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OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

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Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#381

Post by upupupandaway »

lazystar wrote: post #367
upupupandaway wrote: post #246

At Amazon a senior manager would probably be fired for not giving a project to multiple teams.

thats not very frugal; please provide a source or citation for your claim.

I am a former L7 SDM at Amazon. Just last year I had to contend with not one, but three teams doing the same thing. The faster one won with a half-baked solution that caused multiple Sev-1s. My original comment was half in jest; the actual way this works is that multiple teams discover the same issues at the same time and then compete for completing a solution first. This is usually across VPs so it’s difficult to curtail in time to avoid waste.

Speaking of waste, when I was at Alexa we had to do a summit (flying people from all over the country) because we got to a point where there were 12 CMSs competing for the right to answer queries. So yeah, not frugal. Frugality these days is mostly a “local” concept, definitely not company-wide or even org wide.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#383

Post by AndyNemmity »

kmlevitt wrote: post #81

Neither of these reasons have anything to do with a lofty ideology regarding the safety of AGI or OpenAI’s nonprofit status. Rather it seems they are micromanaging personnel decisions. Also notice that Ilya Sutskever is presenting the reasons for the firing as just something he was told. This is important, because people were siding with the board under the understanding this firing was led by the head research scien…

Wouldn't it make sense that Ilya Sutskever presented the reasons the board had for firing Sam Altman, which were not his reasons.

My feeling is Ilya was upset about how Sam Altman was the face of OpenAI, and went along with the rest of the board for his own reasons.

That's often how this stuff works out. He wasn't particularly compelled by their reasons, but had his own which justified his decision in his mind.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#384

Post by aravindgp »

015a wrote: post #350
aravindgp wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my point why would d Angelo want openai to thrive when his own company poe(chatbot) wants compete in the same space. Its conflict of interest which ever way you look. He should resign from board of openai in the first place. The main point is greg, Ilya can get 50% vote and convince Helen toner to change decision. It's all done then it's 3 to 2 in board of 5 people. Unless greg board membership is reinstated.…

So? Sam gave Worldcoin early access to OpenAI's proprietary technology. Should Sam step down (oh wait)?

Early access is different from firing board members or CEO! If Sam was always involved in furthering openai success as far the facts and actions he has taken show. It never showed his action is against openai.

Like all bets are not correct I don't agree with sams worldcoin project at all in the first place.

Giving early access to worldcoin doesn't correlate to firing employees or board or CEO.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#385

Post by maxbond »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #282
minimaxir wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That axiom is a relic from the pre-social media days. Nowadays, bad PR going viral can sink a company overnight.

> That axiom is a relic from the pre-social media days. Nowadays, bad PR going viral can sink a company overnight You're saying we're in a less attention-seeking culture today than in pre-social media times?

[ES: Speculation I have medium confidence in.]

Maybe "attention seeking" isn't the right way to look at this. Getting bad press always does reputational damage while giving you notoriety, and I think GP's suggestion that the balance between them has changed is compelling.

In an environment with limited connectivity, it's much more difficult for people to learn you even exist to do business with. So that notoriety component has much more value, and it often nets out in your favor.

In a highly connected environment, it's easier to reach potential customers, so the notoriety component has less value. Additionally, people have access to search engines, so the reputational damage becomes more lasting; potential customers who didn't even hear about the bad press at the time might search your name and find it. They may not have even been looking for it, they might've searched your name to find you website (whereas before they would have needed to intentionally visit a library and look through the catalog to come across an old story). So it becomes much less likely to net out in your favor.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#387

Post by dragonwriter »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #383
kmlevitt wrote: post #81

Neither of these reasons have anything to do with a lofty ideology regarding the safety of AGI or OpenAI’s nonprofit status. Rather it seems they are micromanaging personnel decisions. Also notice that Ilya Sutskever is presenting the reasons for the firing as just something he was told. This is important, because people were siding with the board under the understanding this firing was led by the head research scien…

Wouldn't it make sense that Ilya Sutskever presented the reasons the board had for firing Sam Altman, which were not his reasons. My feeling is Ilya was upset about how Sam Altman was the face of OpenAI, and went along with the rest of the board for his own reasons. That's often how this stuff works out. He wasn't particularly compelled by their reasons, but had his own which justified his decision in his mind.

> Wouldn't it make sense that Ilya Sutskever presented the reasons the board had for firing Sam Altman, which were not his reasons.

Ilya was one of the board members that removed Sam, so his reasons would, ipso facto, be a subset of the board's reasons.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#388

Post by aidaman »

ipaddr wrote: post #83
dekhn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, since he's on the board, and it wouldn't have been Brockman or Altman who gave him this info... there are only three people left: "non-employees Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner."

The obvious answer is he was the one Sam gave an opinion on. He was one of the people doing duplicate work (probably the first team). Sam said good things about him to his ally and bad things to another board member. There was a falling out between that board member and Sam and she spilled the beans.

one of the first members to quit was on a team that sounds a lot like a separate team that is doing the same thing as Ilya's Superalignment team.

"Madry joined OpenAI in May 2023 as its head of preparedness, leading a team focused on evaluating risks from powerful AI systems, including cybersecurity and biological threats."

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