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

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

#651

Post by Zolde »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #420
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite hypothesis: Ilya et al suspected emergent AGI ( e.g. saw the software doing things unprompted or dangerous and unexpected) and realized the Worldcoin shill is probably not the one you want calling the shots on it. For the record, I don't think it's true. I think it was a power play, and a failed coup at that. But it's about as substantiated as the "serious" hypotheses being mooted in the media. And it's m…

But why would Ilya publicly say he regrets his decision and wants Sam to come back. You think his existential worries are less important than being liked by his coworkers??

He may have wanted Sam out, but not to destroy OpenAI.

His existential worries are less important than OpenAI existing, and him having something to work on and worry about.

In fact, Ilya may have worried more about the continued existence of OpenAI than Sam after he was fired, which looked instantly like a: "I am taking my ball and going home to Microsoft.". If Sam cared so much about OpenAI, he could have quietly accepted his resignation and help find a replacement.

Also, Anna Brockman had a meeting with Ilya where she cried and pleaded. Even though he stands by his decision, he may ultimately still regret it, and the hurt and damage it caused.

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

#652

Post by jll29 »

todd3834 wrote: post #576
shafyy wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ChatGPT has already had a tremendous positive impact on society. Citation needed

Fair enough, I should have said, it’s my opinion that it has had a positive impact. I still think it’s easy to see them as a non profit. Even with everything they announced at AI day. Can anyone make an argument against it? Or just downvote because you don’t agree.

I think it's fair to say that after a lot of empty promises, AI research finally delivered something that can "wow" the general population, and has been demonstrated to be useful for more than an single use case.

I know a law firm that tried ChatGPT to write a legal letter, and they were shocked that it use the same structure that they were told to use in law school (little surprise here, actually).

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

#653

Post by sgt101 »

xinayder wrote: post #607
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. What exactly is the problem here? Is a non-profit expected to exclusively help impoverished communities or something? What type of politicking and decepti…

I like to read that, besides the problems others have listed, OpenAI seems like it was built on top of the work of others, who were researching AI, and suddenly took all this "free work" from the contributors and sold it for a profit where the original contributors didn't even see a single dime from their work. To me it seems like it's the usual case of a company exploiting open source and profiting off others' contr…

Personally I don't think that the use of previous research is an issue, the fact is that the investment and expertise required to take that research and create GPT-4 were very significant and the en-devour was pretty risky. Very few people five years ago thought that very large models could be created that would be able to encode so much information or be able to retrieve it so well.

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

#655

Post by gardenhedge »

didip wrote: post #191

If I were OpenAI employee, I would have been uber pissed. Imagine your once-in-blue-moon, whatsapp-like, payout at $10m per employee evaporated over the weekend before Thanksgiving. I would have joined MSFT out of spite.

These people joined a non-profit though. Am I right in thinking that you wouldn't join a non-profit expecting a large future payout?

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

#656

Post by codeduck »

tsimionescu wrote: post #605
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…

Except that the new CEO has explicitly stated he and the board are very much still interested in commercialization. Plus, if the board had on this simple kind of disagreement, they had no reason to also accuse Sam of dishonesty and bring about this huge scandal. Granted, it's also possible the reasons are as you state and they were simply that incompetent at managing PR.

> Except that the new CEO has explicitly stated he and the board are very much still interested in commercialization

This could be desperate, last-ditch efforts at damage control

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

#657

Post by qwytw »

015a wrote: post #363
samspenc wrote: post #23

> One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project. Have these people never worked at any other company before? Probably every company with more than 10 employees does something like this.

I think this needs to be viewed through the lens of the gravity of how the board reacted; giving them the benefit of the doubt that they acted appropriately and, at least with the information they had the time, correctly. A hypothetical example: Would you agree that it's an appropriate thing to do if the second project was Alignment-related, Sam lied or misled about the existence of the second team, to Ilya, because…

> giving them the benefit of the doubt that they acted appropriately

Yet you're only willing to give this to one side and not the other? Seems reasonable... Especially despite all the evidence so far that the board is either completely incompetent or had ulterior motives.

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

#658

Post by tw1984 »

ps256 wrote: post #620
tw1984 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He made it pretty clear that he consider it as a once in a life time chance. I think he is correct, being the CEO twitch is a position known by no one in many places, e.g. how many developers/users in China even heard of Twitch? Being the CEO of OpenAI is a completely different story, it is a whole new level he can leverage in the years to come.

It seems kind of naive to think that he'll be CEO for long, or if it is for long, that there will be much company left to be a CEO of.

why he needs to be CEO for long?

If everything goes well, he can claim that he is the man behind all these to reunite the OpenAI team. If something goes wrong, well, no one is going to blame him, the board screwed the entire business. He is more like a emergency room doctor who failed to save a poor dude who just intentionally shot himself in the head with a shotgun.

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

#659

Post by mcv »

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…

This certainly feels like the most likely true reason to me. Altman fundraising for this new investment, and taking money from people the board does not approve of, and Altman possible promised not to do business with.

Of course it's all speculation, but this sounds a lot more plausible for such a sudden and dramatic decision than any of the other explanations I've heard.

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

#660

Post by Zolde »

trhway wrote: post #645
Zolde wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT was too polished and product-ready to have been a runaway low-key research preview, like Meta's Galactica was. That is the legacy you build around it after the fact of getting 1 million users in 5 days ("it was build in my garage with a modest investment from my father"). I had heard (but now have trouble sourcing) that ChatGPT was commissioned after OpenAI learned that other big players were working on a cha…

>This was not a fluke of striking gold, but a carefully planned business move Then that execution and operationalization failure is even more profound.

You are under the impression that OpenAI "just failing to scale efficient mining of that gold", but it was one of the fastest growing B2C companies ever, failing to scale to paid demand, not failing to scale to monetization.

I admire the execution and operationalization, where you see a failure. What am I missing?

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