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Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

nytimes.com

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Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#421

Post by baking »

zucker42 wrote: post #335
comp_throw7 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, she replaced Holden Karnofsky, who was almost certainly the one to pick her.

Who, it's worth mentioning, got a seat because Open Philanthropy donated $30 million to OpenAI early in its creation.

Pledged $30 million, $10 million per year for three years, but most likely only $20 million received. Elon Musk gave $40 million. There is also $70 million in mystery "other income" in the 990's that is missing the required explanation (nature and source.)

OpenAI is operated at a public charity and is required to meet a "public support test" of 33%, so Musk could not have given his $40 million without the $20 million from Open Philanthropy, an EA supported public charity. In fact, most of Open Philanthropy's money went to OpenAI.

Public charities are also required to have less than a majority of the board be employees or relatives of employees. For a while, after Elon Musk was removed, Holden Karnofsky of Open Philanthropy was the only non-employee on the board.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#422

Post by db-interface »

Manuel_D wrote: post #382
db-interface wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human biodiversity is an empirical fact. Are some populations taller than other, on average? Is red hair more prevalent in certain populations? Pretty much nobody actually rejects the idea of human biodiversity. > The neo reactionary types tend to draw specific conclusions from the idea of human biodiversity, like that racial disparities in IQ are inherent[...] This is a classic motte-and-bailey. The IQ view is cle…

Again, you're drawing very explicit conclusions from a few sentences. Racial disparities in IQ are indeed observed, but it's highly contentious over whether these are due to environmental factors like education and nutrition or inherent. That Asians have score higher IQs on average than whites in the US is an empirical observation. But it's also known that IQ can be increased by studying, and Asians study about twice…

If your contention is that we should more frankly discuss IQ disparities, pretending we're talking about height was a strange way to go about it.

In those emails, SA does not say he thinks these questions deserve more study -- he says they're "probably partially true". Again, in that context he's talking about Steve Sailer's views.

Yes, I'm focusing on a few sentences. Do you think he wrote those by accident? That the words came out wrong and the straightforward reading was not his intent? In the context of the rest of his emails, and his writing on e.g. Albion's Seed, I do not think that is likely.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#423

Post by sumedh »

TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #206
sumedh wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens to the for-profit arm of OpenAI is not her problem Who pays the bill for the non profit arm, wasnt that the for profit arm?

The for-profit arm was always meant to be subservient to the non-profit arm - the latter practically owns the former. The important thing for the non-profit arm is the mission, its own existence is secondary.

> The important thing for the non-profit arm is the mission, its own existence is secondary.

So OpenAI should just shut down because the charitable donations were not enough to keep the lights on.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#424

Post by GreedClarifies »

Sounds like Sam was attempting to fix the board membership.

OpenAI had grown massively since some of the board members were installed. Some of them were simply not the caliber of people that one would have running such a prestigious institution, especially not with the weight they had due to the board being depopulated. Sam realized this and maybe was attempting to address the issue.

Some of the members (ahem, Helen, Tasha and to a lesser extent Adam) liked their positions and struck first, probably convincing poor Ilya that this was about AI safety.

Being lightweights they did not do any pre-work or planning, they just plowed ahead. They didn't think through that Sam and Greg have added tremendous value to the company and that the company would favor them far over the board that added zero value. They didn't think through that tech in general would see rain makers and value creators being cut loose and side with them instead of figureheads. They didn't think that partners and customers, who dealt with Sam and Greg daily would be find the move disconcerting (at a minimum). They didn't even think through who would be the next CEO.

Maybe they didn't think it through since they didn't care. There was only upside for them since Sam was going to get rid of them sooner or later. They didn't see that having been on the OpenAI board was an honor and enormous career boost. Or maybe their ambition was so great that nothing mattered but controlling OpenAI.

Further, they thought that if they slandered Sam that he would be cowed and that they would retain their power. I wonder how many times they had pulled this stunt in the past and it worked?

