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OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

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Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#391

Post by ademeure »

Sam implied OpenAI had a major breakthrough a few weeks ago in a panel yesterday:

"Like 4 times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple of weeks, I've gotten to be in the room when we sort of like, pushed the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward. And getting to do that is like the professional honor of a lifetime".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFFvqRemDv8#t=13m22s

This is going to sound terrible, but I really hope this is a financial or ethical scandal about Sam Altman personally and he did something terribly wrong, because the alternative is that this is about how close we are to true AGI.

Superhuman intelligence could be a wonderful thing if done right, but the world is not ready for a fast take-off, and the governance structure of OpenAI certainly wouldn't be ready for it either it seems.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#392

Post by andrewstuart »

nikcub wrote: post #301

Put the pieces together: Nov 6 - OpenAI devday, with new features of build-your-own ChatGPT and more Nov 9 - Microsoft cuts employees off from ChatGPT due to "security concerns" [0] Nov 9 - OpenAI experiences severe downtime the company attributes to a "DDoS" (not the correct term for 'excess usage') [3] Nov 15 - OpenAI announce no new ChatGPT plus upgrades [1] but still allow regular signups (and still do) Nov 17 -…

It would have to be extremely serious, obviously.

"review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board"

OK, so they tell us he was lying, which is precisely what "not consistently candid in his communications" means.

Possible topics for lying:

* copyright issues to do with ingestion of training data

* some sort of technical failure of the OpenAI systems

* financial impropriety

* some sort of human resources issue - affair with employee

* other - some sort of political power play? Word from Satya Nadella - "get rid of him"?

Possibly the reason is something that the board members felt exposed them personally to some sort of legal liability, thus if they did not act then they would have to pay a legal price later.

It has to be pretty serious to not make it public.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#393

Post by throw555chip »

nlh wrote: post #50

For a company that's executing so well (at least from an outside perspective), shipping so fast, growing so fast, and so ahead of the curve in arguably the hottest segment of the tech market, at this moment, to do this right now, means this must be REALLY bad.

> arguably the hottest segment of the tech market

Yes it is arguable. OpenAI is nothing more than a really large piece of RAM and storage around a traditional model that was allowed to ingest the Internet and barfs pieces back up in prose making it sound like it came up with the content.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#394

Post by tentacleuno »

nlh wrote: post #50

For a company that's executing so well (at least from an outside perspective), shipping so fast, growing so fast, and so ahead of the curve in arguably the hottest segment of the tech market, at this moment, to do this right now, means this must be REALLY bad.

It's worth noting (though I'm not sure whether this is related), that Discord has announced that they're shutting down their ChatGPT-based bot[0], Clyde.

[0]: https://uk.pcmag.com/ai/149685/discord-is-shutting-down-its-...

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#395

Post by siavosh »

gzer0 wrote: post #312

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google has this to say: https://x.com/ericschmidt/status/1725625144519909648?s=20 Sam Altman is a hero of mine. He built a company from nothing to $90 Billion in value, and changed our collective world forever. I can't wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work- it's going to be simply incredible. Thank you @sama for all you have done for al…

I think it's logical in these scenarios if you don't know what happened to presume something forgivable and maintain that relationship (cynically, opportunity to invest), and if something truly unforgivable comes out post another tweet.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#396

Post by kelnos »

gkoberger wrote: post #27

I know I won't get a lot of love for this, but Sam is a really good person. I don't know him well, but I've known him since long before OpenAI. He's not perfect, but behind the scenes he's a genuine and upstanding person. I've met lots of wealthy smart people, and he's the only exception. He was the only person I trusted in this situation, and I'm genuinely nervous that he's no longer running OpenAI.

I do believe you are being genuine here, but good people still sometimes do bad things. Good people still have their blind spots, and the negative consequences of those blind spots are often exacerbated and have outsized (negative) impact on others when the person behind them is wealthy.

I've never met the man, but I can say I have not been impressed by his words and attitude in public. I never got the sense or feeling that he's actually doing right by the world.

Ultimately it doesn't matter if he's a good or bad person; what matters is what he's done.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#397

Post by user3939382 »

gkoberger wrote: post #27

I know I won't get a lot of love for this, but Sam is a really good person. I don't know him well, but I've known him since long before OpenAI. He's not perfect, but behind the scenes he's a genuine and upstanding person. I've met lots of wealthy smart people, and he's the only exception. He was the only person I trusted in this situation, and I'm genuinely nervous that he's no longer running OpenAI.

Didn’t I just read a post about him abusing his sister? It seems impossible to judge people you don’t know well personally, and even then sometimes you can be surprisingly wrong.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#398

Post by gumballindie »

nikcub wrote: post #301

Put the pieces together: Nov 6 - OpenAI devday, with new features of build-your-own ChatGPT and more Nov 9 - Microsoft cuts employees off from ChatGPT due to "security concerns" [0] Nov 9 - OpenAI experiences severe downtime the company attributes to a "DDoS" (not the correct term for 'excess usage') [3] Nov 15 - OpenAI announce no new ChatGPT plus upgrades [1] but still allow regular signups (and still do) Nov 17 -…

OpenAI not only has stolen intellectual property from millions of people it’s also stealing it from users. Those “leaks” are openai training against data people upload - sensitive customer data, private information, proprietary source code, and so on.

Ai doesnt “learn”, it depends on data. The more the better. This guy wanted to get as much as possible to make their chat bot appear more intelligent at all cost.

I have the strong suspicion we will see a bunch of revelations soon some covering what i stated above.

Re: OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman

#400

Post by H8crilA »

malwarebytess wrote: post #249

So, to summarize the speculations: That the board is unhappy with his for profit and moat building charted path. That this is about his sister. That he pissed off microsoft. That he did something illegal, financially. That he has been lying about costs/profit. That he lied about copyrighted training data. I will add: maybe he's not aggressive enough in pursuit of profit.

What's the deal with his sister? Never heard about her.
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