Live data from Hacker News

Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

theverge.com

521–530 of 985 posts

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#521
post #248

The only way this story gets more suspenseful: 1) Large military convoys are seen moving towards data centers used by OpenAI. 2) Rumors start going around that GPT-5 demonstrated very unusual behavior towards end of testing last week. 3) "Unknown entity" has somehow gained control of key US infrastructure. 4) Emergency server shut down procedures at key Microsoft Azure data centers rumored to run GPT-5 inference have…

Is that really more suspenseful? Seems like you're turning something genuinely stochastic into hackneyed fiction. Worse for humanity, sure, but hardly more suspenseful.

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#522
post #273
post #7

I will be very sad if there isn’t a documentary someday explaining what in the world happened. I’m not convinced even people smack in the middle of this even know what’s going on.

And the main scene must be even better than the senior management emergency meeting in Margin Call. And all must be written by AI.

Nothing is better than the senior management emergency meeting in Margin Call.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#523
post #504

As of 10am PT, 700 of 770 employees have signed the call for board resignation. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/joannejang/status/1726667504133808242

Or what, they will quit and give up all their equity in a company valued at 86bn dollars? Is Microsoft even on record as willing to poach the entire OpenAI team? Can they?! What is even happening.

Come on, I absolutely agree with you, signing a paper is toothless.

On the other hand, having 90% of your employees quite quit, is probably bad business.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#524
post #504

As of 10am PT, 700 of 770 employees have signed the call for board resignation. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/joannejang/status/1726667504133808242

Or what, they will quit and give up all their equity in a company valued at 86bn dollars? Is Microsoft even on record as willing to poach the entire OpenAI team? Can they?! What is even happening.

Yes, and yes. Equity is worthless if a company implodes. Non competes are not enforceable in California.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#525
post #332
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this your opinion or is this something that’s an actual theory in sociology or psychology, or at least something people talk about in practice? Not trying to be mean, just to learn. There’s a whole genre of press releases and videos for apologies, so I’m not sure it’s such a reputational risk to admit one is wrong. It might be a bigger risk not to, it would seem. But what you say sounds interesting.

I would be interested too if that's an actual theory. My experience has largely been that if you're willing to admit you were wrong about something, most reasonable people will appreciate it over you doubling down. If they pile on after you have conceded, typically they come off much worse socially in my opinion.

(This is a reflection on human behavior, not a statement about any specific work environment. How much this is or isn't true varies by place.)

In my experience, it's something of a sliding scale as you go higher in the amount of politicking your environment requires.

Lower-level engineers and people who operate based on facts appreciate you admitting you were incorrect in a discussion.

The higher you go, the more what matters is how you are perceived, and the perceived leverage gain of someone admitting or it being "proven" they were wrong in a high-stakes situation, not the facts of the situation.

This is part of why, in politics, the factual accuracy of someone's accusations may matter less than how successfully people can spin a story around them, even if the facts of the story are proven false later.

I'm not saying I like this, but you can see echoes of this play out every time you look at history and how people's reactions were more dictated by perception than the facts of the situation, even if the facts were readily available.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#528
post #250

I couldn’t make up a more ridiculous plot even if I tried. At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if Musk got involved. It’s already ridiculous enough, why not.

Well, there was a tweet by one of the Bloomberg's journalist saying that Musk tried to manouver himself to be the replacement CEO but got rebuffed by the board. Paraphrasing this since the tweet seems to be deleted (?), so take of it what you will.

That sounds more likely than anything else I've heard about this. Doesn’t really matter if it’s true: it’s painfully true to form.

Re: Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

#529

As I posted elsewhere, I think this is a conflict between Dustin Moskovitz and Sam Altman. Ilya may have been brought into this without his knowledge (which might explain why he retracted his position). Dustin Moskovitz was an early employee at FB, and the founder of Asana. He also created (along with plenty of MSFT bigwigs) a non-profit called Open Philanthropy, which was a early proponent of a form of Effective Alt…

Correlation =/= causation. This is most likely coincidental. I highly doubt Dustin's differing views caused a (near) unanimous ousting of a completely different company's CEO that had nothing to do with Dustin's primary business.

All 3 having some connection to effective altruism, which Dustin is at the center of, is not coincidental.
Post reply on HN