I've seen some discussion on HN in which people claimed that even really important engineers aren't -too- important and that Ilya is actually replaceable, using Apple's growth after Woz' departure as an example. But I don't think that's the best situation to compare this to. I think a much better one is John Carmack firing Romero from id Software after the release of Quake. Some background: During a period of about 1…
Three points: 1. I don't think Ilya is equivalent to Carmack in this case — he's been focused on safety and alignment research, not building GPT-[n]. By most accounts Greg Brockman, who quit in disgust over the move, was more impactful than Ilya in recent years, as well as the senior researchers who quit yesterday. 2. I think you are underselling what happened with id: while they didn't blow up as fantastically as Io…
This is one of the core promises of alignment. Without it how can there be trust? While there are probably short term slow downs with an alignment focus, ultimately it is necessary to avoid throwing darts in the dark.