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We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

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Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#961

Post by zucker42 »

sgt101 wrote: post #863
MattHeard wrote: post #531

I was hopeful for a private-industry approach to AI safety, but it looks unlikely now, and due to the slow pace of state investment in public AI R&D, all approaches to AI safety look unlikely now. Safety research on toy models will continue to provide developments, but the industry expectation appears to be that emergent properties puts a low ceiling on what can be learned about safety without researching on cutting…

There are no emergent properties, just a linear increase in knowledge that can be retrieved. - It can't plan - It can't do arithmetic - It can't reason - It can approximately retrieve knowledge with a natural language query (there are some issues with this, but it's very good) - It can encode data into natural languages and other modalities I'm not worried about it, I am worried about how badly people have misunderst…

What is your definition of reasoning? In my mind, GPT-4 has some nascent reasoning abilities.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#963

Post by aluminum96 »

altpaddle wrote: post #42

I guess the main question is who else will be on the board and to what degree will this new board be committed to the Open AI charter vs being Sam/MSFT allies. I think having Sam return as CEO is a good outcome for OpenAI but hopefully he and Greg stay off the board. It's important that the board be relatively independent and able to fire the CEO if he attempts to deviate from the mission. I was a bit alarmed by the…

The enormous majority of CEOs sit on their board, and that's absolutely proper, as the CEO sets the agenda for the organization. (Although they typically are merely one of 8+ members, diluting their influence a bit.)

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#964

Post by [deleted] »

taway1874 wrote: post #897

Some perspective ... One developer (Ilya) vs. One businessman (Sam) -> Sam wins Hundreds of developers threaten to quit vs. Board of Directors (biz) refuse to budge -> Developers win From the outside it looks like developers held the power all along ... which is how it should be.

[deleted]

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#965

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

laserlight wrote: post #236

With Sam coming back as CEO, hasn't OpenAI board proven that it has lost its function? Regardless of who is in the board, they won't be able to exercise one of the most fundamental of their rights, firing the CEO, because Sam has proven that he is unfireable. Now, Sam can do however he pleases, whether it is lying, not reporting, etc. To be clear, I don't claim that Sam did, or will, lie, or misbehave.

Looks like all the naysayers from the original “were making a for-profit but it won’t change us” post ended up correct: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19359928

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#966

Post by dinvlad »

lucubratory wrote: post #262
doctoboggan wrote: post #54

I really did not think that would happen. I guess the obvious next question is what happens to Ilya? From this announcement it appears he is off the board. Is he still the chief scientist? I find it hard to believe he and Sam would be able to patch their relationship up well enough to work together so closely. Interesting that Adam stayed on the board, that seems to disprove many of the theories floating around here…

From Ilya's perspective, not much seems to have changed. Sam sidelined him a month ago over their persistent disagreements about whether to pursue commercialisation as fast as Sam was. If Ilya is still sidelined, he probably quits and whichever company offers him the most control will get him. Same if he's fired. If he's un-sidelined as part of the deal, he probably stays on as Chief Scientist. Hopefully with less ho…

Ilya is just naive, imho. Bright but just too idealistic and hypothesizing about AGI, and not seeing that this is now ONLY about making money from LLMs, and nothing more. All the AGI stuff is just a facade for that.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#967

Post by nikcub »

taway1874 wrote: post #897

Some perspective ... One developer (Ilya) vs. One businessman (Sam) -> Sam wins Hundreds of developers threaten to quit vs. Board of Directors (biz) refuse to budge -> Developers win From the outside it looks like developers held the power all along ... which is how it should be.

The employees rapidly and effectively formed a quasi-union to grant themselves a very powerful seat at the table.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#968

Post by bossyTeacher »

adverbly wrote: post #904
taway1874 wrote: post #897

Some perspective ... One developer (Ilya) vs. One businessman (Sam) -> Sam wins Hundreds of developers threaten to quit vs. Board of Directors (biz) refuse to budge -> Developers win From the outside it looks like developers held the power all along ... which is how it should be.

There are three dragons: Employees, customers, government. If motivated and aligned, any of these three could end you if they want to. Do not wake the dragons.

Or tame the dragons. AFAIK Sam hired the employees. Hence they are loyal to him

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#969

Post by asperous »

zug_zug wrote: post #757
intended wrote: post #203

From a business sense, Satya was excellent. He made the right calls, fast, with limited information. Things further shifted from plan a to b to… whatever this is. Despite that, MSFT still came out on top. Consider if Satya didn’t say anything. Suppose MSFT stood back and let things play out. That’s a gap for google or some competitor to make a move. To showcase their stability and long term business friendly vision.…

I am not sure why people keep pushing this narrative. It's not obviously false, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence of it. From where I sit Satya possibly messed up big. He clearly wanted Sam and the Open AI team to join microsoft and they won't now, likely ever. By offering a standing offer to join MS publicly he gave Sam and OpenAI employees huge leverage to force the board's hand. If he had waited then mayb…

I don't think that's quite right, Microsoft's main game was keeping the money train going by any means necessary, they have staked so much on copilots and Enterprise/Azure Open AI. So much has been invested into that strategic direction and seeing Google swoop in and out-innovate Microsoft would be a huge loss.

Either by keeping OpenAI as-is, or the alternative being moving everyone to Microsoft in an attempt to keep things going would work for Satya.

Re: We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

#970

Post by mcast »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #789
garrison wrote: post #637

If OpenAI remains a 501(c)(3) charity, then any employee of Microsoft on the board will have a fiduciary duty to advance the mission of the charity, rather than the business needs of Microsoft. There are obvious conflicts of interest here. I don't expect the IRS to be a fan of this arrangement.

Larry Summers is in place to effectively give the govt seal of approval on the new board, for better and worse.

If you wanted to wear a foil hat, you might think this internal fighting was started from someone connected to TPTB subverting the rest of the board to gain a board seat, and thus more power and influence, over AGI.

The hush-hush nature of the board providing zero explanation for why sama was fired (and what started it) certainly doesn't pass the smell test.

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