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Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

nytimes.com

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Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#591

Post by ffgjgf1 »

lmm wrote: post #570
LASR wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s surprising to me is that top-level executives think that self-destructing the current leader in LLMs is the way to ensure safety. Aren’t you simply making space for smaller, more aggressive, and less safety-minded competitors to grab a seat on the money train to do whatever they want to do? Pandora’s box is already open. You have to guard it. You have to use your power and influence to enforce other competitor…

> Pandora’s box is already open. You have to guard it. You have to use your power and influence to enforce other competitors to also do that with their own boxes. > Self-destructing is the worst way to ensure AI safety. If they don't believe you're prepared to destroy the company if that's what it takes, then you have zero power or influence. If they try to "call your bluff", you have to go there, otherwise they'll n…

So the outcome of that is that you either destroy the company or you’re out? Either outcome is the same from your perspective, you chose to no longer have any say in what happens next

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#592

Post by jiggawatts »

zoogeny wrote: post #522
jiggawatts wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recall hearing that Anthropic started because the people who had left were unhappy with OpenAIs track record on AI safety. Anthropic announced Claude 2.1 just recently, to which HN members notably responded by saying that their models are "overly restricted", to the point of uselessness. E.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38366134 and: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38368072 etc.: https://news.ycomb…

In that interpretation, it sounds like you feel that the scientists referenced in the article and Ms. Toner are insubordinate. You feel that Altman was exercising legitimate authority to remove obstructionist elements in the OpenAI organization. I have no idea to be honest. I do not believe that Altman is maliciously reckless. I have no evidence other than these two anecdotes to suggest negligence or a willful disreg…

A friend of mine came up with a good analogy: the AI doomers that went off to start Anthropic AI are like the extremist Puritans that were driven out of an increasingly secular Europe.

The thing is that two groups superficially share common traits, but if they do so for different reasons, they aren't actually compatible. You see this with groups of friends that are all "conspiracy theorists", for example. They're all vaguely the same and band together, but get into enormous arguments.

The "AI Puritans" and the "Secular Humanists" are both concerned about AI safety, but for different reasons. The former group would rather that the AIs behave in a prim and proper manner, banning it from doing anything that isn't mandatory. The latter group is concerned for people's jobs, unfairness, bias, and inappropriate over usage of early, low-quality models.

They both say they want "AI safety", but they understand that term to mean different things and arrived at their position from fundamentally different axioms.

One group wants the AI to never say "naughty" things and is happy to dumb down the models to the point of being a lobotomised and retarded... but behaved.

The other group thinks that newer, smarter, better models are critical to ensure that the AI doesn't make mistakes, doesn't get confused, and can obey orders correctly.

One group wants to shove the genie back into the bottle, the other group wants a genie that can grant our wishes.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#593

Post by adastra22 »

himaraya wrote: post #508
mupuff1234 wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk, seems like a pretty easy sell to me: "Sam was trying to censor legitimate concerns the board had with regards to the safety of the technology and actively tried to undermine the board and replace it with his own puppets." If that is indeed true they did a mistake by saying something vague imo.

I suspect the board prioritized legal exposure first and foremost. They made the mistake of not hiring a legal or PR firm to handle the dismissal.

If they prioritized legal exposure, they would not have made disparaging remarks in their initial press release.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#594

Post by adastra22 »

remarkEon wrote: post #538
dmix wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting the paper is selling Anthropic's approach to 'safety' as the correct approach when they just launched a new version of Claude and HN thread is littered with people saying its unusable because half the prompts they type get flagged as ethical violations. It's pretty clear some legitimate concerns about a hypothetical future AGI, that we've barely scraped the surface of, turns into "what can we do toda…

Has Toner (or someone with like-minded views) filled in the blanks between "GPT-4" and "Terminator Judgement Day" in a believable way? I've read what Yudkowsky writes but it all sounds so fantastical that it's, at least to me, more like an episode of The Twilight Zone or The X-Files than something resembling reality. Is Toner really in the "nuke the datacenters" camp? If so, was her placement on the board not a mista…

No one has, no.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#595

Post by adastra22 »

Sol- wrote: post #554
remarkEon wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Toner (or someone with like-minded views) filled in the blanks between "GPT-4" and "Terminator Judgement Day" in a believable way? I've read what Yudkowsky writes but it all sounds so fantastical that it's, at least to me, more like an episode of The Twilight Zone or The X-Files than something resembling reality. Is Toner really in the "nuke the datacenters" camp? If so, was her placement on the board not a mista…

No idea if the concerns are realistic, but dismissing them because they are fantastical surely is a fallacy, no? We currently almost have scifi-level AI we can talk to on our smartphones, which would have been fantastical only a few years ago.

