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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

#561

Post by grumple »

It is disappointing that the outcome of this is that Altman and co are basically going to steal a nonprofit's IP and use it at a competitor. They took advantage of the goodwill of the public and favorable taxation in order to develop the technology; now that it's ready, they want to privatize the profit. It looks like this was the plan all along, and it's very strange to me that a nonprofit is allowed to have a for-profit subsidiary.

I would hope the California AG is all over this whole situation. There's a lot of fishy stuff going on already, and the idea that nonprofit IP / trade secrets are going to be stolen and privatized by Microsoft seems pretty messed up.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#562

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #491
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems more damage control than power move. I'm sure their first choice was to reinstate Altman and get more control over OpenAI governance. What they've achieved here is temporarily neutralizing Altman/Brockman from starting a competitor, at the cost of potentially destroying OpenAI (who they remain dependent on for next couple of years) if too many people quit. Seems a bit of a lose-lose for MSFT and OpenAI, even if…

Disagree. MSFT extending an open invitation to all OpenAI employees to work under sama at a subsidiary of MSFT sounds to me like it'll work well for them. They'll get 80% of OpenAI for negative money - assuming they ultimately don't need to pay out the full $10B in cloud compute credits. Competitors should be fearful. OpenAI was executing with weights around their ankles by virtue of trying to run as a weird "need lo…

AFAIK MSFT/Altman can't just fork GPT-N and continue uninterrupted. All MSFT has rights to is weights and source code - not the critical (and slow to recreate) human-created and curated training data, or any of the development software infrastructure that OpenAI has built.

The leaders may be motivated by retribution, but I'm sure none of leaders or researchers really want to be a division of MSFT rather than a cool start-up. Many developers may chose to stay in SF and create their own startups, or join others. Signing the letter isn't a commitment to go to MSFT - just a way to pressure for a return to status quo they were happy with.

Not everyone is going to stay with OpenAI or move to MSFT - some developers will move elsewhere and the knowledge of OpenAI's secret sauce will spread.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#563

Post by slfnflctd »

calf wrote: post #364
abkolan wrote: post #73

HN desperately needs a mega thread, it's only Monday early hours, there is so much drama to come out of this.

Tangentially I noticed that Reddit's front page has been conspicuously absent on coverage of this, I feel a twinge of pity. Maybe there are some some subreddits but I haven't bothered to look.

Their front page has been mostly increasingly abysmal for a while.

The technology sub (not that there's anything special about it other than being big) has had a post up since very early this morning, so there are likely others as well.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#565

Post by ghaff »

breadwinner wrote: post #388
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft hasn't actually given OpenAI $13 Billion because much of that is in the form of Azure credits To be clear, these don't go away. They remain an asset of OpenAI's, and could help them continue their research for a few years.

Assuming OpenAI still exists next week, right? If nearly all employees — including Ilya apparently — quit to join Microsoft then they may not be using much of the Azure credits.

It's a lot easier to sign a petition than it is to quit your cushy job. It remains to be seen how many people jump ship to (supposedly) take a spot at Microsoft.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#566

Post by renegade-otter »

gadders wrote: post #129

I think it was Mark Zuckerberg that described (pre-Elon) Twitter as a clown car that fell into a gold mine. Reminds me a bit of the Open AI board. Most of them I'd never heard of either.

Perhaps we can stop pretending that some of these people who are top-level managers or who sit on boards are prodigies. Dig deeper and there is very little there - just someone who can afford to fail until they drive the clown car into that gold mine. Most of us who have to put food on the table and pay rent have much less room for error.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#568

Post by ergocoder »

andrewfromx wrote: post #64

so what happens if @eshear calls this probably-not-a-bluff, but lets everyone walk? The people that remain get new options and 500 other people still definitely want to work at OAI?

It is likely gonna be that way.

Eshear is the new CEO. This implosion is not his fault. His reputation is not destroyed.

He can rebuild the non-profit part, which is hard to determine success or failure anyway. Then, he will leave in a few years.

He doesn't seem to have much to lose by just focusing on rebuilding OpenAI.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#569

Post by x86x87 »

ycsux wrote: post #340
fny wrote: post #20

At this point, I think it’s absolutely clear no one has any idea what happened. Every speculation, no matter how sophisticated, has been wrong. It’s time to take a breath, step back, and wait until someone from OpenAI says something substantial.

Just made it 100% certain that the majority of AI staff is deluded and lacks judgment. Not a good look for AI safety.

Yes, also the whole 500 is probably inflated and makes for a better narrative/better leverage in negotiations.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#570

Post by gigglesupstairs »

ekojs wrote: post #100

From The Verge [1]: > Swisher reports that there are currently 700 employees as OpenAI and that more signatures are still being added to the letter. The letter appears to have been written before the events of last night, suggesting it has been circulating since closer to Altman’s firing. It also means that it may be too late for OpenAI’s board to act on the memo’s demands, if they even wished to do so. So, 3/4 of th…

She's also reporting that newly anointed interim CEO already wants to investigate the board fuck up that put him there

https://x.com/karaswisher/status/1726626239644078365?s=20

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