Sam Altman Will Not Return to OpenAI as CEO
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So many articles with no real sources saying the board was desperate for him to come back, or reneged on their decision, or that there would be an exodus of employees!
I’m glad the board wasn’t browbeaten by Sam and his cohort of VC friends.
I am also incredibly doubtful this will have any meaningful impact in terms of engineers/researchers who will choose to leave. Most of the core group of researchers and engineers joined OpenAI the non-profit, not OpenAI the LLC, that is to say I assume many have strong feelings about safety around AI, which judging by the employee testimonies in the recent Atlantic article Sam acted negligently towards.
Who reported that?
> reneged on their decision
Who reported that?
> there would be an exodus of employees
The chairman of the board and three senior scientists resigned before the weekend was over. You'd have to be naive to think it's not a strong possibility.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/18/23967199/breaking-openai...
“The OpenAI board is in discussions with Sam Altman to return to the company as its CEO, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. One of them said Altman, who was suddenly fired by the board on Friday with no notice, is “ambivalent” about coming back and would want significant governance changes.
Update November 18th, 5:35PM PT: A source close to Altman says the board had agreed in principle to resign and to allow Altman and Brockman to return, but has since waffled”
Do you want me to hold your hand to google anything else or is that enough?
Former-chairman*, he was removed from the board immediately after Sam’s ouster. OpenAI has 700 employees, 4 resignations do not make an exodus.
This isn't reddit; we're not hear to 'one-up' a parent commenter with a one word response. By the guidelines :
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Also, any new competition started by Altman would be good for the ecosystem in general.
I haven't seen anyone worship Altman.
I've seen many say the board made an incredibly dumb decision. Like Apple-firing-Jobs level dumb decision.
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Whether you think it's net good for OpenAI to be brought down a rung or two...you can still think it was bad for OpenAPI.
Because they are different products?
Or because Altman wasn't pivotal in the success of OpenAI?
Anyhow, I just was using the Caesar example because it was an memorable example that stuck out to me.
I'm so proud of the board for sticking to their principles over profit. This is a huge victory for all of us, and a chance for everyone to come together and approach AGI safely and for the benefit of all.
Personally I think this is where they'll end up stagnating, although I'm happy to be wrong. It's going to make recruiting top talent far harder, and ultimately this hiccup will cause them to lose their edge. Losing that edge lessens the desire to go there, which will drive down competitiveness, which will further pull them back from the fray. I believe it'll make the US less competitive, which makes me sad.
The only risk AGI poses to the average american is unemployment. If immigration/outsourcing is fine, i don't see anthing being done about this.
Now that sam is out and his new ai startup if he makes one will be a new entrant in the ai space, he probably should have waited a couple weeks before recommending all the ai regulations.
As an aside, i would support a system like the patent system where if new ai models are going to be heavily regulated, then the uncensored/pre-gated weights of the already launched model should be released to the public in much the same way your patent idea is protected but you have to release the design in the application.
"Why You Should Fear Machine Intelligence"
https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1
It's unfortunate how crank people on HN like you turn when it comes to this grave topic. Multiple people, for years, many without incentive, will tell you what they think and you will just "no they're lying," especially when YC has placed a huge amount of value on earnestness forever. Not too mention they've addressed the regulation conspiracy and how the regulation restricts them and big co's, not GPT4 level models by anyone smaller.
Edit to add: if you believe the rapid commercialization of frontier models at OpenAI was a cancer that needed to be destroyed, the likely outcome of the board's clumsy handling is that it probably now metastasizes.
But if you do believe, I don't see how this a "victory."
OpenAI is now existentially at risk. Even if it does survive it will very likely lose its dominance to a non-"AI safety" commercial endeavor.
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Classic "biting the hand that feeds you" https://youtu.be/Lg2dqFCU67Q?si=TWX8slGW_8hLdgQu&t=35
Encryption can be used for good things and bad things. And yet no one is talking about "encryption safety."
Okay, you are getting me off topic, but this is totally not the case. Hasn't governments been especially interesting in dealing with encryption lately? UK or EU (can't remember which) being most recently raising the pitchforks.
Anyway, the more important thing for me to point out is that AI is anticipated to possess exponential properties that technology like encryption does not have. Encryption is predictable while AI is not.
Edit: fixed typo
Fair enough :)
People have been talking about it, and it's a similarly bad idea.
> Encryption is predictable while AI is not.
Banking info vs child porn is pretty divergent.
Lol not sure where I want to take this and it's getting pretty late...
From the reading on this I did this evening (which was much more than I probably should have) I had seen it suggested that this might have been a limited window in time where the board was small enough to pull this off. It was 9 members not long ago before being reduced down to 6 (where 4 of them collaborated). Allegedly Sam was looking to grow the board back up.
"Motte: e/acc is just techno-optimism, everyone who is against e/acc must be against building a better future and hate technology
Bailey: e/acc is about building a techno-god, we oppose any attempt to safeguard humanity by regulating AI in any form around and around and around"
https://beff.substack.com/p/notes-on-eacc-principles-and-ten...
https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-tech-leaders-...
This is really the question: how many employees will stay, go to existing competitors, or go to AltmanAI.
Without brain drain from OpenAI, Altman's new venture will not be nearly as interesting. (Though given that three senior scientists resigned already...it seems probable.)
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Does OpenAPI not have any non-compete agreements? Is that why this is possible?
Whether you're Team Sutzkaver or team Altman, you can't deny it's been interesting to see extremely talented people fundamentally disagree what to do with godlike technology.