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Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

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Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#361

Post by malwarebytess »

zamfi wrote: post #98
ryandrake wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this from a couple of VP/SVP level execs at companies I've worked. My pet theory is it's some kind of weird "My time is too important to even use the shift key" signal. They probably add up the cumulative amount of time they would spend using the shift key and multiply by their compensation and realize they could buy another car if they just optimized that useless key out of their lives.

at this point, it's work to keep autocorrect from fixing this.

Plenty of people don't use autocorrect.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#362

Post by kolja005 »

anvuong wrote: post #301
jumploops wrote: post #244

Sam and Ilya have recently made public statements about AGI that appear to highlight a fundamental disagreement between them. Sam claims LLMs aren't sufficient for AGI (rightfully so). Ilya claims the transformer architecture, with some modification for efficiency, is actually sufficient for AGI. Obviously transformers are the core component of LLMs today, and the devil is in the details (a future model may resemble…

That is just disagreement in technological aspects, which any well-functioning company should always have a healthy amount of within its leadership. The press release literally said he was fired because he was lying. I haven't seen anything like that from a board of a big company for a very long time.

Additionally, OpenAI can just put resources towards both approaches in order to settle this dispute. The whole point of research is that you don't know the conclusions ahead of time.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#364

Post by majormajor »

johnwheeler wrote: post #353
anigbrowl wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John, I don't think you understand how corporate law departments work. It's not like a romantic or friend breakup where someone says a mean remark about the other to underline that it's over; there's a big legal risk to the corporate entity from carelessly damaging someone's reputation like that, so it's smarter to just keep the personality/vision disagreements private and limit public statements to platitudes.

Please don’t patronize me. It indeed looks like the press release from OpenAI is under scrutiny. What you fail to understand is human nature and the way people really do things ^TM https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725685211436814795

One imagines "human nature" cuts both ways here - sometimes damage control is just damage control.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#365

Post by cthalupa »

Geee wrote: post #168

I think I see it now. Speculation following: They achieved AGI internally, but didn't want OpenAI to have it. All the important people will move to another company, following Sam, and OpenAI is left with nothing more than a rotting GPT. They planned all this from the start, which is why Sam didn't care about equity or long-term finances. They spent all the money in this one-shot gamble to achieve AGI, which can be re…

> Legally it's not IP theft, because it's just code which can be memorized and rewritten.

That is not how IP law works. Even writing new code based on the IP developed at OpenAI would be IP theft.

None of this really makes sense when you consider that Ilya Sutskever, arguably the single most important person at OpenAI, appears to have been a part of removing Sam.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#367

Post by mrandish »

robswc wrote: post #213

Can a super smart business-y person educate this engineer on how this even happens. So, if there's 6 board members and they're looking to "take down" 2... that means those 2 can't really participate, right? Or at the very least, they have to "recuse" themselves on votes regarding them? Do the 4 members have to organize and communicate "in secret"? Is there any reason 3 members can't hold a vote to oust 1, making it a…

The details depend on what's specified in the non-profit's Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation. As a 501(c)3 there are certain requirements and restrictions but other things are left up to what the founding board mandated in the documents which created and govern the corporation.

Typically, these documents contain provisions for how voting, succession, recusal, eligibility, etc are to be handled. Based on my experience on both for-profit and non-profit boards, the outside members of the board probably retained outside legal counsel to advise them. Board members have specific duties they are obligated to fulfill along with serious legal liability if they don't do so adequately and in good faith.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#368

Post by kolinko »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #68
dougmwne wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The board does and they are not supposed to have a financial stake in the non-profit. Usually they just vote their friends on. Welcome to the loony tunes that is nonprofit management. Clearly Microsoft staked its whole product roadmap on 4 random people with no financial skin in the game.

> Usually they just vote their friends on You actually think that for-profit corporate boards are significantly different, especially in the startup/early IPO phase?

From Tom Perkins’s biography - after serving on boards both big private companies and non-profjts, he said that non profits were much worse. His theory was that with no money on the stake it’s all about egos, and they cause weird situations to happen.

Also, I worked in startups and my ex-gf in various nonprofits, and the amount of drama she saw was way higher than in the commercial world

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#369

Post by lenerdenator »

wavemode wrote: post #356
lenerdenator wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I'm not a lawyer (of the big city or simple country varieties, or any other variety) but if you talk to most HR people they'll tell you that if they ever get a phone call from a prospective employer to confirm details about someone having worked there previously, the three things they'll typically say are: 1) a confirmation of the dates of employment 2) a confirmation of the role/title during employment 3) whe…

Someone at OpenAI hates the man's guts. It's that simple. Even with very public cases of company leaders who did horrible things (much worse than lying), the companies that fired them said nothing officially. The person just "resigned". There's just no reason open up even the faintest possibility of an expensive lawsuit, even if they believe they can win. So yeah, someone definitely told the lawyers to go fuck themse…

Well, for their sake, I hope they either issue a retraction soon, have good lawyers and documentation of their decision, or Sam turns out to be a forgiving person.

I wouldn't put money on the last one, though.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#370

Post by u320 »

adastra22 wrote: post #148
anon291 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not even sure of who really has control over things. Honestly, this is the big problem with Big Non Profit (tm). The entire structure of non-profits is really meant for ladies clubs, Rotary groups, and your church down the street, not openai and ikea.

ikea is a non-profit?!?

It's a foundation in Luxembourg, with a Dutch subsidiary that owns some offices in Sweden.
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