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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

#791

Post by aerhardt »

hooande wrote: post #530
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…

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…

Surely the API products are the runaway products, unless you are conflating the two. I think their economics are much more promising.

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

#793

Post by vaxman »

vaxman wrote: post #166
sagarpatil wrote: post #157

What a sh*t show. For someone who is building on top of OpenAI this is very unnerving. My twitter is full of heart emojis and OpenAI is nothing without its employees.

That is exactly right.

Erm, 37+ years at a senior level, more total years of industry experience than Apple has been in business (and still years younger than Apple's youngest founding employee) has led me to agree with the original poster, deal with it. (Still badly downvoted heheh - https://i.imgflip.com/6to2m8.jpg)

OpenAI has two types of customers: MS and Everyone Else. The original poster expresses the feeling of Everyone Else (including me). We now know we CAN GET FIRED for not knowing better than to avoid OpenAI just a few weeks after we found out we CAN GET FIRED for not betting on OpenAI and betting heavily on it! (In the Business world, where perception is often mistaken for reality, it isn't going to be considered an "honest mistake" if an enterprise sustains a capital loss due to a problem with a new OpenAI deployment after the obvious business integrity issues at OpenAI we're all seeing play out now, including just about everyone at OpenAI threatening to quit, allegations that OpenAI ILLEGALLY allowed a for-profit subsidiary to influence the operations of its nonprofit parent, allegations of breach of fiduciary to the stakeholders --many of whom are also key employees, etc.) Yeah, Microsoft has signaled it will quickly get between OpenAI and Everyone Else and then Everyone Else can bet solely on Microsoft (the world's largest company by valuation), but that only gets us back to being able to use the current "GPT4turbo" generation of the system (and who knows if/when Microsoft will spin that up so we can resume building)? But as far as counting on any future versions of that tech, or even optimizations to the current generation, that's all believed to be above Microsoft's current level of expertise until/unless they legally acquire OpenAI and resolve all of its outstanding liabilities, which may not even be legally possible before OpenAI's assets (that have legs) take flight to SalesForce and others who are already reported to be making lucrative offers OpenAI's workforce --and oh, the annual holiday period is underway here in the US, the perfect time for stressed out engineers to take the rest of the year off, travel beyond the cell service at the ski areas and start anew after CES 2024 wraps.

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

#794

Post by [deleted] »

twic wrote: post #760
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?

Altman is an interesting character in all of this. As far as i can tell, he has never done anything impressive, in technology or business. Got into Stanford, but dropped out, founded a startup in 2005 which threw easy money at a boring problem and after seven years, sold for a third more than it raised. Got hired into YC after it was already well-established, and then rapidly put in charge of it. I have no knowledge…

[deleted]

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

#795

Post by ajb »

robocat wrote: post #592
dang wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've merged quite a few! but not all, because (1) to some extent there are distinct ongoing subplots, and (2) it's too big a mess to control. If you or anyone want to know how we handle this, here you go... Once or twice a year, a Major Ongoing Topic (MOT) hits HN that isn't just one big story, but an entire sequence of big stories. A saga, even! This is one. With these we can't do what we usually do, which is have…

> avalanched by sneelessness sp.: senselessness (I guess since it appears to be a Googlewhack). But I'll be honest I think the word sneelessness covers this whole FUBAR better!

I was assuming it meant 'Significant New Information'-lessness. Which perfectly captures why I've found the discussion frustrating, since there was loads of speculation on no concrete information. So even if it was a typo, I think it's a great new word

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

#796

Post by peteradio »

adastra22 wrote: post #392
peteradio wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say that if you "believed" you could build it from scratch. It doesn't mean they actually own the existing IP although rubes thinking about buying MSFT may think so.

It appears they have an exclusive, irrevocable license to the existing IP. They have the GPT-4 weights, and the legal right to use them however they see fit. That's the deal with the devil OpenAI made.

Whoa GPT-4 weights! Stop the presses. That is an artifact of the process. They have license to play the game but don't have the IP to make the game.

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

#797

Post by avidphantasm »

twic wrote: post #760
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?

Altman is an interesting character in all of this. As far as i can tell, he has never done anything impressive, in technology or business. Got into Stanford, but dropped out, founded a startup in 2005 which threw easy money at a boring problem and after seven years, sold for a third more than it raised. Got hired into YC after it was already well-established, and then rapidly put in charge of it. I have no knowledge…

A lot of this was done when money was free.

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

#798

Post by atq2119 »

dheavy wrote: post #754
achenet wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

useless to society... fashion allows people to optimize their appearance so as to get more positive attention from others. Or, put more crudely, it helps people look good so they can get laid. Not sure that it's net positive for society as a whole, but individual humans certainly benefit from the fashion industry. Ask anyone who has ever received a compliment on their outfit. This is true for rich people as well as n…

It goes even deeper than getting laid if you study Costume History and its psychological importance. It is a powerful medium of self-expression and social identity yes, deeply rooted in human history where costumes and attire have always signified cultural, social, and economic status. Drawing from tribal psychology, it fulfills an innate human desire for belonging and individuality, enabling people to communicate th…

Clothing is important in that sense, but fashion as a changing thing and especially fast fashion isn't. I suppose it can be a nice hobby for some, but for society as a whole it's at best a wasteful zero-sum pursuit.

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

#799

Post by zztop44 »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #727
sgt101 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think ChatGPT has created some harms: - It's been used unethically for psychological and medical purposes (with insufficient testing and insufficient consent, and possible psychological and physical harms). - It has been used to distort educational attainment and undermine the current basis of some credentials as a result. - It has been used to create synthetic content that has been released unmarked into the inter…

> - It has been used to distort educational attainment and undermine the current basis of some credentials as a result. I'm going to go ahead and call this a positive. If the means for measuring ability in some fields is beaten by a stochastic parrot then these fields need to adapt their methods so that testing measures understanding in a variety of ways. I'm only slightly bitter because I was always rubbish at long…

What if the credentials in question are a high school certificate? ChatGPT has certainly made life more difficult for high school and middle school teachers.

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

#800

Post by aerhardt »

laurels-marts wrote: post #661
arthur_sav wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also notice that Ilya Sutskever is presenting the reasons for the firing as just something he was told. You mean to tell me that the 3-member board told Sutskever that Sama was being bad and he was like "ok, I believe you".

Two possibilities when it comes to Ilya: 1. He’s the actual ringleader behind the coup. He got everyone on board, provided reassurances and personally orchestrated and executed the firing. Most likely possibly and the one that’s most consistent with all the reporting and evidence so far (including this article). 2. Others on the board (e.g. Adam) masterminded the coup and saw Ilya as a fellow traveler useful idiot th…

If #1 is real, he’s just the biggest weasel in tech history by repenting so swiftly and decisively… I don’t think neither the article, nor the broader facts really point to him being the first to cast the stone.
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