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OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

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Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#701

Post by paulddraper »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #358
breadwinner wrote: post #51

If they join Sam Altman and Greg Brockman at Microsoft they will not need to start from scratch because Microsoft has full rights [1] to ChatGPT IP. They can just fork ChatGPT. Also keep in mind that Microsoft hasn't actually given OpenAI $13 Billion because much of that is in the form of Azure credits. So this could end up being the cheapest acquisition for Microsoft: They get a $90 Billion company for peanuts. [1]…

> Microsoft hasn't actually given OpenAI $13 Billion because much of that is in the form of Azure credits To be clear, these don't go away. They remain an asset of OpenAI's, and could help them continue their research for a few years.

Sure, the point is that MS giving $13B of its services away is less expensive than $13B in cash.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#703

Post by leetharris »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #651
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #621

I don't really understanding why the workforce is swinging unambiguously behind Altman. The core of the narrative thus far is that the board fired Altman on the grounds that he was prioritising commercialisation over the not-for-profit mission of OpenAI written into the organisation's charter.[1] Given that Sam has since joined Microsoft, that seems plausible, on its face. The board may have been incompetent and shor…

> I don't really understanding why the workforce is swinging unambiguously behind Altman. Maybe it has to do with them wanting to get rich by selling their shares - my understanding is there was an ongoing process to get that happening [1]. If Altman is out of the picture, it looks like Microsoft will assimilate a lot of OpenAI into a separate organisation and OpenAI's shares might become worthless. [1] https://www.f…

Yep.

What people don't realize is that Microsoft doesn't own the data or models that OpenAI has today. Yeah, they can poach all the talent, but it still takes an enormous amount of effort to create the dataset and train the models the way OpenAI has done it.

Recreating what OpenAI has done over at Microsoft will be nothing short of a herculean effort and I can't see it materializing the way people think it will.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#704

Post by crazygringo »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #659
mcny wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really understanding why the workforce is swinging unambiguously behind Altman. I have no inside information. I don't know anyone at Open AI. This is all purely speculation. Now that that's out out the way, here is my guess: money. These people never joined OpenAI to "advance sciences and arts" or to "change the world". They joined OpenAI to earn money. They think they can make more money with Sam Altman in…

Really? If they work at OpenAI they are already among the highest lifetime earners on the planet. Favouring moving oneself from the top 0.5% of global lifetime earners to the top 0.1% (or whatever the percentile shift is) over the safe development of a potentially humanity-changing technology would be depraved. EDIT: I don't know why this is being downvoted. My speculation as to the average OpenAI employee's place in…

> over the safe development

Not if you think the utterly incompetent board proved itself totally untrustworthy of safe development, while Microsoft as a relatively conservative, staid corporation is seen as ultimately far more trustworthy.

Honestly, of all the big tech companies, Microsoft is probably the safest of all, because it makes its money mostly from predictable large deals with other large corporations to keep the business world running.

It's not associated with privacy concerns the way Google is, with advertisers the way Meta is, or with walled gardens the way Apple is. Its culture these days is mainly about making money in a low-risk, straightforward way through Office and Azure.

And relative to startups, Microsoft is far more predictable and less risky in how it manages things.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#705

Post by epups »

catchnear4321 wrote: post #63
sebzim4500 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone assumed this was an aquihire without the "aqui-" but this is the first time I've seen it explicitly stated.

hostile takeunder?

Love it. Could also be called a hostile giveover, considering the OpenAI board gifted this opportunity to Microsoft

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#706

Post by DeIlliad »

jonahrd wrote: post #700
mcny wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really understanding why the workforce is swinging unambiguously behind Altman. I have no inside information. I don't know anyone at Open AI. This is all purely speculation. Now that that's out out the way, here is my guess: money. These people never joined OpenAI to "advance sciences and arts" or to "change the world". They joined OpenAI to earn money. They think they can make more money with Sam Altman in…

I'm not sure I fully buy this, only because how would anyone be absolutely certain that they'd make more with Sam Altman in charge? It feels like a weird thing to speculatively rally behind. I'd imagine there's some internal political drama going on or something we're missing out on.

I fully buy it. Ethics and morals are a few rungs on the ladder beneath compensation for most software engineers. If the board wants to focus more on being a non-profit and safety, and Altman wants to focus more on commercialization and the economics of business, if my priority is money then where my loyalty goes is obvious.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#707

Post by jdminhbg »

leetharris wrote: post #703
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really understanding why the workforce is swinging unambiguously behind Altman. Maybe it has to do with them wanting to get rich by selling their shares - my understanding is there was an ongoing process to get that happening [1]. If Altman is out of the picture, it looks like Microsoft will assimilate a lot of OpenAI into a separate organisation and OpenAI's shares might become worthless. [1] https://www.f…

Yep. What people don't realize is that Microsoft doesn't own the data or models that OpenAI has today. Yeah, they can poach all the talent, but it still takes an enormous amount of effort to create the dataset and train the models the way OpenAI has done it. Recreating what OpenAI has done over at Microsoft will be nothing short of a herculean effort and I can't see it materializing the way people think it will.

Microsoft has full access to code and weights as part of their deal.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#708

Post by kbenson »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #648
bnralt wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now the cat is out of the bag, and people no longer believe that a non-profit who can act at will is a trusted vehicle for the future. And maybe it’s not. The big mistake people make is hearing non-profit and think it means there’s a greater amount of morality. It’s the same mistake as assuming everyone who is religious is therefore more moral (worth pointing out that religions are nonprofits as well). Most hospita…

I've worked with a lot of non-profits, especially with the upper management. Based on this experience I am mostly convinced that people being motivated by a desire for making money results in far better outcomes/working environment/decision-making than people being motivated by ego, power, and social status, which is basically always what you eventually end up with in any non-profit.

> people being motivated by ego, power, and social status, which is basically always what you eventually end up with in any non-profit.

I've only really been close to one (the owner of the small company i worked at started one), and in the past I did some consulting work for anther, but that describes what I saw in both situations fairly aptly. There seems to be a massive amount of power and ego wrapped up in the creation and running these things from my limited experience. If you were invited to a board, that's one thing, but it takes a lot of time and effort to start up a non-profit, and that's time and effort that could be spent towards some other existing non-profit usually, so I think it's relevant to consider why someone would opt for the much more complicated and harder route than just donating time and money to something else that helps in roughly the same way.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#709

Post by Sunhold »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #621

I don't really understanding why the workforce is swinging unambiguously behind Altman. The core of the narrative thus far is that the board fired Altman on the grounds that he was prioritising commercialisation over the not-for-profit mission of OpenAI written into the organisation's charter.[1] Given that Sam has since joined Microsoft, that seems plausible, on its face. The board may have been incompetent and shor…

Why should they trust the board? As the letter says, "Despite many requests for specific facts for your allegations, you have never provided any written evidence." If Altman took any specific action that violated the charter, the board should be open about it. Simply trying to make money does not violate the charter and is in fact essential to their mission. The GPT Store, cited as the final straw in leaks, is actually far cleaner money than investments from megacorps. Commercializing the product and selling it directly to consumers reduces dependence on Microsoft.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#710

Post by gsuuon »

The firing was definitely handled poorly and the communications around it were a failure, but it seems like the organizational structure was doing what it was designed to do.

Is this the end of non-profit/profit-capped AI development? Would anyone else attempt this model again?

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