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

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

#381

Post by roguecoder »

sheepscreek wrote: post #351
threeseed wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In other words, it’s unheard of for a $90B company with weekly active users in excess of 100 million. A coup leaves a very bad taste for everyone - employees, users, investors and the general public. When a company experiences this level of growth over a decade, the board evolves with the company. You end up with board members that have all been there, done that, and can truly guide the management on the challenges t…

Why do you think someone who could be CEO of a $100 million company would be qualified to run a billion dollar company?

Not providing this kind of oversight is how we get disasters like FTX and WeWork.

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

#382

Post by [deleted] »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #173
swatcoder wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A deal-making CEO who can carry rapport with the right people, make clever deals, and earn public trust can genuinely make a huge difference to a profit-seeking product company's trajectory. But when your profit-seeking company is owned by a non-profit with a public mission, that trajectory might end up pointed the wrong way. The Dev Day announcements, and especially the marketplace, can be seen as suggesting that's…

I agree with what you've written here but would add the caveat that it's also rather terrible to be in a position where somehow "shepherding responsible AGI" is falling to these self-appointed arbiters. They strike me as woefully biased and ideological and I do not trust them . While I trust Altman even less, there's nothing I've read about Sutskever that makes me think I want him or the people who think like him aro…

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by 8note »

huytersd wrote: post #313
stavros wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do feel free to give some examples of a less constrained imagination.

Selectively generate highly likely images of politicians in compromising sexual encounters based on the people that are attractive and they work with a lot in their lives. Use to power of LLMs to mass denigrate politicians and regular folks at scale in online spaces with reasonable, human like responses. Use LLMs to mass generate racist caricatures, memes, comics and music. Use LLMs to generate nude imagery of someon…

Most of these could be done with Photoshop, a long time ago, or even before computers

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

#384

Post by cma »

FireBeyond wrote: post #221
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.

> 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. OED: candour - the quality of being open and honest in expression. "They didn't state he lied ... without even using lies of omission ... they said he wasn't [word defined as honest and open]" Candour encapsulates exactly those things. Being open (i.e. not omitting thin…

If "and" operates as logical "and," then being "honest and not open," "not honest and open," and "not honest and not open" would all be possibilities, one of which would still be "honest" but potentially lying through omission.

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

#385

Post by quadcore »

selimthegrim wrote: post #353
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…

I think the team that became Looking Glass Studios did a lot of the same things in parallel so it’s a little unfair to say no one else had figured it out

Not at the same level of quality. For example, their game, ultima underworld if my memory doesnt fault me, didnt have sub-pixel precision for texturing. Their texturing was a lot uglier and unpolished compared to Wolf and especially Doom. I remember I checked, they were behind. And their game crashed. Never saw Doom crash, not even once.

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

#386

Post by consp »

austhrow743 wrote: post #334
Draiken wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which proves my point. This cult on top of someone that simply convinced people (they knew from their connections) being considered a genius is absurd.

Convincing people is the ultimate trade. It can achieve more than any other skill. The idea that success at it shouldn’t be grounds for the genius label is absurd.

> It can achieve more than any other skill.

And also destroy more. The line between is very thin and littered with landmines.

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

#387

Post by Draiken »

austhrow743 wrote: post #334
Draiken wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which proves my point. This cult on top of someone that simply convinced people (they knew from their connections) being considered a genius is absurd.

Convincing people is the ultimate trade. It can achieve more than any other skill. The idea that success at it shouldn’t be grounds for the genius label is absurd.

Depends on what we, as a society, want to value. Do we want to value people with connections and luck, or people that work for their achievements?

Of course it's not a boolean, it's a spectrum. But the point remains: valuing lucky rich people with connections as geniuses because they are lucky, rich and connected is nonsensical to me

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

#388

Post by Apocryphon »

threeseed wrote: post #311
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have … split the company into two camps By all accounts, this split happened a while ago and led to this firing, not the other way around.

The split happened at the management/board level. And instead of resolving this and presenting a unified strategy to the company they have instead allowed for this split to be replicated everywhere. Everyone who was committed to a pro-profit company has to ask if they are next to be treated like Sam. It's incredibly destabilising and unnecessary.

Let the two sides now create separate organizations and pursue their respective pure undivided priority to the fullest. May the competition flow.

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

#390

Post by YetAnotherNick »

galangalalgol wrote: post #332
dragonwriter wrote: post #307

Earlier 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…

> treating it like someone with intrinsic value

Do you think if chickens treated us better with intrinsic value we won't kill them? For AGI superhuman x risk folks that's the bigger argument.

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