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Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

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Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#611

Post by jazzyjackson »

upwardbound wrote: post #593
lend000 wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is probably the source of the whole debacle right here... Sam is pretty self righteous and self important and just seems to lack some subtle piece of social awareness, and I imagine that turns a lot of people off. That delusional optimism is probably the key to his financial success, too, in terms of having a propensity for taking risk.

Agreed. I think one of the biggest questions on a lot of A.I. Safety people's minds now is whether Sam's optimism includes techno-optimism. In particular, people on twitter are speculating about whether Sam is, at heart, an e/acc, which is a new term that means Effective Accelerationism. Its use originally started as a semi-humorous dig at E.A. (Effective Altruism) but has started to pick up steam as a major philosop…

you're making e/acc sound more serious than it is, it's more of an aesthetic movement, a meme, than some branch of philosophy.

Altruists described a scifi machine god and accelerationists said "bring it on"

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#612

Post by civilitty »

upwardbound wrote: post #593
lend000 wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is probably the source of the whole debacle right here... Sam is pretty self righteous and self important and just seems to lack some subtle piece of social awareness, and I imagine that turns a lot of people off. That delusional optimism is probably the key to his financial success, too, in terms of having a propensity for taking risk.

Agreed. I think one of the biggest questions on a lot of A.I. Safety people's minds now is whether Sam's optimism includes techno-optimism. In particular, people on twitter are speculating about whether Sam is, at heart, an e/acc, which is a new term that means Effective Accelerationism. Its use originally started as a semi-humorous dig at E.A. (Effective Altruism) but has started to pick up steam as a major philosop…

Jesus christ someone hide the FlavorAid.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#614

Post by max_ »

peanuty1 wrote: post #598
utopcell wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larry Page was pretty pissed off with Elon Musk for poaching Ilya [1]. A great opportunity for him to come back to Google. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-justified-poaching...

Elon claims that Larry ended their friendship after he hired Ilya.

Where/when did he say this?

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#615

Post by concordDance »

vasco wrote: post #528
dmix wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though there has been speculation, we were not motivated by a desire to slow down OpenAI’s work. Strange when their choice of interim-CEO was someone who explicitly stated he wants to see the pace of AI development go from a 10 to a 2 [1] and she regularly speaks at EA conferences where that's a major theme. This is probably double speak for she want's to not "slow down OpenAI's work" on AI safety but probably woul…

The way EA does donations is "I'll take a premise I believe in and will stretch the argument until it makes no sense". This is how they end up thinking that a massage for an AI researcher is money better spent than on hungry Yemeni children for example. Once you view it like this, I wouldn't put it past them to blatantly lie. Looking at the facts as you say, they tried to replace a guy that is moving ahead with a guy…

This is your daily reminder that most EAs will just donate to the top GiveWell charity even though people will talk a lot about the interesting edge cases.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#616

Post by pembrook »

upwardbound wrote: post #593
lend000 wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is probably the source of the whole debacle right here... Sam is pretty self righteous and self important and just seems to lack some subtle piece of social awareness, and I imagine that turns a lot of people off. That delusional optimism is probably the key to his financial success, too, in terms of having a propensity for taking risk.

Agreed. I think one of the biggest questions on a lot of A.I. Safety people's minds now is whether Sam's optimism includes techno-optimism. In particular, people on twitter are speculating about whether Sam is, at heart, an e/acc, which is a new term that means Effective Accelerationism. Its use originally started as a semi-humorous dig at E.A. (Effective Altruism) but has started to pick up steam as a major philosop…

Sometimes it’s helpful to take a break from Twitter.

I know the hype algorithms have tech folks convinced they’re locked in a self important battle over the entirety of human destiny.

My guess is we’re going to look back on this in 10 years and it’s all going to be super cringe.

I hate to throw cold water on the party…we’re still talking about a better autocomplete here. And the slippery slope is called a logical fallacy for a reason.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#617

Post by DebtDeflation »

fastball wrote: post #255
7e wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were either scared of being sued for defamation or unwilling to divulge existential company secrets. Or both.

Doesn't really make sense to be unwilling to divulge company secrets if you're willing to gut the company for this hill.

