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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

#821

Post by piuantiderp »

GuyFromNorway wrote: post #784
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the board can either step down and lose completely or try to continue and destroy whatever is left of OpenAI. From the board's perspective, destroying OpenAI might be the best possible outcome right now. If OpenAI can no longer fulfill its mission of doing AI work for the public good, it's better to stop pretending and let it all crumble.

I am not sure if it would be commendable or out-right stupid though for the remaining board members to be that altruistic, and actually let the whole thing crash and burn. Who in their right mind would let these people near any sort of decision-making role if they let this golden goose just crash to the ground, even if would "benefit the greater good" - cannot see that this is in the self-interest of anyone

Spoken like a true modern. What could be more important than money? Makes you wonder if aristocracy was really that bad when this is the best we get with democracy!111

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

#822

Post by NewEntryHN »

sumitkumar wrote: post #818
hooande wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Usually what happens in fast growing companies is that the high energy founders/employees drive out the low energy counterparts when the pace needs to go up. In OpenAI Sam and team did not do that and surprisingly the reverse happened.

Give it a week until it is exactly that that did actually happen (not saying it has been orchestrated, just talking net result).

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

#823

Post by piuantiderp »

stareatgoats wrote: post #636
rtpg wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "lying" line in the original announcement feels like where the good gossip is. The general idea of "Altman was signing a bunch of business deals without board approval, was told to stop by the board, he said he would, then proceeded to not stop and continue the behavior"... that feels like the juicy bit (if that is in fact what was happening, I know nothing). This is all court intrigue of course, but why else are…

Agreed, court intrigue. But it is also the mundane story of a split between a board and a CEO. In normal cases the board simply swaps out the CEO if out of line, no big fuss. But if the CEO is bringing in all the money, having the full support of the rest of organization, and is a bright star in mass media heaven, then this is likely what you get: the CEO flaunts the needs of the board and runs his own show, and gets…

It just confirmed what was already a rumor, the board of OpenAI was just a gimmick, Altman held all the strings and maybe cares, or not, about safety. Remember this is a man of the highest ambition.

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

#824

Post by VBprogrammer »

zztop44 wrote: post #799
VBprogrammer wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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.

In which ways it it more difficult? Presumably a high school certificate encompasses more than just writing long form essays? You presumably have to show an understanding in worked examples in maths, physics, chemistry, biology etc?

I feel like the invention of calculators probably came with the same worries about how kids would ever learn to count.

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

#825

Post by mcpackieh »

mcv wrote: post #814
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the board can either step down and lose completely or try to continue and destroy whatever is left of OpenAI. From the board's perspective, destroying OpenAI might be the best possible outcome right now. If OpenAI can no longer fulfill its mission of doing AI work for the public good, it's better to stop pretending and let it all crumble.

Except that letting it all crumble leaves all the crumbs in Microsoft's hands. Although there may not be any way to prevent that anyway at it point.

If the board had already lost control of the situation anyway, then burning the "OpenAI" fig leaf was an honorable move.

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

#826

Post by piuantiderp »

comboy wrote: post #731
benterix wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there definitely seem to be some personality cult around Sam on HN. I met him when he visited Europe during his lobbying tour. I was a bit surprised the CEO of one of the most innovative companies would promote an altcoin. And then he repeated how Europe is crucial, several times. Then he went to the UK and laughed, "Who cares about Europe". So he seems like the guy who will tell you what you want to hear. Ask…

> Then he went to the UK and laughed, "Who cares about Europe" Interesting. Got any source? Or was it in a private conversation.

It's a surprisingly small world.

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

#827

Post by mvdtnz »

mcv wrote: post #705
mvdtnz wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely wild to me that people are drawing a straight line between a text completion algorithm and AGI. The term "AI" has truly lost all meaning.

ChatGPT is not AGI, but it is AI. The thing that makes AI lose all meaning is the constantly moving goal posts. There's been tons of very successful AI research over the past decades. None of it is AGI, but it's still very successful AI.

> ChatGPT is not AGI, but it is AI.

I absolutely disagree in the strongest terms possible.

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

#828

Post by bnralt »

rightbyte wrote: post #625
hooande wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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?

I’ve said this before, but it’s quite possible to think that Altman isn’t great, and that he’s better than the board and his replacement.

The new CEO of OpenAI said he’d rather Nazi’s take over the world forever than risk AI alignment failure, and said he couldn’t understand how anyone could think otherwise[1]. I don’t think people appreciate how far some of these people have gone off the deep end.

[1] https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1664375903223427072

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

#829

Post by curiousllama »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #811
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…

The more likely explanation is that D'Angelo has a massive conflict of interest with him being CEO of Quora, a business rapidly being replaced by ChatGPT and which has a competing product "creator monetization with Poe" (catchy name, I know) that just got nuked by OpenAI's GPTs announcement at dev day. https://quorablog.quora.com/Introducing-creator-monetization... https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/31/quoras-poe-introdu…

A (potential, unstated) motivation for one board member doesn't explain the full moves of the board, though.

Maybe it's a factor, but it's insufficient

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