"A source with direct knowledge of the negotiations says that the sole job of this initial board is to vet and appoint a new formal board of up to 9 people that will reset the governance of OpenAl.
Microsoft will likely have a seat on that expanded board, as will Altman himself."
Just following up, it's also totally Smeagol-like to make people sign up before they can get any useful answers at Quora. True Gollum move, D'gelo. Thanks for showin' yer true colors!
Elon was once "in possession" (influential investor and part of the board) of OpenAI, but it was since taken from him and he is evidently bitter about it.
How has the board shown that they fired Sam Altman due to "responsible governance".
They haven't really said anything about why it was, and according to business insider[0] (the only reporting that I've seen that says anything concrete) the reasons given were:
> One explanation was that Altman was said to have given two people at OpenAI the same project.
> The other was that Altman was said to have given two board members different opinions about a member of personnel.
Firing the CEO of a company and only being able to articulate two (in my opinion) weak examples of why, and causing >95% of your employees to say they will quit unless you resign does not seem responsible.
If they can articulate reasons why it was necessary, sure, but we haven't seen that yet.
Good lord: it’s a private company. As a general matter of course it’s inadvisable to comment on specifics of why someone is fired. The lack of a thing that pretty much never happens anyway (public comment) is just harmful to your soap opera, not to the potential legitimacy of the action.
According to reports they haven't told executives and employees inside the company. (I'm not arguing that they should speak publicly, though given the position the board put itself in I think hiring PR people for external crisis comms is very much warranted)
When 95% of your staff threatens to resign and says "you have made a mistake", that's when it's time to say "no, the very good reasons we did it are this". That didn't happen.
Its not a private company it is a non profit working in the public interest this usually requires some sort of public accountability. The board want to be a public good when they make decisions but want to be a private entity when those decisions are criticised by the public.
If Altman will be 1 of 9, that means he has power but not an exceptional amount.
The real teams here seem to be:
"Team Board That Does Whatever Altman Wants"
"Team Board Provides Independent Oversight"
With this much money on the table, independent oversight is difficult, but at least they're making the effort.
The idea this was immediately about AI safety vs go-fast (or Microsoft vs non-Microsoft control) is bullshit -- this was about how strong board oversight of Altman should be in the future.
This seems like a silly way of understanding deceleration. By this comparison the USSR was decelerating the cold war because they were a couple years behind in developing the hydrogen bomb.
Microsoft can and will be using GPT4 as soon as they get a handle on it, and if it doesn't boil their servers to do so. If you want deceleration you would need someone with an incentive that didn't involve, for example, being first to market with new flashy products.
This is my take too, and I'm sure in the shadows their plan is to close off the APIs as much as possible and try use it for their own gain, not dissimilar to how Google deploy AI.
There is no way MS is going to let something like ChatGPT-5 build better software products than what they have for sale.
This is an assassination and I think Ilya and Co know it.
It's not assassination. It's a Princess Bride Battle of Wits, that they initiated and put the poison into one of the chalices themselves, and then thought so highly of their intellect they ended up choosing and drinking the chalice that had the poison in it.
What product do you envision OpenAI selling would be better than Microsoft?
I emphasized product because OpenAI may have great technology. But any product they sell is going to require mass compute and a mass sales army to go into the “enterprise” and integrate with what the enterprise already has.
Guess who has both? Guess who has neither?
And even the “products” that OpenAI have now can only exist because of mass subsidies by Microsoft.
Right now, quota is very valuable and scarce, but credits are easy to come by. Also, Azure credits themselves are worth about $0.20 per dollar compared to the alternatives.
"You are a dim-witted kobold who prefers to hack-n-slash-slash-slash-n-burn over any sort of proper diplomatic negotiations or even strategic thinking; we would like you to consider next year's capital expenditures; what are your top three suggestions for improvements that could be made to the employee breakroom(s)?"
Well, if ye really want ol' me to put me noggin to it... I reckon ye could start with addin' a proper gaming corner! Ye know, some sturdy tables 'n' comfy chairs where the lads 'n' lasses can gather 'round for some good ol' dice chuckin' or card playin'. Next up, a big ol' fire pit! Not just any fire, mind ye, but one where we can roast our snacks 'n' share tales of our adventures. And lastly, a grand stash of provisions—plenty o' snacks 'n' drinks to keep the energy high for when we're plannin' our next raid or just takin' a breather. How's that for some improvements, eh?
Train it on meeting minutes and board charter various contracts they have, and use the voice compatibilitys of chatgpt as the input during the meeting the prompt is it is an ethical ai givingbinput to the board of open ai on the development of its next iteration.
If you know that putting four wheels on a car works better than putting three wheels on a car, that doesn't make you biased against three wheels. It makes you biased towards better results.
We know that "thought diversity" on a team, which can take many forms, has a short term drawback (team gelling doesn't go as fast) and long term advantages (more ideas, better ideas, better resilience, etc etc).
Is there any evidence that gender is a primary determinant of "thought diversity"? I'd expect other factors, including age, upbringing, ethnicity, etc. have much more of an impact on diversity. A woman and a man who grew up in the same suburbs, went to the same school, have studied the same, etc. probably have very similar ideas on most topics than two men (or women for that matter) who have completely different upbringing.
If thought diversity is what matters, a much better determinant is probably geographical distribution in upbringing and unique educational paths and unique previous employments (all of which can just as easily be estimated by a resume as gender).
Diversity is good, but diversity for diversity's sake is not good. I think teams should be made based on merit, and if then the team is also diverse, all the more better. Although important, imo making diversity the most important criteria seems a bit misguided and somewhat idealistic although on paper and in principle it seems to be coming from a good place.
That’s like saying adding a wheelchair lift to a building is ableist. By definition equity requires acknowledging and catering towards different demographics in different ways. I guess if you want to be pedantic, it’s discrimination, but in this case, that’s a good thing.
You could also argue that equity is a bad thing, but I wholeheartedly disagree with that. However, your argument is simply logically unsound.
No, your comparison is probably not what you're trying to say, since wheelchair-bound people have vastly different capabilities than the bipedal population. Unless you're trying to say women have different capabilities, which is true, but probably not the point you want to make.
I am, and it is. Having a diverse board ensures that women’s viewpoints are taken into account in a way that men simply aren’t tuned into. That’s the whole point of diversity in the workplace, and particularly in leadership. Especially with women, who are 50% of the population.
What viewpoints would benefit the company that a woman can have that a man can't? I hear the talking point a lot, and it just doesn't make sense, unless it's a marketing firm or something.
OpenAI? they do. they chose the wrong people, and now they're in damage control mode to something more familiar to the markets without the oxygen necessary to focus on DEI
https://twitter.com/teddyschleifer/status/172721237871736880...