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

OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

811–820 of 1001 posts

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#811

Post by reducesuffering »

LtWorf wrote: post #448
jimnotgym wrote: post #398

>the company will succeed at developing AI systems that make most human labor obsolete. Hmmmn. Most of the humans where I work do things physically with their hands. I don't see what AI will achieve in their area. Can AI paint the walls in my house, fix the boiler and swap out the rotten windows? If so I think a subscription to chat GPT is very reasonably priced!

It has difficulties with middle school mathematical problems.

1.5 year old GPT-4 is getting 4/5 on an AP Calculus test, better than 95% of humans. Want to guess how much better at all educational tests GPT-5 is going to be than people?

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#812

Post by smt88 »

spinach wrote: post #757
sumedh wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’ll see that he cares a lot about the truth. Didnt he call the cave diver, a pedo and the guy who attacked Pelosi's husband they were in a gay relationship.

He doesn't seem have much of a filter because of his aspergers, but I think he genuinely believed those things. And they are more on the level of calling people names on the playground anyway. In the grand scheme of things, those are pretty shallow "lies".

I have multiple relatives on the spectrum. None of them baselessly accuse strangers of being pedophiles.

It's not Musk's lack of filter that makes him unhinged and dangerous. It's that he's deeply stupid, insecure, racist, enamored of conspiracy theories, and powerful.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#813

Post by reducesuffering »

brap wrote: post #700
surfingdino wrote: post #478

It's for the good of humanity, right? /s I wonder if Lex is going to ask Sam about it the next time they get together for a chat on YouTube?

I kinda like Lex, but he never asks any difficult questions. That’s probably why he gets all these fancy guests on his show.

Worse, he will agree 95% with what guest A opinions are, only for guest B to come on next episode and also agree with 95%. It would've been better for those opposing guests to just debate themselves. Like, I don't want to see Lex and Yuval Noah Harari, then Lex and Bibi Netanyahu, I'd rather see Yuval and Bibi. I don't want to see Lex and Sama, then Lex and Eliezer, I'd rather see Sama and Eliezer.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#814

Post by simonklitj »

colibri727 wrote: post #670
candiddevmike wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to cut emissions, but AGI research/development is going to increase energy usage dramatically amongst all the players involved. For now, this mostly means more natural gas power. Thus accelerating our emissions instead of reducing them. For something that will not reduce the emissions long term. IMO, we should pause this for now and put these resources (human and capital) towards reducing the impact of global…

Or we could use microwaves to drill holes as deep as 20km to tap geothermal energy anywhere in the world https://www.quaise.energy/

I don’t know the details of how it works, but considering the environmental impact of fracking, I’m afraid something like this might have many unwanted consequences.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#816

Post by llamaimperative »

tinyhouse wrote: post #799
llamaimperative wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they didn’t want the company, their job, and all of their equity to evaporate

Well, if he's a clown then his departure should cause the opposite, no? And you're right, more than 90% of them said we don't want the non-profit BS and openness. We want a unicorn tech company that can make us rich. Good for them. Disclaimer: I'm Sam's best friend from kindergarten. Just joking, never met the guy and have no interest in openai beyond being a happy customer (who will switch in a heartbeat to the comp…

> Well, if he's a clown then his departure should cause the opposite, no?

Nope, not even close to necessarily true.

> more than 90% of them said we don't want the non-profit BS and openness. We want a unicorn tech company that can make us rich. Good for them.

Sure, good for them! Dissolve the company and its charter, give the money back to the investors who invested under that charter, and go raise money for a commercial venture.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#817

Post by YeBanKo »

jay-barronville wrote: post #173

It probably would be better to switch the link from the X post to the Vox article [0]. From the article: “““ It turns out there’s a very clear reason for [why no one who had once worked at OpenAI was talking]. I have seen the extremely restrictive off-boarding agreement that contains nondisclosure and non-disparagement provisions former OpenAI employees are subject to. It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, fr…

They can’t loose their already vested options for refusing to sign NDA upon departure. Maybe they are offered additional grants or expedited vesting of the remaining options.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#818

Post by monktastic1 »

listenallyall wrote: post #270
modeless wrote: post #202

A lot of the brouhaha about OpenAI is silly, I think. But this is gross. Forcing employees to sign a perpetual non-disparagement agreement under threat of clawing back the large majority of their already earned compensation should not be legal. Honestly it probably isn't, but it'll take someone brave enough to sue to find out.

It's very possible someone has already threatened to sue, and either had their equity restored or received a large payout. But they probably had to sign an NDA about that in order to receive it. End result, every future person thinks they are the first to challenge the legality contract, and few actually try.

Man, sounds like NDAs all the way down.

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#819

Post by parpfish »

ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #234
ryandrake wrote: post #33

Non-disparagement clauses seem so petty and pathetic. Really? Your corporation is so fragile and thin-skinned that it can't even withstand someone saying mean words ? What's next? Forbidding ex-employees from sticking their tongue at you and saying "nyaa nyaa nyaa?"

This isn't about pettiness or thin skin. And it's not about mean words. It's about potential valid, corroborated criticism of misconduct. They can totally deal with appearing petty and thin-skinned.

Wouldnt various whistleblower protections apply if you were reporting illegal activities?

Re: OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk?

#820

Post by xpe »

portaouflop wrote: post #569
xpe wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think superalignment is absurd, and model "safety" is the modern AI company's "think of the children" pearl clutching pretext to justify digging moats. All this after sucking up everyone's copyright material as fair use, then not releasing the result, and profiting off it. How can I be confident you aren't committing the fallacy of collecting a bunch of events and saying that is sufficient to serve as a cohesive…

An organisations intentions are always the same and very simple: “Increase shareholder value”

Oh, it is that simple? What do you mean?

Are you saying these so-called simple intentions are the only factors in play? Surely not.

Are you putting forth a theory that we can test? How well do you think your theory works? Did it work for Enron? For Microsoft? For REI? Does it work for every organization? Surely not perfectly; therefore, it can't be as simple as you claim.

Making a simplification and calling it "simple" is an easy thing to do.

Post reply on HN