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Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#511

Post by zzzeek »

Lacerda69 wrote: post #206
Shank wrote: post #192

It seems like firing Sam and causing this massive brain drain might be antithetical to the whole AGI mission of the original non-profit. If OpenAI loses everyone to Sam and he starts some new AI company, it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal company. All of the organizational safeguards OpenAI had inked with Microsoft and protection against "selling AGI" once-developed are out-the-window if he just…

If MS gets their hands on an AGI help us god, but no "organizational safeguards" will matter. Not that I think AGI is possible or desirable in the first place, but that's a different discussion.

All hail Big Clippy

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#512

Post by Xcelerate »

kpandit wrote: post #345
ramraj07 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s always a hoarde of people second guessing the 10x engineer. Of course it looks impossible to regular folks. I have seen a few people like this. They’re real. Sometimes it’s even worth the dysfunction they cause to see this in action.

Not commenting about the ppl who are subject of this thread but talking in general. I have been lucky enough to have seen some of these 10x engineers but what is much more common is a 1x engineer feeling and treated like a 10x engineer because they are surrounded by 0.1x engineers.

Haha, that reminds me a lot of this quote from an Atlantic article on Freeman Dyson:

I asked him whether as a boy he had speculated much about his gift. Had he asked himself why he had this special power? Why he was so bright?

Dyson is almost infallibly a modest and self-effacing man, but tonight his eyes were blank with fatigue, and his answer was uncharacteristic.

“That’s not how the question phrases itself,” he said. “The question is: why is everyone else so stupid?”

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#513

Post by zzzeek »

concordDance wrote: post #477
wil421 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impossible with computers full stop. IMHO, we may be able to slice together DNA or modify it to create a new or smarter organism than AGI in a computer. They already shifted goal posts and they’ll do it again. AI used to mean AGI but marketing got a hold of it. Once something resembling AGI comes out they’ll say well it’s not Level 5 AGI or something similar.

> Impossible with computers full stop. This combined with it being possible with DNA is a very rare view. How did you come by it?

I would assume Blade Runner

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#514

Post by szundi »

tsurba wrote: post #329
convexstrictly wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Greg Brockman works 60 to 100 hours per week, and spends around 80% of the time coding. Former colleagues have described him as the hardest-working person at OpenAI." https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6309033/greg-brockman...

What Brockman tweets is from technical standpoint the most mundane, boring, and obvious stuff I’ve read from a programmer. My reads of this guy have been he’s not working on any problems that are technically difficult (or interesting). It’s much easier to work long hours on easy problems. He also has a managerial vibe in all communications which supports my feeling. Most programming work in any project and company is…

How nice would be him tweeting about the real stuff that is their competitive advantage

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#515

Post by mkl »

worldsayshi wrote: post #404
Roark66 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt self awareness has anything to do with it..

What else would you call the ability for it to adapt a task for its own capabilities?

Language modelling, token prediction. It's not much different from generating code in a particular programming language; given examples, learn the patterns and repeat them. There's no self-awareness or consciousness or understanding or even the concept of capabilities, just predicting text.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#516

Post by LightMachine »

n2d4 wrote: post #479
twoodfin wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your forward-looking value to an organization is your value whether it’s realized in equity or not. In the world where Sam Altman leads OpenAI to market dominance and eventual acquisition by Microsoft for $400B or whatever, he obviously would represent an important part of what Microsoft would be buying and would be compensated accordingly.

No he wouldn't, if the CEO is substantially compensated for a $400B acquisition despite not owning equity that would be fraud. It's the CEO's fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of shareholders, if they take a $10bil cut for themselves that is $10bil that could've gone to the shareholders and hence not in their best interest. It is the reason why CEOs (not Sam, apparently) are usually compensated in stock opti…

You completely miss OP's point. He is basically saying that the market value of Sam is appreciated regardless of his equity. And one example on how that is true is that whatever company Sam starts next will have an insanely high valuation from the go.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#517

Post by RockCoach »

slekker wrote: post #509
RockCoach wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My bet is that it could be all about some research directions that were "shielded" by Sam. As far as I can tell, all three of them are of Polish descent. For all we know they might have decided to resign together even if only one of them had a personal issue with OpenAI's vision. We will find out soon enough whether they will just found their own competing startup, based on OpenAI's "secret sauce" or not.

What does being Polish have to do with it?

You've been focussing on the most irrelevant part of my comment.

Nothing to do with being Polish in particular. Only that there is a connecting element that might help explain why these 3 decided to resign together on the same day.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#518

Post by Sai_ »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #94
cryptoz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also same here. Actually currently staying up late Friday night hacking on OpenAI API projects (while waiting for SpaceX Starship launch, it's quite a day for high-tech news!) - and wondering if I should even bother. Of course I will keep hacking, but...still it makes you think. Which is a very unexpected feeling. Hugely more interested in the open source models now, even if they are not as good at present. Because a…

Totally. I'll keep going too. I am just putting a nice GUI wrapper around the new Assistant stuff which looks damn cool. Project is half "might make some bucks" and half "see if this is good to use in the day job".

Yeah, the assistants api is pretty great. Curious if you’ve faced issues with certain things not working out of the blue forcing you to re-run threads?

For example, i have an assistant which is supposed to parse an uploaded file and extract useful info from it. To use this assistant, I create a thread and a run and attach it to the assistant with a different file-id. About half the time, the assistant simply throws up its hands and says it can’t parse the file I supplied with the thread. Retrying a few times seems to do the trick.

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#519

Post by awestroke »

Shank wrote: post #192

It seems like firing Sam and causing this massive brain drain might be antithetical to the whole AGI mission of the original non-profit. If OpenAI loses everyone to Sam and he starts some new AI company, it probably won't be capped-profit and just be a normal company. All of the organizational safeguards OpenAI had inked with Microsoft and protection against "selling AGI" once-developed are out-the-window if he just…

And how would Altman achieve that? What hitherto hidden talents would he employ?

Re: Three senior researchers have resigned from OpenAI

#520

Post by Strom »

mromanuk wrote: post #428
convexstrictly wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Greg Brockman works 60 to 100 hours per week, and spends around 80% of the time coding. Former colleagues have described him as the hardest-working person at OpenAI." https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6309033/greg-brockman...

Coding for 10/12hs daily isn’t healthy, is not sustainable and is not the way to live. I love coding and I being in front of a computer all my life, since I was 8. All the meaningful life moments in retrospective weren’t at the screen. Life occurs outside the screen. I understand that sometimes is worth it, to create a great product, solve something important or just for fun. But beware

Meaning of life is highly subjective. Just because your personal beliefs don't value coding highly doesn't mean that is universal.
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