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ah765 commented on We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO   twitter.com/openai/status... · Posted by u/staranjeet
siva7 · 2 years ago
I can't interpret from the charter that the board has the authorisation to destroy the company under the current circumstances:

> We are concerned about late-stage AGI development becoming a competitive race without time for adequate safety precautions. Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project

That wasn't the case. So it may be not so far fetched to call her actions borderline as it is also very easy to hide personal motives behind altruistic ones.

ah765 · 2 years ago
The more relevant part is probably "OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that AGI ... benefits all of humanity".

The statement "it would be consistent with the company mission to destroy the company" is correct. The word "would be" rather than "is" implies some condition, it doesn't have to apply to the current circumstances.

A hypothesis is that Sam was attempting to gain full control of the board by getting the majority, and therefore the current board would be unable to hold him accountable to follow the mission in the future. Therefore, the board may have considered it necessary to stop him in order to fulfill the mission. There's no hard evidence of that revealed yet though.

ah765 commented on We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO   twitter.com/openai/status... · Posted by u/staranjeet
siva7 · 2 years ago
A board member, Helen Toner, made a borderline narcissistic remark that it would be consistent with the company mission to destroy the company when the leadership confronted the board that their decisions puts the future of the company in danger. Almost all employees resigned in protest. It's insulting calling the employees under these circumstances investors.
ah765 · 2 years ago
It is a correct statement, not really "borderline narcissistic". The board's mission is to help humanity develop safe beneficial AGI. If the board thinks that the company is hindering this mission (e.g. doing unsafe things), then it's the board's duty to stop the company.

Of course, the employees want the company to continue, and weren't told much at this point so it is understandable that they didn't like the statement.

ah765 commented on We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO   twitter.com/openai/status... · Posted by u/staranjeet
Satam · 2 years ago
I'm sure most of them are extremely intelligent but the situation showed they are easily persuaded, even if principled. They will have to overcome many first-of-a-kind challenges on their quest to AGI but look at how quickly everyone got pulled into a feel-good kumbaya sing-along.

Think of that what you wish. To me, this does not project confidence in this being the new Bell Labs. I'm not even sure they have it in their DNA to innovate their products much beyond where they currently are.

ah765 · 2 years ago
I thought so originally too, but when I thought about their perspective, I realized I would probably sign too. Imagine that your CEO and leadership has led your company to the top of the world, and you're about to get a big payday. Suddenly, without any real explanation, the board kicks out the CEO. The leadership almost all supports the CEO and signs the pledge, including your manager. What would you do at that point? Personally, I'd sign just so I didn't stand out, and stay on good terms with leadership.

The big thing for me is that the board didn't say anything in its defense, and the pledge isn't really binding anyway. I wouldn't actually be sure about supporting the CEO and that would bother me a bit morally, but that doesn't outweigh real world concerns.

ah765 commented on We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO   twitter.com/openai/status... · Posted by u/staranjeet
bugglebeetle · 2 years ago
> Sam, Greg and even Ilya are off the board altogether. Whoever they can all agree on to fill the remaining seats, Sam is going to have to be a lot more subservient to them to keep the peace.

The existing board is just a seat-warming body until Altman and Microsoft can stack it with favorables to their (and the U.S. Government’s) interests. The naïveté from the NPO faction was believing they’d be able to develop these capacities outside the strict control of the military industrial complex when AI has been established as part of the new Cold War with China.

ah765 · 2 years ago
According to this tweet thread[1], they negotiated hard for Sam to be off the board and Adam to stay on. That indicates, at least if we're being optimistic, that the current board is not in Sam's pocket (otherwise they wouldn't have bothered)

[1]:(https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1727216818648134101)

ah765 commented on We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO   twitter.com/openai/status... · Posted by u/staranjeet
_fizz_buzz_ · 2 years ago
I am still a bit puzzled that it is so easy to turn a non-profit into a for profit company. I am sure everything they did is legal, but it feels like it shouldn't be. Could Médecins Sans Frontières take in donations and then take that money to start a for profit hospital for plastics surgery? And the profits wouldn't even go back to MSF, but instead somehow private investors will get the profits. The whole construct just seems wrong.
ah765 · 2 years ago
I think it actually isn't that easy. Compared to your example, the difference is that OpenAI's for-profit is getting outside money from Microsoft, not money from non-profit OpenAI. Non-profit OpenAI is basically dealing with for-profit OpenAI as a external partner that happens to be aligned with their interests, paying the expensive bills and compute, while the non-profit can hold on to the IP.

