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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

#781

Post by smolder »

laurels-marts wrote: post #667
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…

Wait I’m completely confused. Why is Ilya signing this? Is he voting for his own resignation? He’s part of the board. In fact, he was the ringleader of this coup.

No, it was just widely speculated that he was the ringleader. This seems to indicate he wasn't. We don't know.

Maybe to Quora guy, Maybe the RAND Corp lady? All speculation.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#782

Post by accrual »

calf wrote: post #364
abkolan wrote: post #73

HN desperately needs a mega thread, it's only Monday early hours, there is so much drama to come out of this.

Tangentially I noticed that Reddit's front page has been conspicuously absent on coverage of this, I feel a twinge of pity. Maybe there are some some subreddits but I haven't bothered to look.

/r/singularity has been having a field day with this.

https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#784

Post by danielovichdk »

Microsoft is laughing all the way to the bank by the moves they have done today.

One could speculate if Microsoft initiated this behind the scenes. Would love it if it came out that they had done some crazy espionage and lobbied the board. Tinfoil hat and all, but truth is crazier than you think.

I remember Bill Gates once said that whoever wins the race for a computerised digital personal assistant, wins it all.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#785

Post by jurgenaut23 »

If I weren't so adverse to conspiracy theories, I would think that this is all a big "coup" by Microsoft: Ilya conspired with Microsoft and Altman to get him fired by the board, just to make it easy for Microsoft to hire him back without fear of retaliation, along with all the engineers that would join him in the process.

Then, Ilya would apologize publicly for "making a huge mistake" and, after some period, would join Microsoft as well, effectively robbing OpenAI from everything of value. The motive? Unlocking the full financial potential of ChatGPT, which was until then locked down by the non-profit nature of its owner.

Of course, in this context, the $10 billion deal between Microsoft and OpenAI is part of the scheme, especially the part where Microsoft has full rights over ChatGPT IP, so that they can just fork the whole codebase and take it from there, leaving OpenAI in the dust.

But no, that's not possible.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#786

Post by gosub100 »

CyanLite2 wrote: post #500
hospitalJail wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few weeks ago my 4yr old Minecraft gamer was playing pretend and said "I'm fighting the biggest boss. THE MICROSOFT BOSS!" Yeah M$ hasnt had a good reputation. I finally left Windows this year because I'm afraid of them after Win11. 2023/4 will be the year of the Linux Desktop in retrospect. (or at least my family's religion deemed it)

I was wondering how many lines I'd have to scroll down in the comments to see a "M$" reference here on HackerNews. They're a $2+ trillion dollar company. They're doing something right.

they violated free market principles (years ago) that left their users captive. Not home users, every business in the country for the past 30+ years. They are profiting from doing many things wrong, anti-competitive, and illegal. In some alternative universe, there's an earth where you can switch just the OS (and keep all your apps, data, and functionality) and MSFT went bankrupt. Another far-away-galaxy has an earth where MSFT's board got decade prison sentences for breaking antitrust law, another where MSFT paid each victim of spyware $1000 in damages due to faulty product design. We don't live in those realities where bad guys pay.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#787

Post by dan_quixote »

himaraya wrote: post #549
breadwinner wrote: post #51

If they join Sam Altman and Greg Brockman at Microsoft they will not need to start from scratch because Microsoft has full rights [1] to ChatGPT IP. They can just fork ChatGPT. Also keep in mind that Microsoft hasn't actually given OpenAI $13 Billion because much of that is in the form of Azure credits. So this could end up being the cheapest acquisition for Microsoft: They get a $90 Billion company for peanuts. [1]…

This is wrong. Microsoft has no such rights and its license comes with restrictions, per the cited primary source, meaning a fork would require a very careful approach. https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-forge-awkw...

This is MSFT we're talking about. Aggressive legal maneuvers are right in their wheelhouse!

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#789

Post by chr1 »

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…

Or maybe they have good reason to believe that all the talk about "safe development" doesn't contribute anything useful to safety, and simply slows down devlopment?

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#790

Post by dixie_land »

hnbad wrote: post #772
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft hasn't actually given OpenAI $13 Billion because much of that is in the form of Azure credits To be clear, these don't go away. They remain an asset of OpenAI's, and could help them continue their research for a few years.

Sure but you can't exchange Azure credits for goods and services... other than Azure services. So they simultaneously control what OpenAI can use that money for as well as who they can spend it with. And it doesn't cost Microsoft $13bn to issue $13bn in Azure credits.

Can you mine 13bn+ bitcoin with 13bn worth of Azure compute power?
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