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

businessinsider.com

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

#631

Post by roschdal »

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…

> the single greatest threat from strong AI (according to Hinton) is rich and powerful people using the technology to enhance their power over society.

This!

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

#632

Post by LZ_Khan »

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…

Taking money from Saudi's alone should raise a big red flag.

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

#633

Post by mdisc0rd »

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…

[dead]

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

#634

Post by dendrite9 »

bredren wrote: post #423
bezier-curve wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Business" sucks then. This is sociopathic behavior.

What has been seen can not be unseen. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881296

Thanks for that. The discussion feels like a look into another world, which I guess is what history is.

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

#635

Post by smolder »

PeterStuer wrote: post #548
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…

What is interesting is the total absence of 3 letter agency mentions from all of the talk and speculation about this.

I don't think that's true. I've seen at least one other person bring up the CIA in all the "theorycrafting" about this incident. If there's a mystery on HN, likelihood is high of someone bringing up intelligence agencies. By their nature they're paranoia-inducing and attract speculation, especially for this sort of community. With my own conspiracy theorist hat on, I could see making deals with the Saudis regarding cutting edge AI tech potentially being a realpolitik issue they'd care about.

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

#636

Post by stareatgoats »

rtpg wrote: post #581
hooande wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative theory: ChatGPT was a runaway hit product that sucked up a lot of the organization's resources and energy. Sam and Greg wanted to roll with it and others on the board did not. They voted on it and one side won. There isn't a bigger, more interesting story here. This is in fact a very common story that plays out at many software companies. The board of openai ended up making a decision that destroyed billi…

The "lying" line in the original announcement feels like where the good gossip is. The general idea of "Altman was signing a bunch of business deals without board approval, was told to stop by the board, he said he would, then proceeded to not stop and continue the behavior"... that feels like the juicy bit (if that is in fact what was happening, I know nothing). This is all court intrigue of course, but why else are…

Agreed, court intrigue. But it is also the mundane story of a split between a board and a CEO. In normal cases the board simply swaps out the CEO if out of line, no big fuss. But if the CEO is bringing in all the money, having the full support of the rest of organization, and is a bright star in mass media heaven, then this is likely what you get: the CEO flaunts the needs of the board and runs his own show, and gets away with it, in the end.

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

#637

Post by auggierose »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #602
mvdtnz wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely wild to me that people are drawing a straight line between a text completion algorithm and AGI. The term "AI" has truly lost all meaning.

I agree, it's an extremely non-obvious assumption and ignores centuries-old debates (empiricism vs. rationalism) about the nature of reason and intelligence. I am sympathetic to Chomsky's position.[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chat...

Very weak article. It really lowers my opinion of Chomsky.

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

#638

Post by tomashubelbauer »

> only a handful of the company's employees attended, according to a person familiar with the company and the events of Sunday. The rest of the staff effectively staged a walk-out.

This paragraph is quite funny to me. It was a Sunday, maybe they were neither in attendance, nor staging a walk-out, maybe they were on their weekend? Realistically with the shake-up this gigantic, likely no OpenAI employees were _just_ enjoying their weekend, but it still gave me a chuckle.

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

#639

Post by mschuster91 »

arrosenberg wrote: post #556
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.

> 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)

> The NFL, Heritage Foundation and Scientology are all non-profits and none of them improve society; they all profit from it.

At least for Scientology, the government actually tried to pull the rug, but it didn't work out because they managed to achieve the unthinkable - they successfully extorted the US government to keep their tax-exempt status.

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

#640

Post by kmlevitt »

Wronnay wrote: post #617
kmlevitt wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep speculating sensational, justifiable reasons to fire Altman. But if these were actual factors in their decision, why doesn't the board just say so? Until they say otherwise, I am going to take them at their word that it was because he a) hired two people to do the same project, and b) gave two board members different accounts of the same employee. It's not my job nor the internet's to try to think up bett…

The Issue with these two explanations from the board is that this is normally nothing which would result into firing the CEO. In my eyes these two explanations are simple errors which can occur to everybody and in a normal situation you would talk about these Issues and you could resolve them in 5min without firing anybody.

I agree with you. But that leads me to believe that they did not, in fact, have a good reason to fire their CEO. I'll change my mind about that if or when they provide better reasons.

Look at all the speculation on here. There are dozens of different theories about why they did what they did running so rampant people are starting to accept each of them as fact, when in fact probably all of them are going to turn out to be wrong.

People need to take a step back and look at the available evidence. This report is the clearest indication we have gotten of their reasons, and they come from a reliable source. Why are we not taking them at their word?

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