OpenAI execs informed Board of Altman concerns before firing
time.com
time.com
This is not the type of person we want in charge of potentially world changing AI.
It's the Great Filter, if not this, then something else.
I understand what you're saying, and why people like this are in SV. Risk of money isn't what I'm worried about. It's the risk to humanity.
This tech will be used for surveillance/propaganda and military applications. That's where the big $$$ money will be coming from. Either that or Bond super villain types -- the kind that want this kind of power at all costs. The longer we can hold off their involvement, the better.
My understanding of the tech is that the breakthrough (transformers) is known -- so the hardest part is behind us, now comes the relentless evolution of the tech. So at this point it's really a race towards who can scale the most (holding more variables in memory, faster processing) to achieve better "cognition". So it's literally a race to build the biggest/baddest server farms full of the biggest/baddest GPUs. That will take nation state money, or dystopian mega-corp / Bond super villian money.
The people with money, and those connected in power, are already aware of this and are already moving pieces on the board. Microsoft was all over the OpenAI situation -- they get it. They get where this is going. China is desperate to build their own GPU farms... the race is already here.
So I don't like that this tech is already in the hands of someone who is "seeking power in an extreme way". Just means that, like Zuckerberg/Facebook situation, the population will be "wowed" for a while before they wake up and realize what the end goal was all along (total control of society).
At least with Google it took some time before they decided to become evil. Seems like the opportunity to go slow, balancing growth while we deal with social issues, is already lost.
I don't like being all pessimistic about this stuff, but the stuff OpenAI is doing is scary to me in a way that all the other tech I've seen over the past 50 years isn't.
"One example came in late October, when an academic paper Toner wrote in her capacity at Georgetown was published. Altman saw it as critical of OpenAI’s safety efforts and sought to push Toner off the board. Altman told one board member that another believed Toner ought to be removed immediately, which was not true, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
This episode did not spur the board’s decision to fire Altman, those people say, but it was representative of the ways in which he tried to undermine good governance, and was one of several incidents that convinced the quartet that they could not carry out their duty of supervising OpenAI’s mission if they could not trust Altman. Once the directors reached the decision, they felt it was necessary to act fast, worried Altman would detect that something was amiss and begin marshaling support or trying to undermine their credibility. “As soon as he had an inkling that this might be remotely on the table,” another of the people familiar with the board’s discussions says, “he would bring the full force of his skills and abilities to bear.”
...The board expected pressure from investors and media. But they misjudged the scale of the blowback from within the company, in part because they had reason to believe the executive team would respond differently, according to two people familiar with the board’s thinking, who say the board’s move to oust Altman was informed by senior OpenAI leaders, who had approached them with a variety of concerns about Altman’s behavior and its effect on the company’s culture.
...Altman, 38, has been Silicon Valley royalty for a decade, a superstar founder with immaculate vibes...Interviews with more than 20 people in Altman’s circle—including current and former OpenAI employees, multiple senior executives, and others who have worked closely with him over the years—reveal a complicated portrait. Those who know him describe Altman as affable, brilliant, uncommonly driven, and gifted at rallying investors and researchers alike around his vision of creating artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of society as a whole. But four people who have worked with Altman over the years also say he could be slippery—and at times, misleading and deceptive. Two people familiar with the board’s proceedings say that Altman is skilled at manipulating people, and that he had repeatedly received feedback that he was sometimes dishonest in order to make people feel he agreed with them when he did not. These people saw this pattern as part of a broader attempt to consolidate power. “In a lot of ways, Sam is a really nice guy; he’s not an evil genius. It would be easier to tell this story if he was a terrible person,” says one of them. “He cares about the mission, he cares about other people, he cares about humanity. But there’s also a clear pattern, if you look at his behavior, of really seeking power in an extreme way.” An OpenAI spokesperson said the company could not comment on the events surrounding Altman’s firing. “We’re unable to disclose specific details until the board’s independent review is complete. We look forward to the findings of the review and continue to stand behind Sam,” the spokesperson said in a statement to TIME. “Our primary focus remains on developing and releasing useful and safe AI, and supporting the new board as they work to make improvements to our governance structure.”"