If you ever needed a lesson in the difference between power and authority, this is a good one.
The leaders of this coup read the rules and saw that they could use the board to remove Altman, they had the authority to make the move and “win” the game.
It seems that they, like many fools mistook authority for power. The “rules” said they could do it! Alas they did not have the power to execute the coup. All the rules in the world cannot make the organization follow you.
Power comes from people who grant it to you. Authority comes from paper. Authority is the guidelines for the use of power, without power, it is pointless.
Well, surely it’s premature to be making grand statements like this until it actually causes a reversal?
Even if it doesn’t, the consequences of the board ignoring this is catastrophic to the company. One way or another, the workers will have a victory here.
If the workers actually quit and jump to Microsoft, they would be in a much worse position than they are currently in.
Yeah, but he’s like 15 years old. All the moral/ethical fallout he’s ever seen have been in movies and tv shows. Let the kid dream.
People don’t need to be old to make a good point
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Strange women, lying in ponds, distributing swords, is no basis for government!
Hahaha, I was missing that quote a few posts higher
“I am your king!”
“Well, I didn’t vote for you.”
You don’t vote for kings.
You can’t expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!
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Monty Python, my friend
And my comment is the next line in that exchange.
Pardon me I’m a dunce. I’ll see myself out ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
We don’t yet know the cause of this power struggle, so hard to say of they were trying to stage a coup or trying to prevent something else.
But regardless it appears they dun goofed
Nah. Microsoft engineered this whole thing to weaken the boards power and ripen OpenAI up as a less expensive acquisition target.
A most curious suggestion!
Well fucking said
Power courses through you… Authority.
The problem is the employees were paid too much. They have too much and aren’t desperate enough. Need to drop that pay going forward
No working 8-5/6 pm employee, making under 100k a year, is being paid too much
One engineer at a company like this produces literally millions of dollars in revenue and savings. Practically no one is paid “too much” and anyone who says they are doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Even if they make over 100k.
I can assure even at 200k the company would still be extracting value from most employees. They pay as little as the market lets them get away with.
The only people who are paid too much at these tech companies are the execs, especially the ones who have no clue what they’re doing and constantly fuck things up.
$200k a year in Silicon Valley isn’t exactly getting anyone a mansion and a yacht.
You’d be surprised.
No I wouldn’t be. I work in HR as a Generalist, BS Graduate for business management and human resources management, AND I do payroll…
I see it first hand who is disadvantaged and who is privileged. I see who deserves raises and who didn’t do squat for the amount they have been paid (executive teams and presidents/owners) … Your opinions on who is paid too much, are misguided…
Your username doesn’t check out as you clearly are not touching grass
🎲 🎲
two Nat 1s?
Snake Eyes?
It’s rather interesting here that the board, consisting of a fairly strong scientific presence, and not so much a commercial one, is getting such hate.
People are quick to jump on for profit companies that do everything in their power to earn a buck. Well, here you have a company that fires their CEO for going too much in the direction of earning money.
Yet every one is all up in arms over it. We can’t have the cake and eat it folks.
It’s my opinion that every single person in the upper levels is this organization is a maniac. They are all a bunch of so-called “rationalist” tech-right AnCaps that justify their immense incomes through the lens of Effective Altruism, the same ideology that Sam Bankman-fried used to justify his theft of billions from his customers.
Anybody with the urge to pick a “side” here ought to think about taking a step back and reconsider; they are all bad people.
even outside the upper tiers, high paid tech workers do mental gymnastics to rationalize the shittiness they do via their companies while calling themselves liberal. motherfuckers will union bust for their company for a larger TC next year then go on LinkedIn or Facebook and spin it like “I successfully destroyed a small town’s economy, killed a union forming in the division I manage, and absolutely threw my coworkers under the bus this year. My poor father swept countless floors until his hands bled so I can be here today and that’s why I support the small working man and will never forget where I came from #boss”
Yep these fucks are all doom cultists, and I bet more than a few of them are nonironically Roko’s simps
Wisdom.
Well, here you have a company that fires their CEO for going too much in the direction of earning money.
Yeah, honestly, that’s music to my ears. Imagine a world where organizations weren’t in the business of pursuing capital at any cost.
I think what a lot of people object to is the speed and level of complete disorganization that this was done with. Why did Microsoft only get a 60 second warning.
Sounds like the workers all want to end up with highly valued stocks when it goes IPO. Which is, and I’m just guessing here, the only reason anyone is doing AI right now.
