"Et Tu, Ilya?"
techarena.substack.com
techarena.substack.com
Sure, you can argue that they thought they could persuade people Sam had done something bad.... but they haven't even tried! They've said basically nothing specific about what he was doing wrong.
You would've thought they knew if they were going to do it they needed a bloody good reason yet we haven't even heard them try to justify it.
Organizations used to do that, from time to time. Maybe some still do.
Or maybe they can't release what the reason was because they don't actually have a good one, and trying to say what their reason was would just make them look either evil or incompetent.
And as long as they're silent, we can't tell which it is. Given how badly this has been handled, though, "incompetent" seems likely...
They certainly could have communicated better, but most of the actually good reasons are stuff you wouldn't expect a board to disclose, like "we told you not to do this large unannounced deal with a publicly listed company that we intend to totally renegotiate" or or "you lied about how much this tech sucks" or "you keep lying about this in-progress initiative we haven't announced yet and don't intend to launch in your departure notice"
It's extremely strange to make it clear the firing is for cause, and to be vague about the cause, and then to issue statements that whatever the cause was it was not related to fiduciary issues or AI safety. It really does amount to "he did something really bad that created a crisis we had no choice but to respond to precipitously... but it wasn't all that bad and we don't want to talk about it" situation.
I think "incompetent seems likely" is the only reasonable conclusion here.
It's hard to think of what they could have said that would have been worse than what they did.
Sam and his allies have been extremely effective at getting their voice out on all the media outlets over the weekend. The OpenAI board, on the other hand, seems to have broken apart already.
It alleged that Sam funneled a lot of money to his AI chip company startup.
There’s a world of difference between those two things.
I could understand board concerns about him being spread too thin, but more chip competition would pretty clearly benefit OpenAI as a large consumer of GPU chips, and this is very different than any sort of allegation around mishandling of funds (which has been ruled out by several people anyway).
There certainly appears to be a conflict of interest in Altman trying to create an NVidia competitor, and proliferation of AI, and seeing as he was seeking middle eastern funds it also raises questions about US limits on export of AI tech.
It appears Sam has joined Microsoft instead.
So perhaps it wasn't actually much of a real deal.
From legal and career point of view - no one will say that, outside of a courthouse or memoirs published in like 15 years from now.
This points to 2 things - First, it really is only the board who know the details because anyone else would've leaked it. Second, the board has lost faith in the reason because if they thought it was good they'd have leaked it by now.
oh good. I can skip reading a million HN posts on this drama. Thanks for pointing this out.
Worth noting that Pompey's march was spurred at least in part by Caesar's ambition- Stalwarts of the Republic like Cato and Cicero supported Pompey as the lesser of two evils. In short there's a lot of nuance. (Caesar was also famous for being great to his soldiers, being apathetic about wealth, and inspiring incredible leadership)
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-roman-empire-tiktok-trend-w...
she knew i read meditations a lot, but she never really tied it to the roman empire.
Also my go to thought when trying to parse the Israel / Palestine business.
Ilya is a guy who is on the board and supported the board decision until it was clear that the mood of the company meant that the entire project was hosed as a result, then argues that the board he himself is 1/6th of, is incompetent.
This is less Ides of March, more Leopards Ate My Face.
The romans, pre-Caesar, had been extremely wary of concentrated power and had therefore ruled the empire by committee - the senate. There was no emperor before Caesar. They would give individuals short-term grants of specific powers necessary to do an assigned job such as managing a province or to a general fighting a war. One such grant of temporary power being "dictator" (where we get the modern word from).
Caesar was really out for himself at the expense of the empire, had enriched himself via military campaigns in gaul, then literally crossed the line by "crossing the [river] rubicon" and bringing his army into the city of Rome, and declared himself dictator for life. This was all too much for Brutus et al who were defending traditional roman values in plotting the murder of this egomaniac.
So, in the Ilya=Brutus analogy, is he the disloyal friend or is he the one defending the empire by getting rid of an egomaniac (Ilya: "ego is the enemy of growth") ?
Now they have got rid of Mira as well. Mira and Ilya and 500+ employees are threatening to quit if the board doesn't back down.
So it seems Ilya was not the main driver of the coup but essentially went along with it initially but changed his opinion after seeing what that would do, but the rest of the board were not willing to back down.
Did they? I never heard any "EA" reasoning, or any reasoning at all from the board beyond their statement that he was insufficiently candid.
"[Shakespeare's] version of Mark Antony's speech is probably the greatest written speech ever"
Let us not forget the Gettysburg Address, which is the pivot point not of a factional quarrel but a national repurposing to equality, and shorter to boot.
Quibbling can be fun!
It's like there's a fan club for high-profile individuals involved in tech.
1. Voting out chairman with chairman abstaining needs only 3/5.
2. Voting out CEO then requires 3/4?
Did Ilya have to vote for any of this to happen?