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#425

Post by 15457345234 »

kickopotomus wrote: post #418
15457345234 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure how someone is meant to parse that Someone is meant to use context and understand that when the context clearly refers to someone who is well known to be a member of the board of directors, 'advisory board member' means that they are a board member in an advisory role, aka a nonexec. That assumes that someone is familiar with the structure and makeup of boards of directors. It's a bit rude to participate i…

> 'advisory board member' means that they are a board member in an advisory role, aka a nonexec No, those are not synonyms. Advisory boards are distinct from the board of directors. Advisory board members have roles similar to what you alluded to in your original comment and do not have fiduciary duties, hence my confusion. Non-exec board members are not involved with day-to-day business operations but their fiduciar…

Oh well I guess I used the wrong word then, but from context you should have been able to figure out the intent behind my words.

Only human!

> Don't insult others for your own clumsy usage.

We're on the internet. Something like 25% of internet discourse is nitpicking vocabulary. Let's keep traditions alive this holiday season!

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#426

Post by GreedClarifies »

bigtones wrote: post #406
GreedClarifies wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm much more interested in how Helen managed to get on this board at all." Indeed. This is far more interesting. How the hell did Helen and Tasha get on, and stay on, the board.

Helen Toner through her association with Open Philanthropy donated $30 Million dollars to OpenAI early on. That's how she got on the board. https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board

How did she stay on the board?

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#427

Post by Riverheart »

brigadier132 wrote: post #33
PepperdineG wrote: post #3

>Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that mission would be fulfilled. Now we know where that came from

Amazing how these higher minded people always forget about the little people on the ground. All these employees losing their livelihoods for the greater good. Not surprised an ethicist thinks like this.

“All these employees losing their livelihoods for the greater good.”

The same employees building technology that will ultimately put many more employees out of jobs? Ironic, because people say that jobs lost to AI will be for the greater good. I think we’re okay with sacrificing for greater goods as long as we aren’t the ones getting sacrificed.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#428

Post by stale2002 »

zombiwoof wrote: post #385
sumedh wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it really does not sound like she had any obligation to do so The optics dont look good though if a board member is complaining publicly.

but her job is to do exactly that. anybody in this space knows Anthropic was formed with the goal of AI Safety. her paper just backed that. is she supposed to lie?

What she is supposed to do is bring the issues to the company so that they can be fixed.

That's the pro safety solution.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#429

Post by lmm »

jph00 wrote: post #372
Aunche wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't the whole reason we have non-profit boards and charters is so that they can make just this kind of call? Yes. From the board. That's why we typically don't see boards air their dirty laundry out in the open even when in retrospect, they obviously had a problem with leadership.

The board seems to be getting an awful lot of crap for not saying enough , and also getting crap because their initial letter was too direct rather than being the usual corporate mealy-mouth BS.

It's possible to simultaneously believe that announcing that the CEO lied to the board about x on day y is better than announcing that the CEO is leaving to spend more time with his family, but announcing that the CEO lied to the board and then refusing to elaborate when everyone including the CEO says "huh? What?" is worse than either.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#430

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

gwern wrote: post #203

None of the comments thus far seem to clearly explain why this matters. Let me summarize the implications: Sam Altman expelling Toner with the pretext of an inoffensive page ( https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding... ) in a paper no one read* would have given him a temporary majority with which to appoint a replacement director, and then further replacement directors. These directors would, nat…

I mean, here is a relevant passage from the paper, linked in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38373684

If I were the CEO of OpenAI, I'd be pretty pissed if a member of my own board was shitting on the organization she was a member of while puffing up a competitor. But the tone of that paper makes me think that the schism must go back much earlier (other reporting said things really started to split a year ago when ChatGPT was first released), and it sounds to me like Toner was needling because she was pissed with the direction OpenAI was headed.

I'm thinking of a good previous comment I read when the whole Timnit Gebru situation at Google blew up and the Ethical AI team at Google was disbanded. The basic argument was on some of the inherent incompatibilities between an "academic ombudsman" mindset, and a "corporate growth" mindset. I'm not saying which one was "right" in this situation given OpenAI's frankenstein org structure, but just that this kind of conflict was probably inevitable.

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