Chat GPT

Sam Altman has been fired:


Strange development, and announcing on a Friday night... suggests maybe they're trying to bury the lede somewhat.
Yeah, just heard about this.
But, although Open AI (and specifically Chat GPT) is huge news, I'm not 100% on the significance of Sam Altman's sacking.
 
Yeah, just heard about this.
But, although Open AI (and specifically Chat GPT) is huge news, I'm not 100% on the significance of Sam Altman's sacking.

Nor am I. The statement raises more questions than answers, but it sounds like he has been deliberately concealing things from the board. What those things are and for what reason he chose to hide them is open to rampant speculation - which naturally the internet is already engaged in.

I think we will find out soon enough, whatever the case.
 
Nor am I. The statement raises more questions than answers, but it sounds like he has been deliberately concealing things from the board. What those things are and for what reason he chose to hide them is open to rampant speculation - which naturally the internet is already engaged in.

I think we will find out soon enough, whatever the case.
I might ask ChatGPT…
 
It's been seen as very, very sudden move. Things to note;

He's been ousted by the "not-for-profit" board. Rules work out that as few as three board members could oust him. There's a big tension regarding not-for-profit duties, and the making of deals in Silicon Valley. As well as selling 49% to MS, Open AI have recently been exploring raising further funding from for-profit organisations.

Funnily enough, Open AI could have delayed / potentially prevented a substantial tanking of Microsoft's stock by waiting another half an houir with the announcement. But the not-for-profit board have zero responsibility to MS (because they are a only minority shareholder).

Sam was speaking for Open AI just yesterday.

Recent timeline at Open AI is rocky;
6th Nov, Open AI announce new features.
9th Microsoft cut employees off from Chat GPT
9th-15th Major outages, attributed to 'DDS'

Other stuff about impending legal challenges regarding using copyright data to train the LLM's. Couple of incidents possibly look like Sam making unwise announcements.

There's also a lot of talk (very unhappy stuff) about his relationship with his poor sister. Recent high profile article on Sam was 25% almost exclusively about her. Loads of gossip, including "he's shadowbanned her using his position at other firms", also people saying other firms (X/Twitter) seem to have limited the spread of her story. Good summary here; https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDc...s-sister-annie-altman-claims-sam-has-severely
 
The way it looks now, there's a shake out, with some other figures resigning / leaving.

It's about the not-for-profit thing. Sama (as he is known) has pushed too far towards commercial goals for the board's liking.

Worth knowing this much; Open AI was formed by Sama, Elon Musk and others and backed heavily by Venture Capitalists as a way to stop Facebook/Google/Microsoft dominating AI. If it was only in the hands of those companies, then none of those people would get a look in. They made a not-for-profit company to keep opportunity open for other companies, they want a rich competitive scene that they can invest in.

For now, Open AI have a substantial lead, and the product is going global. But the lead is precarious. And they still need more funding just to keep delivering. This means for Sam, and for others, it's time to up the commercial side, make deals, and engage in other competitive behaviour.

Some of the dealings will have gone down very badly with the not-for-profit board, who are sworn to defend other goals. His recent appearance in front of Congress (if you know how rich and ambitious he is, you'd have balked at the balls on the guy trying to pretend he's an ideologically driven person -- he really did not appear like a truthful guy, and his appearance is widely taken as being about him seeking 'regulatory capture', trying to influence lawmakers to act in ways that would help secure Open AI's commercial future). Last few days, he invited Microsoft's CTO to the Open AI dev day - this is a massive cultural insult to open source devs. He's talked up "new" products that seemingly are being a bit rushed to market, when they clearly are still struggling a bit to deliver GPT reliably to existing customers.
 
The way it looks now, there's a shake out, with some other figures resigning / leaving.

It's about the not-for-profit thing. Sama (as he is known) has pushed too far towards commercial goals for the board's liking.

Worth knowing this much; Open AI was formed by Sama, Elon Musk and others and backed heavily by Venture Capitalists as a way to stop Facebook/Google/Microsoft dominating AI. If it was only in the hands of those companies, then none of those people would get a look in. They made a not-for-profit company to keep opportunity open for other companies, they want a rich competitive scene that they can invest in.

For now, Open AI have a substantial lead, and the product is going global. But the lead is precarious. And they still need more funding just to keep delivering. This means for Sam, and for others, it's time to up the commercial side, make deals, and engage in other competitive behaviour.

Some of the dealings will have gone down very badly with the not-for-profit board, who are sworn to defend other goals. His recent appearance in front of Congress (if you know how rich and ambitious he is, you'd have balked at the balls on the guy trying to pretend he's an ideologically driven person -- he really did not appear like a truthful guy, and his appearance is widely taken as being about him seeking 'regulatory capture', trying to influence lawmakers to act in ways that would help secure Open AI's commercial future). Last few days, he invited Microsoft's CTO to the Open AI dev day - this is a massive cultural insult to open source devs. He's talked up "new" products that seemingly are being a bit rushed to market, when they clearly are still struggling a bit to deliver GPT reliably to existing customers.

I'll be honest - I don't really get their ownership structure.

The controlling group is a non-profit entity, but it manages the OpenAI Global company, which is a capped profit entity - allowing investors to (at most) 100x their investment.

I've heard people online suggest, as you have, that Sam has been bumped because he got a bit too Silicon Valley with the private capital interests. Then in the same threads I've seen other people speculating that he was fired for trying to protect OpenAI from a complete MS corporate takeover and that he's some hero of AI ethics.

Can't really see the wood for the trees at the moment.
 
This person on Reddit has presented an argument that is still speculative but makes a lot of sense (and is along the same lines as @Summerbuzz post)

Basically comes down to a conflict of when to start labelling an AI model as AGI, given OpenAI's charter has some very specific rules around what can be done commercially with such a product:


1700320362864.png
 
I found these quotes from Altman, a few weeks before he was fired, to be INCREDIBLY insightful...



Quote: "I think there's a real moment of fear, which is like, is this a tool we've built or a creature we've built and what is that going to mean?"

A creature??? Wow.
 
I found these quotes from Altman, a few weeks before he was fired, to be INCREDIBLY insightful...



Quote: "I think there's a real moment of fear, which is like, is this a tool we've built or a creature we've built and what is that going to mean?"

A creature??? Wow.

It’s all moving very quickly, which is scary.
 

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