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Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

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Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#421

Post by brcmthrowaway »

newnwme wrote: post #342
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #192

What is up with the allegations of Annie Altman? Something doesn't smell right

Well, it is wrong to disparage someone that is innocent until proven otherwise. Even if you disagree with them and think they are a snake-oil salesman. That does not mean you should not hear someone out. As far as I am aware Annie said Sam and their brother molested her as a kid. He claims otherwise, and deflects with “she is a drug addict” (heavily paraphrasing here). Lots of talk of how her trust was broken, and it…

Those are shocking allegations, real question is why Sam, as a wealthy man, isn't able to support his family?

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#422

Post by samaltmanfried »

ssklash wrote: post #210

Why anyone trusts Altman or OpenAI with something as societally consequential as AI is beyond me.

I can only think of one other tech CEO that managed to become as universally loathed as Altman in so quick a time, and that's Mark Zuckerberg. However even Zuckerberg somehow manages to seem more trustworthy than Altman.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#423

Post by dang »

nwoli wrote: post #183
istjohn wrote: post #107

I wonder if this HN post will get torpedoed as fast as the one from yesterday[0]. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435440

They’re definitely doing this on comments too. I’ve had negative towards altman comments at the top dropped to below the negative voted ones in the past

It's standard moderation on HN to downweight subthreads where the root comment is snarky, unsubstantive, or predictable. Most especially when it is unsubstantive + indignant. This is the most important thing we've figured out about improving thread quality in the last 10 years.

But it doesn't vary based on specific persons (not Sam or anyone else). Substantive criticism is fine, but predictable one-liners and that sort of thing are not what we want here—especially since they evoke even worse from others.

The idea of HN is to have an internet forum—to the extent possible—where discussion remains intellectually interesting. The kind of comments we're talking about tend to choke all of that out, so downweighting them is very much in HN's critical path.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#424

Post by ssnistfajen »

arnklint wrote: post #374

I thought freedom of speech was a foundational thing in the US. But I guess anyone could be silenced with enough economic incentive?

Freedom of speech in regard to public institutions. For private entities/individuals, any contract you willingly sign will reign supreme over whatever this "freedom of speech" thing is unless there's written law that explicitly forbids the forms of retaliation described within said contracts.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#425

Post by olalonde »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #11
mateus1 wrote: post #4

What surprises me about these stories surrounding openAI is how they apologize while lying and downplaying any blame. Do they expect anybody to believe they didn’t know about clawback clauses?

Do they care? The mob will shout for a week or two and then turn their attention somewhere else. spez (the reddit chief) said something like that about their users, and he was absolutely right. A few days ago I was re-reading some of those threads about reddit API changes from ten months back where so many users claimed it was their last message and they were leaving for good. Almost none of them did. I checked two d…

The risk is not users boycotting them. The risk is OpenAI having trouble recruiting and retaining top talent, which will cause them to eventually fall behind the competition, leading users to naturally leave.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#426

Post by af3d »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #356
af3d wrote: post #339

It just seem petty, refusing to sign a simple document agreeing to not to trash your former employer (with whom you intend to continue to benefit from a shared interest in said company). It wasn't as if Altman was threatening to take back equity. Little more than a "just be nice, OK" and yet somehow that is asking too much?

Damn, is this Sammy's Sock or do you just have elementary level reading comprehension?

The latter, apparently. TBH I answered after hearing about the story elsewhere and it just struck me as fairly benign for an employer to ask as much from a (soon-to-be) former employee. I am not a lawyer anyway so I honestly have no idea what the proper legal interpretation might be. I was just commenting on what seems to be the unfortunate state of human affairs these days. It just feels like people are so much more prone to go on the offensive over what amounts to a simple request for civility. Of course down here we still honor the humble handshake. Maybe that is the difference?

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#427

Post by Dr_Birdbrain »

zniturah wrote: post #323

Looking forward for a document leak about openai using YouTube data for training their models. When asked if they use it, Murali (CTO) told she doesn't know which makes you believe that for 99% they are using it.

I would say 100%, simply because there is no other reasonable source of video data

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#428

Post by optimalsolver »

parineum wrote: post #287
hashtag-til wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s remarkable to see the hoi polloi to stand by CEOs and big corporations, rather than defending the few parts of the media that stand for regular workers.

It's not about taking sides, it's about not caring. Everyone is tired of getting worked up over super rich CEOs being "aggressive" to their very rich employees and your,"if you're not with us, you're against us" attitude.

How do you think those same CEOs would treat their not-so-rich employees?

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#429

Post by ssnistfajen »

dontupvoteme wrote: post #42

It's really maddening just how right the board was.

Doesn't really matter at this point because they gave literally zero info to the public or most of the company employees when they fired Altman. Almost no one sided with them because they never attempted to explain anything.

Re: Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees

#430

Post by ssnistfajen »

thereal_tron wrote: post #136

Does someone know why the employees wanted him back so badly? Must be very few employees actually upset with him and his way of doing things.

If Sam didn't get hired back after the firing, there was a good chance OpenAI would implode and that would be bad news for employee equity. Plus, the board didn't give out any information that could've convinced anyone to side with them. The drama about exit documents and superalignment research appears to have been contained in relatively small circles and did not circulate company-wide until they became public.
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