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

Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 854 posts

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#731

Post by ilikehurdles »

threeseed wrote: post #99
xyzzy4747 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like he outsmarted them and they were holding back the organization.

This is the attitude of a rebellious child instead of a professional. Boards serve a vital fiduciary duty to ensure good corporate governance. They do not exist to hold back the organisation and are not there to be outsmarted.

This is painting by broadest brush imaginable.

Boards routinely hold back the success of organizations, and ousting those boards can be in the best interests of the company. This is pure idealism. Some companies are better with passive or active boards; however, activist boards and passive-reactive boards can cause all kinds of harm leading to the death of the company.

The board member here does not appear knowledgeable in the technology while also expressing a motive be deeply involved in its development. This was a recipe for disaster.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#732

Post by WalterBright »

bmitc wrote: post #683
WalterBright wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, history provides us with examples of societies that confiscated the wealth of the wealthy, and even exterminated them, in their quest to make a utopia. They all ended up as hell-holes. I'm not really interested in repeating that history. It is not at all necessary for wealthy people to be benevolent in order to contribute to society. Nor do they need to be nice people, nor do they need to be unselfish.…

None of that really has anything to do with the discussion and is completely melodramatic, as someone else mentioned. However, we have indeed ended up in a hell-hole. Again, as someone else mentioned, the U.S. in the early 20th century rose up against the capitalist thinking and companies coming out of the industrial revolution and implemented socialist policies, progressive tax structures, and aggressive anti-trust…

Education is run by the government in the US, as is healthcare. It's ironic that you blame capitalism for that.

Infant mortality rate is indeed higher than the US. I dug into it a few years back. It seems that the definition of infant mortality is different among different nations. The US has the most expansive view of it - more specifically, we try to save preemies more aggressively than any other nation, and the failures are counted as infant mortalities. Other nations do not.

Wealth equality is a goal of communism. You are not worse off simply because someone else has more money than you.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#733

Post by shagie »

Aunche wrote: post #430
comp_throw7 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could threaten a lawsuit pressuring him to resign This is extremely confused about the board's responsiblities and powers. A court would laugh this case out of court because the board _can just fire him_.

This has nothing to do with the board's power. Simply firing him doesn't stop him from taking all his employees with him. The lawsuit would be for the damage of Altman's lies, and would prevent him from simply starting another AI company.

Would that be some sort of non-compete agreement that would need to be enforceable in California?

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#734

Post by WalterBright »

bmitc wrote: post #683
WalterBright wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, history provides us with examples of societies that confiscated the wealth of the wealthy, and even exterminated them, in their quest to make a utopia. They all ended up as hell-holes. I'm not really interested in repeating that history. It is not at all necessary for wealthy people to be benevolent in order to contribute to society. Nor do they need to be nice people, nor do they need to be unselfish.…

None of that really has anything to do with the discussion and is completely melodramatic, as someone else mentioned. However, we have indeed ended up in a hell-hole. Again, as someone else mentioned, the U.S. in the early 20th century rose up against the capitalist thinking and companies coming out of the industrial revolution and implemented socialist policies, progressive tax structures, and aggressive anti-trust…

> By many accounts, the U.S. is a hell-hole on the whole.

Many people are unhappy when they discover that a middle class lifestyle requires work.

In Seattle, the government decided that poor people are entitled to free air conditioners. A hellhole? LOL. It's almost June and I still turn the heat on.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#735

Post by zaat »

sudosysgen wrote: post #681
zaat wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Natural rights do really require theism to be truly natural, ie, independent of morality and society. Theism avoids the is-ought problem by forgoing the ought, with theism natural law can simply be, and whether you decide you ought to abide them is no longer so important. Hume's original text describing the is-ought problem is specifically targeting justification of ethics on god. Laws that no one is ought to abide…

> Hume's original text describing the is-ought problem is specifically targeting justification of ethics on god. Laws that no one is ought to abide by are no laws but nonsense. > Is murder immoral because god hate murder, or do god hate murder because it is immoral? We agree here, but that isn't how religion solves the problem. Religious laws are also enforced by threats in the afterlife and violence in the present l…

> We agree here, but that isn't how religion solves the problem. Religious laws are also enforced by threats in the afterlife and violence in the present life, not merely by reason, so they do not need to solve the is-ought problem like secular laws do. Of course, religious law has other problems.

You are mixing law with moral/ethics. Secular law doesn't have is-ought problem, it is enforced by the state law enforcement forces. Pressure to abide to the laws doesn't entail or justify their morality.

> I agree completely, hence why it is impossible to derive rights that are logically justified without an appeal to God. The comment I was replying to claimed there were logically justified rights which have to follow from logically justified moral theories unless they are decreed from beyond reason, and since the latter is a category error, so is the former.

It wasn't. It was arguing for inherent rights. The claim for inherent rights can be justified. It can't be justified by logic just like it cannot be proved mathematically. But it can be justified ethically using reason.

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#736

Post by WalterBright »

CPLX wrote: post #701
WalterBright wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We’re in a society that had higher more progressive tax rates as recently as the 1960’s. That's only superficially true. There were a lot more deductible things in those days, like company cars and 3 martini lunches. Tax shelter investing was de rigueur then. (Tax shelter investing is an inefficient diversion of resources into unproductive investments.) Reagan traded away the tax shelters and tax deductions for low…

Sure, and we also didn't have the fucking insanity of step-up-basis and our current approach of literally not taxing the accumulation of wealth, ever, for those at the top of the pyramid. We also had unions. We can trade examples all day but the fact is that the tax burden on the very wealthy has plummeted and income inequality has skyrocketed. Those are broad measurable facts. Things suck more as a result. I'm not a…

The step-up basis happens when you die. But then you get hit with a 40% federal estate tax and a 20% Washington estate tax on that stepped up basis.

Since you're not young, if you'd invested a modest sum in AMZN in the 1990s you'd be a millionaire several times over today. Same for MSFT. And Apple.

How does other people having more than you take away from you?

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#737

Post by WalterBright »

bmitc wrote: post #686
narrator wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can figure out which 90% we need when they are in seed stage you can become a billionaire venture capitalist. It's like someone spent their whole life searching a thousand volume library of where's Waldo books for a picture of Waldo and found him and told you where to find him and then you said, the guy is an idiot, I found Waldo right here and so could just about anyone!

That's not what I was talking about. What venture capitalists do is figure out which companies and products that they can market and sell. That doesn't say anything about what people need. People can be and are marketed and sold all sorts of things they don't need. The argument of the above commenter was that society somehow needs these companies as a sort of intrinsic need to live better lives. That's simply not tru…

> People can be and are marketed and sold all sorts of things they don't need

What things have you bought that you didn't want and don't need?

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#739

Post by ryukoposting »

margalabargala wrote: post #377
ryukoposting wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we accept that Sam Altmans are necessary for cool technology? Zooming out a bit, do we accept "cool technology" as a virtue? Should it factor into my evaluation of a person at all?

"Cool technology" here means things like dishwashers, or MRI machines, which pretty much strictly improve people's lives, not slightly better advertisement algorithms.

UNIX is pretty cool but Ken Thompson isn't an asshole (as far as I know).

Re: Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

#740

Post by fragmede »

jeffrallen wrote: post #717
trogdor wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What humanitarian organization did you work for that pays its employees in cash?

There are times and places where banks are not operating. In those places you work with cash.

while I can imagine some, what sorts of places are banks not operating for you?
Post reply on HN