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We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

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Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#391

Post by concordDance »

jakey_bakey wrote: post #379
Satam wrote: post #215

Disappointing outcome. The process has conclusively confirmed that OpenAI is in fact not open and that it is effectively controlled by Microsoft. Furthermore, the overwhelming groupthink shows there's clearly little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees either. It might not seem like the case right now, but I think the real disruption is just about to begin. OpenAI does not have in its DNA to win, they're too…

It wasn't necessarily groupthink - there was profound pressure from team Sam to sign that petition. What's going to happen to your career when you were one of the 200 who held out initially?

Isn't that one of the causes of group think?

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#392

Post by bambax »

altpaddle wrote: post #42

I guess the main question is who else will be on the board and to what degree will this new board be committed to the Open AI charter vs being Sam/MSFT allies. I think having Sam return as CEO is a good outcome for OpenAI but hopefully he and Greg stay off the board. It's important that the board be relatively independent and able to fire the CEO if he attempts to deviate from the mission. I was a bit alarmed by the…

It seems ironic that the research paper that started it all [0] deals with "costly signals":

> Costly signals are statements or actions for which the sender will pay a price —political, reputational, or monetary—if they back down or fail to make good on their initial promise or threat

Firing Sam Altman and hiring him back two days later was a perfect example of a costly signal, as it cost all involved their board positions.

There's an element of farce in all of this, that would make for an outstanding Silicon Valley episode; but the fact that Sam Altman can now enjoy unchecked power as leader of OpenAI is worrying and no laughing matter.

[0] https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#393

Post by IanCal »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #331
shubhamjain wrote: post #162

At the end of the day, we still don't know what exactly happened and probably, never will. However, it seems clear there was a rift between Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the Original Principles (Team Helen/Ilya). I think the tensions were brewing for quite a while, as it's evident from an article written even before GPT-3 [1]. > Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting pressu…

I am still a bit puzzled that it is so easy to turn a non-profit into a for profit company. I am sure everything they did is legal, but it feels like it shouldn't be. Could Médecins Sans Frontières take in donations and then take that money to start a for profit hospital for plastics surgery? And the profits wouldn't even go back to MSF, but instead somehow private investors will get the profits. The whole construct…

Well, if it aligned with their goals, sure I think.

Let's make the situation a little different. Could MSF pay a private surgery with investors to perform reconstruction for someone?

Could they pay the surgery to perform some amount of work they deem aligns with their charter?

Could they invest in the surgery under the condition that they have some control over the practices there? (Edit - e.g. perform Y surgeries, only perform from a set of reconstructive ones, patients need to be approved as in need by a board, etc)

Raising private investment allows a non profit to shift cost and risk to other entities.

The problem really only comes when the structure doesn't align with the intended goals - which is something distinct to the structure, just something non profits can do.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#394

Post by Aerbil313 »

dodyg wrote: post #283
flylib wrote: post #111

"A source with direct knowledge of the negotiations says that the sole job of this initial board is to vet and appoint a new formal board of up to 9 people that will reset the governance of OpenAl. Microsoft will likely have a seat on that expanded board, as will Altman himself." https://twitter.com/teddyschleifer/status/172721237871736880...

[flagged]

If gender of people influence your decisions in any way you are sexist and a discriminator, period.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#395

Post by dimask »

politelemon wrote: post #382
Satam wrote: post #215

Disappointing outcome. The process has conclusively confirmed that OpenAI is in fact not open and that it is effectively controlled by Microsoft. Furthermore, the overwhelming groupthink shows there's clearly little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees either. It might not seem like the case right now, but I think the real disruption is just about to begin. OpenAI does not have in its DNA to win, they're too…

> there's clearly little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees either. That they reached a different conclusion than the outcome you wished for does not indicate a lack of critical thinking skills. They have a different set of information than you do, and reached a different conclusion.

