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Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#411

Post by timthelion »

koonsolo wrote: post #387
convexstrictly wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Greg Brockman works 60 to 100 hours per week, and spends around 80% of the time coding. Former colleagues have described him as the hardest-working person at OpenAI." https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6309033/greg-brockman...

Coding for 50 to 80 hours a week? Well, I call bullshit on that. Never seen anyone do that consistently and with high quality and quantity output. Let's first define 'coding' before we jump into the details: 'coding' for me is sitting at your computer doing the work. It's not getting a coffee, chatting with a colleague, going to toilet or reading hacker news. So if you're reading this and claiming to do 100 hours per…

While I'm sure 100 hours a week is impossible, my dad did 6x11 work days which were dominated by coding pre-internet. You wouldn't know him, he burned out. I have personally witnessed him do more than 60 hours in a week coding. That said, his coding work isn't necessarilly creative. He can do a 12 hour stint of step through debugging stopping only to microwave frozen food. Or 12 hours of data analytic work. Since it is said this man is into optimization I'd say it is possible he's like my dad, he gets into this numb zombie state "change something, run again, look at profiler output line by line." Some people doom scroll HN or tiktok 14 hours a day, other's doom scroll a flame graph.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#412

Post by Phenomenit »

Fluorescence wrote: post #307
Phenomenit wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because making as much profit as possible is the only virtue worth pursuing if you believe most comments on Hn. We’re basically Ferengui.

> Ferengui A fitting typo! Show HN: FerenGUI - the ui framework for immoral arch-capitalists Every dark-pattern included as standard components. Upgrade to Pro to get the price-fixing and hidden monero miner modules.

I think you’re on to something, especially when that’s where most of the big scale enterprises end up.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#414

Post by benkarst »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #379
benkarst wrote: post #230

It's incredible how many of you alleged tech people think that Sam just wanted a world of safe AI while his actions suggest he wanted to make dump trucks of money. He was the one who partnered with Microsoft and turned it from a non-profit to a for-profit company.

This post and its replies are a contest for who can best perform enlightened cynicism. The truth is there isn't any strong evidence one way or another, only your existing worldviews. Partnering with Microsoft and closing access both have profit-driven and ideology driven explanations, and we don't have strong evidence it's one and not the other.

[flagged]

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#415

Post by fennecbutt »

Shank wrote: post #192

It seems like firing Sam and causing this massive brain drain might be antithetical to the whole AGI mission of the original non-profit. If OpenAI loses everyone to Sam and he starts some new AI company, it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal company. All of the organizational safeguards OpenAI had inked with Microsoft and protection against "selling AGI" once-developed are out-the-window if he just…

Microsoft will partner with them if they start a new company I reckon, 100%.

And Microsoft are risk adverse enough that I think they do care about AI safety, even if only from a "what's best for the business" standpoint.

Tbh idc if we get AGI. There'll be a point in the future where we have AGI and the technology is accessible enough that anybody can create one. We need to stop this pointless bickering over this sort of stuff, because as usual, the larger problem is always going to be the human using the tool than the tool itself.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#416

Post by jawakar »

Iv wrote: post #299
mirzap wrote: post #193

This is escalating rather quickly. It is an incredibly irresponsible move by the OpenAI board. Hypergrowing company, and now they managed to shake up their user's trust in leadership stability. This has Adam's (D'Angelo) fingerprints all over it (for context, he did overthrow his co-founder, and Quora has been struggling ever since). This guy shouldn't sit on any board ever again. I predict the board will be fired, a…

> and now they managed to shake up their user's trust in leadership stability Do users care about that? I care about features stability and avoidance of shitification. That's why I am usually preferring open models to depending on OpenAI's API. This drama has me curious about the outcome and if it leads to more openness from OpenAI, it may gain me back as a user.

> Do users care about that? I care about features stability and avoidance of shitification.

Maybe not the individual users, but the enterprises/startups which builds around OpenAI.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#417

Post by dustingetz »

vasco wrote: post #346
yodsanklai wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine this type of person to abide to their normal obligations during business hours, and code full time the rest of their wake-up time. In my company, 80% coding for a senior SWE is rare. But if they deliver, management will give them some slack on the other evaluation axis. I have colleagues who work almost by themselves on new high impact projects. This has many benefits. No need to argue about designs, co…

This is very true everywhere I've looked. What also happens is regular developers (like me) want the same treatment as if they could end-to-end deliver "if they only let me", but many times can't, and actually need the structure and processes of a team. I've seen this freedom not working at all.

yes there must be strong accountability for this to work (e.g. a self financed open source project or bootstrapped startup), not only do mid devs overestimate their appetite, motivation to grind and delivery, but also face the Curse of Development wrt communicating to the money people their value. Why should the rockstar grind away 50x harder than their coasting peers for 30% more salary? What happens when the bean counters reorg you or a manager labels you not a team player? Equity is the right form of comp to motivate this level of delivery and at that point it’s not about 50x skills but about sales and overcoming the communication gaps to establish a nonzero price for your equity. Which is why so many amazing niche projects languish and starve and the founder-engineer eventually breaks and goes and ships react apps for whatever empty startup has startup-investor fit that year

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#418

Post by cthalupa »

thawab wrote: post #408
jessriedel wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not. They don't have board seats. The mission-driven founders of Open AI were very serious about ensuring this.

with the amount they paid, how did they not get a seat in the board?

They did not ever have the possibility of one but decided that their investment was still worth the return.

We can debate whether or not that was wise of them, but because of the charter and structure of OpenAI it was never on the table.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#419

Post by fennecbutt »

kashyapc wrote: post #384
Shank wrote: post #192

It seems like firing Sam and causing this massive brain drain might be antithetical to the whole AGI mission of the original non-profit. If OpenAI loses everyone to Sam and he starts some new AI company, it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal company. All of the organizational safeguards OpenAI had inked with Microsoft and protection against "selling AGI" once-developed are out-the-window if he just…

Hi, can we talk about the elephant in the room? I see breathless talk about "AGI" here, as if it's just sitting in Altman's basement and waiting to be unleashed. We barely understand how consciousness works, we should stop talking about "AGI". It is just empty, ridiculous techno-babble. Sorry for the harsh language, there's no nice way to drive home this point.

Why not? It's on topic.

Should people discussing nuclear energy not talk about fusion?

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#420

Post by kashyapc »

tempestn wrote: post #396
kashyapc wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, can we talk about the elephant in the room? I see breathless talk about "AGI" here, as if it's just sitting in Altman's basement and waiting to be unleashed. We barely understand how consciousness works, we should stop talking about "AGI". It is just empty, ridiculous techno-babble. Sorry for the harsh language, there's no nice way to drive home this point.

There is no need to understand how consciousness works to develop AGI.

Fair point. I don't want to split hairs on specifics, but I had in mind the "weak AGI" (consciousness- and sentience-free) vs "strong AGI".

Since Shank's comment didn't specify what they meant, I should have made a more charitable interpretation (i.e. assume it was "weak AGI").

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