Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 711 posts

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#331

Post by computerex »

ramraj07 wrote: post #297
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.

How exactly will he make loads of money if he didn’t have any equity in OpenAI? Or should we assume that was a lie?

You know it's not just about the monetary compensation, that's rather short-sighted. sama is not hurting for cash. Being the CEO of OpenAI, in the climate that we are in, brings with it a lot of exposure and influence.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#332

Post by dabeeeenster »

digitcatphd wrote: post #249

I really wonder if a dividing line started to emerge internally regarding the path to take the company. [1] On one hand they serve Microsoft and developers, building digital AI infrastructure. [2] On the other hand, they seem to try and want to build some monopoly and destroy as many startups (and companies) as possible. In the last developer day, they did a half-ass job of both. GPTs suck. The OpenAI Assistants don'…

"GPTs Suck"

Never change, hacker news!

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#333

Post by basisword »

tsurba wrote: post #329
convexstrictly wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Greg Brockman works 60 to 100 hours per week, and spends around 80% of the time coding. Former colleagues have described him as the hardest-working person at OpenAI." https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6309033/greg-brockman...

What Brockman tweets is from technical standpoint the most mundane, boring, and obvious stuff I’ve read from a programmer. My reads of this guy have been he’s not working on any problems that are technically difficult (or interesting). It’s much easier to work long hours on easy problems. He also has a managerial vibe in all communications which supports my feeling. Most programming work in any project and company is…

I know nothing about the guy but judging his work and assuming you can guess the type of problems he works on based off his tweets is ludicrous.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#334

Post by username332211 »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #45
corethree wrote: post #14

We need to know why he was let go. All else is speculation. I doubt people would follow Sam if he was let go for a good reason.

We don't know if these people left to follow Sam. There's so few details surrounding what the actual catalyst of the firing was and neither said are revealing the details.

I think you can safely assume the reason they left is related to the firing. The question is,are they following Altman or are they just disgusted by the power struggle.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#335

Post by jvolkman »

Solvency wrote: post #314
andrewstuart wrote: post #279

Ilya’s job won’t survive this power play……. Satya has been humiliated and will be furious.

How so?

Reports say Microsoft was caught completely off guard. Here's the damage control tweet Satya found it necessary to make shortly after it all went down: https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1725656554878492779

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#337

Post by wholien »

tsurba wrote: post #329
convexstrictly wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Greg Brockman works 60 to 100 hours per week, and spends around 80% of the time coding. Former colleagues have described him as the hardest-working person at OpenAI." https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6309033/greg-brockman...

What Brockman tweets is from technical standpoint the most mundane, boring, and obvious stuff I’ve read from a programmer. My reads of this guy have been he’s not working on any problems that are technically difficult (or interesting). It’s much easier to work long hours on easy problems. He also has a managerial vibe in all communications which supports my feeling. Most programming work in any project and company is…

he is on a pedestal because everyone who’s worked with him said he’s amazing and effective.

But it is your right to assume what he works on from reading his tweets and leap from that to how this is an American cultural thing tho.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#338

Post by pjc50 »

antman wrote: post #163

So what was he lying about that got the board so pissed? A story that fits is that they assumed/knew that he had different goals and/or was going to create a spinoff. If they waited for the GPT5 pretraining to finish and then they minimized the cost of the loss of Altman and the engineers. The whole secrecy, compartmentalization and urgency of their actions could only be explained by being against a wall. Otherwise i…

I don't think the firing would be this dramatic if it was merely lying to the board; I suspect it's something where:

- he makes misleading statement to board

- board puts this in regulatory filing (e.g. SEC)

- board finds out this is a legally critical statement

- they _have_ to fire him in order to avoid becoming accomplices.

The reverse of the other Sam situation.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#339

Post by ShamelessC »

aidaman wrote: post #61

GPT5 pre-training just ended I believe. Brock, Pachocki, Szymon Sidor, would have likely all been involved. These are huge losses. Pachocki led pre-training for GPT-4, and probably GPT-5. Brockman is the major engineer responsible for the efficiency improvements that enabled ChatGPT and GPT-4 to be even remotely cost-effective. That is a piece that is often overlooked, but OpenAI's advantage over the competition in c…

Do you have a source that they just finished GPT-5 pre training or is that just speculation.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#340

Post by Rastonbury »

mirzap wrote: post #275
chasd00 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who fires the board at a 501.3c?

They resign under public pressure, I guess?

Why would they if they are advancing the goals of the non-profit and Altman was endangering that goal?
Post reply on HN