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Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#301

Post by [deleted] »

keiferski wrote: post #204
NKosmatos wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that’s great, we’re more who find such kind of writing unprofessional. Especially spelling errors in CVs, formatting errors in documents/presentations, one sentence paragraphs and similar kind of things. It might indicate intelligence and people who are extra busy, thus not wasting their time, but depending on the position and circumstances a nicely written text is essential.

I started to write my comment in all lower case letters as a joke, but it was taking too long to cancel each autocorrect suggestion. So I definitely don’t buy the “I’m too busy” reason. I think the main reason I find it unprofessional is that it is such a distraction. Professional communication should be clear and “get out of the way” so that the focus can be on the ideas being discussed.

[deleted]

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#302

Post by concordDance »

Shank wrote: post #192

It seems like firing Sam and causing this massive brain drain might be antithetical to the whole AGI mission of the original non-profit. If OpenAI loses everyone to Sam and he starts some new AI company, it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal company. All of the organizational safeguards OpenAI had inked with Microsoft and protection against "selling AGI" once-developed are out-the-window if he just…

> it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal compan

I can't imagine him doing that. He cares about getting well aligned AGI and profit motives fuck that up.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#303

Post by qwytw »

rlt wrote: post #250
saberience wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were popular at OpenAI, I would say they have a good chance of succeeding too. They could offer excellent equity packages to all the best engineers and researchers and due to the non-profit nature of OpenAI (and hence no equity), these people might be very tempted to leave.

OpenAI is supposedly “capped profit” so employees do get equity with limited upside. But yeah, since Sam and Greg were apparently pushed out because they were building too good of a business any OpenAI employees that were aligned with them are likely to jump ship and join them, and OpenAI will revert to the non-profit research lab it started out as.

Can they do that though? With all the obligations they have to MS.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#304

Post by concordDance »

Lacerda69 wrote: post #206
Shank wrote: post #192

It seems like firing Sam and causing this massive brain drain might be antithetical to the whole AGI mission of the original non-profit. If OpenAI loses everyone to Sam and he starts some new AI company, it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal company. All of the organizational safeguards OpenAI had inked with Microsoft and protection against "selling AGI" once-developed are out-the-window if he just…

If MS gets their hands on an AGI help us god, but no "organizational safeguards" will matter. Not that I think AGI is possible or desirable in the first place, but that's a different discussion.

Impossible with LLMs, with currently known techniques or impossible full stop?

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#305

Post by jstummbillig »

Fluorescence wrote: post #213
Shank wrote: post #192

It seems like firing Sam and causing this massive brain drain might be antithetical to the whole AGI mission of the original non-profit. If OpenAI loses everyone to Sam and he starts some new AI company, it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal company. All of the organizational safeguards OpenAI had inked with Microsoft and protection against "selling AGI" once-developed are out-the-window if he just…

Why not blame Altman for that? If he didn't manage to keep OpenAI consistent with it's founding principles and all interests aligned then wouldn't booting him be right? The name OpenAI had become a source of mockery. If Altman/Brockman take employees for a commercial venture, it just seems to prove their insincerity about the OpenAI mission.

I think "blaming" Sam is entirely correct.

Of course, not for the petty reasons that you list. Sama has comprehensively explained why the original OS model did not work, and so far the argument – it's very expensive – seems to align with a reality where every single semi-competitive available LLM (since they all pale in comparison to GPT-4 anyway) has been trained with a whole lot of corporate money. Meta side-chaining "open" models with their social media ad money is obviously not a comparative business, or any business. I get that the HN crowd + Elon are super salty about that, but it's just a bit silly.

No, Sam's failure as CEO is not having done what is necessary to align the right people in the company with the course he has decided on and losing control over that.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#306

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

ahepp wrote: post #138
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft owns it. I honestly can not imagine trying to build a business on an API owned by Microsoft of all companies.

Isn't Microsoft famous for their insane API stability and backwards compatibility?

While I think the sentiment is overblown, if you compare Azure to AWS, Azure's stability is like Google's.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#307

Post by Fluorescence »

Phenomenit wrote: post #247
Fluorescence wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not blame Altman for that? If he didn't manage to keep OpenAI consistent with it's founding principles and all interests aligned then wouldn't booting him be right? The name OpenAI had become a source of mockery. If Altman/Brockman take employees for a commercial venture, it just seems to prove their insincerity about the OpenAI mission.

Because making as much profit as possible is the only virtue worth pursuing if you believe most comments on Hn. We’re basically Ferengui.

> Ferengui

A fitting typo!

Show HN: FerenGUI - the ui framework for immoral arch-capitalists

Every dark-pattern included as standard components. Upgrade to Pro to get the price-fixing and hidden monero miner modules.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#308

Post by vineyardmike »

exitb wrote: post #231
GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its possible, at least for the foreseable future, they were heavily over indexed on Azure offering them discounted compute, not like they're gonna buy that amount of GPU elsewhere

I can imagine both Apple and Google happily positioning themselves in the same type of relationship as OpenAI-Microsoft.

Google had internal efforts, and Anthropic already. They definitely don’t have the compute to spare to split with another organization.

Apple surely doesn’t have a cluster that at all compares with the big cloud giants.

Oracle and AWS are really the only cloud left, and oracle is already renting to Microsoft for GPU compute.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#310

Post by hughesjj »

bcherny wrote: post #293
benkarst wrote: post #230

It's incredible how many of you alleged tech people think that Sam just wanted a world of safe AI while his actions suggest he wanted to make dump trucks of money. He was the one who partnered with Microsoft and turned it from a non-profit to a for-profit company.

Honest question: How would he make money if he didn’t have equity in OpenAI?

Worldcoin is the mud I've seen thrown around, but I'm making absolutely zero assumptions here. This whole situation stinks.
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