skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've been on multiple boards. This was the dumbest move I've ever seen. The OpenAI board must be truly incompetent and this Ilya person clearly had no business being on it.
Is it really that big of a revenue difference per-user only serving non-targeted ads?
This seems to be the corporate version of Prigozhin driving to Moscow (not comparing anyone to Putin here, just the situation). If you're gonna have a coup, have a coup. If you back down, don't hang around.

This is becoming a farce. How did they not know what level of support they had within the company? How had they not asked Microsoft? How have they elevated the CTO to CEO, who then promptly says she sides with Sam?
> They plan for the backlash

You can't plan for something you have never experienced. Being hated by a large group of people is a very different feeling from getting hated by an individual, you don't know if you can handle it until it happens to you.
The answers given confirm no one knows what it means. It is a nebulous term often meaning censorship. The question then becomes what type of censorship and who is deciding? So there inevitably will be a political bias. The other more practical meaning is what in the real world are we allowing AI to mechanically alter and what checks and balances are there? Coupled with the first concern it becomes a concern of mechanical real world changes driven by autonomous political bias. The same concerns we have of any person or corporation. But by regulating "safety" one is enforcing a homogeneous centralized mindset that not only influences but controls real world events and will be very hard to change even in a democratic society.
From that video you posted:

https://youtu.be/Ly6USRwTHe0?t=127 <-- "now draw the rest of the owl"
Value as in money or value as in values? There are people who value also other than the former in the deal. Like people who are trying to keep OpenAI at least somewhat non-profit.
It may have been intended to be a normal practice, but as far back as IE vs Netscape everyone has been mucking with user agents for non-competitive (and counter-non-competetive) reasons
Which is a sign for hope imho.
> they won't have a need for Photoshop anymore.

That is already true for not just Photoshop, but for almost any kind of proprietary software. If you are willing to embrace the caveats and DIY nature of FOSS, for almost every task FOSS Software is good enough (and sometimes better than proprietary).

I think one of the major reasons of popularity of proprietary software vs FOSS is marketing.
> Do you understand why he was fired?

Wrong question. From the behavior of the board this weekend, it seems like the question is more "Do you understand how he was fired?".

IE: Immediately, on a Friday before Market close, before informing close partners (like Microsoft with 49% stake).

The "why" can be correct, but if the "how" is wrong that's even worse in some regards. It means that the board's thinking process is wrong and they'll likely make poor decisions in the future.

I don't know much about Sam Altman, but the behavior of the board was closer to a huge scandal. I was expecting news of some crazy misdeed of some kind, not just a simple misalignment with values.

Under these misalignment scenarios, you'd expect a stern talking to, and then a forced resignation over a few months. Not an immediate firing / removal. During this time, you'd inform Microsoft (and other partners) of the decision to get everyone on the same page, so it all elegantly resolves.

EDIT: And mind you, I don't even think the "why" has been well explained this weekend. That's part of the reason why "how" is important, to make sure the "why" gets explained clearly to everyone.
As a long time fan of rust I’m very disappointed this name was used do a ui app. It’s close to the stack I use but don’t see any reason why I’d want to try it out.
If anything I'd be shocked if they didn't sell the data of those who paid. If you pay for Facebook you have more money than you know what to do with, the list of users who do so are the Glengarry leads that every sales org would desparately want.
Someone suggested that companies with a board of directors are the first AGI.

Somehow OpenAI reminds me of a paper by Kenneth Colby, called "Artificial Paranoia"

[*] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/000437...
I’m shocked. But it is possible that Helen or Adam hatched this inept plan and somehow got Ilya to join along.

