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OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

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Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#561

Post by danans »

robertlagrant wrote: post #550
adrianN wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Marx wrong?

Probably. Or at least that turned out to not matter so much. The alternative, keeping both control of resources and direct power in the state, seems to keep causing millions of deaths. Separating them into markets for resources and power for a more limited state seems to work much better. This idea also ignores innovation. New rich people come along and some rich people get poor. That might indicate that money isn't…

> New rich people come along and some rich people get poor.

Absent massive redistribution that is usually a result of major political change (i.e. the New Deal), rich people tend to stay rich during their lifetimes and frequently their families remain so for generations after.

> That might indicate that money isn't a great proxy for power.

Due to the diminishing marginal utility of wealth for day to day existence, it's only value to an extremely wealthy person after endowing their heirs is power.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#562

Post by Guthur »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #487

There has to be a bigger story to this. Altman took a non-profit and vacuumed up a bunch of donor money only to flip Open AI into the hottest TC style startup in the world. Then put a gas pedal to commercialization. It takes a certain type of politicking and deception to make something like that happen. Then in the past week, he's going and taking money from the Saudis on the order of billions of dollars to make AI a…

If you don't think the likes of Sam Altman, Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates and the lot of them want to increase their own power you need to think again. At best these individuals are just out to enrich themselves, but many of them demonstrate a desire to affect the prevailing politic and so i don't see how they are different, just more subtle about it.

Why worry about the Sauds when you've got your own home grown power hungry individuals.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#564

Post by moberley »

dwd wrote: post #539
kmlevitt wrote: post #81

Neither of these reasons have anything to do with a lofty ideology regarding the safety of AGI or OpenAI’s nonprofit status. Rather it seems they are micromanaging personnel decisions. Also notice that Ilya Sutskever is presenting the reasons for the firing as just something he was told. This is important, because people were siding with the board under the understanding this firing was led by the head research scien…

Do we even have an idea of how the vote went? Greg was not invited (losing Sam one vote), and Sam may have been asked to sit out the vote, so the 3 had a majority. Ilya who is at least on "Team Sam" now; may have voted no. Or simply went along thinking he could be next out the door at that point; we just don't know. It's probably fair to say not letting Greg know the board was getting together (and letting it proceed…

I find it interesting that the attempted explanations, as unconvincing as they may be, are related to Altman specifically. Given that Brockman was the board chairperson it is surprising that there don't seem to be any attempts to explain that demotion. Perhaps its just not being reported to anyone outside but it makes no sense to me that anyone would assume a person would stay after being removed from a board without an opportunity to be at the meeting to defend their position.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#566

Post by todd3834 »

jelling wrote: post #547
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Altman took a non-profit and vacuumed up a bunch of donor money only to flip Open AI into the hottest TC style startup in the world. Then put a gas pedal to commercialization. It takes a certain type of politicking and deception to make something like that happen. What exactly is the problem here? Is a non-profit expected to exclusively help impoverished communities or something? What type of politicking and decepti…

> What exactly is the problem here? Is a non-profit expected to exclusively help impoverished communities or something? Yes. Yes and more yes. That is why, at least in the U.S., we have given non-profits exemptions from taxation. Because they are supposed to be improving society, not profiting from it.

I don’t think OpenAI ever reported to be profitable. They are allowed and should make money so they can stay alive. ChatGPT has already had a tremendous positive impact on society. The cause of safe AGI is going to take a lot of money in more research.

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#568

Post by arrosenberg »

aurareturn wrote: post #559
arrosenberg wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is why, at least in the U.S., we have given non-profits exemptions from taxation. That's your belief . The NFL, Heritage Foundation and Scientology are all non-profits and none of them improve society; they all profit from it. (For what its' worth, I wish the law was more aligned with your worldview)

FYI, the NFL teams are for profits and pay taxes like normal busineses. The overwhelming majority of the revenue goes to the teams.

I know that, does that change what I said?

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#569

Post by solardev »

halfjoking wrote: post #473
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now they are trying to unring the bell but cannot. Well, they can unring the bell pretty easy. They were given an easy out. Reinstate Sam (he wants to come back) and resign. However, they CONTINUE to push back and refuse to step down.

I'm going to be the only one in this thread calling it this. But why does no one think it's possible these women are CIA operatives? They come from think tanks. You think the US Intelligence community wants AGI to be discovered at a startup? They want it created at big tech. AGI under MSFT would be perfect. All big tech is heavily compromised: https://twitter.com/NameRedacted247 EDIT: Since this heavy speculation, I'…

Couldn't the CIA have sent people with, er, slightly more media experience and tactfulness and such? Did these few just happen to lose a bet or something...?

Maybe somebody there just really wanted to see the expression on Satya's face...

Re: OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

#570

Post by shafyy »

todd3834 wrote: post #566
jelling wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly is the problem here? Is a non-profit expected to exclusively help impoverished communities or something? Yes. Yes and more yes. That is why, at least in the U.S., we have given non-profits exemptions from taxation. Because they are supposed to be improving society, not profiting from it.

I don’t think OpenAI ever reported to be profitable. They are allowed and should make money so they can stay alive. ChatGPT has already had a tremendous positive impact on society. The cause of safe AGI is going to take a lot of money in more research.

> ChatGPT has already had a tremendous positive impact on society.

Citation needed

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