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Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

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Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#731

Post by gorbypark »

PeterStuer wrote: post #690
bambax wrote: post #516

> “Ninety plus percent of the employees of OpenAI are saying they would be willing to move to Microsoft because they feel Sam’s been mistreated by a rogue board of directors,” said Ron Conway (...) “I’ve never seen this kind of loyalty anywhere.” 95% is the kind of score one sees when there's an "election" in a dictatorship. Unanimity is often suspect.

I can't help but wonder how that "Ninety plus percent" would change in a convincingly anonymous voting process instead of a public social pressure with potential repercussions environment.

While I'm sure that would change things too, I'd really be interested in the vote if the employees "PPU/shares" weren't a factor. In the end, if this ends up being a struggle between the OpenAI non-profit vs the for-profit, my money is on everyone mostly voted for their wallets.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#732

Post by projectileboy »

This is an interesting story and was worth reporting, but I don’t believe it changes the fact that Altman is uniquely qualified to lead OpenAI. I am, however, disappointed to see that an organization that at first espoused the ideal of careful, responsible development of AI seems to has decided to go full throttle no matter what. I’m very sad the board tried to exercise their authority in such an amateurish, hamfisted way. They overplayed their hand, and now we’ll all just have to hope that everyone at OpenAI chooses to keep ethical considerations in mind.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#733

Post by eddtries »

gardenhedge wrote: post #575
icelancer wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's largely engineers who don't really understand the value of a C-level person, as evidenced time and time again in the comments. The concept you could fire someone for business reasons and later be their very good friend and recommend them for another job - sometimes an even better one than you employed them in - doesn't fit the single-input single-output mind of a lot of engineers. It's alright. We all have roles…

Your reg dates are 2012 and 2014. As you know, this is hacker news. not c-level news, not middle management news.. hacker news.

Thinking about this, can you think of a great hacker who isn't C-level? Look at the most famous programmers of all time, or people who've made the most popular tools like Ruby on Rails, and they're all C-level.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#734

Post by eddtries »

lupire wrote: post #631
tom_ wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I didn't know Graham was English, perhaps I would take them at face value - and, indeed, perhaps I should anyway. (And my characterisation was an extreme one!) But: they do just all sound rather coldly backhanded, if you ask me.

Graham moved to the US at age 14. He's as American as he is British.

He lives in England nowadays too

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#736

Post by JabavuAdams »

concordDance wrote: post #699
JabavuAdams wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way about Annie Altman's allegations. Those were out there, but somehow I wasn't aware of them, and I see almost no one discussing them. I mean, I understand why, but it's still disheartening.

> I understand why Because its pointless and unpleasant, we have zero means of verifying or discomfirming the story and it won't go anywhere because its unprovable.

It's unpleasant, but it's not pointless. We've just had days of uninformed and uninvolved randos micro-analysing all things Altman, and pushing various wild speculations. This is seen as okay as long as it's confined to what is essentially office intrigue and gossip. But on the much more consequential topic of potential childhood sexual misdeeds -- nothing.

We don't know whether there's any means of verifying the story until people actually put some effort into verifying the story. Also, it's not unprovable. Perhaps in a mathematical sense, but that's not even required in a courtroom.

Consider all that's been written about Altman's character, using such weak signals as "this former co-worker said this about him". Meanwhile there's this disturbing piece of information that could be a strong signal that is completely ignored.

Have you spoken to anyone in your life who has been molested, or abused? It really cuts through the abstract arguments and illustrates that this dynamic is how abusers get away with it.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#737

Post by JabavuAdams »

concordDance wrote: post #699
JabavuAdams wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way about Annie Altman's allegations. Those were out there, but somehow I wasn't aware of them, and I see almost no one discussing them. I mean, I understand why, but it's still disheartening.

> I understand why Because its pointless and unpleasant, we have zero means of verifying or discomfirming the story and it won't go anywhere because its unprovable.

The reason is that SV works on connections, and people are afraid that they won't get their next round or that sweet job if they rock the boat. Also, we're mostly all dudes, so therefore more vulnerable to false allegations on this topic. Also some overlap with culture-wars and pushback against the perceived excesses of the MeToo movement.

Hypothetically, if a little girl were molested by her older brothers, how should she proceed in order to satisfy your sensibilities?

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#738

Post by marcosdumay »

ethbr1 wrote: post #523
marcosdumay wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the marks in favor of being cutthroat about pre-registering KPIs and expected outcomes, and then evaluating solely based on them. That's the only thing off in your comment. Those KPIs are always set by politics, always have surprisingly subjective measurements, and always have unpredictable consequences that are cleared out by politics. An environment with all formal strictly set objective metrics is one of…

The worst option, except for all the other ones. What's the better alternative?

Have the KPIs, but stay aware that they aren't objective and complete measurements of individual performance, thus keeping the entire revision and verification of reported data.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#739

Post by 93po »

AlexandrB wrote: post #163
93po wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's exactly one of the biggest use cases for WC. the internet needs this and will need it 100x more in a few years

Why does the internet "need" this? Anonymity and pseudonymity are features, not bugs of the internet. Eliminating them will supercharge surveillance and government/corporate control.

This is why it's frustrating to discuss WC. WC preserves anonymity and pseudonymity entirely. People assume it doesn't and then it perpetuates the misinformation around it that make people hate it.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#740

Post by 93po »

mattstir wrote: post #245
sam0x17 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer is a lot of potentially useful decentralized protocols completely buckle under the weight of Sybil attacks, so if Sybil attacks were impossible, there is a whole lot more that could be built

So how do retinal scans protect against Sybil attacks exactly?

5 minutes on their website would answer this question.
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