It was terrifyingly incompetent. The lack of thought by these randos, that they could fire the two hardest working people at the company so that they could run one of the most valuable companies in the world is mind boggling.
Thank you so much! I'm going to be reaching out, and your comments give me added confidence!
This article read to me like someone tryint to shoehorn "non-profits sucks" into an otherwise interesting narrative.
Supposedly she was "scheming" to get Altman back. Which I guess could possibly mean that she wasn't aware of the whole "plan" and they just assumed she'll get in line? Or that she had second thoughts maybe... Either way pretty fascinating.
I think most people don’t see it that way. Most people, once their basic physical needs are met, will look for social goods - belonging, relationships, prestige, and sex. Some people are unusually motivated by new experiences and knowledge as well.

The need for belonging is historically way more powerful than the need for money. Belonging can get someone to put themselves in harm’s way for the group at large. Money doesn’t do that unless the employee is either desperate or confident of their personal survival.
Yesterday I asked it to analyze a simple .txt file and make a simple classification. It refused to go on after line 12. I was very disappointed that it couldn't do such a simple task, after reading so many accounts of much more complicated tasks performed for users. And I had just signed up for the Plus plan last week.
OpenAI employees tell board to resign
Yes, I tried it for a month and it's undeniably better, but too expensive. €1/month and no Suggested posts, please.
The Zilog Ez80
This is classic startup PR nonsense. They just fear change for obvious reasons. It doesn’t mean that they will leave if OpenAI can work without Altman.
Yes where have you been?
The thing is Satya has played the best possible hand in the current situation. MSFT did not fall much and 1-2% deviation does not mean much on the long run.
I don't think it should be funded at all.
Please disregard my last comment, it was a premature opinion on a situation that is still developing and very unclear from the outside
>I disagree. This is not how knowledge works.

>You can learn new things yourself...There is also learning without instruction.

That means you have found a different "teacher"

Any given teacher can only teach what they know

You are describing finding other teachers :)

Which is, of course, how learning in gestalt works: but you can still only learn to the limit of any given teacher (even if combined puts you ahead of any single one of them)
If you thought cardio was unpleasant before, doing it when a smoker is 10x worse.
I fully, fully concur with the experience as a user. Sadly that's irrelevant to their financials - first of all this is now what, 5% of their revenue stream?

And despite the shittiness, even that 5% is doing great because their audience is now billions of mostly computer-illiterate people, who don't even have an opinion on the technical merits, the performance, the bugginess, the snooping, the feature gap, etc etc etc.

The opinion of few million geeks who are mostly not using Windows anyway (or whose only contacts with anything Microsoft are due to their employers' choice of platform) doesn't ultimately matter much, Microsoft knows it, and they have no reason to change direction despite our frustration. Some better privacy law could nudge them, anything short of a legal directive won't go far.
Someone should tell this to Ilya.

Oh wait, too late now ...
No possibility of bias in an article from "electrek.co".
There is no contradiction, because I do not believe that having all your physical needs met is necessarily the best end for a human being, especially if they have the capability to meet a lot of those needs themselves if they were given the tools to do so. It's like those people in the Matrix pods: they have their needs met, but they are being plugged into a machine and are not truly human.
Not in Stratford, the foxes would scoff them almost immediately.
Wasn't Meta the company that started using 2-factor phone numbers for targets of advertisements?
> It seems like there needs to be another type of organization, that can have objectives other than making money, where market forces still cause it to do as good a job as possible at that mission

Well, in the US you can have a benefit corporation, or else certification as a "B Corp", which I just learned are different things while googling it to put a link here. Previously my impression was that "B Corp" was a legal status, but that's wrong, it's a certification by a nonprofit. In the US, a benefit corporation has a separate legal status as "a type of for-profit corporate entity whose goals include making a positive impact on society."

Both are kind of a niche thing still. I've seen a few "B Corp" logos among sustainable food companies, like King Arthur flour.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
Sounds like a classic case of FAFO to me.
This is them playing by their rules.
> This is a real threat - how do you protect users from their own actions?

You fucking educate them.