The concerns are unrealistic because there are massive unusual and unvalidated assumptions in multiple levels, and lynchpin arguments that depend on utterly unsupported assumptions.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#596

Post by murakamiiq84 »

losvedir wrote: post #402
gwern wrote: post #203

None of the comments thus far seem to clearly explain why this matters. Let me summarize the implications: Sam Altman expelling Toner with the pretext of an inoffensive page ( https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding... ) in a paper no one read* would have given him a temporary majority with which to appoint a replacement director, and then further replacement directors. These directors would, nat…

This is really interesting. It makes perfect sense that they weren't sitting at 6 board members for 9 months because Sam and the others didn't see the implications, but because they saw them all too well and were gridlocked. But then it gets interesting inferring things from there. Obviously sama and gdb were on one side (call it team Speed), and Helen Toner on the other (team Safety). I think McCauley is with Toner…

Random fanfiction: it's also possible that it wasn't actually a 3-3 split but more like a 2-2 split with 2 people -- likely Adam and Ilya, though I guess Adam and Tasha is also possible -- trying to play nice and not obviously "take sides." And then eventually Sam thought he won Adam and Ilya's loyalty re: firing Helen but slipped up (maybe Adam was salty about Poe and Ilya was uncomfortable with him "being less than candid" about something Ilya care about. Or maybe they were more principled than Sam thought).

And then to Adam and Ilya, normally something like "you should've warned me about GPTs bro" or "hey remember that compute you promised me? Can I prettyplease have it back?" are stuff that they are willing to talk it out with their good friend Sam. But Sam overplayed his hand: they realized that if Sam was willing to force out Helen under such flimsy pretexts then maybe they're next, GoT style[1]. So they had a change of heart, warned Tasha and Helen, and Helen persuaded them to countercoup.

[1] Reid Hoffman was allegedly forced out before, so there's precedent. And of course Musk too. https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/reid-hoffman-was-...

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#597

Post by murakamiiq84 »

dekhn wrote: post #85
comp_throw7 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same can be said for any other instance of deanonymization, and yet we do not thereby (by default) absolve everyone who deanonymizes someone else against their will. Was Scott perfectly careful? No. Was this something that harmed him in straightforward and predictable ways, and done against his wishes? Yes. Was there a trade-off that made it worth it? Not a question that Cade Metz has seen fit to answer publicly.

There's a whole section at the bottom of the published piece where Metz explains his motivations. But yeah- we've deviated too far from the main topic, so let's just agree to agree.

I guess Metz would have a lot of sympathy for someone drawing the heat of the entire internet, and even powerful VCs, by doing something that many people think is destructive "on principle".

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#598

Post by ben_w »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #579
danenania wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“From her perspective, she does have a good reason.” Does she? In that case, perhaps she should tell someone what it is.

She told the board. Who else should she tell?

My limited understanding is that this was all that was strictly required, and would normally be sufficient.

Nevertheless, when a board decision explodes into international headline news as this one did, my gut feeling is it might possibly be a good idea to make a press release with more details.

But that's easy for me to say — I don't have the real insider information, and I wasn't in their shoes.

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#599

Post by peyton »

rmathew wrote: post #288
atombender wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yishan Wong's comment here [1] explains it. (He's the unnamed "young up-and-coming" CEO of the story.) In short, the plan was to reduce Condé Nast's ownership of Reddit by hiring a new CEO, and convincing that person to demand, as a condition for their hiring, that CN reduce their ownership share. Further VC funding and back-room machinations let them further reduce CN's share of the company, thus eventually wresting…

Corrected URL: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...

FYI it’s a joke in case this is going over anybody’s head. Ellen Pao even played along: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the...

Re: Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding

#600

Post by bakuninsbart »

remarkEon wrote: post #538
dmix wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting the paper is selling Anthropic's approach to 'safety' as the correct approach when they just launched a new version of Claude and HN thread is littered with people saying its unusable because half the prompts they type get flagged as ethical violations. It's pretty clear some legitimate concerns about a hypothetical future AGI, that we've barely scraped the surface of, turns into "what can we do toda…

Has Toner (or someone with like-minded views) filled in the blanks between "GPT-4" and "Terminator Judgement Day" in a believable way? I've read what Yudkowsky writes but it all sounds so fantastical that it's, at least to me, more like an episode of The Twilight Zone or The X-Files than something resembling reality. Is Toner really in the "nuke the datacenters" camp? If so, was her placement on the board not a mista…

In his recent Ted talk, Ilya talks about AI as 'brains in a computer', and explains why he believes they aren't that far off from AGI. [0] GPT4 is a substantially worse software engineer than I am, but it is 10x GPT3. And if we 10x for at most 2 or 3 iterations, it could be better than me. While it is unclear that we can get there, it doesn't seem implausible to me, and would have deep implications for human existence. That is already true if it just stayed at that level, but what most doomers are really worried about is the possibility of GPT8 being as good or a better AI researcher than most or all humans.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEkGLj0bwAU

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