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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

#881

Post by kspacewalk2 »

cosmojg wrote: post #428
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems evident that the board was filled at least in part by people whose understanding of the business world and leadership skills is a tier or three below what a position of this level requires. One wonders how they got the job in the first place.

This is America. Practically anyone can start a nonprofit or a company. More importantly, good marketing may attract substantial investment, but it doesn't necessarily imply good leadership.

Clearly corporations are a dime a dozen. What's shocking is the disconnect between the standout quality of the technical expertise (and resulting products!) and the abysmal quality of leadership.

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

#882

Post by robertlagrant »

depr wrote: post #864
robertlagrant wrote: post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is your rule of thumb based on? E.g. [0] > In, for example, the Netherlands the richest people pay less tax [0]. Do you think this is not the case in many other countries? That's a non sequitur from the previous point. However, on the "who pays taxes?" point, that article is careful to only talk about income tax in absolute terms, and indirect taxes in relative terms. It doesn't appear to be trying to make an…

>I don't share the assumption that people should only exist if they're a benefit. Well it's not a matter of the people existing, it's whether they are rich or not. They can exist without the money. Anyway, if you don't think it matters if they are of benefit, then why did you bring up the fact that they pay taxes?

> Well it's not a matter of the people existing, it's whether they are rich or not. They can exist without the money.

I meant people with a certain amount of money. I don't think we should be assessing pros or cons of economic systems based on whether people get to keep their money.

> Anyway, if you don't think it matters if they are of benefit

I don't know what this means.

> then why did you bring up the fact that they pay taxes?

I bring it up because saying they pay less in income taxes doesn't matter if they're spending money on stuff that employs people (which creates lots of tax) and gets VAT added to it. Everything is constantly taxed, at many levels, all the time. Pretending we don't live in a society where not much tax is paid seems ludicrous. Lots of tax is paid. If it's paid as VAT instead of income tax - who cares?

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

#883

Post by robertlagrant »

whelp_24 wrote: post #866
robertlagrant wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need swords to remove kings because they combined power and economy. All potential tyrannies do so: monarchy, socialism, fascism, etc. That's why separating power into the state and economy into the market gets good results.

The separation is impossible, if you don't control the resources, you don't control the country. >separating power into the state and economy into the market gets good results. How do you think this would be done? How do you remove power from money? Money is literally the ability to convert numbers into labor, land, food,

Power is things like: can lock someone in a box due to them not giving a percentage of their income; can send someone to die in another country; can stop someone building somewhere; can demand someone's money as a penalty for an infraction of a rule you wrote.

You don't need money for those things.

Money (in a market) can buy you things, but only things people are willing to sell. You don't exert power; you exchange value.

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

#884

Post by Palpatineli »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #702
benterix wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreover, if this is true, he could reasonably well continue knowing that he has more power than the board. I could almost imagine the board saying, "You can't do that" and him replying "Watch me!" because he understood he is more powerful than them. And he proved he was right, and the board can either step down and lose completely or try to continue and destroy whatever is left of OpenAI.

The thing is, they could have just come out with that fact and everyone in the alignment camp and people who memed the whole super-commercialized "Open" AI thing would be on their side. But the fact that they haven't means that either there was no greater-good mission related reason for ousting Sam or the board is just completely incompetent at communication. Either way, they need to go and make room for people who c…

Telling people that AGI is acheivable with current LLM with minor tricks may be very dangerous in itself.

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

#885

Post by Palpatineli »

adrianN wrote: post #538
cdogl wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then in the past week, he's going and taking money from the Saudis on the order of billions of dollars to make AI accelerators, even though the single greatest threat from strong AI (according to Hinton) is rich and powerful people using the technology to enhance their power over society. This prediction predated any of the technology to create even a rudimentary LLM and could be said of more-or-less any transforma…

Was Marx wrong?

Yes because AGI would invalidate the entirety of das Kapital.

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

#886

Post by passion__desire »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #816
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…

we can correlate now that the more fast fashion there is the less people are coupling though...

There was a tweet by Elon which said that we are optimizing for short term pleasure. OnlyFans exists just for this. Pleasure industry creates jobs as well but do we need so much of it?

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

#887

Post by varelse »

piuantiderp wrote: post #821
GuyFromNorway wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[dead]

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

#888

Post by whelp_24 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #883
whelp_24 wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The separation is impossible, if you don't control the resources, you don't control the country. >separating power into the state and economy into the market gets good results. How do you think this would be done? How do you remove power from money? Money is literally the ability to convert numbers into labor, land, food,

Power is things like: can lock someone in a box due to them not giving a percentage of their income; can send someone to die in another country; can stop someone building somewhere; can demand someone's money as a penalty for an infraction of a rule you wrote. You don't need money for those things. Money (in a market) can buy you things, but only things people are willing to sell. You don't exert power; you exchange…

Money can and does do all of those things. Through regulatory capture, rent seeking, even just good old hiring goons.

The government itself uses money to do those things. Police don't work for free, prisons aren't built for free, guns aren't free. The government can be thought of as having unfathomable amounts of money. The assets of a country includes the entire country (less anyone with enough money to defend it).

If a sword is kinetic energy, money is potential energy. It is a battery that only needs to be connected to the right place to be devastating. And money can buy you someone who knows the right place.

Governments have power because they have resources (money) not the other way around.

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

#889

Post by depr »

robertlagrant wrote: post #882
depr wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't share the assumption that people should only exist if they're a benefit. Well it's not a matter of the people existing, it's whether they are rich or not. They can exist without the money. Anyway, if you don't think it matters if they are of benefit, then why did you bring up the fact that they pay taxes?

> Well it's not a matter of the people existing, it's whether they are rich or not. They can exist without the money. I meant people with a certain amount of money. I don't think we should be assessing pros or cons of economic systems based on whether people get to keep their money. > Anyway, if you don't think it matters if they are of benefit I don't know what this means. > then why did you bring up the fact that t…

What I meant is:

>I don't think we should be assessing pros or cons of economic systems based on whether people get to keep their money.

but earlier you said:

>They are also, for everything they buy, and everyone they employ, paying tax.

So if we should not assess the economic system based on whether people keep their money, i.e. pay tax, then why mention that they pay tax? It doesn't seem relevant.

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

#890

Post by u32480932048 »

jll29 wrote: post #652
todd3834 wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, I should have said, it’s my opinion that it has had a positive impact. I still think it’s easy to see them as a non profit. Even with everything they announced at AI day. Can anyone make an argument against it? Or just downvote because you don’t agree.

I think it's fair to say that after a lot of empty promises, AI research finally delivered something that can "wow" the general population, and has been demonstrated to be useful for more than an single use case. I know a law firm that tried ChatGPT to write a legal letter, and they were shocked that it use the same structure that they were told to use in law school (little surprise here, actually).

I used it to respond to a summons which, due to postal delays, I had to get in the mail that afternoon. I typed my "wtf is this" story into ChatGPT, it came up with a response and asked for dismissal. I did some light editing to remove/edit claims that weren't quite true or I felt were dramatically exaggerated, and a week later, the case was dismissed (without prejudice).

It was total nonsense anyway, and the path to dismissal was obvious and straightforward, starting with jurisdiction, so I'm not sure how effective it would be in a "real" situation. I definitely see it being great for boilerplate or templating though.

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