Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep in mind that the rest of the board members have ties to US intelligence. Something isn't right here.
I'm pretty sure Joseph Gordon-Levitt's wife isn't a CIA plant.
She works for RAND Corporation
Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
371–380 of 754 posts
Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
#372I think OpenAI made the right choice. Just look at what has become of many of the most successful YC companies. Do we really want OpenAI to turn into another Airbnb? It’s clear the biggest priority of YC is profit. They made a deal with Microsoft, who has a long history of exploiting users and customers to make as much money as possible. Just look at the latest version of Windows; Microsoft doesn’t care about AI only…
The problem is that it might unfortunately be necessary to have this kind of funding to be able to develop AGI. And funding will not come if there are no incentives for the investors to fund.
What would you propose instead ?
Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
#373> 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…
Bingo.
I met Conway once. He described investing in Google because it was a way to relive his youth via founders who reminded him of him at their age. He said this with seemingly no awareness of how it would sound to an audience whose goal in life was to found meaningful, impactful companies rather than let Ron Conway identify with us & vicariously relive his youth.
Just because someone has a lot of money doesn’t mean their opinions are useful.
Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
#374I'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…
A difference in this case is how capital intensive AI research is at the level OpenAI is operating. Someone who can keep the capital rolling in (whether through revenue, investors, or partners) and get access to GPUs and proprietary datasets is essential. Carmack could make graphics advances on his own with just a computer and his brain. Ilya needs a lot more for OpenAI to keep advancing. His giant brain isn’t enough…
That's a really, really good point. Maybe OpenAI, at this level of success, can keep the money coming in though.
Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
#375The real issue is that OpenAI is both a for profit and a non profit organization. This structure creates a very significant conflict of interest where maintaining balance between both of them is very tricky business. The non-profit board shouldn’t have been in charge of the for-profit aspect of the company.
The for-profit would not exist if the non-profit was not able to maintain control. The only reason it does exist is because they were able to structure it in such a way that the for-profit is completely beholden to the non-profit. There is no requirement in the charter for the non-profit or the operating agreement of the for-profit to maintain a balance - it explicitly is the opposite of that. The operating agreement that all investors in and employees of the for-profit must sign explicitly states that investments should be considered donations, no profits are obligated to be made or returned to anyone, all money might be dumped into AGI R&D, etc. and that the for-profit is specifically beholden to the charter and mission of the non-profit.
Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
#376I'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…
Meanwhile, id under Carmack kept cranking out hit after hit for years, essentially shrugging off Romero's firing like nothing happened.
I believe this is absolutely wrong. Quale 2, 3 and Doom 3 were critical success, not commercial ones, which led ID to be bought.
John and John were like Paul and John from the beatles, they never made really great games anymore after their break up.
And to be clear, that's because the role of Romero in the success of ID is often underrated like here. He invented those games (Doom and Quake and Wolf) as much as Carmack did. For example, Romero was the guy who invented percent-based life. He removed the score. This guy invented the modern video game in many ways. Games that werent based on Atari or Nintendo. He invented Wolf, Doom and Quake setups which were considerably more mature than Mario and Bomberman and it was new at the time. Romero invented the deathmatch and its "frag". And on and on.
Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
>However, a non-profit board has a primary responsibility to its charter and mission - which doesn't compute for those with fiduciary-duty-instincts Exactly. The tricky part is that board started a second for profit company with VC investors who are co-owners. This has potential for messy conflicts of interest if there is disagreement about how to run the co-venture, and each party has contractual obligations to each…
> Exactly. The tricky part is that board started a second for profit company with VC investors who are co-owners. This has potential for messy conflicts of interest if there is disagreement about how to run the co-venture, and each party has contractual obligations to each other. Anyone investing in or working for the for-profit LLC has to sign an operating agreement that states the LLC is not obligated to make a pro…
See my other response. If you have people sign a contract that says the mission comes first, but also give them profit sharing stocks, and cap those profits at 1.1 Trillion, it is bound to cause some conflicts of interest in reality, even if it is clear who calls the shots when deciding how to balance the mission and profit
Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
#378Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah - I think this is the schism. Sam is clearly a product person, these are AI people. Dev day didn’t meaningfully move the needle on AI, but for people building products it sure did.
Thinking you can develop AGI - if such a thing actually can exist - in an academic vacuum, and not by having your AI rubber meet the road through a plethora of real world business use cases strikes me as extreme hubris. … I guess that makes me a product person?
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Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
> split the company into two camps The split existed long prior to the board action, and extended up into the board itself. If anything, the board action is a turning point toward decisively ending the split and achieving unity of purpose.
Can someone explain the sides? Ilya seems to think transformers could make AGI and they need to be careful? Sam said what? "We need to make better LLMs to make more money."? My general thought is that whatever architecture gets you to AGI, you don't prevent it from killing everyone by chaining it better, you prevent that by training it better, and then treating it like someone with intrinsic value. As opposed to lock…
If I'm understanding it correctly, it's basically the non-profit, AI for humanity vs the commercialization of AI.
From what I've read, Ilya has been pushing to slow down (less of the move fast and break things start-up attitude).
It also seems that Sam had maybe seen the writing on the wall and was planning an exit already, perhaps those rumors of him working with Jony Ive weren't overblown?
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/28/23893939/jony-ive-openai-...