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Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#91

Post by loveparade »

al_borland wrote: post #44
fvdessen wrote: post #9

I've had the 'chance' to work with some deeply manipulative persons in the past, the kind who goes to your desk and say 'Hey, I noticed you started to speak to X again, and your performance seems to suffer as a result", where X is a friendly colleague that opposed some plan of that person. It is incredibly difficult to keep those people in check as all that behaviour is off the record and impossible to prove. When pe…

I find it hard to believe this was the kind of environment he was cultivating at OpenAI if 95% of the staff were ready to follow him out the door. I've worked for the type of people you mention and no one followed them when they leave. 95% threatening to leave in this case is hard to ignore.

If you give me the choice between making a lot of $$$ by working for a for-profit company or staying at a nonprofit with limited upside I'd also choose the former, even if I don't like the CEO much. Don't know where this myth of "people followed him" comes from. There is no evidence for it.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#92

Post by refurb »

Solvency wrote: post #31
bananapub wrote: post #21

it is absolutely fascinating how in all the threads about him, there's all these huge fans, and some people who are apparently highly connected, but no one ever seems to discuss why he has these fancy jobs, why he left others, and why is apparently so well regarded?

It's strangely paradoxical. Sam has zero charisma. Zero looks. No technical ability. He's not a storyteller. He's not a hype man. He comes off as a mildly surly sloth when he talks. His actual pre-OpenAI achievements from a product perspective are a joke. But he was nevertheless "there" for YC and "there" in OpenAI, and a bunch of money was raised, and he's successfully managed to get all spotlights on him at all tim…

> mildly surly sloth

I had to read that twice, but it was well worth it.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#93

Post by shalmanese »

sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: post #12

Yeah, the craziest thing for me to come out of this was how everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent". Poor poor sam altman, he's a victim. He comes across as a sleazebag to me.

This feels like a wild misreading of the situation based on a simplistic good/bad dichotomy. People were mostly stunned at how poorly the board handled things and that sama probably wasn't as bad as the board was trying to make him out to be which is wildly different from him being good.

Even the worst criminal in the world should be declared "not guilty" if they were caught for a crime they did not commit for which the prosecution did not make a convincing case. In law, there no "innocent", only "not guilty" and most people surmised that sama is not guilty in this context irrelevant of a larger backstory.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#94

Post by larme »

fvdessen wrote: post #9

I've had the 'chance' to work with some deeply manipulative persons in the past, the kind who goes to your desk and say 'Hey, I noticed you started to speak to X again, and your performance seems to suffer as a result", where X is a friendly colleague that opposed some plan of that person. It is incredibly difficult to keep those people in check as all that behaviour is off the record and impossible to prove. When pe…

909 people followed Jim Jones to jonestown and died, so?

[edited]: sorry means to replied one comment replied to this comment

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#95

Post by 93po »

imjonse wrote: post #84
Kiro wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mostly because of money/shares How do you know?

I don't obviously. But since those people were ready to jump ship to Microsoft, I am pretty sure they care more about their own careers than 'creating AGI that benefits humanity as a whole in the first place'

Presumably they're jumping ship with Sam, and I'd assume that they'd assume that Sam would uphold the same perceived integrity at MS

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#96

Post by fevangelou »

It's oh so weird the article does not mention any of these though...

- https://twitter.com/phuckfilosophy/status/163570439893983232... (SA's sister - also have a look at her recent posts)

- Also: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman... (utterly distressing)

- https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1727096607752282485 (check the comment with snapshots of the letter - "strangely" that Gist was deleted)

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#97

Post by andsoitis »

photochemsyn wrote: post #38

The fight over OpenAI's leadership is more like celebrity gossip than anything else. The most salient takeaway is that closed-source proprietary LLMs are a bad idea and that everyone with any long-term interest in the subject should switch over to the open-source model. It also has revealed that non-profit philanthropic business models are little more than marketing ploys designed to fool the gullible, and that 'corp…

> The most salient takeaway is that closed-source proprietary LLMs are a bad idea and that everyone with any long-term interest in the subject should switch over to the open-source model.

What is your reasoning for stating that closed-source proprietary LLMs are a bad idea and that anyone with long-term interest in the subject (AGI?) should switch to open-source models?

Open-source tends to foster monopoly and relies on free labor (see Google, Meta). AI also relies on free labor.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#98

Post by antupis »

gizajob wrote: post #45
fvdessen wrote: post #9

I've had the 'chance' to work with some deeply manipulative persons in the past, the kind who goes to your desk and say 'Hey, I noticed you started to speak to X again, and your performance seems to suffer as a result", where X is a friendly colleague that opposed some plan of that person. It is incredibly difficult to keep those people in check as all that behaviour is off the record and impossible to prove. When pe…

This whole saga whiffs of Machiavellianism

I would not be surprised if this is the beginning of the end for the company.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#99

Post by 93po »

Kiro wrote: post #86
sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: post #12

Yeah, the craziest thing for me to come out of this was how everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent". Poor poor sam altman, he's a victim. He comes across as a sleazebag to me.

But it's OK to assume he's a sleazebag?

yeah exactly. everyone is speculating on an event we know virtually nothing about, involving people virtually no one here knows or knows well, in a realm of business virtually no one here has experience with (serving on board of $90b company)
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