Irving on Helen, Ilya, and Sam | Hacker News Reader

Irving on Helen, Ilya, and Sam

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26 pointsstandapart29 comments

https://nitter.net/geoffreyirving/status/1726754270224023971

Unrelated to the actual topic at hand, it’s mind blowing how much better nitter is in usability, speed, and user experience.

I think this shows what you can do with server-side generated HTML without any JavaScript frameworks and bloat.

I am firmly on the side of Ilya and the Board on this. Yes it could have been handled better (easy to say for us who have no "emotional baggage" nor "skin in the game") but it is what it is. There must have been a precipitating factor which we still don't know. Somebody needs to standup for them.

When i look at the various comments across the various posts on this topic i am ashamed of the people in the Tech. Industry. There is just unbridled greed where it seems folks would sell their own mother for money. While i am no better than most of my fellow humans when it comes to love of money, i hope i have some moral/ethical compass which will allow me to make better decisions when it comes to societal altering technologies. Ilya and his team stood for something and we need to encourage such moral/ethical stands in the industry.

Sam Altman is just a business schmoozer and hustler who seems to have only gotten to where he is due to patronage by other well-established folks and not due to any inherent technical vision/mastery/knowledge. He is replaceable but the brains behind the technology is not.

I trust Ilya in his original decision, not in his retraction under intense pressure. Ilya has not changed his beliefs. Rather, he was unable to pay the price of those beliefs.

He will not even say the real reason that he, not the Board, fired Sam. If he has lost trust in Sam, he can no longer say so.

I also do not see why the board would endanger their already weak position by giving any courtesy notice to Microsoft, who has the best lawyers in the world and will move instantly.

There is more news (rumours?) coming out that suggest that Ilya (and others) may have been "played" by Adam D'Angelo. Things seem to be getting murkier by the minute.

But all said and done, people need to get behind Ilya and the Technical Team at OpenAI. They deserve it.

Basically Sam is dishonest and not a likeable person. This is a datapoint.

Anybody else who knows Sam well want to Chime in? All this hero worship is coming from people who don't know Sam and don't know why he's fired.

So at the end of the day at the highest levels it's still just about they were nice/mean to me.

That's really good data. Better than all the data from people who never met him or don't even know what's going on. I still can't answer the question why was he fired, but we have 400 pages of speculation on HN.

This twitter post is literally better information then anything I've seen for the past weekend.

Here’s another datapoint https://x.com/jachiam0/status/1727108699804823656?s=20

97% of OpenAI's employees? You can probably find dozens if not hundreds of active users on this site you are using, who have at some point crossed paths with Sam, given his involvement in building YC. Haven't there already been data points relating their positive views of Altman?

It is a datapoint. It's not the only datapoint.

Some stories don't have a hero.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_Fair_(novel)

I can't read this because I'm not log in to X. How can I access this?

nitter.net

Thanks. Used the link before you edited.

Some red flags: "she took the board role with reservations because she felt it was important someone like her was on it" (climber way of talking) ".. Despite the thoughtfulness of those involved..." (cliche way of describing people, also climber adjacent)

He says that everyone is nice but Sam Altman, who, though always nice to the author, was mean to friends of the author in ways that are not described.

Mean != manipulative / driving wedges.

That said, it feels awkward to even point out these gradations, without knowing the people in question.

I just realized that this is the kind of conversation that preceded forum witch hunts. Or tribe formation :/

You missed perhaps the most important part, where Irving says that Altman lied to him on various occasions.

TLDR: someone who worked at OpenAI relates their firsthand experiences with Sam (not always positive; some lies and deceptive behavior), while strongly vouching for Helen's and Ilya's integrity and character.

My take: this is a counterpoint to a point that is not very relevant. Yes, the ad hominen attacks are despicable, but it should be a debate of their actions, not people's values and character. It's undeniable that the 4 board members didn't demonstrate competence to handle this situation, and very likely didn't fulfill their duty towards the interests of OpenAI's mission (neither the for-profit or the non-profit one). They don't have anyone but themselves to blame for this s*show.

Gotta be honest. Anyone described as "thoughtful" has nothing to recommend them. It's like if you reviewed a restaurant as "bringing out all dishes correctly in order".

It's also sv corporate boilerplate speak used to say "just blindly trust this person"

When it comes to personnel reviews this all smells of "didn't know any of these people all that well," given the lack of detail.

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