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

businessinsider.com

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

#731

Post by comboy »

benterix wrote: post #694
rightbyte wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a decision that destroyed billions of dollars worth of brand value and good will I mean, there seem to be this cult following around Sam Altman on HN and Twitter. But do the common user care like at all? What sane user would want a shitcoin CEO in charge of a product they depend on?

Yeah, there definitely seem to be some personality cult around Sam on HN. I met him when he visited Europe during his lobbying tour. I was a bit surprised the CEO of one of the most innovative companies would promote an altcoin. And then he repeated how Europe is crucial, several times. Then he went to the UK and laughed, "Who cares about Europe". So he seems like the guy who will tell you what you want to hear. Ask…

> Then he went to the UK and laughed, "Who cares about Europe"

Interesting. Got any source? Or was it in a private conversation.

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

#732

Post by matkoniecz »

adrianN wrote: post #538
cdogl wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then in the past week, he's going and taking money from the Saudis on the order of billions of dollars to make AI accelerators, even though the single greatest threat from strong AI (according to Hinton) is rich and powerful people using the technology to enhance their power over society. This prediction predated any of the technology to create even a rudimentary LLM and could be said of more-or-less any transforma…

Was Marx wrong?

> Was Marx wrong?

Not sure, but attempts to treat him seriously (or pretend to do this) ended horribly wrong, with basically no benefits.

Is there any good reason to care what he thought?

Looking at history of Poland (before, during and after PRL) gave me no interest whatsoever to look into his writings.

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

#733

Post by achenet »

Guthur wrote: post #562
LarsDu88 wrote: post #487

There has to be a bigger story to this. 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. Then in the past week, he's going and taking money from the Saudis on the order of billions of dollars to make AI a…

If you don't think the likes of Sam Altman, Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates and the lot of them want to increase their own power you need to think again. At best these individuals are just out to enrich themselves, but many of them demonstrate a desire to affect the prevailing politic and so i don't see how they are different, just more subtle about it. Why worry about the Sauds when you've got your own home grown power hun…

because our home grown power hungry individuals are more likely to be okay with things like women dressing how they want, homosexuality, religious freedom, drinking alcohol, having dogs and other decadent western behaviors which we've grown very attached to

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

#734

Post by edmundsauto »

johnnymorgan wrote: post #699
benterix wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there definitely seem to be some personality cult around Sam on HN. I met him when he visited Europe during his lobbying tour. I was a bit surprised the CEO of one of the most innovative companies would promote an altcoin. And then he repeated how Europe is crucial, several times. Then he went to the UK and laughed, "Who cares about Europe". So he seems like the guy who will tell you what you want to hear. Ask…

I gotten SBF vibes from him for awhile now. Elon split was the warning

Telling statement. The Elon split for me cements Altman as the Lionheart in the story.

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

#735

Post by PeterStuer »

smolder wrote: post #635
PeterStuer wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is interesting is the total absence of 3 letter agency mentions from all of the talk and speculation about this.

I don't think that's true. I've seen at least one other person bring up the CIA in all the "theorycrafting" about this incident. If there's a mystery on HN, likelihood is high of someone bringing up intelligence agencies. By their nature they're paranoia-inducing and attract speculation, especially for this sort of community. With my own conspiracy theorist hat on, I could see making deals with the Saudis regarding c…

I'm sure they are completely hands-off about breakthrough strategic tech. Unless it's the Chinese or the Russians or the Iranians or any other of the deplorables, but hey, if it's none of those, we rather have our infiltrants focus on tiktok or twitter ... /s

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

#736

Post by codeulike »

kmlevitt wrote: post #609
LarsDu88 wrote: post #487

There has to be a bigger story to this. 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. Then in the past week, he's going and taking money from the Saudis on the order of billions of dollars to make AI a…

People keep speculating sensational, justifiable reasons to fire Altman. But if these were actual factors in their decision, why doesn't the board just say so? Until they say otherwise, I am going to take them at their word that it was because he a) hired two people to do the same project, and b) gave two board members different accounts of the same employee. It's not my job nor the internet's to try to think up bett…

For what its worth, here's a thread from someone who used to work with Sam who says they found him deceptive and manipulative

https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/172675427022402397...

I have no details of OpenAI's Board’s reasons for firing Sam, and I am conflicted (lead of Scalable Alignment at Google DeepMind). But there is a large, very loud pile on vs. people I respect, in particular Helen Toner and Ilya Sutskever, so I feel compelled to say a few things.

...

Third, my prior is strongly against Sam after working for him for two years at OpenAI:

1. He was always nice to me.

2. He lied to me on various occasions

3. He was deceptive, manipulative, and worse to others, including my close friends (again, only nice to me, for reasons)

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

#737

Post by twic »

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…

> The "lying" line in the original announcement feels like where the good gossip is

This is exactly it, and it's astounding that so many people are going in other directions. Either this is true, and Altman has been a naughty boy, or it's false, and the board are lying about him. Either would be the starting point for understanding the whole situation.

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

#738

Post by gruturo »

adastra22 wrote: post #347
jeremyjh wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a copy of the files and work on them and that is a fork.

How do you merge changes between the source trees? Keep in mind this predates basically ANY kind of source control. It would have been nearly 3x the work.

Uh? Quite wrong.

SCCS was created in 1973. We're talking about over a decade later.

Also primitive forking, diffing and merging could be (painfully) done even with crude tools, which did exist.

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

#740

Post by kmlevitt »

katastofik wrote: post #718
kmlevitt wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, except most people here are proposing BETTER reasons for why they fired him. Which ignores that if any of these better reasons people are proposing were actually true, they would just state them themselves instead of using ones that sound like pitiful excuses.

Whether it be dissecting what the Kardashians ate for breakfast or understanding why the earth may or may not be flat, seeking to understand the world around us is just what we do as humans. And part of that process is "speculating sensational, justifiable reasons" for why things may be so. Of course, what is actually worth speculating over is up for debate. As is what actually constitutes a better theory. But, if pe…

Think you're still missing what I'm saying. Yes, I understand people will speculate. I'm doing it myself here in this very thread.

The problem is people are beginning to speculate reasons for Altman's firing that have no bearing or connection to what the board members in question have actually said about why they fired him. And they don't appear to be even attempting to reconcile their ideas with that reality.

There's a difference between trying to come up with theories that fit with the available facts and everything we already know, and ignoring all that to essentially write fanfiction that cast the board in a far better light than the available information suggests.

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