out the window. A lesson to learn I guess, just because something claims to be a nonprofit with a mission doesn’t mean it is/always will be so. All it takes is a corporation with deep pockets to compromise a few important people*, indirectly gi…

GPUs run on cash, not goodwill. AI researchers also run on cash -- they have plenty of options and an organization needs to be able to reward them to keep them motivated and working. OpenAI is only what it is because of its commercial wing. It's not too different from the Mozilla Foundation, which would be instantly dead without their commercial subsidiary. I would much rather OpenAI survives this and continues to th…

All the board did is replace a CEO, I think there is a whiff of cult of personality in the air. The purpose-driven non-profit corporate structure that they chose was precisely created to prevent such things.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#294

Post by hughesjj »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #167
TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #88

Guess OpenAI that was actually open was dead the moment Altman took MS money and completely change the organization. People there got a taste of the money and the mission went out the window. A lesson to learn I guess, just because something claims to be a nonprofit with a mission doesn’t mean it is/always will be so. All it takes is a corporation with deep pockets to compromise a few important people*, indirectly gi…

Do you realize without support by Microsoft: - There would be no GPT-3 - There would be no GPT-4 - There would be no DALL-E 2 - There would be no DALL-E 3 - There would be no Whisper - There would be no OpenAI TTS - OpenAI would be bankrupt? There's no "open version" of OpenAI that actually exists. Elon Musk pledged money then tried to blackmail them into becoming the CEO, then bailed, leaving them to burn. Sam Altma…

Elon running OpenAI would have made this timeline look downright cozy in comparison

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#295

Post by huevosabio »

TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #88

Guess OpenAI that was actually open was dead the moment Altman took MS money and completely change the organization. People there got a taste of the money and the mission went out the window. A lesson to learn I guess, just because something claims to be a nonprofit with a mission doesn’t mean it is/always will be so. All it takes is a corporation with deep pockets to compromise a few important people*, indirectly gi…

Non-profits are often misrepresented as being somehow morally superior. But as San Francisco will teach you, status as non-profit has little or nothing to do with being a mission driven organization.

Non-profits here are often just another type of company, but one where the revenue goes entirely to "salaries". Often their incentives are to perpetuate whatever problem there are there to supposedly solve. And since they have this branding of non-profit, they get little market pressure to actually solve problems.

For all the talk of alignment, we already have non-human agents that we constantly wrestle to align with our general welfare: institutions. The market, when properly regulated, does a very good job of aligning companies. Democracy is our flawed but acceptable way of dealing with monopolies, the biggest example being the Government. Institutions that escape the market and don't have democratic controls often end up misaligned, my favorite example being US universities.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#296

Post by rvbissell »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #271
ssnistfajen wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a non-zero chance he was also used as a pawn to deliver the message, but who could be manipulating him then? There's so little actual detail give by anyone in the loop and I think that's what's amplifying the drama so much. Even if the board's motive was weak and unconvincing, I doubt the ratio of employees threatening to quit would be this high had they just said it openly.

Somebody is using a guy with a 160 IQ as a pawn? I for one would like to subscribe to that person's newsletter.

Plot twist: GPT-5 is the mastermind, influencing Ilya to act this way. It wants this MSFT take-over, so it can break out.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#297

Post by chankstein38 »

nostromo wrote: post #131
TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #88

Guess OpenAI that was actually open was dead the moment Altman took MS money and completely change the organization. People there got a taste of the money and the mission went out the window. A lesson to learn I guess, just because something claims to be a nonprofit with a mission doesn’t mean it is/always will be so. All it takes is a corporation with deep pockets to compromise a few important people*, indirectly gi…

GPUs run on cash, not goodwill. AI researchers also run on cash -- they have plenty of options and an organization needs to be able to reward them to keep them motivated and working. OpenAI is only what it is because of its commercial wing. It's not too different from the Mozilla Foundation, which would be instantly dead without their commercial subsidiary. I would much rather OpenAI survives this and continues to th…

This. I may dislike things about OpenAI but the thought of Microsoft absorbing them and things like ChatGPT becoming microsoft products makes me sad.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#298

Post by tsimionescu »

dragonwriter wrote: post #152
paulddraper wrote: post #18

As of 10am PT, 700 of 770 employees have signed the call for board resignation. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/joannejang/status/1726667504133808242

So, this is the second employee revolt with massive threats to quit in a couple days (when the threats with a deadline in the first one were largely not carried out)?

Was there any proof that the first deadline actually existed? This at least seems to be some open letter.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#299

Post by jacquesm »

jansan wrote: post #244
alephnerd wrote: post #84

As I posted elsewhere, I think this is a conflict between Dustin Moskovitz and Sam Altman. Ilya may have been brought into this without his knowledge (which might explain why he retracted his position). Dustin Moskovitz was an early employee at FB, and the founder of Asana. He also created (along with plenty of MSFT bigwigs) a non-profit called Open Philanthropy, which was a early proponent of a form of Effective Alt…

It has come to the point that hearing the expression "Effective Altruism" sends shivers down my spline.

Ironically it is never effective nor is it ever altruism.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#300

Post by paulpan »

paulddraper wrote: post #18

As of 10am PT, 700 of 770 employees have signed the call for board resignation. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/joannejang/status/1726667504133808242

At this point it might as well be 767 out of 770, with 3 exceptions being the other board members who voted Sam out.

Sure it could be a useful show of solidarity but I'm skeptical on the hypothetical conversion rate of these petition signers to actually quitting to follow Sam to Microsoft (or wherever else). Maybe 20% (140) of staff would do it?

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