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Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

businessinsider.com

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Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#61

Post by AlbertCory »

XorNot wrote: post #58
felixgallo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

governments are providing you with safe, clean water, roadways, basic standards of food safety, protection from enemies, disaster prevention and relief, and social services beyond the feasible scope of charity. They may suck at many things, but existential risk (even if just civilizational shift owing to mass-produced disinformation) is a great place to point a government at.

The issue with those things is we actually know how to measure success for most of them, and they notably work best when the politicians stay the hell out of the process other then setting broad directions. There's no equivalent for AI research, and a lot of temptation to try and find simple metrics which mean safe - and it's appealing. Water should be below X ppm contaminant is "easy" to establish. AI should be to b…

I don't get the feeling you read the link. But thanks.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#62

Post by stubish »

Now I'm curious as to the reasoning Sam got back in. The board is there for a purpose and has legal duties. Did they have some duty to cave in when the company was threatened, overriding their oversight duties that caused them to sack Sam in the first place? Did they decide they just got it wrong? It seems pretty wobbly, and makes me question if boards are useful at all for many companies in today's world (and what other structure could protect shareholder interests, when the majority shareholders are passive investment funds?)

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#63

Post by navigate8310 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #52

Kind of ironic that people are jumping in here to defend Sam Altman on the message board of Y Combinator, which also fired him from an executive leadership role for similar reasons.

Believe it or not sama actually delivered something believable and actionable to the general masses while being the CEO of OAI while others all they did was to either lecture or publish papers.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#64

Post by Hizonner »

philsquared_ wrote: post #21

Justified or not doesn't really matter. If your entire company threatens to quit then you made the wrong choice. Hopefully many of the old board is gone because a blunder of that magnitude shows extreme disconnect.

They made the right choice by firing him, and the wrong choice by reinstating him. If firing him had blown up OpenAI, that would have been better than leaving him in charge.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#66

Post by jojobas »

croes wrote: post #28
philsquared_ wrote: post #21

Justified or not doesn't really matter. If your entire company threatens to quit then you made the wrong choice. Hopefully many of the old board is gone because a blunder of that magnitude shows extreme disconnect.

If you threaten to quit to protect a liar then you made the wrong choice.

If enough people make the wrong choice they may well come out on top, at least temporarily.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#67

Post by sho_hn »

navigate8310 wrote: post #63
snowwrestler wrote: post #52

Kind of ironic that people are jumping in here to defend Sam Altman on the message board of Y Combinator, which also fired him from an executive leadership role for similar reasons.

Believe it or not sama actually delivered something believable and actionable to the general masses while being the CEO of OAI while others all they did was to either lecture or publish papers.

Ends don't always justify means.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#68

Post by [deleted] »

AlbertCory wrote: post #60
felixgallo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

governments are providing you with safe, clean water, roadways, basic standards of food safety, protection from enemies, disaster prevention and relief, and social services beyond the feasible scope of charity. They may suck at many things, but existential risk (even if just civilizational shift owing to mass-produced disinformation) is a great place to point a government at.

> They may suck at many things Exactly. I gave examples of actual tech projects undertaken by governments, so an abstract discussion of "government vs. private industry" is not really on point here.

[deleted]

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#69

Post by jjulius »

navigate8310 wrote: post #63
snowwrestler wrote: post #52

Kind of ironic that people are jumping in here to defend Sam Altman on the message board of Y Combinator, which also fired him from an executive leadership role for similar reasons.

Believe it or not sama actually delivered something believable and actionable to the general masses while being the CEO of OAI while others all they did was to either lecture or publish papers.

Ah, so that makes his actions okay. Got it.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#70

Post by xyzzy4747 »

sho_hn wrote: post #67
navigate8310 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not sama actually delivered something believable and actionable to the general masses while being the CEO of OAI while others all they did was to either lecture or publish papers.

Ends don't always justify means.

The parent comment didn’t say ends always justify means. In this case all Sam did was step on a few toes and hurt the egos of a few board members. Meanwhile they also launched some revolutionary products that also didn’t hurt anyone. So what’s the big deal?
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