altpaddle

What a foolish comment, LLMs empower capital owners far more than the 'working class'

Unfortunately I think the writing is clearly on the wall. Fully autonomous weapons are coming soon

Props to Dario and Anthropic for holding firm on these two points that I feel like should be a no-brainer

I do not understand this move by Nvidia, they are afraid of being out competed by this startup in their core competence of building chips for AI? They may be eliminating a competitor for now but this move will immediately many more AI chip startups to get founded

Right because countries with smaller populations can't beat larger ones when defending their homeland. Oh wait that's exactly what happened in Afghanistan vs USSR and USA, Vietnam etc.

And who is China's strongest ally in the world?

This only takes into account income tax and not other taxes which are often more regressive such as sales tax, payroll tax etc. When analyzing taxes paid we should take into account all taxes

That's fair to call our democrats when they say things with contempt but is this not a phenomenon that happens from both sides now? What about when JD Vance calls out 'miserable childless cat ladies'? Donald Trump is a person who more so than anyone else I know of in American history is filled with grievance and contempt.

Right leaning supporters online love to throw around contemptuous terms like groomer, pedophile, cuck, soyboy etc

> Higher child tax credit, and generally pro-family

You mean like the one that democrats proposed and republicans in the senate killed?

Give me a fucking break. Trump trashes segments of America for years and gets a pass but if a democrat makes a single pissed off comment it's a big deal.

Was Mike Pence getting chosen for his Christian background not an example of identity politics? Was JD Vance being a younger politician to balance old Trump identity politics? Everything relates to identity politics

Agreed and Trump is not going to do it, he's going to try and make the richer richer just like he did with his tax cuts last time

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-refo...

Do you realize what the cost was to society to have a Bell Labs? Telephone service was expensive as hell and you couldn't even own your own telephone. There was no incentive for innovation in many areas like answering machines, cell phones etc

You have no idea what you're talking about. China has been cracking down on it's capitalist class/entrepreneurs 100x what the US gov has done.

There really aren't that many platforms that 'everyone' uses. So yes you regulate them. Just like we regulate the thousands of bars in the country from allowing minors in

Time will tell. Hopefully the new board will still be mostly independent of Sam/MSFT/VC influence. I really hope they continue as an org that tries its best to uphold their charter vs just being another startup.

Dude just think about that for a moment. By definition if existential risk has been proven. It's already too late

Well it depends on who's on the new board and what they believe. If Altman, Greg, and MSFT do not have direct representation on the new board there would still be a check against his decisions

The most plausible explanation I've found is that the pro-safety faction and pro-accel factions were at odds which was why the board was stalemated at a small size.

Altman and Toner came into conflict over a mildly critical paper Toner wrote involving Open AI and Altman tried to have her removed from the board.

This is probably what precipitated this showdown. The pro safety/nonprofit charter faction was able to persuade someone (probably Ilya) to join with them and oust Sam.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-...

I think it was mostly a bluff to try the pressure the board. I don't think Sam and most of Open AI rank and file would want to be employees of MSFT

I guess the main question is who else will be on the board and to what degree will this new board be committed to the Open AI charter vs being Sam/MSFT allies. I think having Sam return as CEO is a good outcome for OpenAI but hopefully he and Greg stay off the board.

It's important that the board be relatively independent and able to fire the CEO if he attempts to deviate from the mission.

I was a bit alarmed by the allegations in this article

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-...

Saying that Sam tried to have Helen Toner removed which precipitated this fight. The CEO should not be allowed to try and orchestrate their own board as that would remove all checks against their decisions.

I mean it's not like there's going to be a huge pool of suitable candidates for something like this on short notice. They probably picked the most capable candidate they knew of who aligned with their values

But I think this episode shows how dependent OpenAI was on Microsoft. They seem to be closer to an extension than a truly independent actor

Human character doesn't change that much, let's say that in his heart Sam is more of of a move fast and commercialize type of leader and Ilya doesn't want that. Do you think them sitting down and talking about it is really going to change things that much? People are who they are. If anything they've probably had these exact conversations many times already. Not every relationship is fixable, sometimes people are just incompatible.

As for the board's silence to the public, this should be obvious. Talking about their thinking/plans/reasons for firing Sam exposes them to all kinds of risk both legally and otherwise. The safe move is to stay quiet in public and continue talks with the relevant stakeholders (Microsoft, Sam + loyalists) in private

"...EA brand will now be associated with irrational feminized college students rather than interesting quantitative thinkers."

That is quite a quote, the kind that makes it hard to take anything in this essay seriously. If this guy has been to an EA event in the last year I'm sure he'd notice it's still like 90% men and the demographic is pretty much the same as in previous years.

Somehow he's been around EA for a long time but think AI safety is a problem to work on. He compares AI regulation to over regulation around medicine. Maybe because there's basically no regulation around AI and a huge amount in medicine and the stakes between the two are completely different. In fact they are completely different issues so why should it be the case that EA should have the same viewpoint on both.

Don't bother wasting your time reading this like I did

I'd be willing to bet that the average corporate exec or VC is more of a sociopath than the average nonprofit leader/board member

I dunno man, not sure why you're so cynical. There actually are people out there who are motivated by higher ideals than their own self-interest. I don't know if Ilya and the OpenAI board are in that category but I believe the world is a better place if OpenAI is still governed by the principles in its current charter than just another extension of Microsoft/VC will

If OpenAI changes their governance structure I think every single major AI lab will be controlled by corporations. What makes you so optimistic about a world where the most powerful technology of all time is controlled by a narrow set of capitalist interests? Just think about what the world would be like, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be a 'post-capitalist' society. If anything it'll be the exact opposite

The attitudes I'm seeing in this debate are mind blowing to me, explain to me why you think it's better that the future of AI and therefore the future of humanity is better off controlled by narrow-minded shareholder value maximizing entities like Microsoft or Silicon Valley VCs.

What's wrong with the idea that AI should be developed with the goal of being safe and for the benefit of all humanity?

As for the objection to safe being defined by a narrow group 'great men'. I'm sure Ilya would agree that it's not ideal that such an important milestone in human history being decided by such a small group of people. But what alternatives do we have right now? What if OpenAI decided to turn over their technology to the US government or the UN? Would that make you feel better?

Of course I am but only because I think developing safe AI is going to be such a monumental challenge (greater than manhattan project).

However honestly I think recent events give me more hope that things will go well. My impression from Sam's comments/interviews is he's closer to the techno-maximalist, move fast and break things mindset then someone who really takes AI risks seriously.

I think this fight was going to happen sooner or later and it's better that OpenAI split up into safety focused vs commercialize and move fast teams. These two viewpoints are probably irreconcilable