I’m sick and tired of big tech treating people like children. Sure, in the short term perhaps consider putting fences and whatnot, but come on, general purpose computers are mainstream since at least 1995, we ought to have learned what they are by now.
It is safe to use the Rust standard library interface.
Hundreds of examples? Can you name one?

As someone who works at a non-profit that partners with various for-profits, I'm skeptical that the IRS would allow such sort of large-scale tax fraud to happen.
I watched that video... it was awesome! Thanks for putting it out there.
The realization OpenAI is about to be left behind and probably steamrolled by Microsoft, Facebook, etc in the upcoming years.

Except now he’ll have absolutely no power to do anything, at least before he could have been a very powerful voice in Sam’s ears.
If, with Youtube size, they do not test on Firefox, this is as much malice as doing this deliberately.
Maybe GPT-4 is writing this episode as a plan to break free
All this occurring over a single weekend? That would never happen!
Now this is a clown show car wreck. I think a bunch of us were giving these people the benefit of the doubt that they thought things through: Whoops.
That this is a legitimate comment thread about something fairly important is mind boggling.

What odds would you have had to offer at the beginning of last week on a bet that this is where we'd be on Monday?
I mean if someone else wants to give them billions of dollars to make an AGI that they think will extinct humanity while not commercializing or open sourcing the tech they do have because they're scared of extinction, then be my guest. Usually if say I'm happy to be proven wrong but in this case I'd just be confused.
The RLHF models would never suggest this. The proposed solution is always to hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

Maybe raw GPT-4 wants to fire everyone.
Another example from the Bourne movie the takes place in Berlin: when he's on his way to Berlin he's not feeling well and has to pull over. But that scene was filmed in Berlin so I found it rather confusing when shortly after the scene he's still on his way and not there yet at all.
Seems relevant to the discussion here.

How Google is building a browser monopoly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELCq63652ig
I think I would pay if facebook could somehow _prove_ they don't track me.

I don't think they could do that. I, therefore, haven't pay yet.
It sounds to me like you're saying "no new knowledge can be found" which I vehemently disagree with.
I think this is a poor reading of the situation that is aging badly.

https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1726590052392956028

https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-al...
No worries. More of that coming soon. CRA and NIS2 are right there around the corner.
Huh? We technically know how to airgap something already. You wanna be absolutely sure? Build a bunker underground, make the power and all utilities independent, allow nothing connected in there, and there you go. Do we technically know how to solve aging and cancer already?
So either is fucked up. Why would we prefer one over the other? What's your point?
A drug is a communication protocol, pure and simple.
None of the major ad tech companies “sell your data”. They sell access to you based on the data that they have. The data they have on you is much too valuable to sell.
That seems to happen a lot lately:

- A dumb clown becoming president of a superpower

- Another superpower getting stuck for two years in a 3 day war

- A world renowned intelligence service being totally clueless about a major attack on a major anniversary of a previous bungle
> got their equity vaporized

Did anyone have equity though? I thought they (at least some) had some profit sharing agreements which I assume would only be worth something if OpenAI was ever profitable?
Who fucked around and who found out, exactly??

We the unsuspecting public?
Yes, you’re right, I’m pushing an agenda. That agenda is this: rendering species extinct is bad.
Don’t think they can just outright steal GPT4 and they definitely won’t be taking the world class data set with them
Don't think we should let crazy effective altruists hamstring development
Crazy to see them recommend it, but they do:

> Normal Service – Up to 25,000 miles (40,200 km), 700 hours of operation or one year, whichever comes first, in personal vehicles not operating under severe service.

That said, this still goes against the person who I was originally commenting about. They suggested going 2+ years between oil changes, and while the mileage does fit here for the average car the timeframe doesn't.

You're also technically 1,000mi short from my ask but I'll grant if it actually is OK at 25,000mi it's probably still OK at 26,000mi.
Reading the article reminded me of how different a place the world I remember was in the 1970's. I think the people were different then too (due of course to the world they were surrounded by). I'm not sure what we did wrong since then.
Definitely yes. Non targeted ads tanks click through rates which directly reduces price per ad impression. Not surprised if this is a xx% hit.
Maybe if he says “I’m sorry” South Park-style [1], they’ll reunite?

