Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny (2016)
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
> Two YC partners sat Altman down last year “and told him, ‘Slow down, chill out!’ ” another partner, Jonathan Levy, told me. “Sam said, ‘Yes, you’re right!’—and went off and did something else on the side that we didn’t know about for a while.”
Seems consistent with the original "leadership transition" announcement:
> Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board
Has any more detail surfaced since then about what specific information he (allegedly) withheld from the board?
I hope some of the previous board members make a statement because it’s been almost a week and still nothing really adds up.
The funny part is that this means there is no commercial board looking out for interests like those of stock holders, so the stock holders have basically put themselves in the position the board was in AFA no recourse if the CEO is selecting another interest over theirs as well.
They want to know what the board knows but don't want the stock price to reflect it.
Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12625642
I don't necessarily think that was absolutely without merit: one tires of CEOs and SV types who think too much of themselves and don't attribute enough of their success to simply being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people (not to entirely discount their undeniable talents and abilities, of course).
I wouldn't necessarily say the past few days have radically altered my view but I do find it striking that so many OpenAI employees broke cover to come out in support of him. It's certainly given me pause for further reflection and underscored that you just don't really know someone from simply reading about them, or reading interviews with them. So much of our understanding of individuals comes from spending time with them and from non-verbal cues.
Still, I've known others who have done things similar to the Bronze Age sword thing and, overall, I don't recommend these stunts: you inevitably come off as out of touch and a bit of a tool.
That wouldn’t mean I like him or support him, just that I’d be voting in my own best interest.
I haven't followed the situation as closely as others, but it does seem like board structured to not have 7 figure cheques to undermine safety incentive seemingly willing to let openAI burn out of dogma. Employees want their 7 figure cheques, their interests aligned with larger powers with 10 figures on the line. Reporting so far have felt biased accordingly.
This action, by both the board and the employees, is the result of poor communication. It has caused non-trivial damage to the organisation, internally and externally. It is highly desirable for everyone involved for this level of disruption not to happen again.
It is generally associated with less performant companies, which is not in the interests of those employed in a rapidly growing company.
He must have felt pretty vindicated about his prepper's stance when COVID happened five years after this statement.
I don't have an opinion, but am curious.
I ask because there were released US NIH emails discussing a base sequence not close to any in natural sequences, and concern it was in fact synthesized under the "gain of function" funding provided to Wuhan from the NIH.
Obliquely related : https://theintercept.com/2023/01/19/covid-origin-nih-emails/
Also, try to use less double negations in your writing "I don't necessarily think it's wrong that that comment shouldn't be allowed to pass without challenge." is an atrocious construction.
Which makes this acutely ironic:
> You asking a Replika AI for evidence ...
What are you actually talking about?
If you are seriously asking, you'll have to be much more specific about which exact sequence is being alleged as impossible; there have simply been too many unsound claims about something mysterious in the initial isolates for me to be able to guess what particular claim you want disproven.
If it's the furin site specifically that's supposedly unnatural, then that's simply false, and you can easily find debunkings of this if you just search for "furin site debunk". As an example, here's a recent paper about a very similar furin site (parts of it being identical to the canonical covid-19 site) found in a corona virus from wild bats captured in 2021: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1995820X2... this is simply put explicit observation of this "unnatural feature" found in nature.
[0]: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24318-scurvy
[1]: https://www.healthgrades.com/right-care/thyroid-disorders/ho...
I apologize for the specificity of the nit I'm about to pick, but the "spectrum" part of Autism Spectrum Disorder does not mean that every person is on it! ASD has very specific diagnostic criteria (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html) according to which an individual is either diagnosed with ASD or not.
If you have 95% of the symptoms of autism, but not 100%, what does that mean? Sorry get fucked you're not autistic. You're close, but not quite! See you in six months.
At the end of the day the treatment path will be the same (ie, there is none, learn to accept yourself and manage your neurodivergence like the rest of us)
I wish dang would just disable registration for a week or two when this kind of thing is happening. It attracts low-value commenters who only want to talk about drama, pick fights in the comments, and ban evade. We even have one such commenter in this thread. I'm sure people who actually want to discuss technology would wait until registration is reopened.