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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

#931

Post by qp11 »

Nevermark wrote: post #869
qp11 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI community isn't large, as in the brainpower available. I am talking about the PhD pool. If this pool isn't growing fast enough, no matter what cash or hardware is thrown on the table, then the hype Sam Altman generates can be a pointless distraction and waste of everyones time. But its all par for the course when Hypsters captain the ship and PhDs with zero biz sense try to wrest power.

That is a one-dimensional analysis. You might need to include more dimensions if you really want to model the actual impact and respect that Sam Altman has among knowledgeable investors, high talent developers, and ruthless corporations. It’s so easy to just make things simple, like “it’s all hype”. But you lose touch with reality when you do that. Also, lots of hype is productive: clear vision, marketing, wowing mil…

ChatGPT is pure crap to deploy for actual business cases. Why? Cause if it flubs 3 times out of 10 multiply that error by a million customers and add the cost of taking care of the mess. And you get the real cost.

In the last 20-30 years big money+hypsters have learnt it doesnt matter how bad the quality of their products are if they can capture the market. And thats all they are fit for. Market capture is totally possible if you have enough cash. It allows you to snuff out competition by keeping things free. It allows you to trap the indebted PhDs. Once the hype is high enough corporate customers are easy targets. They are too insecure about competition not to pay up. Its a gigantic waste of time and energy that keeps repeating mindlessly producing billionaires, low quality tech and a large mess everywhere that others have to clean up.

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

#932

Post by VectorLock »

saagarjha wrote: post #589
VectorLock wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like Altman started the whole non-profit thing so he could attract top researchers with altruistic sentiment for sub-FANAAG wages. So the whole "Altman wasn't candid" thing seems to track.

Ok, but the wages were excellent (assuming that the equity panned out, which it seemed very likely it would until last week).

Excellent but not FANAANG astronomical.

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

#933

Post by VectorLock »

mcpackieh wrote: post #834
VectorLock wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like Altman started the whole non-profit thing so he could attract top researchers with altruistic sentiment for sub-FANAAG wages. So the whole "Altman wasn't candid" thing seems to track.

Reminds me of a certain rocket company that specializes in launching large satellite constellations that attracts top talent with altruistic sentiment about saving humanity from extinction.

No surprise that Musk co-founded OpenAI then.

Seems to be pretty much his MO across the board.

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

#934

Post by ps256 »

tw1984 wrote: post #658
ps256 wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems kind of naive to think that he'll be CEO for long, or if it is for long, that there will be much company left to be a CEO of.

why he needs to be CEO for long? If everything goes well, he can claim that he is the man behind all these to reunite the OpenAI team. If something goes wrong, well, no one is going to blame him, the board screwed the entire business. He is more like a emergency room doctor who failed to save a poor dude who just intentionally shot himself in the head with a shotgun.

> If everything goes well, he can claim that he is the man behind all these to reunite the OpenAI team.

It's now one day later and Altman is back as CEO - what can Emmett Shear claim exactly?

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

#935

Post by shafyy »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #701
shafyy wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I didn't downvote you. Depends on what you define as positive impact. Helping programmers write boiler plate code faster? Summarize a document for lazy fuckers who can't get themselves to read two page? Ok, not sure if this is what I would consider "positive impact". For a list of negative impacts, see the sister comments. I'd also like to add that the energy usage of LLMs like ChatGPT is immense…

Your examples seem so obviously to me to be a "positive impact" that I can't really understand your comment. Of course saving time for 100 million people is positive.

"Positive impact" for me would be things like improve social injustice, reduce poverty, reduce CO2 emissions, etc. Not saying that it's a negative impact to make programmers more productive, but it's not like ChatGPT is saving the world.

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

#936

Post by munksbeer »

sgt101 wrote: post #870
munksbeer wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has devalued and replaced the work of people who relied on that work for their incomes. Many people (myself included) would argue that is true for almost all technological progress and adds more value to society as a whole than it takes away. Obviously the comparisons are not exact, and have been made many times already, but you can just pick one of countless examples that devalued certain workers wages but made…

Sure - agree... but - because it's happened before doesn't make it ok (especially for the folks who it happens to) - many more people may be better off, and it may be a social good eventually, but this is not for sure - there is no mechanism for any redistribution or support for the people suddenly and unexpectedly displaced.

Well then, are we in agreement that you can't use the argument that ChatGPT replaced some people's work as an overall negative without a lot more qualification?

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

#937

Post by aidaman »

leobg wrote: post #918
jacquesm wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Altman has convinced PG that he's a pretty smart cookie and that alone would explain a lot of the red carpet treatment he's received. PG is pretty good at spotting talent. http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html Note the date on that.

What about the date?

it was a really long time ago

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

#938

Post by lucubratory »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #255
PheonixPharts wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes these people should all be doing more to feed internet drama! If they don't act soon, HN will have all sorts of wild opinions about what's going on and we can't have that! Even worse, if we don't have near constant updates, we might realize this is not all that important in the end and move on to other news items! I know, I know, I shouldn't jest when this could have grave consequences like changing which uri you…

My favorite hypothesis: Ilya et al suspected emergent AGI ( e.g. saw the software doing things unprompted or dangerous and unexpected) and realized the Worldcoin shill is probably not the one you want calling the shots on it. For the record, I don't think it's true. I think it was a power play, and a failed coup at that. But it's about as substantiated as the "serious" hypotheses being mooted in the media. And it's m…

Damn. Good prediction.

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

#939

Post by tw1984 »

ps256 wrote: post #934
tw1984 wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why he needs to be CEO for long? If everything goes well, he can claim that he is the man behind all these to reunite the OpenAI team. If something goes wrong, well, no one is going to blame him, the board screwed the entire business. He is more like a emergency room doctor who failed to save a poor dude who just intentionally shot himself in the head with a shotgun.

> If everything goes well, he can claim that he is the man behind all these to reunite the OpenAI team. It's now one day later and Altman is back as CEO - what can Emmett Shear claim exactly?

> what can Emmett Shear claim exactly?

- helped to stabilized the situation

- the first to propose the idea of independent investigation into the matter

- sided with impacted employees all the way through such difficult moments

- supported a smooth transition period

depending on how he reacted when 90% employees signed that letter asking for altman's return, don't be too surprised if he claims to be guy how helped to push for that as well.

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

#940

Post by aezart »

dwaltrip wrote: post #399
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.

LLMs predict language, and language is a representation of human concepts about the world. Thus, these models are constructing, piece by piece, conceptual chains about the world. As they learn to construct better and more coherent conceptual chains, something interesting must be happening internally.

Language is only one projection of reality into fewer dimensions, and there's a lot it can't capture. Similar to how a photograph or painting has to flatten 3D space into a 2D representation, so a lot is lost.

I think trying to model the world based on a single projection won't get you very far.

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