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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

#421

Post by concordDance »

arketyp wrote: post #201
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…

For all the talk about responsible progress, the irony of their inability to align even their own incentives in this enterprise deserves ridicule. It's a big blow to their credibility and questions whatever ethical concerns they hold.

Alignment is considered an extremely hard problem for a reason. It's already nigh impossible when you're dealing with humans.

Btw: do you think ridicule eould be helpful here?

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

#422

Post by lewhoo »

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 think only a minority of the general public truly cares about AI Safety

That doesn't matter that much. If your analysis is correct then it means a (tiny) minority of OpenAI cares about AI safety. I hope this isn't the case.

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

#423

Post by maxlin »

random_cynic wrote: post #308
laserlight wrote: post #236

With Sam coming back as CEO, hasn't OpenAI board proven that it has lost its function? Regardless of who is in the board, they won't be able to exercise one of the most fundamental of their rights, firing the CEO, because Sam has proven that he is unfireable. Now, Sam can do however he pleases, whether it is lying, not reporting, etc. To be clear, I don't claim that Sam did, or will, lie, or misbehave.

No that hasn't at all been the case. The board acted like the most incompetent group of individuals who've even handed any responsibility. If they went through due process, notified their employees and investors, and put out a statement of why they're firing the CEO instead of doing it over a 15 min Google meet and then going completely silent, none of this outrage would have taken place.

Exactly. 3 CEO switches in a week is ridiculous

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

#424

Post by ben_w »

eclectic29 wrote: post #196

The media and the VCs are treating Sam like some hero and savior of AI. I’m not getting it. What has he done in life and/or AI to deserve so much respect and admiration? Why don’t top researchers and scientists get equivalent (if not more) respect, admiration and support? It looks like one should strive to become product manager, not an engineer or a scientist.

He says nice things about his team (and even about his critics) when in public.

But my reading of this drama is that the board were seen as literally insane, not that Altman was seen as spectacularly heroic or an underdog.

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

#427

Post by eviks »

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…

Doesn't make sense that after such a broad board capitulation the next one will have any power, and media scrutiny isn't a powerful governance mechanism

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

#428

Post by righthand »

swatcoder wrote: post #397
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 b…

This is the abandoning of ethics. No one moving forward is going to be thinking about it and they've clearly signaled it's about making money. People that have issues with it will just not use the products or be hypocrites about using the products. There is nothing to push up against anymore, but I don't think the recent events are initiator. People were already letting go of ethics the moment they continued using it because the tech was so cool. The parting of the ethical peoples is just the final nail. There is no reason to remove these ethical teams if they believe in ethics, downsize maybe but not dedicating a human to at least researching the ethical outcomes sure isn't very good for humanity ethics concerns.

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

#429

Post by shrimpx »

transcriptase wrote: post #47

Assuming they weren’t LARPing, that Reddit account claiming to have been in the room when this was all going down must be nervous. They wrote all kinds of nasty things about Sam, and I’m assuming the signatures on the “bring him back” letter would narrow down potential suspects considerably. Edit: For those who may have missed it in previous threads, see https://old.reddit.com/user/Anxious_Bandicoot126

That doesn't sound credible or revealing. It's regurgitating a bunch of speculation stuff that's been said on this forum and in the media.

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

#430

Post by lewhoo »

swatcoder wrote: post #195
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…

> If you truly believed that Superhuman AI was near, and it could act with malice, won't you try to slow things down a bit? FWIW, that's called zealotry and people do a lot of dramatic, disruptive things in the name of it. It may be rightly aimed and save the world (or whatever you care about), but it's more often a signal to really reflect on whether you, individually, have really found yourself at the make-or-break…

FWIW, that's called zealotry and people do a lot of dramatic, disruptive things in the name of it.

That would be a really bad take on climate change.

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