You might be able to imagine a world where there was an external company that did the same thing as for-profit OpenAI, and OpenAI nonprofit partnered with them in order to get their AI ideas implemented (for free). OpenAI nonprofit is basically getting a good deal.

MSF could similarly create an external for-profit hospital, funded by external investors. The important thing is that the nonprofit (donated, tax-free) money doesn't flow into the forprofit section.

Of course, there's a lot of sketchiness in practice, which we can see in this situation with Microsoft influencing the direction of nonprofit OpenAI even though it shouldn't be. I think there would have been real legal issues if the Microsoft deal had continued.

ah765 commented on We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO   twitter.com/openai/status... · Posted by u/staranjeet
shubhamjain · 2 years ago
At the end of the day, we still don't know what exactly happened and probably, never will. However, it seems clear there was a rift between Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the Original Principles (Team Helen/Ilya). I think the tensions were brewing for quite a while, as it's evident from an article written even before GPT-3 [1].

> Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting pressure for ever more funding to erode its founding ideals of transparency, openness, and collaboration

Team Helen acted in panic, but they believed they would win since they were upholding the principles the org was founded on. But they never had a chance. I think only a minority of the general public truly cares about AI Safety, the rest are happy seeing ChatGPT helping with their homework. I know it's easy to ridicule the sheer stupidity the board acted with (and justifiably so), but take a moment to think of the other side. If you truly believed that Superhuman AI was near, and it could act with malice, won't you try to slow things down a bit?

Honestly, I myself can't take the threat seriously. But, I do want to understand it more deeply than before. Maybe, it isn't without substance as I thought it to be. Hopefully, there won't be a day when Team Helen gets to say, "This is exactly what we wanted to prevent."

[1]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openai...

ah765 · 2 years ago
One funny thing about this mess is that "Team Helen" has never mentioned anything about safety, and Emmett said "The board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety".

The reason everyone thinks it's about safety seems largely because a lot of e/acc people on Twitter keep bringing it up as a strawman.

Of course, it might end up that it really was about safety in the end, but for now I still haven't seen any evidence. The story about Sam trying to get board control and the board retaliating seems more plausible given what's actually happened.

ah765 commented on We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO   twitter.com/openai/status... · Posted by u/staranjeet
fbdab103 · 2 years ago
People have families, mortgages, debt, etc. Sure, these people are probably well compensated, but it is ludicrous to state that everyone has the stability that they can leave their job at a moment's notice because the boss is gone.
ah765 · 2 years ago
They didn't actually leave, they just signed the pledge threatening to. Furthermore, they mostly signed after the details of the Microsoft offer were revealed.
ah765 commented on We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO   twitter.com/openai/status... · Posted by u/staranjeet
upwardbound · 2 years ago
I think this is an oversimplification and that although the decel faction definitely lost, there are still three independent factions left standing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=38375767

It will be super interesting to see the subtle struggles for influence between these three.

ah765 · 2 years ago
Adam is likely still on the "decel" faction (although it's unclear whether this is an accurate representation of his beliefs) so I wouldn't really say they lost yet.

I'm not sure what faction Bret and Larry will be on. Sam will still have power by virtue of being CEO and aligned with the employees.

ah765 commented on We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO   twitter.com/openai/status... · Posted by u/staranjeet
JumpCrisscross · 2 years ago
> deciding factor was the staff mutiny

The staff never mutinied. They threatened to mutiny. That's a big difference!

Yesterday, I compared these rebels to Shockley's "traitorous eight" [1]. But the traitorous eight actually rebelled. These folk put their name on a piece of paper, options and profit participation units safely held in the other hand.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38348123

ah765 · 2 years ago
Not only that, consider the situation now, where Sam has returned as CEO. The ones who didn't sign will have some explaining to do.

The safest option was to sign the paper, once the snowball started rolling. There was nothing much to lose, and a lot to gain.

ah765 commented on We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO   twitter.com/openai/status... · Posted by u/staranjeet
ah765 · 2 years ago
"Context on the negotiations to bring Sam back as CEO of OpenAI:

The biggest sticking point was Sam being on the board. Ultimately, he conceded to not being on the board, at least initially, to close the deal. The hope/expectation is that he will end up on the board eventually."

(https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1727216818648134101)

u/ah765

KarmaCake day225November 3, 2018View Original