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OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

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Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#501

Post by guhcampos »

soderfoo wrote: post #319
joshstrange wrote: post #308

Well I give up. I think everyone is a "loser" in the current situation. With Ilya signing this I have literally no clue what to believe anymore. I was willing to give the board the benefit of the doubt since I figured non-profit > profit in terms of standing on principal but this timeline is so screwy I'm done. Ilya votes for and stands behind decision to remove Altman, Altman goes to MS, other employees want him bac…

It's almost like a ChatGPT hallucination. Where will this all go next? It seems like HN is melting down.

O was thinking of something like that. This is so weird I would not be surprised if it was all some sort of miscommunication triggered by a self inflicted hallucination.

The most awesome fic I could come up so far is: Elon Musk, in running a crusade to send humanity into chaos out of spite for being forced to acquire Twitter. Through some of his insiders in OpenAI, they use an advanced version of ChatGPT to impersonate board members in conversation with each other in private messages, so they individually believe a subset of the others is plotting to oust them from the board and take over. Then, unknowingly they build a conspiracy among a themselves to bring the company down by ousting Altmann.

I can picture Musk's maniac laughing as the plan unfolds, and he gets rid of what would be GPT 13.0, the only possible threat to the domination of his own literal android kid X Æ A-Xi.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#503

Post by nathan11 »

rtkwe wrote: post #481
joshstrange wrote: post #308

Well I give up. I think everyone is a "loser" in the current situation. With Ilya signing this I have literally no clue what to believe anymore. I was willing to give the board the benefit of the doubt since I figured non-profit > profit in terms of standing on principal but this timeline is so screwy I'm done. Ilya votes for and stands behind decision to remove Altman, Altman goes to MS, other employees want him bac…

That's the biggest question mark for me; what was the original reason for kicking Sam out. Was it just a power move to out him and install a different person or is he accused of some wrong doing? It's been a busy weekend for me so I haven't really followed it if more has come out since then.

It seems like the board wasn't comfortable with the direction of profit-OAI. They wanted a more safety focused R&D group. Unfortunately (?) that organization will likely be irrelevant going forward. All of the other stuff comes from speculation. It really could be that simple.

It's not clear if they thought they could have their cake--all the commercial investment, compute and money--while not pushing forward with commercial innovations. In any case, the previous narrative of "Ilya saw something and pulled the plug" seems to be completely wrong.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#504

Post by tmerse »

Fluorescence wrote: post #338
nottheengineer wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a lot like MS wants to have OpenAI but without a boards that considers pesky things like morals.

Time for a counter-counter-coup that ends up with Microsoft under the Linux Foundation after RMS reveals he is Satoshi...

You mean the GNU Linux Foundation?

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#505

Post by Jensson »

mcv wrote: post #444
Jensson wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this was a fight between the non-profit and the for-profit branches of OpenAI, and the for-profit won. So now the non-profit OpenAI is essentially dead, the takeover is complete.

Is it? Who are the non-profit and for-profit sides? Sutskever initially got blames for ousting Altman, but now seemed to want him back. Is he changing sides only because he realises how many employees support Altman? Or were he and Altman always on the same side? And in that case, who is on the other side?

> Who are the non-profit and for-profit sides?

The only part left of the non-profit was the board, all the employees and operations are in the for-profit entity. Since employees now demand the board should resign there will be nothing left of the non-profit after this. Puppets that are aligned with for-profit interests will be installed instead and the for-profit can act like a regular for-profit without being tied to the old ideals.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#506

Post by dmix »

realce wrote: post #426

Is nobody actually... committed to safety here? Was the OpenAI charter a gimmick and everyone but me was in on the joke?

Assuming this is all over safety vs non-safety is a large assumption. I'm wary of convenient narratives.

At most all we have is some rumours that some board members were unhappy with the pace of commercialization of ChatGPT. But even if they didn't make the ChatGPT store or do a bigo-friendly devday powerpoint, it's not like AI suddenly becomes 'safer' or AGI more controlled.

At best that's just an internal culture battle over product development and a clash of personalities. A lot of handwringing with little specifics.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#507

Post by pgeorgi »

JeremyNT wrote: post #464
joshstrange wrote: post #308

Well I give up. I think everyone is a "loser" in the current situation. With Ilya signing this I have literally no clue what to believe anymore. I was willing to give the board the benefit of the doubt since I figured non-profit > profit in terms of standing on principal but this timeline is so screwy I'm done. Ilya votes for and stands behind decision to remove Altman, Altman goes to MS, other employees want him bac…

There's no way to read any of this other than that the entire operation is a clown show. All respect to the engineers and their technical abilities, but this organization has demonstrated such a level of dysfunction that there can't be any path back for it. Say MS gets what it wants out of this move, what purpose is there in keeping OpenAI around? Wouldn't they be better off just hiring everybody? Is it just some kin…

> Is it just some kind of accounting benefit to maintain the weird structure / partnership, versus doing everything themselves?

For starters it allows them to pretend that it's "underdog v. Google" and not "two tech giants at at each others' throats"

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#508

Post by jrm4 »

Isn't the issue underlying all of this, the following:

OpenAI -- and "the market" -- incorrectly feels like OpenAI has some huge insurmountable advantage in doing AI stuff; but at the end of the day pretty much all the models are or will be effectively open-source (or open-source-ish) meaning they don't necessarily have much advantage at all, and therefore all of this is just irrational exuberance playing out?

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#509

Post by jjfoooo4 »

boringg wrote: post #123
tedivm wrote: post #17

This was handled so very, very poorly. Frankly it's looking like Microsoft is going to come out of this better than anyone, especially if they end up getting almost 500 new AI staff out of it (staff that already function well as a team). > In their letter, the OpenAI staff threaten to join Altman at Microsoft. “Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAI employees at this new subsidiary should we…

I think the board needs to come clean on why they fired Sam Altman if they are going to weather this storm.

Altman is already gone, if they fired him without a good reason they are already toast

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#510

Post by bnralt »

boh wrote: post #312

There can exist an inherent delusion within elements of a company, that if left unchallenged, can persist. An agreement for instance, can seem airtight because it's never challenged, but falls apart in court. The OpenAI fallacy was that non-profit principals were guiding the success of the firm, and when the board decided to test that theory, it broke the whole delusion. Had it not fully challenged Altman, the board…

> Now the cat is out of the bag, and people no longer believe that a non-profit who can act at will is a trusted vehicle for the future.

And maybe it’s not. The big mistake people make is hearing non-profit and think it means there’s a greater amount of morality. It’s the same mistake as assuming everyone who is religious is therefore more moral (worth pointing out that religions are nonprofits as well).

Most hospitals are nonprofits, yet they still make substantial profits and overcharge customers. People are still people, and still have motives; they don't suddenly become more moral when they join a non-prof board. In many ways, removing a motive that has the most direct connection to quantifiable results (profit) can actually make things worse. Anyone who has seen how nonprofits work know how dysfunctional they can be.

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