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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

#451

Post by Manuel_D »

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…

No, I don't think he agrees with neo reactionaries any more than he let on. In his public posts he has praised reactionaries for making observations that most shirk away from, even if they are wrong in their conclusions. This is pretty much what is expressed in the contents of those emails.

I think you're reading way too much into one sentence saying human biodiversity is partially correct (which is not actually a particularly contentious idea when you explain what it is), and leaping to the conclusion he agrees with neo reactionary claims that some races have substantially lower IQ even with identical environmental factors. There's a vast disparity between "IQ disparities across races" and "IQ disparities across races, without environmental differences" that is crucial to understand.

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

#452

Post by negandnek »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #281

“””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 could be consistent with its mission.””” This is remarkable and unhinged. I gave the board the benefit of the doubt at first, but as this unfolds, it becomes clear that the board is held hostage by ideological zealots who can’t comp…

How does he become more sympathetic? If this reporting is true, then Sam going after Toner’s board seat because of a paper is totally out of line.

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

#453

Post by alvah »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #176
alvah wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know nearly enough about the OpenAI situation to suggest what she should have done (apart from "not help to press the self-destruct button," with the benefit of hindsight). However, I've read a bit about EA since the SBF debacle, and a childlike naivete does seem to be baked into the DNA of many of its followers.

You would prefer that $billions be managed by the same snakes in suits who destroy the environment, market products that give people lung cancer, etc.?

You’re going to have to show me where I said that champ

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

#454

Post by Aunche »

zucker42 wrote: post #306
abi wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's not cool for board members to publicly criticize the company.

I think you're taking the intuition from a for-profit company and wrongly applying it to a non-profit company. When a board member criticizes a for-profit company, that's bad because the goal of the company is make a profit, and bad PR is bad for profit. A board member criticizing a non-profit doesn't have the same direct connection to a result opposite of the goals of the company. And if you actually read the page,…

>A board member criticizing a non-profit doesn't have the same direct connection to a result opposite of the goals of the company.

Even in a nonprofit, the board has an obligation to maintain a good working relationship with their organization. It's very rare for a board member to publicly criticized for their own organization.

Also, this argument goes out the window because OpenAI is not just a nonprofit. When they started their for-profit subsidiary in 2019, they accepted a fiduciary duty to their investors.

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

#455

Post by cycomanic »

jacquesm wrote: post #251
hutzlibu wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But it is also possible that the Russians would have launched a first strike on the USA if they were unopposed. It almost happened as it was!" When did a first strike of the Sowjetunion allmost happened? I rather think it was the other way around, first strike was evaluated, to hit them before they got the bomb.

Cuban Missile Crisis/Bay of Pigs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

What do you mean? The soviets never considered a nuclear first strike? They hadn't even fully deployed the ballistic missiles. It was the Joint Chiefs of Staff which recommended a first strike (although not nuclear), which fortunately Kennedy overruled.

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

#456

Post by lazide »

Davidzheng wrote: post #117
jltsiren wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real issue is that OpenAI was doomed to fail from the beginning. AI is commercially too valuable to be developed by an organization with a mission like them. Eventually they had to make a choice: either become a for-profit without any pretensions about the good of humanity, or stay true to the mission and abandon ambitions of being at the cutting edge of AI development. A non-profit could not have beaten…

I think it's different bc atomic bomb is pure cost and AI can have returns from products. But your overall point may stand

Having the bomb first has infinite ROI.

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

#457

Post by usehand »

negandnek wrote: post #420
usehand wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if thats the case why didnt they just stuff the board when they had the chance?

I think it’s also mentioned the article that they have failed to add new members to the board due to the disagreement between the board members.

then the argument that altman would be able to easily stuff the board doesnt hold -- he didnt even have majority.

either you claim (1) that there was a risk of altman having majority and stuffing the board and hence concede that majority allows stuffing the board, in which case you concede the actual majority which was anti-altman could have done that

or (2) you concede that having majority is not enough to stuff the board, in which case we were far from any risk of altman doing so, given that he did not even have a majority of the board

---

edit because i cant seem to reply further down thread: i read the article. my point is precisely that the board had majority. that is how they got to fire altman in the first place. given they had majority they had the chance to stuff the board in their own favor, as per the argument above.

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

#458

Post by cycomanic »

jacquesm wrote: post #50
foobarqux wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her mandate is specifically to do what is good for society not to do what is good for OpenAI.

And how did this improve society? I only see negatives. Other entities with less of a brake on their ethics are gaining ground. Microsoft of all parties is strengthening their position and has full access to the core tech.

This is an argument that can be (and is) used to justify anything.

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

#459

Post by jxi »

jibal wrote: post #399
jxi wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't shutting down her academic freedom. However, if you're going to diss what your own company is doing and praise competitors, you probably shouldn't be on the board. >During the call, Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, said the board was endangering the future of the company by pushing out Mr. Altman. This, he said, violated the members’ responsibilities. >Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is…

> This person is too far gone. Life isn't a movie. This comment is a credibility killer. "This person", as a member of the board of a non-profit, has a duty to keep the non-profit on mission, and even to call for its dissolution if that isn't possible.

How far should she go to fulfill her interpretation of that duty? Should she even commit crimes in order to keep the non-profit mission? There's 700+ employees that disagree with her interpretation of the company's mission, and yet she stubbornly maintains that hers is correct and that it's her duty to destroy the company (or even sell it to Anthropic) to fulfill her duty.

This is delusion, and she thinks she's some hero that's saving the world by keeping it a non-profit when in reality it's just creating needless chaos and even impacting innocent people's livelihoods.

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

#460

Post by mch82 »

comp_throw7 wrote: post #338
powera wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is insane. "They had to fire Sam, because he was trying to take over the board". First: most boards are accountable to something other than themselves. For the exact reason that it pre-empts that type of nonsense. Second: the anti-Sam Altman argument seems to be "let's shut the company down, because that will stop AGI from being invented". Which is blatant nonsense; nothing they do will stop anyone else. (with t…

> "They had to fire Sam, because he was trying to take over the board". I mean, yes? The board is explicitly there to replace the CEO if necessary. If the CEO stuffs the board full of their allies, it can no longer do that. > First: most boards are accountable to something other than themselves. For the exact reason that it pre-empts that type of nonsense. Boards of for-profits are accountable to shareholders because…

I’m curious about the IRS angle. Anyone know more about that?

One reason open source software projects struggle to get donations is because the IRS is skeptical of OSS as a true non-profit activity, so often doesn’t allow 503c tax deductible donations. OpenAI seems like a data point in favor of the IRS skepticism.

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