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The place to course correct is from the board room, not in public. If she had enough power to oust the CEO, she should have enough power to pressure him to make changes.
The board can't compel the CEO to do specific things, only replace them.
>Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that mission would be fulfilled. Doesn’t this sound like Toner herself is playing god? That is, only she is the gatekeeper of humanity and only she knows what is good for the entire humanity, when many of us believe that OpenAI’s tech is p…
Not sure why you’re singling her out - all execs of massive tech companies think exactly the same.
A handful of execs have decided that AI is what humanity needs and they’ve spent the last year shoehorning it into every product possible, giving the consumer no choice but to use it. I even discovered it in a journaling app - AI rated my response to the journaling prompt, completely defeating the purpose.
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Sam wanted to restrict Helen's free expression on the topic of beneficial AI in order to boost OpenAI's position. That suggests he cares more about the success of OpenAI than he does upholding the charter.
No, Sam wanted to be the first recipient of Helen's expression. So -- if appropriate -- he could make changes. Or he could not change, and she publishes anyway.
Otherwise I'm not sure what changes would be "appropriate" for him to direct.
The only specific accusation made in the article is that Sam criticized Helen Toner for writing a paper: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/ That says Anthropic has a better approach to AI safety than OpenAI. Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he w…
> I'm much more interested in how Helen managed to get on this board at all. My gut says that she is the central figure in how this all went down. She and D'Angelo are the central figures, if my gut is right. It looks like Helen Toner was OK with destroying the company to make a point. FTA: > Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of h…
“””Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that could be consistent with its mission.””” This is remarkable and unhinged. I gave the board the benefit of the doubt at first, but as this unfolds, it becomes clear that the board is held hostage by ideological zealots who can’t comp…
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I think it clearly represents the dichotomy of OpenAI’s structure. By its nature it created an adversarial position between the non-profit and for profit side with Sam and Toner representing those two poles. I, personally, have a hard time picking sides here. On its face it seems that Ms Toner is more aligned with OpenAI’s stated mission. However Sam seems much better suited to operating the company and being the “pu…
I'm seeing a somewhat larger stage where the United States and other countries are in an undeclared arms race and it just so happens that from what we know private entities (or an entity) in the United States believes that they are close enough to achieving that goal that they are actively working on things like alignment rather than just futzing around with GPUs and other multiplication hardware. AGI is either just…
> Assuming it can be done weaponization of this tech would change the balance of power in the world dramatically.
Yes it would, but it wouldn't be as bad as everyone dying.
> Everybody seems to be worried about the wrong thing: whether or not the AGI will be friendly to us. That doesn't really matter, what matters is who controls it.
No, "who controls it" is a problem best tackled after "will it kill everyone." You say "That doesn't really matter," but again, Sam Altman himself thinks "Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."
None of the comments thus far seem to clearly explain why this matters. Let me summarize the implications: Sam Altman expelling Toner with the pretext of an inoffensive page ( https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding... ) in a paper no one read* would have given him a temporary majority with which to appoint a replacement director, and then further replacement directors. These directors would, nat…
First: most boards are accountable to something other than themselves. For the exact reason that it pre-empts that type of nonsense.
Second: the anti-Sam Altman argument seems to be "let's shut the company down, because that will stop AGI from being invented". Which is blatant nonsense; nothing they do will stop anyone else. (with the minimal exception that the drama they have incepted might make this holiday week a complete loss for productivity).
Third: in general, "publishing scholarly articles claiming the company is bad" is a good reason to remove someone from the board of a company. Some vague (and the fact that nobody will own up to anything publicly proves it is vague) ideological battle isn't a good enough rationale for the exception to a rule that suggests that her leaving the board soon would be a good idea.
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I mean it's not cool for board members to publicly criticize the company.
It's a nonprofit board & it's absolutely the role of advisory board members to continue their work in the sector they're specialized in without bias.
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People with a child’s view of the world, in charge of $billions of other people’s money, is the common theme.
There's been a ton of criticism of Helen here in this thread and elsewhere, but I haven't seen anyone clearly articulate what Helen should have done. Everyone says she did the wrong thing, but no one has said what the right thing actually was. Here's my guess: I think OpenAI should have prioritized character more in its hiring. Ending up with an organization full of employees who cared more about making money than up…
I think OpenAI should have prioritized sanity more in its board member selection.
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https://openai.com/our-structure "Second, because the board is still the board of a Nonprofit, each director must perform their fiduciary duties in furtherance of its mission—safe AGI that is broadly beneficial. While the for-profit subsidiary is permitted to make and distribute profit, it is subject to this mission. The Nonprofit’s pzrincipal beneficiary is humanity, not OpenAI investors." I see. I don't know whethe…
> but it really does not sound like she had any obligation to do so The optics dont look good though if a board member is complaining publicly.