This was my first thought… But then why are the employees taking a stand against it?
There’s got to be more to this story
Bandwagoning. The narrative is so easy to spin "hey the evil board of directors forced our beloved CEO to leave. If they do that to /US/ we need to do it back to /them/.
I think that would get most people with moral concerns on board, the rest are just tech bros and would fully support a money grubbing unethical CEO if they thought they might get a bigger bonus out of it.
I mean, isn’t this just an attempt to instil democracy in their workplace? If the vast majority of employees want something, whether or not it is objectively in their best interest, shouldn’t leadership listen to them? Isn’t this just what unions do on the regular?
I have no dog in this fight, I don’t know who’s a good person and who’s bad, but I believe in democracy even when it doesn’t produce the best result. I wish all companies acted upon the wishes of their employees rather than their shareholders, customers or consumers; that would make for far more cohesive and productive workplaces.
Democracy works best when the people voting are well informed. I’m saying it seems like people have been manipulated by a very easy “us vs them” narrative to get the lower employees on board with the wishes of the upper management. And if you poised the question of “what direction should the company take, to pursue ethical AI or to try and make profitable AI” or something similar you probably would get different results.
Also this isn’t really democracy in the work place just people attaching their names to a letter. Of which I’m betting most didn’t even read themselves.
Sure, but the answer to a lack of an informed public is not reverting away from democracy; it’s trying to inform the voters. Very many people vote against their best interests on a regular basis in a political sphere, and we shouldn’t revoke their right to vote as a result. Democracy, as a principle, should still prevail.
I don’t think it’s fair to infantilise people you’ve never met in the way that you are. What evidence do you have that the people who signed on to this letter didn’t read it? What evidence do you have that they’re either naïve or easily manipulated? I think they’re unfair assumptions. They may be true, but I have no idea if that’s the case.
I’m working on the assumption that the people working at the company are a fairly typical example of the general population.
So I’m applying my experiences of people in general to them. It’s would be like assuming they didn’t read a software licence because most people don’t do that. And I know from previous experience that people would get an email asking them to put their name to this letter and would opt to do so based on their existing opinions, and wouldn’t take the time to actually read it. Of course some people did, but I think it’s a safe assumption to say most didn’t.
I’d argue that a group of new-tech employees is a specifically atypical example of the general population. They’re very likely tertiary qualified (minority), they’d all be earning more than six figures (minority), they’re likely on the lower end of the age bracket, and I doubt they’re representative with regards to gender and cultural background as that’s a known issue in tech. I’m not sure that cohort is in any way representative of the general population.
I’m not trying to take a stand here; I have no dog in this fight. I’m just trying to elucidate why making such an assumption might not be wise. As I’ve said before; it may be true, but I (and you) have no idea if that’s actually the case, so assuming it serves no real value.
I too think all the people I disagree with are simply stupid and ill-informed, as that is truly the highest form of intellectual integrity
Not at all what I’m saying but go off.
Whatever I’m betting you didn’t even fully read my comment. You’re obviously not informed or are being manipulated. Maybe if someone just explained it to you differently you’d understand what my comment says and support it
They all want to become millionaires. Think IPO.
I immediately thought that the board was bad, then read the context…
so are the employees backing Altman because it means more money for the company/them? Or is there another reason?
Well, here you have a company that fires their CEO for going too much in the direction of earning money.
I think this is very much in question by the people who are up in arms
Altman went to Microsoft within 48 hours, does anything else really need to be said? Add to that, the fact that basically every news outlet has reported - with difference sources - that he was pushing in exactly in that way. There’s very little to support the fact that reality is different.
The board has given no real reasoning for why they fired him. Until they do, there’s no reason anyone should consider this anything other than an internal power struggle that resulted in a coup.
And Sam didn’t have a job anymore. Why shouldn’t he go work for Microsoft? He was pushed out of OpenAI, is he contractually bound to never do something different?
I’m not the one contesting it, but there’s a strong contingent of people who believe Altman’s interest is in developing AGI and little else. To them, him taking that position could be explained him positioning himself to affect broader influence.
That’s not my personal interpretation, but it is at least a little surprising that the rift is between him and his BOD. Presumably they would all have the same financial incentive to monetize their project, not just Altman.
Personally, I think people being quick to draw any conclusion from this are putting the cart before the horse. It’s not clear to me at all what the competing interests are, if it’s not just completely political posturing to begin with.
