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Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

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Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#681

Post by Spivak »

blackguardx wrote: post #482
Spivak wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is honestly par for the course for anyone who didn't grow up a digital native and is a career businessman who didn't spend it hand-composing messages. I wouldn't read too much into it. Direct emails from executives that aren't filtered by their assistants all look like this.

You don't think Greg is a "digital native?"

Oh god no, born in '89 and went straight from college to an executive role and stayed there.

Like it's not a bad thing, I'm not implying any kind of judgement but keeping those things in context helps you know that "K." means something totally different coming from your dad.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#682

Post by blazespin »

johnwheeler wrote: post #84

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…

You don't call someone a liar because you have philosophical differences.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#683

Post by BobaFloutist »

eslaught wrote: post #372
johnwheeler wrote: post #84

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…

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 mean I think it would be pretty hard to prove that you weren't at any time "less than candid" in reports to a board.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#684

Post by adastra22 »

manquer wrote: post #647
adastra22 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the early stage the investor does not own the startup. 20-30% stake would be typical. Hence why a Series A investor usually demands a board seat and special considerations.

Investor here is not someone who puts cash in professionally without running the company. Investor here means whoever owns the stock. There is always an investor in a company even if its just the founder owning 100% stock. The board reports to the shareholders and the management reports to the board. In early stage companies it is possible and likely that all three are the same person, that doesn't change the differe…

The word you are looking for is "shareholder."

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#685

Post by robswc »

adastra22 wrote: post #571
robswc wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there has to be some sort of framework in which they operate, no? OpenAI isn't a single person, so decisions like firing the CEO have to be made somehow. I'm wondering about how that framework actually works.

There isn't really any rules specified in the law for this, unlike with corporate law which mandates companies to be structured a certain way. We'd have to see OpenAI's operating by-laws.

Thank you for a real answer, this is what I was looking for!

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#686

Post by leptons »

smoldesu wrote: post #678
fsloth wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always in my mind compared Apple 2 to the likes of Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum etc - 8 bit home computers. Apple 2 predates these several years ofc. You could most certainly create an 8 bit home computer without Woz. I haven’t really geeged out on the complete tech specs & history of these, it’s possible Apple 2 was more fundamental than that (and would love to understand why).

Apple already had competitors back then in the likes of Franklin Computers. From a pure "can you copy Woz" perspective, it's not really even a question; of course you could. It was always a matter of dedication and time. It's foolish for any of us to peer inside the crystal ball of "what would Jobs be without Woz", but I think it is important to acknowledge that the Apple II and IIc pretty much bankrolled Apple throu…

If Steve Jobs didn't have Woz, or if the Apple 1 or 2 flopped, Steve Jobs would have gone on to sell something else - medical supplies, timeshares, or who knows what and maybe he'd be famous in another industry, but not necessarily attaining a reality distortion field. If Apple flopped early, maybe he would have stayed with selling computers, for another company but he wouldn't be elevated to the status he was, because he had Woz's contribution and had total marketing control over it. If he had to work for another company in sales, Steve Jobs would be reprimanded and fired for his toxic attitudes. There is probably an alternate universe where Steve Jobs is a nobody. The reality is that he got very, very lucky in this universe.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#687

Post by apstls »

foobiekr wrote: post #558
apstls wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The board, like any, is a small group of people, and in this case a small group of people divided into two sides defined by conflicting ideological perspectives. In this case, I imagine the board members have much broader and longer-term perspectives and considerations factoring into their decision making than the significant, significant majority of other companies/boards. Generalizing doesn’t seem particularly help…

Generalizing is how we reason, and having been on boards and worked with them closely, I can straight up tell you that's not how it works. In general, everyone is professional unless there's something really bad. This was quite unprofessionally handled, and so we draw the obvious conclusion.

I am also not a stranger to board positions. However, I have never been on the board of a non-profit that is developing technology with genuinely deep, and as-of-now unknown, implications for the status quo of the global economy and - at least as the OpenAI board clearly believes - the literal future and safety of humanity. I haven’t been on a board where a semi-idealist engineer board member has played a (if not _the_) pivotal role in arguably the most significant technical development in recent decades, and who maintains ideals and opinions completely orthogonal to the CEO’s.

Yes, generalizing is how we reason, because it lets us strip away information that is not relevant in most scenarios and reduces complexity and depth without losing much in most cases. My point is, this is not a scenario that fits in the set of “most cases.” This is actually probably one of the most unique and corner-casey example of board dynamics in tech. Adherence to generalizations without considering applicability and corner cases doesn’t make sense.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#688

Post by sdo72 »

siva7 wrote: post #501
johnwheeler wrote: post #84

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…

Ah, the old myth about the irreplaceable engineer and the dumb suit. Ask Wozniak about that. I don't think he believes Apple would be without Steve Jobs.

The first Steve was totally irreplaceable, the second Steve was probably arguably the difficult one to be replaceable. Without the first firing, the second Steve would never exist. But then when Apple current ball rolling, he was replaced fine with Tim Cook.

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#689

Post by astrange »

lucubratory wrote: post #554
Apocryphon wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a superhuman intelligence invent a new non-hypothetical actually-working device without actually conducting physical experiments, building prototypes, and so on? By conducting really rigorous meta-analysis of existing research papers? Every single example you listed involved work IRL. > with enough time and copies of itself. Alright, but that’s not what you the previous post was hypothesizing，which is that…

Yes, the sort of challenges you're talking about are pretty much exactly why I don't consider it feasible that OpenAI has an internal system that is at that level yet . I would consider it to be at the reasonable limits of possibility that they could have an AI that could give a very convincing, detailed, & feasible "grant proposal" style plan for answering those questions, which wouldn't qualify for OPs comment. Wit…

> With a more advanced AI system, one that could build better physics simulation environments, write software that's near maximally efficient, design better atomic modelling and tools than currently exist, and put all of that into thinking through a plan to achieve the technology (effectively experimenting inside its own head), I could maybe see it being possible for it to make it without needing the physical lab work.

It couldn't do any of that because it would cost money. The AGI wouldn't have money to do that because it doesn't have a job. It would need to get one to live, just like humans do, and then it wouldn't have time to take over the world, just like humans don't.

An artificial human-like superintelligence is incapable of being superhuman because it is constrained in all the same ways humans are and that isn't "they can't think fast enough".

Re: Greg Brockman quits OpenAI

#690

Post by zamfi »

malwarebytess wrote: post #361
zamfi wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at this point, it's work to keep autocorrect from fixing this.

Plenty of people don't use autocorrect.

Sure — my point is only that by and large it’s on by default, and you have to actively turn it off (or de-correct manually).
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