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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

#391

Post by ethanbond »

photochemsyn wrote: post #370
w10-1 wrote: post #299

It's hard to believe a Board that can't control itself or its employees could responsibly manage AI. Or that anyone could manage AGI. There is a long history of governance problems in nonprofits (see the transaction-cost economics literature on point). Their ambiguous goals induce politics. One benefit of profit-driven boards is that the goals make only well-understood risk trade-off's between growth now or later, an…

The solution is to replace the board members with AGI entities, isn't it? Just have to figure out how to do the real-time incorporation of current data into the model. I bet that's an active thing at OpenAI. Seems to have been a hot discussion topic lately: https://www.workbyjacob.com/thoughts/from-llm-to-rqm-real-ti... The real risk is that some government will put the result in charge of their national defense syst…

> The real risk is that some government will put the result in charge of their national defense system, aka Skynet, not that kids will ask it how to make illegal drugs.

These cannot possibly be the most realistic failure cases you can imagine, are they? Who cares if "kids" "make illegal drugs?" But yeah, if kids can make illegal drugs with this tech, then actual bad actors can make actual dangerous substances with this tech.

The real risk is manifold and totally unforeseeable the same way that a 400 Elo chess player has zero conception of "the risks" that a 2000 Elo player will exploit to beat them.

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

#392

Post by deanCommie »

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…

> Meanwhile, id under Carmack kept cranking out hit after hit for years, essentially shrugging off Romero's firing like nothing happened.

Romero was fired in 1996

Until this point, as you mentioned id had created multiple legendary franchises with unique lore, attributes, and each one groundbreaking tech breakthroughs: Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake.

After Romero left, id released: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_id_Software_games

* Quake 2

* Quake 3

* Doom 3

* And absolutely nothing else of any value or cultural impact. The only "original" thing was Rage which again had no footprint.

There were a lot of technical achievements, yes, but it turns out that memorable games need more than interesting technology. They were well-reviewed for their graphics at a time when that was the biggest thing people expected from new id games - interesting new advances in graphics. For a while, they were THE ones pushing the industry forward until arguably Crysis.

But the point is for anyone experiencing or interacting with these games today, Quake is Quake. Nobody remembers 1, 2 or 3 - it's just Quake.

Now, was id a successful software company and business? Yes. Would it have become the industry titan and shaped the future all of all videogames based on their post Romero output? Absolutely not.

So, while it is definitely justifiable to claim that Carmack achieved more on his own than Romero did, the truth is at least in the video game domain they needed each other to achieve the real greatness that they will be remembered for.

It remains to be seen what history will say about ALtman and Sutskever.

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

#393

Post by gedy »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #198
gedy wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what's silly about "shepherding responsible AGI" is this is basically math, it's not some genie that can be kept hidden or behind some Manhattan Project level of effort. Pandora's box is open, and the best we can do is make sure it's not locked up behind some corporation or gov't.

I mean, that's clearly not really true, there's a huge "means of production" aspect to this which comes down to being able to afford the datastructure infrastructure. The cost of the computing machinery and the energy costs to run it are actually massive .

Sure but I meant the costs are feasible for many companies, hence competition. That was very different from the barriers to nuclear weapons development.

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

#394

Post by jacquesm »

wolverine876 wrote: post #46

> 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…

I'm fairly certain that a board is not allowed to capriciously harm the non-profit they govern and unless they have a very good reason there will be more fall-out from this.

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

#395

Post by galangalalgol »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #390
galangalalgol wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think od I was raised by chickens that treated me kindly and fairly, yes, I would not harm chickens.

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

#396

Post by justaj »

gardenhedge wrote: post #302
jddj wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where I've ended up as well for now. I'm as distant from it all as anyone else, but I can easily believe the narrative that Ilya (et al.) didn't sign up there just to run through a tired page from the tech playbook where they make a better Amazon Alexa with an app store and gift cards and probably Black Friday sales.

And that is fine.. but why the immediate firing, why the controversy?

My guess is that if Sam would have found this out before being fired, he would have done his best not to be fired.

As such, it would have been much more of a challenge to shift OpenAI's supposed over-focus on commerce towards a supposed non-profit focus.

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

#397

Post by loeber »

svnt wrote: post #359
sheepscreek wrote: post #310

Here’s another theory. > the ousting was likely orchestrated by Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever over concerns about the safety and speed of OpenAI's tech deployment. Who was first to launch a marketplace for GPTs/agents? It wasn’t OpenAI, but Poe by Quora. Guess who sits on the OpenAI non-profit board? Quora CEO. So at least we know where his interest lies with respect to the vote against Altman and Greg.

This is a really good point. If a non profit whose board you sit on releases a product that competes with a product from the corporation you manage, how do you manage that conflict of interest? Seems he should have stepped down.

Yeah, I just wrote about this as well on my substack. There were two significant conflicts of interest on the OpenAI board. Adam D'Angelo should've resigned once he started Poe. The other conflict was that both Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner were associated with another AI governance organization.

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

#398

Post by jacquesm »

HAL3000 wrote: post #357
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…

As someone who has orchestrated two coups in different organizations, where the leadership did not align with the organization's interests and missions, I can assure you that the final stage of such a coup is not something that can be executed after just an hour of preparation or thought. It requires months of planning. The trigger is only pulled when there is sufficient evidence or justification for such action. Bui…

All of this is spot on. The key to it all is 'if you strike at the king, you best not miss'.

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

#399

Post by atleastoptimal »

sheepscreek wrote: post #310

Here’s another theory. > the ousting was likely orchestrated by Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever over concerns about the safety and speed of OpenAI's tech deployment. Who was first to launch a marketplace for GPTs/agents? It wasn’t OpenAI, but Poe by Quora. Guess who sits on the OpenAI non-profit board? Quora CEO. So at least we know where his interest lies with respect to the vote against Altman and Greg.

The current interim CEO also spearheaded ChatGPT's development. Its the biggest product, consumer market based move the company's ever made. I can't imagine it's simply a pure "Sam wanted profits and Ilya/board wanted pure research" hard line in the sand situation.

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

#400

Post by takinola »

jjfoooo4 wrote: post #103
nilkn wrote: post #34

Only time will tell, but if this was indeed "just" a coup then it's somewhat likely we're witnessing a variant of the Steve Jobs story all over again. Sam is clearly one of the top product engineering leaders in the world -- few companies could ever match OpenAI's incredible product delivery over the last few years -- and he's also one of the most connected engineering leaders in the industry. He could likely have $5…

OpenAI’s biggest issue is that it has no moat. The product is a simple interface to a powerful model, and it seems likely that any lead they have in the power of the model can be quickly overcome should they decrease R&D. The model is extremely simple to integrate and access - unlike something like Uber, where tons of complexity and logistics is hidden behind a simple interface, an easy interface to OpenAI’s model ca…

People keep saying that but so far, it is commonly acknowledged that GPT-4 is differentiated from anything other competitors have launched. Clearly, there is no shortage of funding or talent available to the other companies gunning for their lead so they must be doing something that others have not (can not?) done.

It would seem they have a product edge that is difficult to replicate and not just a distribution advantage.

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