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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

#741

Post by logicchains »

yafbum wrote: post #607
joshstrange wrote: post #308

Well I give up. I think everyone is a "loser" in the current situation. With Ilya signing this I have literally no clue what to believe anymore. I was willing to give the board the benefit of the doubt since I figured non-profit > profit in terms of standing on principal but this timeline is so screwy I'm done. Ilya votes for and stands behind decision to remove Altman, Altman goes to MS, other employees want him bac…

Waiting for US govt to enter the chat. They can't let OpenAI squander world-leading tech and talent; and nationalizing a nonprofit would come with zero shareholders to compensate.

If it was nationalised all the talent would leave anyway, as the government can't pay close to the compensation they were getting.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#742

Post by taylorlapeyre »

kashyapc wrote: post #689

Silicon Valley outsider here. Am I being harsh here? I just bothered to look at the full OpenAI board composition. Besides Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman, why are these people eligible to be on the OpenAI board? Such young people, calling themselves "President of this", "Director of that". - Adam D'Angelo — Quora CEO (no clue what he's doing on OpenAI board) - Tasha McCauley — a "management scientist" (this is a ne…

Helen Toner funded OpenAI with $30M, which was enough to get a board seat at the time.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#743

Post by ratsbane »

Question for California IP/employment law experts - 1) would you have expected the IP-sharing agreement between MS and OpenAI to contain some provisions for employee poaching, within the constraints allowed by California (?) law? 2) California law has good provisions for workers' rights to leave one company and go to another, but what does it all for company A to do when entering an IP-sharing relationship with company B?

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#745

Post by atishay811 »

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…

It just makes more sense to build it in an entity with better funding and commercialization. There will be advanced 2-3 AIs and the most humane one doesn't necessarily win out. It is the one that has the most resources, is used and supported by most people and can do a lot. At this point it doesn't seem OpenAI can get that. It seems to be a lose-lose to stay at open AI - you lose the money and the potential to create something impactful and safe.

It is wrong to assume Microsoft cannot build a safe AI especially within a separate OpenAI-2, better than the for-profit in a non-profit structure.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#746

Post by dougmwne »

standapart wrote: post #736

What a wonderful way to cut headcount/expense and lock-in profitable margins on healthy annual revenue. Can only work when you have the advantage of being the dominant product in the marketplace -- but I gotta hand it to the board, I couldn't have done it better myself.

And where will their compute come from to continue to run their expensive models and serve their customers? From the company that just stole all their employees?

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#747

Post by defaultcompany »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #296

Can we have a quick moment of silence for Matt Levine? Between Friday afternoon and right now, he has probably had to rewrite today's Money Stuff column at least 5 or 6 times.

"Except that there is a post-credits scene in this sci-fi movie where Altman shows up for his first day of work at Microsoft with a box of his personal effects, and the box starts glowing and chuckles ominously. And in the sequel, six months later, he builds Microsoft God in Box, we are all enslaved by robots, the nonprofit board is like “we told you so,” and the godlike AI is like “ahahaha you fools, you trusted in the formalities of corporate governance, I outwitted you easily!” If your main worry is that Sam Altman is going to build a rogue AI unless he is checked by a nonprofit board, this weekend’s events did not improve matters!"

Reading Matt Levine is such a joy.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#748

Post by jkaplan »

BoorishBears wrote: post #580
JeremyNT wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way to read any of this other than that the entire operation is a clown show. All respect to the engineers and their technical abilities, but this organization has demonstrated such a level of dysfunction that there can't be any path back for it. Say MS gets what it wants out of this move, what purpose is there in keeping OpenAI around? Wouldn't they be better off just hiring everybody? Is it just some kin…

I feel weird reading comments like this since to me they've demonstrated a level of cohesion I didn't realize could still exist in tech... My biggest frustration with larger orgs in tech is the complete misalignment on delivering value: everyone wants their little fiefdom to be just as important and "blocker worthy" as the next. OpenAI struck me as one of the few companies where that's not being allowed to take root:…

I think the surprising thing is seeing such cohesion around a “goal to ship” when that is very explicitly NOT the stated priorities of the company in its charter or messaging or status as a non-profit.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#749

Post by dumbo-octopus »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #462
Jensson wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this was a fight between the non-profit and the for-profit branches of OpenAI, and the for-profit won. So now the non-profit OpenAI is essentially dead, the takeover is complete.

The nonprofit side of the venture actually was in worse shape before, because it was completely overwhelmed by for-profit operations. A better way to view this is the nonprofit side rebelled, has a much smaller footprint than the for-profit venture, and we're about to see if during the ascendency of the for-profit activities the nonprofit side retained enough rights to continue to be relevant in the AI conversation.…

Disloyalty to the board due to overwhelming loyalty to the CEO isn't really an issue. I've interviewed for tech positions where a chat with the CEO is part of the interview process, I've never chatted with the board.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#750

Post by dreamcompiler »

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.

I expect there's a huge amount of peer pressure here. Even for employees who are motivated more by principles than money, they may perceive that the wind is blowing in Altman's direction and if they don't play along, they will find themselves effectively blacklisted from the AI industry.

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