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Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

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Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#381

Post by habitue »

jdminhbg wrote: post #328
light_triad wrote: post #191

The whole saga is an interesting case study for theoretical versus real power. On paper the board has the power and it’s their job to monitor and hire/fire the execs. But they’re dependent on the execs for info. Also having one investor own half, plus the founders guiding the roadmap and having sway over key hires leaving is where the real power is…

> On paper the board has the power and it’s their job to monitor and hire/fire the execs. But they’re dependent on the execs for info. It's way worse for the OpenAI board position in this case, because the company is basically just an assemblage of researchers, engineers, and Microsoft Azure credits. They can replace the CEO if they want, but all the value of the company can walk away if they don't like it.

> the company is basically just an assemblage of and . They can replace the CEO if they want, but all the value of the company can walk away if they don't like it.

This is generally true of any company

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#382

Post by marcus_holmes »

WalterBright wrote: post #346
thaumaturgy wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might be time to turn back the clock a bit and revisit some of the things pg said way back when he was pitching Sam Altman to lead YC and the general reaction was "...who?" 2008: "You could parachute [Sam Altman] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without the…

> amoral wealth-hoarders They're not hoarding wealth. They don't have any Scrooge McDuck cash faults. Their money is all invested , i.e. put to work creating things that people want. > moralists ... capitalists History shows us that societies based on morals (religious, ideological) fare extremely poorly compared with societies based on rights (free markets). Like it or not, for a large, prosperous society you must h…

I think the question is more "do you have to be amoral to run a large organisation?"

There are endless numbers of idiots in black turtlenecks being absolute dicks to other co-working space members because they believe that being a dick is a prerequisite to commercial success. They are clearly cargo-culting something.

Most CEOs of large organisations appear to be psychopaths. Is this because you need to be a psychopath to run a large organisation? Or because you need to be a psychopath to get to be a CEO of a large organisation? (these are different things).

It does make sense that non-psychopathic founders don't build the kind of scale of organisation that we're having such problems with. A "normal" person can accept an exit at the merely "more money than you'll ever be able to spend in your lifetime" level, rather than scaling to FAAANG level. Likewise, non-psychopathic executives are probably at a disadvantage when climbing a career ladder.

Psychopathic CEOs make psychopathic decisions, based on their own mental dysfunction. We're seeing this in the Enshittification of Everything; though probably more immediately and clearly in Musk's antics at X: ego over every other consideration.

If we could wave a wand and appoint non-psychopathic CEOs at all the large tech companies, would we see them change behaviour and solve a lot of the problems themselves? Or is it inherent in the organisation culture now, or a required feature of the organisational culture in order to grow so large?

We have historically curbed the extreme capitalist tendencies that build such large organisations. We have anti-trust laws, and all sorts of regulations to control the damage that unbridled capitalism does, and break up large monopolistic organisations. Do we need to draw that line a lot lower for tech?

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#383

Post by bryanrasmussen »

WalterBright wrote: post #346
thaumaturgy wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might be time to turn back the clock a bit and revisit some of the things pg said way back when he was pitching Sam Altman to lead YC and the general reaction was "...who?" 2008: "You could parachute [Sam Altman] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without the…

> amoral wealth-hoarders They're not hoarding wealth. They don't have any Scrooge McDuck cash faults. Their money is all invested , i.e. put to work creating things that people want. > moralists ... capitalists History shows us that societies based on morals (religious, ideological) fare extremely poorly compared with societies based on rights (free markets). Like it or not, for a large, prosperous society you must h…

every society is based on a set of morals, the rights societies are ones that have rights in that set, it seems somewhat to be skipping a wide inductive gap to blithely say that free markets need be a part of rights based societies (assuming that by "free market" something like the modern American conception of that term is meant)

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#384

Post by int_19h »

jonas21 wrote: post #293
bmitc wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I answered that scenario though. I'm fine, as a board, letting employees who want to hold the company hostage over a CEO that the board fired walk. The board's major mistake was not communicating why he was let go. My guess is that the likely reason why employees threatened to go was that they felt Altman had the best chances of making the for-profit arm's shares skyrocket. As a non-profit company's board, I'd be fin…

> I'm not aware of the machine learning researchers responsible for the core technology threatening to leave. Who were they? Ilya Sutskever, Alec Radford, Wojciech Zaremba, Nick Ryder, Mark Chen, ... how many names do you want? >90% of the company threatened to leave.

Sutskever was one of the people who fired Altman to begin with.

Him joining the pile-on when it was already clear how big it is was pretty much surrendering to the mob, and was perceived as such even at the time.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#385

Post by stonogo »

WalterBright wrote: post #346
thaumaturgy wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might be time to turn back the clock a bit and revisit some of the things pg said way back when he was pitching Sam Altman to lead YC and the general reaction was "...who?" 2008: "You could parachute [Sam Altman] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without the…

> amoral wealth-hoarders They're not hoarding wealth. They don't have any Scrooge McDuck cash faults. Their money is all invested , i.e. put to work creating things that people want. > moralists ... capitalists History shows us that societies based on morals (religious, ideological) fare extremely poorly compared with societies based on rights (free markets). Like it or not, for a large, prosperous society you must h…

They are hoarding wealth. They do have Scrooge McDuck cash vaults. (Look for them under "real estate holdings" as a starting place.)

