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OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

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Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#951

Post by nojvek »

Instead of outsing Sam A and Greg B, if Ilya really had deep concerns, he should have quit and built his own AGI dedicated research company. His prestige surely would have given him funding.

Like how Hinton left Google so he could speak freely.

IMO inventing AGI is more powerful than nuclear energy. It would be very stupid of humanity to release it out in the wild.

LLMs are a great tool and nowhere near AGI.

I’m of the belief that alignment of AGI is impossible. It’s like asking us to align with lions. Once we compete for the same resources, we lose.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#952

Post by corethree »

knd775 wrote: post #683
corethree wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the most likely explanation. Altman was going to oust them, hence why they had to make what seems like a bad strategic move. The move seems bad from our perspective but it's actually the most logical strategy for the board in terms of self preservation. I agree. I think this is most likely what occurred.

How could he possibly oust them?

I'm sure their are ways that we aren't privy to knowing just like we don't know why Altman was fired. Why was Sam Altman being dishonest and what was he dishonest about?

This reasoning is the only one that makes sense. Where action taken by the board aligns with logic and any private action done by Sam Altman that could have offended the board.

The story of the board being incompetent to the point of mental retardation and firing such a key person is just the most convenient, attractive and least probable narrative. It's rare for an intelligent person to do something stupid, even rarer an entire board of intelligent people to do something stupid in unison.

But it's so easy to fall for that trope narrative.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#953

Post by refurb »

slowhadoken wrote: post #752
meetpateltech wrote: post #568

Update on the OpenAI drama: Altman and the board had till 5pm to reach a truce where the board would resign and he and Brockman would return. The deadline has passed and mass resignations expected if a deal isn’t reached ASAP https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1726055095341875545

Has anyone else notice how many techies are on Twitter but still badmouth Twitter?

It's like some Americans claiming they're going to move to Canada if their presidential candidate loses.

All that tough talk means doodly-squat.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#954

Post by emptysongglass »

soufron wrote: post #937

But what about the legal responsability of Microsoft and investors there? To explain, it's the board of the non-profit that ousted @sama . Microsoft is not a member of the non-profit. Microsoft is "only" a shareholder of its for-profit subsidiary - even for 10B. Basically, what happened is a change of control in the non-profit majority shareholder of a company Microsoft invested in. But not a change of control in the…

Highly unethical would be throwing the CEO of the division keeping the lights on under a bus with zero regard for the consequences.

The non-profit board acted entirely against the interest of OpenAI at large. Disclosing an intention to terminate the highest profile member of their company to the company paying for their compute, Microsoft, is not only the ethical choice, it's the responsible one.

Members of the non-profit board acted recklessly and irresponsibly. They'll be paying for that choice for decades following, as they should. They're lucky if they don't get hit with a lawsuit for defamation on their way out.

Given how poorly Mozilla's non-profit board has steered Mozilla over the last decade and now this childish tantrum by a man raised on the fanfiction of Yudkowsky together with board larpers, I wouldn't be surprised if this snafu sees the end of this type of governance structure in tech. These people of the board have absolutely no business being in business.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#955

Post by airstrike »

hmottestad wrote: post #891
d-z-m wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe that people don’t understand that Data Scientists are full stack engineers. What do you mean by "full stack"? I'm sure there's a spectrum of ability, but frankly where I'm from, "Data Scientist" refers to someone who can use pandas and scikit-learn. Probably from inside a Jupyter notebook.

Maybe she just meant that "data scientists are engineers too", rather than saying that they work on both the ChatGPT web UI and the the machine learning code on the backend.

Wait until they learn the "engineer" in SWE is already a very liberal use of the term....

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#956

Post by jprete »

soufron wrote: post #937

But what about the legal responsability of Microsoft and investors there? To explain, it's the board of the non-profit that ousted @sama . Microsoft is not a member of the non-profit. Microsoft is "only" a shareholder of its for-profit subsidiary - even for 10B. Basically, what happened is a change of control in the non-profit majority shareholder of a company Microsoft invested in. But not a change of control in the…

I think a lot of commenters here are treating the nonprofit as if it were a temporary disguise with no other relevance, which OpenAI now intends to shed so it can rake in the profits. Legally this is very much not true, and I’ve read that only a minority of the board can even be a stakeholder in the for-profit (probably why Altman is always described as having no stake). If that’s true, it’s very obviously why half the board are outside people with no stake in the finances at all.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#957

Post by stevespang »

soufron wrote: post #937

But what about the legal responsability of Microsoft and investors there? To explain, it's the board of the non-profit that ousted @sama . Microsoft is not a member of the non-profit. Microsoft is "only" a shareholder of its for-profit subsidiary - even for 10B. Basically, what happened is a change of control in the non-profit majority shareholder of a company Microsoft invested in. But not a change of control in the…

[dead]

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#958

Post by Hasnep »

jacquesm wrote: post #910
tim333 wrote: post #897

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If Altman gets to return, it’s the goodbye of AI ethics Any evidence he's unethical? Or just dislike him? He actually seems to have done more practical stuff like experimenting with UBI, to mitigate AI risk than most people.

I think the UBI experiment was quite unethical in many ways and I believe it was Altman's brainchild. https://www.businessinsider.nl/y-combinator-basic-income-tes...

Okay I'll bite, what's so unethical about giving people money?

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#959

Post by soufron »

emptysongglass wrote: post #954
soufron wrote: post #937

But what about the legal responsability of Microsoft and investors there? To explain, it's the board of the non-profit that ousted @sama . Microsoft is not a member of the non-profit. Microsoft is "only" a shareholder of its for-profit subsidiary - even for 10B. Basically, what happened is a change of control in the non-profit majority shareholder of a company Microsoft invested in. But not a change of control in the…

Highly unethical would be throwing the CEO of the division keeping the lights on under a bus with zero regard for the consequences. The non-profit board acted entirely against the interest of OpenAI at large. Disclosing an intention to terminate the highest profile member of their company to the company paying for their compute, Microsoft, is not only the ethical choice, it's the responsible one. Members of the non-p…

Except it's not a "division" but an independent entity.

And if that corporate structure does not suit Satya Nadella, I would say he's the one to blam for having invested 10B in the first place.

Being angry at a decision he had no right to be consulted on does not allow him to meddle in the governance of its co-shareholder.

Or then we can all accept together that corruption, greed and whateverthefuckism is the reality of ethics in the tech industry.

Re: OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO

#960

Post by soufron »

jprete wrote: post #956
soufron wrote: post #937

But what about the legal responsability of Microsoft and investors there? To explain, it's the board of the non-profit that ousted @sama . Microsoft is not a member of the non-profit. Microsoft is "only" a shareholder of its for-profit subsidiary - even for 10B. Basically, what happened is a change of control in the non-profit majority shareholder of a company Microsoft invested in. But not a change of control in the…

I think a lot of commenters here are treating the nonprofit as if it were a temporary disguise with no other relevance, which OpenAI now intends to shed so it can rake in the profits. Legally this is very much not true, and I’ve read that only a minority of the board can even be a stakeholder in the for-profit (probably why Altman is always described as having no stake). If that’s true, it’s very obviously why half t…

Exactly my point.
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