zlacker

>>mjcl+(OP)
Well, that statement lays out a damning timeline:

- OpenAI approached Scarlett last fall, and she refused.

- Two days before the GPT-4o launch, they contacted her agent and asked that she reconsider. (Two days! This means they already had everything they needed to ship the product with Scarlett’s cloned voice.)

- Not receiving a response, OpenAI demos the product anyway, with Sam tweeting “her” in reference to Scarlett’s film.

- When Scarlett’s counsel asked for an explanation of how the “Sky” voice was created, OpenAI yanked the voice from their product line.

Perhaps Sam’s next tweet should read “red-handed”.

>>anon37+t5
I know I have a reputation as an OpenAI hater and I understand why: it’s maybe 5-10% of the time that the news gives me the opportunity to express balance on this.

But I’ve defended them from unfair criticism on more than a few occasions and I feel that of all the things to land on them about this one is a fairly mundane screwup that could be a scrappy PM pushing their mandate that got corrected quickly.

The leadership for the most part scares the shit out of me, and clearly a house-cleaning is in order.

But of all the things to take them to task over? There’s legitimately damning shit this week, this feels like someone exceeded their mandate from the mid-level and legal walked it back.

>>benree+IG
It really doesn't sound like a "mid-level exceeding their mandate".

It sounds like Altman was personally involved in recruiting her. She said no and they took what they wanted anyway.

>>crznp+fJ
It feels weird to be defending Altman, but those of us who go hard on the legitimately serious shit are held to a high standard on being fair and while multiple sources have independently corroborated e.g. the plainly unethical and dubiously legal NDA shit Vox just reported on, his links to this incident seem thinly substantiated.

I’m not writing the guy a pass, he’s already been fired for what amount to ethics breaches in the last 12 months alone. Bad actor any way you look at it.

But I spent enough time in BigCo land to know stuff like this happens without the CEO’s signature.

I’d say focus on the stuff with clear documentary evidence and or credible first-hand evidence, there’s no shortage of that.

I get the sense this is part of an ambient backlash now that the damn is clearly breaking.

Of all the people who stand to be harmed by that leadership team, I think Ms. Johansson (of who I am a fan) is more than capable of seeing her rights and privileges defended without any help from this community.

>>benree+oK
I retract my remarks trying to give the benefit of the doubt on this, it’s now covered thoroughly by the credible mainstream press and I apologize to both the siblings and Ms. Johansson for being skeptical.

There is value in OpenAI, there are (a steadily shrinking number of) ethical pros there guilty of nothing worse than wanting to make a good living. Groups including but not limited to the voice group have done excellent, socially positive work.

But the leadership team is a menace (as I’ve been saying for years) and it’s just time for a clean sweep at the senior leadership level.

I’ve been such a vocal critic for so long that I’m always looking for an opportunity to present a balanced view whenever there’s a reasonable doubt.

Wrong again, me.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/05/opena...