It is not about different set of information, but different stakes/interests. They act firstmost as investors rather than as employees on this.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#397

Post by swatcoder »

righthand wrote: post #376

What's interesting to me is that during this time Meta and OpenAI have eliminated their AI ethics members/teams but are still preaching about how it matters. No one has given any details beyond grand statements about it's importance on what these ethical AIs do. Everyone has secured their payday though.

I think those changes (and this shakeup) are the start of the industry grounding its expectations for this technology. I think a lot of product and finance people, and many but not all researchers, are seeing the current batch of generative AI ideas as ripe to make do things and see the pseudo-religious safety/ethics communities as not directly relevant to that work.

So you let your product teams figure out how the brand needs to be protected and the workflow needs to be shaped, like always, and you don't defer to some outside department full of beatniks in berets or whatever.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#398

Post by bugglebeetle »

kmlevitt wrote: post #389
Satam wrote: post #215

Disappointing outcome. The process has conclusively confirmed that OpenAI is in fact not open and that it is effectively controlled by Microsoft. Furthermore, the overwhelming groupthink shows there's clearly little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees either. It might not seem like the case right now, but I think the real disruption is just about to begin. OpenAI does not have in its DNA to win, they're too…

I think this outcome was actually much more favorable to D'Angelo's faction than people realize. The truth is before this Sam was basically running circles around the board and doing whatever he wanted on the profit side- that's what was pissing them off so much in the first place. He was even trying to depose board members who were openly critical of open AI's practices. From here on out there is going to be far mor…

> Sam, Greg and even Ilya are off the board altogether. Whoever they can all agree on to fill the remaining seats, Sam is going to have to be a lot more subservient to them to keep the peace.

The existing board is just a seat-warming body until Altman and Microsoft can stack it with favorables to their (and the U.S. Government’s) interests. The naïveté from the NPO faction was believing they’d be able to develop these capacities outside the strict control of the military industrial complex when AI has been established as part of the new Cold War with China.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#399

Post by karmasimida »

Satam wrote: post #215

Disappointing outcome. The process has conclusively confirmed that OpenAI is in fact not open and that it is effectively controlled by Microsoft. Furthermore, the overwhelming groupthink shows there's clearly little critical thinking amongst OpenAI's employees either. It might not seem like the case right now, but I think the real disruption is just about to begin. OpenAI does not have in its DNA to win, they're too…

It is not groupthink it is comradery.

For me, the whole thing is just human struggle. It is about fighting for people they love and care, against some people they dislike or indifferent to.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#400

Post by ah765 »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #331
shubhamjain wrote: post #162

At the end of the day, we still don't know what exactly happened and probably, never will. However, it seems clear there was a rift between Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the Original Principles (Team Helen/Ilya). I think the tensions were brewing for quite a while, as it's evident from an article written even before GPT-3 [1]. > Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting pressu…

I am still a bit puzzled that it is so easy to turn a non-profit into a for profit company. I am sure everything they did is legal, but it feels like it shouldn't be. Could Médecins Sans Frontières take in donations and then take that money to start a for profit hospital for plastics surgery? And the profits wouldn't even go back to MSF, but instead somehow private investors will get the profits. The whole construct…

I think it actually isn't that easy. Compared to your example, the difference is that OpenAI's for-profit is getting outside money from Microsoft, not money from non-profit OpenAI. Non-profit OpenAI is basically dealing with for-profit OpenAI as a external partner that happens to be aligned with their interests, paying the expensive bills and compute, while the non-profit can hold on to the IP.

You might be able to imagine a world where there was an external company that did the same thing as for-profit OpenAI, and OpenAI nonprofit partnered with them in order to get their AI ideas implemented (for free). OpenAI nonprofit is basically getting a good deal.

MSF could similarly create an external for-profit hospital, funded by external investors. The important thing is that the nonprofit (donated, tax-free) money doesn't flow into the forprofit section.

Of course, there's a lot of sketchiness in practice, which we can see in this situation with Microsoft influencing the direction of nonprofit OpenAI even though it shouldn't be. I think there would have been real legal issues if the Microsoft deal had continued.

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