zlacker

>>staran+(OP)
At the end of the day, we still don't know what exactly happened and probably, never will. However, it seems clear there was a rift between Rapid Commercialization (Team Sam) and Upholding the Original Principles (Team Helen/Ilya). I think the tensions were brewing for quite a while, as it's evident from an article written even before GPT-3 [1].

> Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting pressure for ever more funding to erode its founding ideals of transparency, openness, and collaboration

Team Helen acted in panic, but they believed they would win since they were upholding the principles the org was founded on. But they never had a chance. I think only a minority of the general public truly cares about AI Safety, the rest are happy seeing ChatGPT helping with their homework. I know it's easy to ridicule the sheer stupidity the board acted with (and justifiably so), but take a moment to think of the other side. If you truly believed that Superhuman AI was near, and it could act with malice, won't you try to slow things down a bit?

Honestly, I myself can't take the threat seriously. But, I do want to understand it more deeply than before. Maybe, it isn't without substance as I thought it to be. Hopefully, there won't be a day when Team Helen gets to say, "This is exactly what we wanted to prevent."

[1]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openai...

>>shubha+B7
What the general public thinks is irrelevant here. The deciding factor was the staff mutiny, without which the organization is an empty shell. And the staff sided with those who aim for rapid real world impact, with directly affects their career and stock options etc.

It's also naive to think it was a struggle for principles. The rapid commercialization vs. principles is what the actors claim to rally their respective troops, in reality it was probably a naked power grab, taking advantage of the weak and confuse org structure. Quite an ill prepared move, the "correct" way to oust Altman was to hamstring him in the board and enforce a more and more ceremonial role until he would have quit by himself.

>>cornho+xa
> deciding factor was the staff mutiny

The staff never mutinied. They threatened to mutiny. That's a big difference!

Yesterday, I compared these rebels to Shockley's "traitorous eight" [1]. But the traitorous eight actually rebelled. These folk put their name on a piece of paper, options and profit participation units safely held in the other hand.

[1] >>38348123

>>JumpCr+dd
I think you are downplaying the risk they took significantly, this could have easily gone the other way.

Stock options usually have a limited time window to exercise, depending on their strike price they could have been faced with raising a few hundred thousand in 30 days, to put into a company that has an uncertain future, or risk losing everything. The contracts are likely full of holes not in favor of the employees, and for participating in an action that attempted to bankrupt their employer there would have been years of litigation ahead before they would have seen any cent. Not because OpenAI would have been right to punish them, but because it could and the latent threat to do it is what keeps people in line.