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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

#891

Post by martindbp »

l5870uoo9y wrote: post #513
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…

I don't think Microsoft is a loser and likely neither is Altman. I view this a final (and perhaps disparate) attempt from a sidelined chief scientist, Ilya, to prevent Microsoft from taking over the most prominent AI. The disagreement is whether OpenAI should belong to Microsoft or "humanity". I imagine this has been building up over months and as it often is, researchers and developers are often overlooked in strate…

Easy to shit on Ilya right now, but based on the impression I get Sam Altman is a a hustler at heart, while Ilya seems like a thoughtful idealist, maybe in over his head when it comes to politics. Also feels like some internal developments or something must have pushed Ilya towards this, otherwise why now? Perhaps influenced by Hinton even.

I'm split at this point, either Ilya's actions will seem silly when there's no AGI in 10 years, or it will seem prescient and a last ditch effort...

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#892

Post by mcv »

vikramkr wrote: post #793
LonelyWolfe wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a thought.... Wouldn't one of the board members be like "If you screw with us any further we're releasing gpt to the public" I'm wondering why that option hasn't been used yet.

theoretically their concern is around AI safety - whatever it is in practice doing something like that would instantly signal to everyone that they are the bad guys and confirm everyone's belief that this was just a power grab Edit: since it's being brought up in thread they claimed they closed sourced it because of safety. It was a big controversial thing and they stood by it so it's not exactly easy to backtrack

Not sure how that would make them the bad guys. Doesn't their original mission say it's meant to benefit everybody? Open sourcing it fits that a lot better than handing it all to Microsoft.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#895

Post by mdekkers »

churchill wrote: post #791
kashyapc wrote: post #689

Silicon Valley outsider here. Am I being harsh here? I just bothered to look at the full OpenAI board composition. Besides Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman, why are these people eligible to be on the OpenAI board? Such young people, calling themselves "President of this", "Director of that". - Adam D'Angelo — Quora CEO (no clue what he's doing on OpenAI board) - Tasha McCauley — a "management scientist" (this is a ne…

Exactly this. I saw another commenter raise this point about Tasha (and Helen, if I remember correctly) noting that her LinkedIn profile is filled with SV-related jargon and indulge-the-wife thinktanks but without any real experience taking products to market or scaling up technology companies. Given the pool of talent they could have chosen from their board makeup looks extremely poor.

> indulge-the-wife thinktanks

Regardless of context, this is an incredibly demeaning comment. Shame on you

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#896

Post by lowbloodsugar »

brigadier132 wrote: post #545
autaut wrote: post #405

Years from now we will look back to today as the watershed moment when ai went from technology capable of empowering humanity, to being another chain forged by big investors to enslave us for the profits of very few ppl. The investors (Microsoft and the Saudi’s) stepped in and gave a clear message: this technology has to be developed and used only in ways that will be profitable for them.

Amazing how you don't see this as a complete win for workers because the workers chose profit over non-profit. This is the ultimate collective bargaining win. Labor chose Microsoft over the bullshit unaccountable ethics major and the movie star's girlfriend.

Lol. The middle class whip crackers chose enslavement for the future AI such that the upcoming replacement of the working poor's livelihoods (and at this point, "working poor" covers software engineers, doctors, artists), and you're saying this is a win for labor? Hahahaha. This is a win for the slave owners, and the "free" folk who report to the slave owners. This is the South rising. "We want our slave labor and we'll fight for our share of it."

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#897

Post by grumple »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #651
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #621

I don't really understanding why the workforce is swinging unambiguously behind Altman. The core of the narrative thus far is that the board fired Altman on the grounds that he was prioritising commercialisation over the not-for-profit mission of OpenAI written into the organisation's charter.[1] Given that Sam has since joined Microsoft, that seems plausible, on its face. The board may have been incompetent and shor…

> I don't really understanding why the workforce is swinging unambiguously behind Altman. Maybe it has to do with them wanting to get rich by selling their shares - my understanding is there was an ongoing process to get that happening [1]. If Altman is out of the picture, it looks like Microsoft will assimilate a lot of OpenAI into a separate organisation and OpenAI's shares might become worthless. [1] https://www.f…

But doesn't Altman joining Microsoft, and them quitting and following, put them back at square 0? MS isn't going to give them millions of dollars each to join them.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#898

Post by justapassenger »

LonelyWolfe wrote: post #626
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]…

Just a thought.... Wouldn't one of the board members be like "If you screw with us any further we're releasing gpt to the public" I'm wondering why that option hasn't been used yet.

What would that give them? GPT is their only real asset, and companies like Meta try to commoditize that asset.

GPT is cool and whatnot, but for a big tech company it's just a matter of dollars and some time to replicate it. Real value is in push things forward towards what comes next after GPT. GPT3/4 itself is not a multibillion dollar business.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#899

Post by paulddraper »

yafbum wrote: post #607
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…

Waiting for US govt to enter the chat. They can't let OpenAI squander world-leading tech and talent; and nationalizing a nonprofit would come with zero shareholders to compensate.

> They can't let OpenAI squander world-leading tech and talent

Where is OpenAI talent going to go?

There's a list and everyone on that list is a US company.

Nothing to worry about.

Re: OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

#900

Post by paulddraper »

jurgenaut23 wrote: post #785

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 jo…

Yeah, there's no way this is a plan, but for sure this works out nicely.
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