Most active commenters
  • corethree(4)

←back to thread

OpenAI scrapped a promise to disclose key documents to the public

(www.wired.com)
614 points nickthegreek | 11 comments | 24 Jan 24 19:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.916s | source | bottom
Show context
mgreg ◴[24 Jan 24 19:55 UTC] No.39121867[source]▶
Unsurprising but disappointing none-the-less. Let’s just try to learn from it.

It’s popular in the AI space to claim altruism and openness; OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI (the new Musk one) all have a funky governance structure because they want to be a public good. The challenge is once any of these (or others) start to gain enough traction that they are seen as having a good chance at reaping billions in profits things change.

And it’s not just AI companies and this isn’t new. This is art of human nature and will always be.

We should be putting more emphasis and attention on truly open AI models (open training data, training source code & hyperparameters, model source code, weights) so the benefits of AI accrue to the public and not just a few companies.

[edit - eliminated specific company mentions]

replies(17): >>39122377 #>>39122548 #>>39122564 #>>39122633 #>>39122672 #>>39122681 #>>39122683 #>>39122910 #>>39123084 #>>39123321 #>>39124167 #>>39124930 #>>39125603 #>>39126566 #>>39126621 #>>39127428 #>>39132151 #
ertgbnm ◴[24 Jan 24 20:58 UTC] No.39122564[source]▶
The botched firing of Sam Altman proves that fancy governance structures are little more than paper shields against the market.

Whatever has been written can be unwritten and if that fails, just start a new company with the same employees.

replies(7): >>39122621 #>>39122688 #>>39122787 #>>39123102 #>>39124695 #>>39127641 #>>39128460 #
1. corethree ◴[25 Jan 24 09:07 UTC] No.39127641[source]▶
It was botched because the public was too stupid to see how much of a snake Sam Altman is. He was fired from Y-combinator and people were still Universally supporting him on HN.

IF people hated him he would've been dropped. Microsoft and everybody else only moved forward because they knew they wouldn't get public backlash. Seems everyone fails to remember their own mob mentality. People here on HN were practically worshipping the guy.

Statistically most people commenting here right now were NOT supporting his firing and now you've all flipped and are saying stuff like: "yeah he should've been fired." Seriously?

I don't blame the governance. They tried their best. It's the public that screwed up. (Very likely to be YOU, dear reader)

Without public support the leadership literally only had enemies at every angle and they have nowhere to turn. Imagine what that must have felt like for those members of the board. Powerful corporations threatening aspects of their livelihoods (of course this happened, you can't force a leader to voluntarily step down without some form of a serious threat) and the entire world hating on them for doing such a "stupid" move as everyone thought of it at the time.

I'm ashamed at humanity. I look at this thread and I'm seriously thinking, what in the fuck? It's like everyone forgot what they were doing. And they still twist it to blame them as if they weren't "powerful" enough to stop it. Are you kidding?

replies(4): >>39127820 #>>39128006 #>>39128045 #>>39132814 #
2. christianqchung ◴[25 Jan 24 09:47 UTC] No.39127820[source]▶
Genuine question, what did he do that was so unforgivable? If it's so obvious, you should be able to list what happened in an unambiguous way.
replies(3): >>39127896 #>>39128091 #>>39129871 #
3. mrcode007 ◴[25 Jan 24 09:59 UTC] No.39127896[source]▶
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/self-dealing.asp

In lesser known places such as Wall St, practices like self dealing are considered illegal. In venture they’re often celebrated. Go figure.

I think there’s a general distaste towards setting up networks of companies B, C, D, planning to profit from a success of another company A where a single person controls all the companies and there’s a reasonable expectation of plans to divert business from A towards B, C, D.

I don’t know the details but there seems to be some gripe about it. I’m speculating.

4. mhitza ◴[25 Jan 24 10:15 UTC] No.39128006[source]▶
It's a mistake to claim that Altman has/had universal support in here. I'm neutral towards him for example, and in all this firing minidrama the only thing I was interested in was to learn the motives of his firing.
replies(1): >>39129770 #
5. ◴[25 Jan 24 10:22 UTC] No.39128045[source]▶
6. latexr ◴[25 Jan 24 10:30 UTC] No.39128091[source]▶
We can start with the crypto scam that he’s now trying to pivot to the AI space as the “solution” to the problem he created.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...

7. corethree ◴[25 Jan 24 14:17 UTC] No.39129770[source]▶
For these types of things of course there's alternative opinions. It's like measuring voting... No candidate literally gets 100 percent of the vote.

But to characterize it as something other then overwhelming support to reinstate Sam altman would be false.

Hence why I said most people (key word: most) are just flip flopping with the background trends. Mob mentality.

8. corethree ◴[25 Jan 24 14:26 UTC] No.39129871[source]▶
I can't. Even this company policy being talked about in this thread is ambigiuose. That's the problem.

He was fired from y combinator and the entire board wanted to fire his ass too.

Therefore by this logic he should have universal support for reinstatement and the entire board should be vilified? Makes no sense. But this is exactly the direction of the Mob and was the general reaction on HN.

It was ambigiuose whether Sam was a problem and that makes ambigiuose treatment and investigation warranted. The proper reaction is: "wtf is going on? Let's find out" Instead what he got was hero worship. The public was literally condemning the board and worshipping the guy with no evidence.

And now with even more ambiguous and suspicious facts everyone here is suddenly "level headed." Yeah that's bs. What's going on is mostly everyone here is just going with the flow and adopting the background trends and sentiments. Mob mentality all the way.

replies(1): >>39136458 #
9. insane_dreamer ◴[25 Jan 24 18:27 UTC] No.39132814[source]▶
> I don't blame the governance. They tried their best. It's the public that screwed up.

Yes, the public was to blame, but inherently the board was doomed because OpenAI had morphed from a public benefit mission-driven company to a profit-driven one heavily funded by MSFT which expected its due return. Once the for-profit "sub"-company, the parent mission-driven company was doomed, because most people were going to be working for the profit-driven child company and therefore had different goals (i.e., salary, options) than the mission-driven parent company (scientific breakthroughs, responsible creation/development of AI). This is why the employees (of the child company) revolted and supported Sam (who had reneged on OpenAI's mission and gone full capitalist like any other tech mogul out there). The only question in my mind was whether "Open"AI was always a scam from the start to get attention or a genuine pivot (which the board unsuccessfully tried to stop).

And now responsible AI development is gone and everyone is chasing the money, just like the social media companies did, and well, we know how that ended up (Facebook, Twitter).

Sad day indeed.

10. christianqchung ◴[25 Jan 24 22:43 UTC] No.39136458{3}[source]▶
Yes, I see. I wrote ambiguously myself, I meant to say what justifies calling him a snake. I assume that it was past incidents pre-OpenAI involving ycomb and other things? I understand that you feel the mob mentality is unfair and overwhelming, so please don't keep retreading that.
replies(1): >>39136736 #
11. corethree ◴[25 Jan 24 23:09 UTC] No.39136736{4}[source]▶
Insider info. I know people who know people who terminated Sam Altman from Y combinator. In general there's no solid evidence about Sams character on the surface but you can glean details. There's other people on HN who know of his character as well. Maybe you can find them when sifting through the posts.

It's like Trump. Is trump really a snake? depends on who you ask but there's controversy around trump and in direct parallel there's controversy about Sam as well.