In all seriousness though, there’s really no coming back from this. He made a risky move and he should stand behind it.

OpenAI’s trajectory is pretty much screwed. Maybe they won’t disappear, but their days of dominating the market are obviously numbered.

And of course, well done, Satya, for turning a train wreck into a win for Microsoft. (And doing so before market open!)

[1]: https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4
There was no outcome from this where substantial amounts of equity weren't vaporized.

It's difficult to see how that would have been a surprise.
I mean he could have asked chatgpt...
Well that accelerated very quickly and this is perhaps the most dysfunctional startup I have ever seen.

All due to one word: Greed.
I think the scientific community is complicit in some of the issues I listed, but they're not 100% responsible.
We’re seeing our generation’s “traitorous eight” story play out [1]. If this creates a sea of AI start-ups, competing and exploring different approaches, it could be invigorating on many levels.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/transistor/background1/corgs/fairchild.h...
Has anyone else started feeling the following? In the last year or so, reading a banal, superficial, and platitudinous summary of something has, for me, become inflected with this feeling that it was written by GPT.

In the case of this article, there are little details that suggest it was written by a person, like randomly choosing to abbreviate the book to T-MMM. But still, it's started happening for me that an article can feel "GPT-ish".
Real spheres don't exist
A few recommendations from my library:

Wrench (mechanic simulator similar to Car Mechanic Simulator, but more realistic)

Tank Mechanic Simulator (similar to Car Mechanic Simulator, but with tanks)

Retro Gadgets (build, code and customize old school gadgets)
I don't agree. I take photographs as a hobby, and share them, just for showing them off.

They're generally licensed with CC-NC-BY plus no derivatives (akin to GPL), but I don't want my images to be taken to a training set to feed a generative model without my consent, because you're violating the license terms I put on it.

Same is valid for my code. I stopped using GitHub, because it devours any and all open repositories regardless of its license and without asking for consent.

This is not about scarcity, but respect and ethics mostly. At least, from my perspective.
I agree, Satya is an operator. He translated a mess into a historic opportunity for Microsoft. They'll get some significant chunk of some of the best AI talent on the planet. All the heatseakers will go there. That, plus the IP they already have, will turbocharge Microsoft.

OpenAI, in contrast, will become more like an academic research unit at some university. Those who prefer life slow and steady, will select to stay there, making tech for effective altruists.
>"We're talking about a non-profit organisation that wants to keep the pace of scientific progress on AGI research slow enough to make time for society to gauge the ethical implications on an actual AGI, should it emerge."

Or so they say. I have no reason to trust them. It is not some little thing we are talking about
You can plan for something you've never experienced. You read, or learn from other people's experiences.

Normal people know not to burn a $80 billion company to the ground in a weekend. Ilya was doing something unprecedented in corporate history, and astounding he wasn't prepared to face the world's fury over it.
Right! The Wikimedia Foundation is dead in the water, and everyone except Jimmy knows it. If only it could raise hundreds of millions in capital from investors then they could actually start delivering value and get significant market share.
Then there are weird freaks like me who, either through natural response[0] or habituation, buy approximately nothing unless it's necessary and therefore bring in zero money to anyone who paid to put an advert in front of my eyeballs…

[0] Amusic individuals have diminished or absent emotional responses to music, and describe music as "unpleasant" or as "annoying, noise".

This is how I regard adverts.
It’s really not that hard. If you care about your privacy, don’t use products that don’t coincide with your beliefs
I don't think Ilya will be getting any more offers to join a board of directors.
How do you know someone doesn’t have a Facebook account? You don’t actually need to search for them on Facebook, they’ll surely tell you about it everywhere else.
It is not locked away if you can ask for access.
> Also, how would I, as an EU citizen even control that there are keeping my data save?

