Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 754 posts

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#731

Post by glitchc »

goldinfra wrote: post #697
glitchc wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To pin OpenAI's success completely on Sam is disingenuous at best, outright dishonest at worst. Incentives don't build ML pipelines and infrastructure, developers and scientists do. This visionary bullshit is exactly that, bullshit.

A leader can't do anything on their own, they need people to lead. And those people deserve recognition and rewards. But in most cases there's no one more important than the leader. And thus, no one that deserves more credit than the leader. I'm absolutely not comparing Sam Altman to any of these leaders, but just to illustrate how much vision and leadership does matter. Consider how stupid these statements sound: "J…

Such grand examples that are unfortunately a poor fit for Sam.

It's Ilya who conceived of the vision for ChatGPT. Sam is a sales and fundraising guy. He was endorsed by Thiel and Musk.

While raising money is certainly important, let's not confuse that for product vision. There are enough guys that can do what Sam does.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#732

Post by p1esk »

yeck wrote: post #692
p1esk wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability for models to be (easily) swayed is a different problem. I don’t see how AI safety would help with that.

> models to be (easily) swayed is a different problem No, this is the alignment problem at a high level. You want a model to do X but sometimes it does Y. Mechanistic interpretability, one area of study in AI alignment, is concerned with being able to reason about how a network "makes decisions" that lead it to an output. If you wanted an LLM that doesn't succumb to certain prompt injections, it could be very helpful…

You want a model to do X but sometimes it does Y

That’s too broad. Any AI problem falls under this characterization.

Also, AI interpretability and AI alignment are distinct subfields. Partially overlapping, but distinct goals.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#733

Post by reissbaker »

yeck wrote: post #693
reissbaker wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't mind a focus on reliably following tasks with greater intelligence; what I think is negative utility is focusing more compute and research resources on hypothetical superintelligence alignment — the entire focus of Ilya's "Superalignment" project — when GPT-4 is still way, way sub-human-intelligence. For example, I don't think the GPT Store was in any way a dangerous idea, which seems to have been Ilya's c…

I wouldn't call GPT-4 sub-human intelligence. While it's intelligence is less robust aggregate human intelligence, I don't think there is any one person alive who can compete with the breadth of GPT-4 knowledge. I also think that the potential of what currently is possible with existing models has not been fully realized. Good prompting strategies and reflection may already be able to produce a system that is effecti…

Wikipedia has broader knowledge, and yet no one calls it intelligent. I'm talking about reasoning capability, and GPT-4 is well below human on complex tasks, especially multi-step tasks, which is why "autonomous agents" like AutoGPT, BabyAGI, etc are not yet very useful.

For example: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09247

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#734

Post by underlipton »

pokepim wrote: post #528
underlipton wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure my coworkers at [retailer] were not happy to be even shorter staffed than usual when I was ambush fired, but no one who mattered cared, just as no one who matters cares when it happens to thousands of workers every single day in this country. Sorry to say, my schadenfreude levels are quite high. Maybe if the practice were TRULY verboten in our society... but I guess "professional" treatment is only for the s…

I have noticed you decided to use several German words in your reply, trying not to be petty but at least you should attempt to write them correctly. It’s either Wunderkind (German word for child prodigy) or english translation: wonder kid.

You are correct, though I must be Mandela Effect-ing, because I could have sworn that "wunderkid" was an accepted American English corruption of the original term, a la... Well, "a la" (à la).

My use of "schadenfreude", in general, can be attributed largely to Avenue Q and Death Note. Twice is coincidence.

EDIT: I just noticed "verboten." Now I'm worried.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#735

Post by FireBeyond »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #230
FireBeyond wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, they didn't state that he lied. They stated that he wasn't candid. A lot of people here have been reading specifics into a generalized term. OED: candour - the quality of being open and honest in expression. "They didn't state he lied ... without even using lies of omission ... they said he wasn't [word defined as honest and open]" Candour encapsulates exactly those things. Being open (i.e. not omitting thin…

Yes? I agree, and don't see how what you've written either extends or contradicts what I wrote.

To not be candid means to not be open (i.e. keeping things back, 'omission') or to not be honest (i.e. lie).

If he didn't lie, and didn't lie by omission then he was by definition being candid.

Give us an example then, of how you can be "not candid" while being honest and open.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#736

Post by jacquesm »

g42gregory wrote: post #729
jacquesm wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong No guarantees about NPOV on that page. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Falun_Gong If you want to see what makes WikiPedia tick that's a great place to start.

Interesting. The Wikipedia's declaration about them being "new religious movement" is inconsistent with the body of the article. It looks like it started as some kind of Chi Kung exercise and wellness group, but it got big very fast and Chinese Government got concerned about their popularity. Then, under CCP persecution, it escalated and morphed into a full-blown political dissident movement. Initially viewed favorab…

I wouldn't trust either the CCP or Falun Gong to speak my weight, they are both power structures and they are both engaging in all kinds of PR exercises to put themselves in the best light. But to Falun Gong's credit: I don't think they've engaged in massive human rights violations so they have that going for them. But there are certain cult like aspects to it and 'new religious movement' or not I think that the fewer such entities there are the better (and also fewer of the likes of the CCP please).

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#737

Post by polishdude20 »

maxlamb wrote: post #594
polishdude20 wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of it as more of a mutiny.

A mutiny is when the entire boat’s crew rebels at once, a coup is only when a few high-level powerful people remove the folks at the top.

I mean that's if you believe the "crew" is not just the board members.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#738

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

sudosysgen wrote: post #220
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The next day, Brockman, who was Chairman of the OpenAI board, was not invited to this board meeting, where Altman was fired. > Around 30 minutes later, Brockman was informed by Sutskever that he was being removed from his board role but could remain at the company, and that Altman had been fired (Brockman declined, and resigned his role later on Friday). The board firing the CEO is not a coup. The board firing the…

The point being made is that the board is the one that's supposed to be in power. How the CEO is fired may be gauche but it's not usurpation of power or anything like that.

Right, and my point is that it sounds like an usurpation of power inside the board - the rest of the board not inviting the chair to a meeting, taking significant action, and then removing the chair is a coup regardless of what the significant action was. That they happened to fire the CEO is... not exactly irrelevant, because it probably speaks to the underlying politics, but for this particular discussion it's a side show.

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#739

Post by gemstones »

concordDance wrote: post #676
autaut wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between investing in a company who is developing ai software in a widely accessible way that improve everyone’s lives and a company that pursues software to put out of work entire sectors for the profit of a dozen of investors

"Put out of work" is a good thing. If I make a new js library which means a project that used to take 10 devs now takes 5 I've put 5 devs out of work. But ive also made the world a more efficient place and those 5 devs can go do some other valuable thing.

What percent of those devs don’t do a valuable thing and become homeless?

Maybe devs are a bad example, so replace them with “retail workers” in your statement if it helps.

Is “put out of work” a good thing with no practical limits?

Re: Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI

#740

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

slenk wrote: post #522
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OpenAI is well within its rights to change strategy even as bold as from a profit-seeking behemoth to a smaller research focused team. But how they went about this is appalling, unprofessional and a blight on corporate governance. This wasn't a change of strategy, it was a restoration of it. OpenAI was structured with a 501c3 in oversight from the beginning exactly because they wanted to prioritize using AI for the…

This isn't going to make me think in any way that OpenAI will return to its more open beginning. If anything it shows me they don't know what they want

I agree. They've had tension between profit motive and the more grandiose thinking. If they'd resolved that misalignment early on they wouldn't be in this mess.

Note I don't particularly agree with their approach, just saying that's what they chose when they founded things, which is their prerogative.

Post reply on HN