Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 625 posts

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

#441

Post by upupupandaway »

jacquesm wrote: post #311
jessenaser wrote: post #96

> Mr. Altman complained that the research paper seemed to criticize OpenAI’s efforts to keep its A.I. technologies safe while praising the approach taken by Anthropic, according to an email that Mr. Altman wrote to colleagues and that was viewed by The New York Times. > OpenAI's board of directors approached rival Anthropic's CEO about replacing chief Sam Altman and potentially merging the two AI startups, according…

So, at least the outline of something that is consistent begins to form: - board is reduced in size - Altman has a collision with Toner - Toner proposes they get rid of Sam and offer the company to Anthropic thinking they won't refuse - They pull the trigger on Altmans's ouster, Ilya goes along for /reasons/, D'Angelo goes along because it nicely dovetails with his own interests and #4 is still a mystery - Mira gets…

Did Mira also get fired?

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

#442

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

sackfield wrote: post #377
verall wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's life has been ruined? Did I miss something?

Ask the labour class at OpenAI. They are not in the privileged position the capital class on the board find themselves in.

As an academic, we can be fairly certain that Helen makes way less money than top AI talent

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

#443

Post by lacker »

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…

It's not just OpenAI. Every AI organization is discovering that they have internal groups which are pulling in a different direction than the rest of the organization, and trying to get rid of those groups.

* Google got rid of its "Ethical AI" group

* Facebook just got rid of its "Responsible AI" team

* OpenAI wanted to get rid of the "Effective Altruists" on the board

I guess if I was afraid of AI taking over the world then I would be rooting for OpenAI to be destroyed here. Personally I hope that they bring Sam back and I hope that GPT-5 is even more useful than GPT-4.

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

#444

Post by richk449 »

jafitc wrote: post #236

Sam Altman's Actions - Sam complained that Helen Toner's research paper criticized OpenAI's safety approach and praised Anthropic's, seeing it as dangerous for OpenAI - He reprimanded her for the paper, saying as a board member she should have brought concerns to him first rather than publishing something critical right when OpenAI was in a tricky spot with the FTC - He then began looking for ways to remove her from…

Is there a name for this type of analysis?

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

#445

Post by reducesuffering »

jacquesm wrote: post #348
reducesuffering wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically all of the most relevant experts in this domain, leadership in OpenAI, think it's right around the corner. > Assuming it can be done weaponization of this tech would change the balance of power in the world dramatically. Yes it would, but it wouldn't be as bad as everyone dying. > Everybody seems to be worried about the wrong thing: whether or not the AGI will be friendly to us. That doesn't really matter…

> Practically all of the most relevant experts in this domain, leadership in OpenAI, think it's right around the corner. Oh, ok. That makes it alright then. So, let's see those minutes of that meeting where this was decided with all of the pomp and gravitas required rather than that it was a petty act of revenge or to see who could oust who first from OpenAI. Because that's what it looks like to me based on what is n…

What you’re missing is that Eliezer has been beating this drum a long time, while the rest of HN and the world is asleep at the wheel.

Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and the original founders of OpenAI believe AGI is an existential threat and are building it with the belief that it’s best they’re the ones who do it, rather than worse people, in an arms race. Eliezer is the one saying “you fucking fools, you’re speeding up the arms race and have now injected a shit ton of $ from all VC into accomplishing the naive capabilities with no alignment.”

People don’t even realize that Elon Musk founded Neuralink with the belief that AGI is such an existential threat, we’re better off becoming the AGI cyborgs than a separate inferior intelligence. But most of the people thinking theyre so smart and understand the AGI X risk landscape here, even Elon fans, don’t know that.

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

#446

Post by red75prime »

db-interface wrote: post #349
red75prime wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can agree that people are different, and, simultaneously, don't agree that, say, the less useful ones should be stripped of some of their rights.

If you view some races as generally "less useful" than others, most people would consider that racist regardless of whether you think they should enjoy the same rights.

"Less useful" belongs to "don't agree" part, if you haven't noticed. It isn't an inherent part of the package.

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

#447

Post by gizmo »

cpncrunch wrote: post #419
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect his popularity is mostly about employees who want to maintain the value of their equity: https://nitter.net/JacquesThibs/status/1727134087176204410#m Wild guess: If the board stands its ground, appoints a reasonable new CEO, and employees understand that OpenAI will continue to be a hot startup, most of them will stay with the company due to their equity

Except, the facts behind Sam's firing will inevitably come out, and it won't be possible to brush it under the carpet. I think they hoped the facts wouldn't come out, and they could just give a hand-wavey explanation, but that's clearly not going to happen. It seems they have well and truly shot themselves in the feet, and they will likely have to be replaced now.

If I'm correct then the board is fine with getting replaced, they just don't want Sam to have total control. Many of the candidates for independent director are friendly with Sam and will happily give him the keys to the kingdom. It's probably extremely difficult to find qualified independent board members who don't have ties to Sam.

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

#448

Post by [deleted] »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit naive, to put it mildly. It presumes that nobody else would be able to replicate the effort and that the parties that are able to replicate it would also destroy theirs after proving that it could be done. Fat chance.

The actions of other organisations are not in the scope of the board's mission. The actions of the company the board controls are in that scope. "The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,”" We can't control other's actions, but we can control our own. If we feel that our actions are diverging from our own sense of what we ought to be doing we can…

[deleted]

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

#449

Post by marquisdepolis »

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…

In this instance, "Sam is trying to take over the Board on a flimsy basis" is an reasonable reason to remove him. Started leading discussions about whether she should be removed, is also very very far from actively working to remove her.

This is amateur hour and considering what happened she probably should have been removed.

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

#450

Post by kragen »

db-interface wrote: post #432
Manuel_D wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"nuggets of gold" implies that the bulk of it is not gold. If reference someone, saying even a broken clock is right twice a day is that really an endorsement?

As I mentioned in a sibling comment, the contention I intend to make is that he agrees more with the racial views of his NRx commenters than he publicly let on. That was the framing of the NYT article -- nobody thinks or would be incensed to learn that SA is a Neo-Monarchist or any of the other NRx beliefs that are orthogonal to modern US political discourse. If you don't think racial IQ disparities are a significant…

unfortunately i don't think neoreactionary views are at all orthogonal to the political discourse that is current in the usa; moldbug has his own variant of the 'cultural marxism' thesis, though naturally enough he doesn't blame it on the jews or the frankfurt school; instead, he picks the quakers, which i mostly agree with (except that of course i agree with the quakers)

his criticism is squarely directed at the mainstream us left that he grew up in and its core ideals, such as equality, human rights, pacifism, fighting injustice, etc. he thinks all those are bad things

Post reply on HN