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Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

arstechnica.com

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Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#321

Post by nprateem »

threeseed wrote: post #216
wolverine876 wrote: post #46

> Angel investor Ron Conway wrote, "What happened at OpenAI today is a Board coup that we have not seen the likes of since 1985 when the then-Apple board pushed out Steve Jobs. It is shocking; it is irresponsible; and it does not do right by Sam & Greg or all the builders in OpenAI." With all sympathy and empathy for Sam and Greg, whose dreams took a blow, I want to say something about investors [edit: not Ron Conway…

> The board's job is not to do right There is why you do something. And there is how you do something. OpenAI is well within its rights to change strategy even as bold as from a profit-seeking behemoth to a smaller research focused team. But how they went about this is appalling, unprofessional and a blight on corporate governance. They have blind-sided partners (e.g. Satya is furious), split the company into two cam…

> Which in turn now creates the threat that a for-profit version of OpenAI dominates the market with no higher purpose.

If it was so easy to go to the back of the queue and become a threat, Open AI wouldn't be in the dominant position they're in now. If any of the leavers have taken IP with them, expect court cases.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#322

Post by [deleted] »

fourside wrote: post #150
jjfoooo4 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI’s biggest issue is that it has no moat. The product is a simple interface to a powerful model, and it seems likely that any lead they have in the power of the model can be quickly overcome should they decrease R&D. The model is extremely simple to integrate and access - unlike something like Uber, where tons of complexity and logistics is hidden behind a simple interface, an easy interface to OpenAI’s model ca…

I’d say OpenAI branding is a moat. The ChatGPT name is unique sounding and also something that a lot of lay people are familiar with. Similar to how it’s difficult for people to change search engine habits after they come to associate search with Google, I think the average person was starting to associate LLM capabilities with ChatGPT. Even my non technical friends and family have heard of and many have used ChatGPT…

[deleted]

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#323

Post by stavros »

Danjoe4 wrote: post #312
nyssos wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest near-term threat is probably bioterrorism. You can get arbitrary DNA sequences synthesized and delivered by mail, right now, for about $1 per base pair. You'll be stopped if you try to order some known dangerous viral genome, but it's much harder to tell the difference between a novel synthetic virus that kills people and one with legitimate research applications. This is already an uncomfortably risky si…

The threat of bioterrorism is in no way enabled or increased by LLMs. There are hundreds of guides on how to make fully synthetic pathogens, freely available online, for the last 20 years. Information is not the constraint. The way we've always curbed manufacture of drugs, bombs, and bioweapons is by restricting access to the source materials. The "LLMs will help people make bioweapons" argument is a complete lie use…

I haven't found any convincing arguments to any real risk, even if the LLM becomes as smart as people. We already have people, even evil people, and they do a lot of harm, but we cope.

I think this hysteria is at best incidentally useful at helping governments and big players curtail and own AI, at worst incited hy them.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#324

Post by cthalupa »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #160
wolverine876 wrote: post #65

In the past, many on HN complained that OpenAI had abandoned its public good mission and had morphed into a psuedo-private for-profit. If that was your feeling before, what do you think now? Are you relieved or excited? Are you the dog who caught the car? At this point, on day 2, I am heartened that their mission was most important, even at the heart of the most important technology maybe ever or since nuclear power…

>OpenAI had abandoned its public good mission and had morphed into a psuedo-private for-profit. >They should be fine with the overwhelming volume of investment available to them. >Another way to look at it: How could this be wrong, given that their objective was not profit, and they can raise money easily with or without Altman? This wasn't just some cultural shift. The board of OpenAI created a seperate for profit l…

The thing here is that the structure of these companies and the operating agreement for the for-profit LLC all effectively mean that everyone is warned going in that the for-profit is beholden to the mission of the non-profit and that there might be zero return on investment and that there may never be profit at all.

The board answers to the charter, and are legally obligated to act in the interest of the mission outlined in the charter. Their charter says "OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) [...] benefits all of humanity" - not do that "unless it'd make more money for our for-profit subsidiary to focus on commercializing GPT"

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#325

Post by lukeschlather »

WendyTheWillow wrote: post #30

I just hope the "AI safety" people don't end up taking LLMs out of the hands of the general public because they read too many Isaac Asimov stories...

In most of Asimov's stories it's implied that machines have quietly and invisibly replaced all human government and the world is better for it because humans tend to be petty and cruel while it's impossible for robots to harm humans.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#326

Post by pdntspa »

notahacker wrote: post #250
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, they didn't state that he lied. They stated that he wasn't candid. A lot of people here have been reading specifics into a generalized term. It is even possible to not be candid without even using lies of omission. For a CEO this could be as simple as just moving fast and not taking the time to report on major initiatives to the board.

Its possible not to be candid without even using lies of omission (and be on the losing side of a vicious factional battle) and get a nice note thanking you for all that you've done and allowing you to step down and spend more time with your family at the end of the year too. Or to carry on as before but with onerous reporting requirements. The board dumped him with unusual haste and an almost unprecedented attack on…

> hyperliterally focusing on the exact words used.

Business communication is never, ever forthright. These people cannot be blunt to the public even if their life depended on it. Reading between the lines is practically a requirement.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#327

Post by rafaelero »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #206
rafaelero wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a bad take. Developers (me included) loved Dev Day.

What did you love about it?

Cheaper, faster and longer context window would be enough of an advancement for me. But then we also had the Assistant API that makes our lives as AI devs much easier.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#328

Post by p1esk »

Michelangelo11 wrote: post #240

I've seen some discussion on HN in which people claimed that even really important engineers aren't -too- important and that Ilya is actually replaceable, using Apple's growth after Woz' departure as an example. But I don't think that's the best situation to compare this to. I think a much better one is John Carmack firing Romero from id Software after the release of Quake. Some background: During a period of about 1…

Ilya might be too concerned with AI safety to make significant progress on model quality improvement.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#329

Post by cthalupa »

robg wrote: post #54

Seems pretty straightforward, the dev day was a breaking point for the non-profit interests. Question is, how did the board become so unbalanced where this kind of dispute couldn’t be handled better? The commercial interests were not well-represented in the number of votes.

> The commercial interests were not well-represented in the number of votes.

This is entirely by design. Anyone investing in or working for the for-profit had to sign an operating agreement that literally states the for-profit is entirely beholden to the non-profit's charter and mission and that it is under no obligation to be profitable. The board is specifically balanced so that the majority is independent of of for-profit subsidiary.

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that the intent was for there to be significant representation of commercial interests here, and that is the exact opposite of how all of this is structured.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#330

Post by rafaelero »

marcinzm wrote: post #210
rafaelero wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a bad take. Developers (me included) loved Dev Day.

He didn’t say developers, he said researchers.

He said in his opinion Dev Day was an "absolute embarrassment".
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