Exactly. It sounds like those board members themselves were acting in the interest of profit instead of the "benefit all humanity" mission stuff, no different than Altman. If anything then, the only difference between the two groups is one of time horizon. Altman wants to make money from the technology now. The board wants to wait until it's advanced enough to take over the world, and then take over the world with it. For the world's benefit, of course.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#618

Post by civilitty »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #566
consp wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely depends on your morality. I'm pretty sure there are some libertarians out there who think the most basic version of the second amendment includes owning F16 with live weapons.

Sure -- if you're a libertarian who thinks it should be possible to purchase an F16 without a background check, that seems consistent with the position that an amoral GPT-4 should be broadly available.

What kind of background check do you think exists when buying a fighter jet?

It’s kind of a moot point since only one F16 exists in civilian hands but you can buy other jets with weapon hardpoints for a million. Under 3 million if you want to go supersonic too. The cheapest fighter jet is on the order of $250k. There’s zero background check.

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#619

Post by upwardbound »

jacquesm wrote: post #582
upwardbound wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, it appears that Microsoft has been caught violating SEC regulations at least 6 previous times, and that's just what I turned up in a cursory search: 2023: https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/03/activision_sec_settle... 2019: https://techcentral.co.za/eoh-microsoft-ensnared-in-sec-corr... 2013-2019: https://fcpa.stanford.edu/investigation.html?id=156 2013-2016: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/micr…

And yet, they continue to exist and no CEO of MS ever stepped down because of any of these. And I predict that even if Microsoft is going to be caught again that it will be a non-event in terms of actual repercussions. If Nadella exits MS HQ in Seattle in handcuffs I would be most surprised.

Yeah. I think the most realistically-achievable positive outcome is that Microsoft is forced to give up their new board-observer seat, which seems highly improper for them to have since the board they are observing is supposed to make decisions that benefit all of humanity equally. If Microsoft gets to have a fly on the wall in those discussions, it gives them a gold mine of juicy insider knowledge about which sectors of the economy are about to be affected next by Generative AI — knowledge which they can use to front-run the market by steering the roadmaps of Bing, MS Office, etc. so as to benefit from upcoming OpenAI product launches before any non-insiders are aware of what OpenAI is currently planning.

Microsoft plainly shouldn't be allowed to have this advantage, in that giving an advantage to any one party directly harms the mandate set forth in OpenAI's Charter:

    Broadly distributed benefits

    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 anticipate needing to marshal substantial resources to fulfill our mission, but will always diligently act to minimize conflicts of interest among our employees and stakeholders that could compromise broad benefit.
https://openai.com/charter

It certainly seems that Microsoft, a "stakeholder", has managed to get a highly improper listening seat that will give them the ability to act on insider information about what's coming next in AI, allowing Microsoft to front-run the rest of the AI software industry and all those industries it affects, in a way that will plainly "compromise broad benefit". (Since any wealth that accrues excessively to Microsoft shareholders is not distributed to other humans who don't hold Microsoft shares.)

A mere 10 days ago, Nadella was shamelessly throwing his weight around on national TV, by appearing on CNBC where he improperly pressured the OpenAI non-profit board — which owes nothing to him legally or morally — to give him more deference, in direct violation of the "always diligently act to minimize conflicts of interest among our employees and stakeholders that could compromise broad benefit" provision of the OpenAI non-profit charter.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/20/microsoft-ceo-nadella-says-o...

Re: Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board

#620

Post by dalbasal »

What makes this hard to read/follow is the grandiose moral vision... and the various levels of credulity it's met with.

If it's words from Ilya, Sam, the board... the words are all about alignment, benefiting humanity and such.

Meanwhile, all parties involved are super serious tycoons who are super serious about riding the AI wave, establishing moats, monopolies and the next AdWords, azure, etc.

These are such extreme opposite vocabularies that it's just hard to bridge. It's two conversations happening under totally different assumptions and everyone assumes at least someone is being totally disingenuous.

Meanwhile, "AI alignment" is such a charismatic topic. Meanwhile, the less futuristic but more applicable, "alignment questions" are about the alignment of msft, openai, other investors and consortium members.

If Ilya, Sam or any of them are actually worried about si alignment... They should at least give credence to the idea that we're all worried about their human alignment.

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