The fact is they have enough money to have Scrooge McDuck cash vaults AND ALSO invest a shitload of money.

History also shows us that sooner or later, unbounded wealth disparity ends poorly for the wealthy. I hope we can find a way forward without that "solution" happening here.

You can have big business without robber barons. I'm not sure that exploitation is a necessity to produce things like chat bots, even really good chatbots. Pretending that these people are not hoarding wealth is not really going to answer the question, though.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#386

Post by exitheone »

pests wrote: post #359
Auracle wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no horse in this race but I’m glad that - for once - people aren’t taking claims with absolutely no evidence seriously. That’s no way to function as a society. For all we know she could be jealous, have mental issues, or have a different bone to pick with him and thought that’d be the best way to hurt him. If I had his money I could see some of my own relatives doing similar things after being denied handouts,…

Oh okay then we should just dismiss it?

"we" as in "a group of people not in a position to provide any evidence or investigate"?

Yes, absolutely, because all "we" would be adding to the conversation is speculation. No new information can be gained here.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#387

Post by komali2 »

avarun wrote: post #322
komali2 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always think I've found the limit of people's ability to blame communism for every problem on earth, and I'm always surprised. Was the current genocide in Palestine the fault of Communism also? Was 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, communism?

For anybody to take your comment seriously, you'd first have to actually explain how you get to your assumptions. Because most serious people reject your assumption that there's a genocide going on in Palestine right now.

Oh, well, that's pretty easy to explain. Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. Israel is intentionally destroying Palestinian people in part if not in whole.

Here's a good FAQ: https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2023/11/FA...

> In their public statements and speeches, Israeli officials have used dehumanizing language, describing Palestinians in Gaza as “human animals.” They have also been unequivocal in the goal of maximum harm, stating that the “emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy” using “fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known.”

Here is a full legal analysis: https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2023/10/Is...

Of course this is not the most systematized, industrialized genocides in human history; that would be the Holocaust. It is nonetheless a genocide.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#388

Post by stale2002 »

Terr_ wrote: post #182
stale2002 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> does not address the substance of any claims for openAI specifically Well, so what ? Parent-poster is suggesting there's a pattern to Altman's conduct in a similar set of situations, and a precedent that we should bear in mind when looking at more-recent stuff. By it's very nature, that kind of argument has to focus on past events. While you might reasonably disagree with their conclusion, it seems you're demanding…

> Well, so what?

> While you might reasonably disagree with their conclusion

What I want is for people to actually discuss the topic as opposed to doing a roundabout dismissal that is devoid of substance.

> Yet you literally just did that

Now you are catching on! I was worried that I was being too subtle. Indeed I did do that! Annoying isn't it?

Especially when I am simply fighting fire with fire and showing why this method of communication is worthless to begin with.

Wouldn't this all be better if we were talking about the actual issue, instead of responses to responses on who is being too meta?

I totally agree that the whole conversation thread was a mistake from the beginning and that any further comments just destroy the conversation topic as opposed to actually addressing the substance of it.

Now you know, by demonstration, of why the whole line of thinking was bad from the beginning.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#389

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Aunche wrote: post #372
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could have filed formal complaints, mandated increased scrutiny, handed off Sam's responsibilities to other people, or threatened legal action. I think you fundamentally misunderstand the role of the board of directors. It's often been said that the board (of any company) has basically one job: to hire (and fire) the CEO. While that may be a slight exaggeration, the wisdom behind that quote is that things turn…

> the board (of any company) has basically one job: to hire (and fire) the CEO Yes. In a formal board meeting, not in an secretive one behind Altman and Brockman's back. That's what makes it seem more like a coup. > They're the board, who else would they file formal complaints to? Like I said in other comments. It's always useful to have a paper trail. > "Hand off Sam's responsibilities to other people"?? Again, any…

> If Altman is neglecting and being opaque about AI safety, as Toner claims, then the board should appoint someone to lead this effort and be fully transparent with them.

No, that is absolutely not the role of the board (and I mean any board, not just OpenAI's), and that's the point I was trying to make. It is the CEO's role to define the org structure of the company. If the board feels that this structure doesn't meet their corporate goals, they don't go in and say "No, actually, we demand you create this AI safety group with a separate head that reports directly to us." Their option is instead to fire the current CEO and hire a different one who they believe is more aligned with their values.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#390

Post by comp_throw7 »

Aunche wrote: post #354
florean wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you think this stuff wasn't in writing? Do you think the investigation OAI did into the board's actions was just relayed orally?[1] That the board's discussions where all done in conference calls and not in e-mail? Do you think that this documentation gets routinely released to the public or even employees? Before you throw around accusations of incompetence, you should probably have some shred of evidence.…

> Before you throw around accusations of incompetence, you should probably have some shred of evidence. The evidence is in this interview. It sounded like the board basically let Altman walk all over them until they suddenly decided that they wanted to fire him, but by then it was too late. For example, if they had a thorough paper trail documenting all of his lies, they could threaten a lawsuit pressuring him to res…

> they could threaten a lawsuit pressuring him to resign

This is extremely confused about the board's responsiblities and powers. A court would laugh this case out of court because the board _can just fire him_.

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