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Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

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Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#651
post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> referring to someone online by their name is considered patronizing This has to be a joke, right?

I don't think it's a joke. I would find it patronizing unless I'm already on a first name basis with the commenter through some prior relationship.

Is it the first name or the personal touch that would make you feel patronized? What if you read a reply “… a 24 year old, such as yourself, will know …”.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#652

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Yea cause Steve Jobs dying stopped apple from becoming a juggernaut. People need to stop idolizing the fact that one or two people are "indispensable". Humanity moves forward eventually, even if Einstein wasn't born, someone would have figured out general relativity.

It's also quite silly that society often credits one guy at the top who supposedly has "incredible vision" and yet would likely fail at explaining even the most basic technical details. And if such a person must be credited, why not the CTO, chief engineers, or principal scientists, who are at least closer to what actually drive the technical innovations than the CEO? In reality, it's actually the 1000s of actual eng…

Human motivations and effort are like Brownian motion completely stochastic and hard to direct in any one direction to make any significant impact .

A effective leader whether it is Musk, Jobs, Altman, Gandhi, Mandela (or Hitler for that matter) has the unique to skill to be able to direct everyone in a common direction efficiently like a superconducting material.

They are not individually contributing like say a Nobel laureate doing theoretical research. They get accolades they get is because they were able to direct many other people to achieve a very hard objective and keep them motivated and focused on the common vision, That is rare and difficult to do.

In the case of Altman, yes there were 1000s researchers, programmers who did the all the actual heavy lifting of getting OpenAI where it is today.

However without his ability and vision to get funding none of them would be doing what they are doing today at OpenAI.

All those people would not work a day more if there is no pay, would not be able train any model without resources. A CEO's first priotity is to make that happen by selling that vision to investors, Secondly he has to sell the vision to all these researchers to leave their cushy academic and large company jobs to work in small unproven startup and create an environment they can thrive in their roles. He has done both very well.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#653

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But the point is that Woz was replacable, because he was replaced. Jobs on the other hand was replaced and the company nearly died, he came back and turned it around. Of course it only because a trillion dollar company after Tim Apple took over, which I guess just shows that nobody is irreplacable.

Tim Cook?

Trump said Tim Apple instead of Tim Cook: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tim-apple

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting if Altman and Brockman, assuming that they want accelerated development, ended up in some high level roles at Microsoft. That seems like a win-win-win all the way around since OpenAI could follow their new path, Microsoft and Google could build new things fast, and the open model proponents can keep up their good work. Except for a clumsy fast press release, this doesn’t really have to end bad…

Sam Altman is not the kind of person that goes into a bigco management job. He'll be doing another startup come Monday.

Yes. I changed my perspective - Altman would not fit in and be happy at Microsoft.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#655
post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vice versa ;)

If Steve Jobs couldn't claim Wozniak's work as his own, he wouldn't have landed "his" Atari contract. Who knows where things would have gone after that, but I have a hard time tracing Apple's history of success without, say, the Apple II.

The milieu in which Apple came to fruitition was full of young small microcomputer shops. So it's not like Woz invented the microcomputer for the masses - his contribution was critical for early Apple for sure, but the market had tons of alternatives as well. Without Apple II it's hard to say were Jobs and Wozniak would have turned out. Jobs is such a unique, driven figure that I'm fairly sure he would have created a lasting impression on the market even without Woz. This is not to say Woz was insighnificant - but rather the 1970's Silicon Valley had tons of people with Woz's acumen (not to disparage their achievements) but only few tech luminaries who obviously were not one trick ponies but managed to build their industrial legacy over decades.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#656

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This doesn't make any sense. If it was a disagreement, they could have gone the "quiet" route and just made no substantive comment in the press release. But they made accusations that are specific enough to be legally enforceable if they're wrong, and in an official statement no less. If their case isn't 100% rock solid, they just handed Sam a lawsuit that he's virtually guaranteed to win.

I agree. None of this adds up. The only thing that makes any sense, given OpenAI has any sense and self interest at all, is that the reason they let Altman go may have even been bigger than even what they were saying, and that there was some lack of candor in his communications with the board. Otherwise, you don't make an announcement like that 30 minutes before markets close on a Friday.

[flagged]

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, I live in a US urban environment and my experience is that most people enjoy doing good and helping others, especially when it is simple and low effort.

> simple and low effort You would agree the OpenAI is neither ? the comparison doesn't do well then?

You set the bar for most people at lifting a finger, not running a global company.

If you want to talk about rarer cases, there at lots of examples of people that literally sacrifice their lives and die for no personal benefit

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#658

Edit: I called it https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725682088639119857 nothing to do with dishonesty. That’s just the official reason. ———- I haven’t heard anyone commenting about this, but the two main figures here-consider: This MUST come down to a disagreement between Altman and Sutskever. Also interesting that Sutskever tweeted a month and a half ago https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1707752576077176907 Th…

If it was really just about seeing eye to eye, why would the press release say anything about Sam being "consistently candid in his communications?" That seems pretty unnecessary if it were fundamentally a philosophical disagreement. Why not instead say something about differences in forward looking vision?

Which they can do in a super polite "wish him all the best" way or an "it was necessary to remove Sam's vision to save the world from unfriendly AI" way as they see fit. Unlike an accusation of lying, this isn't something that you can be sued for, and provided you're clear about what your boardroom battle-winning vision is it probably spooks stakeholders less than an insinuation that Sam might have been covering up something really bad with no further context.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#659
post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>John >I'm not patronizing you (A)ssuming (G)ood (F)aith, referring to someone online by their name, even in an edge case where their username is their name, is considered patronizing as it is difficult to convey a tone via text medium that isn't perceived as a mockery/veiled threat. This may be a US-internet thing; analogous to getting within striking distance with a raised voice can be a capital offense in the US,…

> referring to someone online by their name is considered patronizing This has to be a joke, right?

- it means you answer more to the person than its argument (ad hominem) - it is uneccessary and 9/10 when used for a disagreement, especially at the beginning of a response, it is meant to be patronizing.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. The board statement, peeling away the pleasantries, says he lied to the board repeatedly. That's a very serious accusation. I don't know how US law works here, but in the UK you can sue and win over defamation for far milder infractions.

Even in the UK, if you sue, it is on you to prove that you didn't lie, not on the person you're sueing to prove that you did. Also, as long as you are a public person, defamation has a very high bar in the USA. It is not enough to for the statement to be false, you have to actually prove that the person you're accusing of defamation knew it was false and intended it to hurt you. Note that this is different from an ac…

> Even in the UK, if you sue, it is on you to prove that you didn't lie, not on the person you're sueing to prove that you did.

No, in the UK it's unambiguously the other way round. The complainant simply has to persuade the court that the statement seriously harmed or is likely to seriously harm their reputation. Truth is a defence but for that defence to prevail the burden of proof is on the defendant to prove that it was true (or to mount an "honest opinion" defence on the basis that both the statement would reasonably be understood as one of opinion rather than fact and that they did honestly hold that opinion)

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