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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

#61

Post by Emma_Goldman »

himaraya wrote: post #40
letmevoteplease wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the paper, Anthropic's superior safety approach was deliberately delaying release in order to avoid “advanc[ing] the rate of AI capabilities progress." OpenAI is criticized for kicking off a race for AI progress by releasing ChatGPT to the public. [1] https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding...

The paper reads a lot more nuanced than that. It compares the "system card" released with GPT-4 to the delay of Claude and the merits of each approach vis a vis safety.

Not really, and your own description is little different from the person you're responding to anyway?

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

#62

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

jacquesm wrote: post #25
ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actions of other organisations are not in the scope of the board's mission. The actions of the company the board controls are in that scope. "The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,”" We can't control other's actions, but we can control our own. If we feel that our actions are diverging from our own sense of what we ought to be doing we can…

That is absolutely true. But you do operate on a larger stage and sticking your head in the sand and pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist is also not going to work. Altman appears to me to be reckless, ms. Toner appears to be naive. Both should not be near this kind of power.

>But you do operate on a larger stage and sticking your head in the sand and pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist is also not going to work.

I'm sure that's how tobacco and oil executives justify their paycheck: "If I wasn't doing it, someone else would". Probably lots of criminals justify their crimes using similar reasoning too.

Ultimately it's not quite true. If you quit your job at that tobacco or oil company, it's going to take a while to find them a replacement for you. That replacement might not be quite as good at the job (why were you picked for the job in the first place? Probably because you were the strongest candidate.) You aren't going to totally halt EvilCorp by quitting, but you're going to give it a speed bump.

In the case of OpenAI, we have to consider what organization is likely to replace them if they throw in the towel. If it's a more cautious org like Anthropic, OpenAI throwing in the towel could actually be a good thing from the point of view of their charter: https://openai.com/charter

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

#63

Post by tapoxi »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #42
PepperdineG wrote: post #3

>Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that mission would be fulfilled. Now we know where that came from

It's pretty heavily implied by OpenAI's charter: https://openai.com/charter It's weird to me that Helen is getting so much crap for upholding the charter. No one objected to the charter at the time it was published. The charter was always available for employees, investors, and customers to read. Did everyone expect it to be ignored when push came to shove? There's a lot of pressure on Helen right now from people who…

Investors wanted to have a commercial enterprise while pretending it was a nonprofit acting for the good of humanity. This helps market something as scary and potentially destructive as AI. "It can't be that bad, they're a nonprofit with altruistic goals!" Then the investors get mad when the board they intended to be figureheads actually try to uphold some principles.

Best to rip the band-aid off and stop pretending.

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

#64

Post by ipaddr »

foobarqux wrote: post #19
CSMastermind wrote: post #4

The only specific accusation made in the article is that Sam criticized Helen Toner for writing a paper: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/ That says Anthropic has a better approach to AI safety than OpenAI. Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he w…

Who is being completely reasonable? Board member has a mandate and appears to be making a good faith effort to carry it out and the CEO tries to overthrow her. Whether that is standard behavior for CEOs is irrelevant.

She has a mandate not to promote Anthropic on the back of OpenAI. Very unprofessional

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

#65

Post by hintymad »

>Ms. Toner disagreed. The board’s mission is to ensure that the company creates artificial intelligence that “benefits all of humanity,” and if the company was destroyed, she said, that mission would be fulfilled.

Doesn’t this sound like Toner herself is playing god? That is, only she is the gatekeeper of humanity and only she knows what is good for the entire humanity, when many of us believe that OpenAI’s tech is perfectly safe and amazingly beneficial?

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

#66

Post by NoboruWataya »

CSMastermind wrote: post #4

The only specific accusation made in the article is that Sam criticized Helen Toner for writing a paper: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/ That says Anthropic has a better approach to AI safety than OpenAI. Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he w…

The CEO is generally accountable to the board. A CEO trying to silence criticism and oust critical board members may be typical behaviour in the world of megalomaniacal tech startup CEOs, but it is not generally considered good corporate governance. (And usually the megalomaniacal tech startup CEOs have equity to back it up.)

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

#67

Post by dekhn »

comp_throw7 wrote: post #59
dekhn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty interesting article if you know how to read around the NYTimes's rhetoric. """The issue, it was clear to me, was that I told him I could not guarantee him the anonymity he’d been writing with. In fact, his real name was easy to find because people had shared it online for years and he had used it on a piece he’d written for a scientific journal. I did a Google search for Scott Alexander and one of the f…

(I think this is a bit of a distraction from the main thread, but the main issue there was always de-anonymization in the other direction: that patients might Google "Scott Siskind" and find his blog, which might render it difficult to maintain the correct kind of relationship with him as their psychiatrist. He's careful to not accept any readers of his blog as patients.)

Well, he signed up for exactly that outcome with full knowledge it could happen. Outing a psychiatrist's internet ramblings to his patients is not high on my list of journalistic crimes.

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

#68

Post by simonw »

tempusalaria wrote: post #2

This claims that Anthropic founders also tried to throw Sam out before leaving. They claim three sources but not clear how strong - technically the current board could be three sources

Skilled journalists (and this piece was written by skilled journalists) would not use the three members of the board as their only three sources.

A big part of this kind of journalism is taking information from sources, considering the potential bias of each source and carefully correlating it with information from other sources before publishing it.

That bit specifically says:

"After they failed, they gave up and departed, according to three people familiar with the attempt to push Mr. Altman out."

My guess is that at least one of those people comes from the Anthropic side, who would be someone with a clear insight into what happened.

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

#69

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

ipaddr wrote: post #53
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome. >... >We commit to use any influence we obtain over AGI’s deployment to ensure it is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid enabling uses of AI or AGI that harm humanity or unduly concentrate power. >Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. >... >We are concern…

Promoting Anthropic and putting down OpenAI doesn't make her better at her job. Her job isn't self promotion.

Is Helen associated with Anthropic?

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

#70

Post by greyface- »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #30
CSMastermind wrote: post #4

The only specific accusation made in the article is that Sam criticized Helen Toner for writing a paper: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/decoding-intentions/ That says Anthropic has a better approach to AI safety than OpenAI. Sam apparently said she should have come to him directly if she had concerns about the company's approach and pointed out that as a board member her words have weight at a time when he w…

>We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome. >... >We commit to use any influence we obtain over AGI’s deployment to ensure it is used for the benefit of all, and to avoid enabling uses of AI or AGI that harm humanity or unduly concentrate power. >Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity. >... >We are concern…

This charter is doomed to be interpreted in radically different ways by people with differing AI-eschatological beliefs. It's no wonder it's led to so much conflict.
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