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Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

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Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#421

Post by lucubratory »

jonas_kgomo wrote: post #395
nostrademons wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is more abrupt and more direct than any CEO firing I've ever seen. For comparison, when Travis Kalanick was ousted from Uber in 2017, he "resigned" and then was able to stay on the board until 2019. When Equifax had their data breach, it took 4 days for the CEO to resign and then the board retroactively changed it to "fired for cause". With the Volkswagon emissions scandal, it took 20 days for the CEO to r…

what examples are you considering here, bioweapons?

I don't think the person you are replying to is correct, because the only technological advancement where a new OpenAI artifact provides schematics that I think could qualify is Drexler-wins-Smalley-sucks style nanotechnology that could be used to build computation. That would be the sort of thing where if you're in favour of building the AI faster you're like "Why wouldn't we do this?" and if you're worried the AI may be trying to release a bioweapon to escape you're like "How could you even consider building to these schematics?".

I don't think it's correct not because it sounds like a sci-fi novel, but because I think it's unlikely that it's even remotely plausible that a new version of their internal AI system would be good enough at this point in time to do something like that, considering all the many problems that need to be solved for Drexler to be right.

I think it's much more likely that this was an ideological disagreement about safety in general rather than a given breakthrough or technology in specific, and Ilya got the backing of US NatSec types (apparently their representative on the board sided with him) to get Sam ousted.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#423

Post by newsclues »

next_xibalba wrote: post #317

Here is Helen Toner's resumé: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-toner-4162439a/details/edu... I am genuinely flabbergasted as to how she ended up on the board. How does this happen? I can't even find anything about fellow board member Tasha McCauley...

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/tasha-mccauley-3562...

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#424

Post by Spivak »

Mistletoe wrote: post #400
muzani wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a way to soften your tone so it doesn't sound angry. but then it sounds like soft anger.

I just read it as illiterate and am amazed someone that deliberately writes like that was chairman of the board.

This is honestly par for the course for anyone who didn't grow up a digital native and is a career businessman who didn't spend it hand-composing messages. I wouldn't read too much into it. Direct emails from executives that aren't filtered by their assistants all look like this.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#425

Post by w-ll »

cthalupa wrote: post #365
Geee wrote: post #168

I think I see it now. Speculation following: They achieved AGI internally, but didn't want OpenAI to have it. All the important people will move to another company, following Sam, and OpenAI is left with nothing more than a rotting GPT. They planned all this from the start, which is why Sam didn't care about equity or long-term finances. They spent all the money in this one-shot gamble to achieve AGI, which can be re…

> Legally it's not IP theft, because it's just code which can be memorized and rewritten. That is not how IP law works. Even writing new code based on the IP developed at OpenAI would be IP theft. None of this really makes sense when you consider that Ilya Sutskever, arguably the single most important person at OpenAI, appears to have been a part of removing Sam.

Would Ilya maybe the one to push for AGI, and Sam didn't? And the board wants the Skynet they were promissed?

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#427

Post by dboreham »

jumploops wrote: post #404
abra0 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>rightfully so How the hell can people be so confident about this? You describe two smart people reasonably disagreeing about a complicated topic

The LLMs of today are just multidimensional mirrors that contain humanity's knowledge. They don't advance that knowledge, they just regurgitate it, remix it, and expose patterns. We train them. They are very convincing, and show that the Turing test may be flawed. Given that AGI means reaching "any intellectual task that human beings can perform", we need a system that can go beyond lexical reasoning and actually con…

Prediction: there isn't a difference. The apparent difference is a manifestation of human brain delusion about how human brains work. The Turing test is a beautiful proof of this phenomenon: so and so thing is impossibility hard only achievable via magic capabilities of human brains...oops no actually it's easily achievable now so we better re-define our test. This cycle Will continue until the singularly. Disclosure: I've been long term skeptical about AI but that writing is up on the wall now.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#428

Post by [deleted] »

AmericanOP wrote: post #282
johnwheeler wrote: post #84

Edit: I called it https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725682088639119857 nothing to do with dishonesty. That’s just the official reason. ———- I haven’t heard anyone commenting about this, but the two main figures here-consider: This MUST come down to a disagreement between Altman and Sutskever. Also interesting that Sutskever tweeted a month and a half ago https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907 Th…

So I should cancel any plans to build on the GPT platform? Because it doesn't align with the values of Ilya and Helen? Open AI- we need clarity on your new direction.

[deleted]

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#429

Post by mcmcmc »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #273
cowl wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't justify the hostile language and the urgent last minute timing. (partners were notified just minutes before press release). They didn't wait even 30 min for the market to close causing MSFT to drop billions in that time. A mere direction disagrement would have been handled with "Sam is retiring after 3 months to spend more time with his Family, We thank him for all his work". And surely would be taken months…

Great point. It was rude to drop a bombshell during trading hours. That said, the chunk of value Microsoft dropped today may be made back tomorrow, but maybe not: if OpenAI is going to slow down and concentrate on safe/aligned AI then that is not quite as good for Microsoft.

Why is OpenAI responsible for protecting Microsoft’s stock price?

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#430

Post by staticman2 »

wavemode wrote: post #356
lenerdenator wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I'm not a lawyer (of the big city or simple country varieties, or any other variety) but if you talk to most HR people they'll tell you that if they ever get a phone call from a prospective employer to confirm details about someone having worked there previously, the three things they'll typically say are: 1) a confirmation of the dates of employment 2) a confirmation of the role/title during employment 3) whe…

Someone at OpenAI hates the man's guts. It's that simple. Even with very public cases of company leaders who did horrible things (much worse than lying), the companies that fired them said nothing officially. The person just "resigned". There's just no reason open up even the faintest possibility of an expensive lawsuit, even if they believe they can win. So yeah, someone definitely told the lawyers to go fuck themse…

You can't say a person resigned if they refused to resign, correct? If the person says they refuse to resign you have to fire them. So that's one scenario where they would have to say they fired him.

You also wouldn't try to avoid a lawsuit if you believed (hypothetically) it was impossible to avoid a lawsuit.

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