Many of our institutions are more held together by 'un-written social norms' and someone like Trump can just ignore them. Do laws even matter now? Just like in Rome, the positions of power do 'what they can get away with', not what any 'law' says they can do.
The US has had past 'coup' plots. Even going back to Washington. Really if Washington hadn't been such boy scout, true believer, would we even have a US Republic?
Basically, the US has been more fragile than we would like to acknowledge.
... unless people from SV are involved, in which case HN is flooded with gossip and drama.
Which part of the world is that?
Do the countries there have something special which they are well known for, and which might make unpaid passion projects more attainable than, say, 2020s North America?
Ilya signed the letter, too, and has posted an apology[0].
[0] - https://nitter.net/ilyasut/status/1726590052392956028?s=20
Sounds more like a regret than anything else
Ilya, yes. But in what universe are the AI Safety people the builders?
OpenAI board completely messed up the framing.
I find these threads deeply frustrating, as a long-time Yudkowskyan, because approximately zero of the critics show any understanding at all of the arguments involved, and the vast majority seem not even to have tried to understand the core concern. Most seem to be engaging in some kind of status demonstration, sneering at a group of panicked nerds, rather than having any actual technical opinion at all.
Unlike another poster, I don't think this indicates that HN is full of MBA types. Just average software engineers.
Eg see this Twitter exchange between Greg and Ilya: https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1359603222491451394?lang=en
I’ve welcomed how a non-profit board finally “struck back” on the trend of the commercialization and rollout of an incomplete yet highly impactful technology. It might have been imperfectly done, but it was done.
We went though scaling at all costs with social media etc and lived through the last several years to pay for that choice. Watching AI the last year felt like that was all starting again.
OAI’s 700 employees not having as clear a route to fat RSU payouts as they did on Friday seems to be the least important concern here. This technology and its impacts are greater than any 1 company or founder. The idea of another Zuck situation sitting on it in control is not good. Zero lessons were learned from ‘07-2022.
My hope is that the people around Ilya give him compassion and love. He will be experiencing sadness, regret, and grief. I hope he gets lots of good emotional support.
Same for Sam, same for all employees.
My hope for Ilya is that once the dust settles, instead of getting people scared about AI safety by talking to them, he gives people the experience he had. Give the training data, not the output. You can't reason someone into or out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into. People don't get into opinions from a place of reasoning but from a place of emotion and experience. To help someone shift their opinion, we need to give them experience.
There are some interesting religious lenses on the situation. It certainly will remind people a bit of a crucifixion scenario where we may see Sam and Greg emerge three days later within a new company. It's kind of like a Phoenix from the ashes, like Aslan in Narnia, which of course is also based on the story of Christ. Humans like stories of scapegoats and people being attacked and then being defended. One of the things we've seen is a massive outpouring of support for Sam Altman on Twitter, particularly from so many random founders and people in tech that he helped whether they were nobodies or already successful. When someone gets attacked publicly in a way that people dislike or when it’s a person people really like and like more than the perceived attacker, then they have a lot of other people that then want to come and defend them.
I hope everyone involved realizes that debate doesn't accomplish much other than polarization and tribalization, and that people instead seek to make the other side feel understood. And give the other side the experiences that gave them their own preferences/feelings, rather than trying to convince them to feel the same way. And generally, help people emotionally regulate instead of going into debate or commiserating by sharing negative things about other parties involved.
(Don’t tweet while angry, instead, share your emotions with a friend, then tweet after you’re feeling neutral and peaceful!)
Overall, I hope people minimize attacks. I hope that people directly express their own emotions so that they don't come out in other ways cloaked in rationalizations. This will help people avoid derogatory comments towards people. Sharing specific facts and specific stories can be okay, but avoiding miscellaneous negative judgment in any direction. I hope that people from all directions can see that everyone involved is just doing what they felt was good, and there's a good chance that you would have done something similar if you had the same genetics and upbringing. I hope everyone involved realizes that debate doesn't accomplish much other than polarization and tribalization…
Reminder: Any attack or vitriol makes the person defend themselves, and defending themselves make them more of whatever they are defending themselves against.
There will be a lot of people experiencing varying degrees of grief in the startup and AI ecosystems in the coming week.
Ideally, everyone involved just goes in and gets a really good Swedish relaxation massage, is feeling super peaceful, helping all those around them feel equally peaceful, focusing on releasing and processing their emotions. I believe this moment is potentially a critical moment in history, and the more emotional regulation the people involved in the industry can do over the coming weeks, the better. I believe the future is path-dependent and depends on the present. Generally, we get more of what we have, so the more peace we can have in the present, the more peace we're likely to have in the future. I hope we can all maximize empathy and understanding for all the people involved and minimize polarization and tribalization. I hope people try to make others feel understood and focus on emotional regulation.
Emotional regulation and open-mindedness are vital when facing unexpected and influential incidents.