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

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

#891

Post by m3kw9 »

BillyTheKing wrote: post #348
hal009 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mentioned by another person in this thread [0], it is likely that it was Ilya's work that was getting replicated by another "secret" team, and the "different opinions on the same person" was Sam's opinions of Ilya. Perhaps Sam saw him as an unstable element and a single point of failure in the company, and wanted to make sure that OpenAI would be able to continue without Ilya? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/repl…

either that or Sam didn't tell Adam D'Angelo that they were launching a competing product in exactly the same space that poe.ai had launched one. For some context, poe had launched something similar to those custom GPTs with creator revenue sharing etc. just 4 weeks prior to dev-day

Not sure how he would see that coming? It was a UI tweak away for OpenAI

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

#892

Post by robertlagrant »

depr wrote: post #889
robertlagrant wrote: post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> So if we should not assess the economic system based on whether people keep their money, i.e. pay tax

Not just pay tax. People lose money over generations for all sorts of reasons.

I brought up tax in the context of "redistribution", as there's a growing worldview that says tax is not as a thing to pay for central services, but more just to take money from people who have more of it than they do.

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

#893

Post by leoc »

kmlevitt wrote: post #745
codeulike wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what its worth, here's a thread from someone who used to work with Sam who says they found him deceptive and manipulative https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/172675427022402397... I have no details of OpenAI's Board’s reasons for firing Sam, and I am conflicted (lead of Scalable Alignment at Google DeepMind). But there is a large, very loud pile on vs. people I respect, in particular Helen Toner and Ilya Su…

The General anecdotes he gives later in the thread line up with their stated reasons for firing him: he hired another person to do the same project (presumably without telling them), and he gave two different board members different opinions of the same person. Those sound like good reasons to dislike him and not trust him. But ultimately we are right back where we started: they still aren't good enough reasons to su…

It's possible that what we have here is one of those situations where people happily rely on oral reports and assurances for a long time, then realise later that they really, really should have been asking for and keeping receipts from the beginning.

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

#894

Post by arrosenberg »

gardenhedge wrote: post #587
arrosenberg wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is why, at least in the U.S., we have given non-profits exemptions from taxation. That's your belief . The NFL, Heritage Foundation and Scientology are all non-profits and none of them improve society; they all profit from it. (For what its' worth, I wish the law was more aligned with your worldview)

An argument could be made that sports - and a sports organization - helps society

Sure you can, but I wouldn't make that argument about the NFL. They exist to enrich 30 owners and Roger Goodell. They don't even live up to their own mission statement - most fans deride it as the No Fun League.

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

#895

Post by LMYahooTFY »

nmfisher wrote: post #555
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. What exactly is the problem here? Is a non-profit expected to exclusively help impoverished communities or something? What type of politicking and decepti…

> Is a non-profit expected to exclusively help impoverished communities or something? What type of politicking and deception is involved in creating a for profit subsidiary which is granted license to OpenAIs research in order to generate wealth? OpenAI was literally founded on the promise of keeping AGI out of the hands of “big tech companies”. The first thing that Sam Altman did when he took over was give Microsoft…

I don't know about the motivations, but the point seems valid.

I agree WorldCoin is creepy.

Is the corporate structure then working as intended with regard to firing Sam, but still failed because of the sellout to Microsoft?

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

#896

Post by freejazz »

johnnymorgan wrote: post #699
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…

I gotten SBF vibes from him for awhile now. Elon split was the warning

Normally that's a good sign

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

#897

Post by freejazz »

rightbyte wrote: post #858
bnralt wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://twitte…

He gotta be insane? I guess what he is trying to say is that those who want to selfhost open AIs are worse than Nazis? E.g. Llama? What is up with these people and pushing for corporate overlord only AIs. The OpenAI folks seem to be hallucinating to rationalize why the "Open" is rather closed. Organizations can't pretend to believe nonsense. They will end up believing it.

He's trying to say that AI-non-alignment would be a greater threat to humanity than having Nazis take over the world. It's perfectly clear.

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

#898

Post by dragonwriter »

bnralt wrote: post #828
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?

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://twitte…

> The new CEO of OpenAI said he’d rather Nazi’s take over the world forever than risk AI alignment failure

That's pretty much in line with Sam's public statements on AI risk (Sam, taking those statements as honest which may not be warranted, apparently also thinks the benefits of aligned AI are good enough to drive ahead anyway, and that wide commercial access with the limited guardrails OpenAI has provided users and even moreso Microsoft is somehow beneficial to that goal or at least low enough risk of producing the bad outcome, to be warranted, but that doesn't change that he is publicly on record as a strong believer in misaligned AI risks.)

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

#899

Post by thiagoharry »

robertlagrant wrote: post #753
aylmao wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> New rich people come along and some rich people get poor This is an overly simplistic look, and disregards a lot of history where, unsurprisingly, the reason there was wealth redistribution wasn't "innovation" but government policy

> This is an overly simplistic look, and disregards a lot of history where, unsurprisingly, the reason there was wealth redistribution wasn't "innovation" but government policy The point is that wealth and power aren't interchangeable. You're right that government bureaucrats have actual power, including that to take people's stuff. But you've not realised that that actual power means the rich people don't have power…

> There were rich people in the USSR that were killed. They had no power

Precisely, they were not a capitalist society, where capital (and not simply "money" as you said) is source of power, like in capitalist societies.

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