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

OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 1001 posts

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#521

Post by jstummbillig »

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…

> just madness

In a sense, sure, but I think mostly not: The motives are still not quite clear but Ilya wanting to remove Altman from the board but not at any price – and the price is right now approach the destruction of OpenAI – are completely sane. Being able to react to new information is a good sign, even if that means complete reversal of previous action.

Unfortunately, we often interpret it as weakness. I have no clue who Ilya is, really, but I think this reversal is a sign of tremendous strength, considering how incredibly silly it makes you look in the publics eye.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#522

Post by gtirloni »

airstrike wrote: post #498
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…

> I think everyone is a "loser" in the current situation. On the margin, I think the only real possible win here is for a competitor to poach some of the OpenAI talent that may be somewhat reluctant to join Microsoft. Even if Sam'sAI operates with "full freedom" as a subsidiary, I think, given a choice, some of the talent would prefer to join some alternative tech megacorp. I don't know that Google is as attractive a…

This is pure speculation but I've said in another comment that Anthropic shouldn't be feeling safe. They could face similar challenges coming from Amazon.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#523

Post by guhcampos »

abraxas wrote: post #104
sesutton wrote: post #75

Ilya posted this on Twitter: "I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company." https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1726590052392956028

Trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. I seriously doubt this will work out for him. He has to be the smartest stupid person that the world has seen.

I've worked with this type multiple times. Mathematical geniuses with very little grasp of reality, easily manipulated into doing all sorts of dumb mistakes. I don't know if that's the case, but it certainly smells like it.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#525

Post by demondemidi »

If I was one of the 700 people that worked at the vanguard what could potentially be the most profitable, culture-changing technology in the past 50 years, I wouldn't want to miss out on becoming a billionaire by working for a non-profit. My conspiracy for the day: an unspoken profit motive. And it seems to be playing out, Sam just went to MS, and if those 500 also go there, then I think that's the motivation.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#526

Post by Solvency »

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…

Everyone got what they wanted. Microsoft has the talent they've wanted. And Ilya and his board now get a company that can only move slowly and incredibly cautiously, which is exactly what they wanted.

I'm not joking.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#528

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#529

Post by cm277 »

autaut wrote: post #405

Years from now we will look back to today as the watershed moment when ai went from technology capable of empowering humanity, to being another chain forged by big investors to enslave us for the profits of very few ppl. The investors (Microsoft and the Saudi’s) stepped in and gave a clear message: this technology has to be developed and used only in ways that will be profitable for them.

Hold on... we went from talking about disruptive technologies (where a startup had a chance to create/take a market) to sustaining technologies (where only leaders can push the state-of-the-art). Mobile was disruptive; AI (really, LLMs) is sustaining (just look at the capex spend from the big clouds). This is old school competition with some ideological BS thrown in for good measure --sure, go ahead and accelerate humanity; just need a few dozen datacenters to do so.

I am holding out hope that a breakthrough will create a disruptive LLM/AI tech, but until then...

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#530

Post by notahacker »

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?

That seems a reasonable takeaway. Plenty of grounds for criticising the board's handling of this, but the tone of the letter is pretty openly "we're going to go and work directly for Microsoft unless you agree to return the company focus to working indirectly for Microsoft"...
Post reply on HN