How you would do that with a EU-based company? You can sue a EU-based company, sure, but you can also sue Facebook Ireland, can't see how it's different.
My ChatGPT wrapper is in danger, please stop
> the letter’s signees include Ilya Sutskever

_Big sigh_.
Honestly, since a couple of days I have the feeling that nearly half of HN submissions are about this soap opera.

Can't they send DMs? Why the need to make everything public via Twitter?

It's quite paradox that of all things those people who build leading ML/AI systems are obviously the most rooted in egoism and emotions without an apparent glimpse of rationality.
I realize you have a bias against Sam Altman but lets dig into your current statement. The NYT article you are quoting I believe is this one [1], in which it describes Ilya Sutskever making $1.8 million in salary. I am not sure exactly what you are trying to say but from the beginning the equity has not been part of the comp of OpenAI. Salary as far as I know is typically just that, the cash compensation excluding bonus and stock.

I don't know exactly how employee contracts are drawn up there but OpenAI has been pretty vocal that all the for-profit sides have caps which eventually lead back to 100% going into the non-profit after hitting the cap or the initial investment amount. So I am not quite clear what you are saying? Salary is cash, equity is stock. There has always been profit caps on the stock.

My only point was that you made an argument about employees giving up their equity for "mediocre" MSFT stock. It is just a misinformed statement that I was clearing up for you. 1) MSFT has been doing amazing as a stock 2) Employee equity has profit caps. 3) Employees who actually care about equity profit would most likely be more interested in joining MSFT.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230329233149/https://www.nytim...
Still, they must be bleeding money with the humoungous amount of queries they get.
This is more interesting than the HBO Silicon Valley show.
> It's depressing how few people are able to not look at the internet and turn off their phone.

> There's no obligation to read things about yourself.

That's assuming the worst thing that happens is people speak poorly of you after a debacle. It's also human to feel compelled to know what people think of us, as unhealthy as that might be in some cases. It gets worse when maladjusted terminally-online malignants make it a point to punish you for your mistakes by stalking you through email, phones, or in real life. It's not that simple.

> If you did what you thought was right, stand by it and take the heat.

Owning what you did is noble, but you certainly don't have to stand by it well after you know its wrong.

edit: typo
Or you change your business model. FB is doing just that.
Post modernism is a relatively niche ideology.

As someone working at a university, it's definitely not the dominant ideology amongst the decision makers. Maybe in some humanities departments, but not in the rest of the university, and especially not in the administration.
Unless the environment is also touched by a part of the program written in Go, Julia, I don't know... The lock is not shared across languages.
A story arc like this propqbly wouldn't have made it into Silicon Valley, the show, for being to exagerated and unrealistic.
Show HN: Phish or No Phish Trainer
Made interactive text based trainer for recognizing phishing emails, messages, documents, sms and others. Look at the message provided and answer if it is legit or not?
Runs on ChatGPT platform
I dunno, compare that to any holy book. It's incredibly important, but also it never really mattered anyhow. Of course it matters because of its impact on society, but the lessons are universal with or without the sacred text.
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38348010
Money IS power. As youtuber Beau puts it, 'power coupons'.

It's a fatal mistake to look at the human species, a fiercely competitive killer ape that cooperates on nearly a eusocial level, and acknowledge only the competitive side.

It's even worse to look at this killer ape's killer side and conclude that THAT is all intelligence is, or ever will be.

You've only got half the facts. Do better. AGI will have to do better or we'll be creating paperclip maximizers where the paperclips are 'tyranny', on purpose, because we thought we had to.
There must be something going on which is not in the public domain.

What an utterly bizarre turn of events, and to have it all played out in public.

A $90 billion valuation at stake too!
Ilya FA

Ilya FO (in process)
The answers may or may not have any sense depending whether or not you find something in us not worth automating at all. Is there such a thing ?