OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO • Hacker News Board

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

#961

Post by adverbly » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:21 PM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #951

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 t…

> If Ilya really had deep concerns, he should have quit and built his own AGI dedicated research company.

...

You should look up some history here.

Exactly what you say has already happened and OpenAI is the dedicated research company you are referring to.

He originally left Google deep mind I believe.

> I’m of the belief that alignment of AGI is impossible.

I don't think most people in this space are operating based on beliefs. If there is even a 10% chance that alignment is possible, it is probably still worth pursuing.

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

#962

Post by soufron » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:22 PM UTC

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #942

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…

"Also, how come a 90 billion dollars company hailed as the future of computing and a major transformative force for society would now be valued 0 dollars only because its non-technical founder is now out?" Please think about this. Sam Altman is the face of OpenAi and was doing a very good job leading it. If the relationships are what kept OpenAI from always being on top and they removed that from the company, corpora…

Well, once again, then it's Satya's mistake to have allowed the representative of an independant third party entity become the public face of a company he invested in.

OpenAI might have wasted the 10B of Microsoft. But whose fault is it in the first place? It's Microsoft's fault to have invested it in the first place.

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

#963

Post by barnabee » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

yanderekko wrote: post #934

barnabee wrote: post #871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "AI ethics" means being run by so-called rationalists and Effective Altruists then it has nothing to do with ethics or doing anything for the benefit of all humanity. It would be great to see a truly open and truly human benefit focused AI effort, but OpenAI isn't, and as far as I can tell has no chance of becoming, that. Might as well at least try to be an effective company at this point.

>If "AI ethics" means being run by so-called rationalists and Effective Altruists then it has nothing to do with ethics or doing anything for the benefit of all humanity. Many would disagree. If you want a for-profit AI enterprise whose conception of ethics is dumping resources into an endless game of whack-a-mole to ensure that your product cannot be used in any embarrassing way by racists on 4chan, then the market…

I disagree that the “rationalist” and EA movements would make good decisions “for the benefit of humanity”, not that an open (and open source) AI development organisation working for the benefit of the people rather than capital/corporate or government interests would be a good idea.

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

#964

Post by tim333 » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

latexr wrote: post #909

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.

That “experimenting with UBI” is indistinguishable from any other cryptocurrency scam. It took from people, and he described it with the words that define a Ponzi scheme. That project isn’t “mitigating AI risk”, it pivoted to distinguish between AI and human generated content, a problem created by his other company , by continuing to collect your biometric data. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/wor…

He also did cash in Oakland https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/silicon-v...

I signed up from Worldcoin and have been given over $100 which I changed to real money and think it's rather nice of them. They never asked me for anything apart from the eye id check. I didn't have to give my name or anything like that. Is that indistinguishable from any other cryptocurrency scam? I'm not aware of one the same. If you know of another crypto that wants to give me $100 do let me know. If anything I think it's more like VCs paying for your Uber in the early days. It's VC money basically at the moment, with I think they idea they can change it into a global payment network or something like that. As to whether that will work, I'm a bit skeptical but who knows.

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

#965

Post by l33tman » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:29 PM UTC

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…

As a non-profit with the charter they have, their board was not supposed to be in business (at this scale). I guess this is where all of this diverged, a while ago now..

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

#966

Post by manyoso » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:31 PM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #946

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…

No one is saying they are now valued at 0. They are likely valued a lot less than 80 billion now. OpenAI had the largest multiple - >100X their revenue for a recent startup. That multiple is a lot smaller now without SamA. Honestly the market needs a correction.

SamA is nowhere even close to relevant to the value that OpenAI presents. He's def. less than half a billion and likely much less than that. What makes OpenAI so transformative is the technology it produces and SamA is not an engineer that built that technology. If the people that made it were to all leave it would reduce the value of the company by a large amount, but the technology would remain and it is not easy to duplicate given the scarcity of GPU cycles, the training data now being very hard to acquire and lots of other well invested companies chasing with the likes of Google, Meta, Anthropic. That doesn't even begin to mention the open source models that are also competing.

SamA could try and start his own new copy of OpenAI and I have no doubt raise a lot of money, but that new company if it just tried to reproduce what OpenAI has already done would be not worth very much. By the time they reproduce OpenAI and its competitors will have already moved on to bigger and better things.

Enough with the hero worship for SamA and all the other salesmen.

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

#967

Post by emptysongglass » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:32 PM UTC

soufron wrote: post #959

emptysongglass wrote: post #954

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

This is entirely false. If it were true, the actions of today would not have come to pass. My use of the word "division" is entirely in-line with use of that term at large. Here's the Wikipedia article, which as of this writing uses the same language I have. [1]

If you can't get the fundamentals right, I don't know how you can make the claims you're making credibly. Much like the board, you're making assertions that aren't credibly backed.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_of_Sam_Altman

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

#968

Post by jeffrallen » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:35 PM UTC

Simon_ORourke wrote: post #835

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

But, but... what company will that guy from Quora go on to ruin next, if he's kicked off the OpenAI board now?

Don't worry about him: failure is the surest sign of an impending incidence of "white man about to get another chance to not learn from his failures".

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

#969

Post by bradleyjg » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

manyoso wrote: post #966

nojvek wrote: post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is saying they are now valued at 0. They are likely valued a lot less than 80 billion now. OpenAI had the largest multiple - >100X their revenue for a recent startup. That multiple is a lot smaller now without SamA. Honestly the market needs a correction.

SamA is nowhere even close to relevant to the value that OpenAI presents. He's def. less than half a billion and likely much less than that. What makes OpenAI so transformative is the technology it produces and SamA is not an engineer that built that technology. If the people that made it were to all leave it would reduce the value of the company by a large amount, but the technology would remain and it is not easy t…

SamA is nowhere even close to relevant to the value that OpenAI presents.

The issue isn’t SamA per se. It’s that the old valuation was assuming that the company was trying to make money. The new valuation is taking into account that instead they might be captured by a group that has some sci-fi notion about saving the world from an existential threat.

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

#970

Post by Joeri » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

soufron wrote: post #962

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #942

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also, how come a 90 billion dollars company hailed as the future of computing and a major transformative force for society would now be valued 0 dollars only because its non-technical founder is now out?" Please think about this. Sam Altman is the face of OpenAi and was doing a very good job leading it. If the relationships are what kept OpenAI from always being on top and they removed that from the company, corpora…

Well, once again, then it's Satya's mistake to have allowed the representative of an independant third party entity become the public face of a company he invested in. OpenAI might have wasted the 10B of Microsoft. But whose fault is it in the first place? It's Microsoft's fault to have invested it in the first place.

It depends on what assurances they were given and by whom. Perhaps it was Sam Altman himself that made verbal promises that weren’t his to give, and he may end up in trouble over them.

We don’t know what was said, and what was signed. To put the blame with microsoft is premature.