Is that actually the case? I’ve not seen any actual information yet about what happened or why they did what they did.
If they’ve actually stated that the guy was fired because the company was going too far down the focus on money making route, that would be huge news I’d be really interested in hearing.
I’m sure some amount of the negative press is propaganda from corporations who would like to profit from using AI and are prevented from doing so by OpenAI’s model some how.
What we have here, is a company that fired its CEO for vague and cryptic reasons and a whole lot of speculation on what the real issue was. These are their own words:
https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition
I’m not trying to defend Altman or the altruism of Microsoft. Although I would like to understand why this firing happened and why it was done in such an abrupt and dramatic manner.
Even if I agree with the decision that doesn’t mean I agree with how the decision was carried out.
From the outside, this story plays out like a bunch of snivelling family members of a lottery winner who plotted to steal all his money and throw him out, because he’s “not candid”.
The rest of the family, who also lived with the guy, clearly don’t agree and are now demanding that the thieves turn themselves in.
I mean, sure they may even have real reasons to kick him out, but man did they fuck this one up…
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The analogy isn’t about stealing money, it’s about kicking the dude from the house.
I could believe that they thought they had good reasons for it, but they’ve done such a bad job of explaining them that even their own employees aren’t buy it, as per original article.
At least they got support in this thread, got to count for something.
I’d like to know why exactly the board fired Altman before I pass judgment one way or the other, especially given the mad rush by the investor class to re-instate him. It makes me especially curious that the employees are sticking up for him. My initial intuition was that MSFT convinced Altman to cross bridges that he shouldn’t have (for $$$$), but I doubt that a little more now that the employees are sticking up for him. Something fucking weird is going on, and I’m dying to know what it is.
Wanting to know why is reasonable but it’s sus that we don’t already know. Why haven’t they made that clear? How did they think they could do this without a solid explanation? Why hasn’t one been delivered to set the rumors to rest?
It stinks of incompetence, or petty personal drama. Otherwise we’d know by now the very good reason they had.
If there was something illegal going on, then all parties involved would have incentive to keep it under wraps.
And possibly legal orders to not discuss it in public
If this circus is what they consider “under wraps” then I don’t know what.
Altman wanted profit. Board prioritized (rightfully, and to their mission) responsible, non-profit care of AI. Employees now side with Altman out of greed and view the board as denying them their mega payday. Microsoft dangling jobs for employees wanting to jump ship and make as much money possible. This whole thing seems pretty simple: greed (Altman, Microsoft, employees) vs the original non-profit mission (the board).
Edit: spelling
That’s what I thought it was at first too. But regular employees aren’t usually all that interested in their company being profit driven. Especially AI researchers. Most of those that I know are extremely passionate about ethics in AI.
But do they know things we don’t know? They certainly might. Or it might just be bandwagoning or the likes.
But regular employees aren’t usually all that interested in their company being profit driven. Especially AI researchers. Most of those that I know are extremely passionate about ethics in AI.
I would have thought so too of the employees, but threatening a move to Microsoft kinda says the opposite. That or they are just all-in on Altman as a person.
The only explanation I can come up with is that the workers and Altman both agreed in monetizing AI as much as possible. They’re worried that if the board doesn’t resign, the company will remain a non-profit more conservative in selling its products, so they won’t get their share of the money that could be made.
Yeah, the speed at which MS snapped him up makes me think of Zampella and West from Infinity Ward.
Microsoft Stock dropped 2% with the announcement, hiring him was just to stop the hemorrhaging while they figure out what to do.
Isn’t that more because MS own lots of OpenAI stock? But then 2% is neither here nor there anyway. More background noise than anything.
This is the most compelling explanation I’ve seen: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2023/11/18/pivot-to-ai-replacing-sam-altman-with-a-very-small-shell-script/?n=@
The tone of the blog post is so amateurish I feel like I’m reading a reddit post on r/Cryptocurrency
Don’t get me wrong, this move from the board reeks of some grade A bullshit but this article is absolute crap. Is this supposed to be a serious journalism?
Thanks for sharing. That is… Weird in ways I didn’t anticipate. “Weird cult of pseudointellectuals upending the biggest name in silicon valley” wasn’t on my bingo board.
IMO there are some good reasons to be concerned about AI, but those reasons are along the lines of “it’s going to be massively disruptive to the economy and we need to prepare for that to ensure it’s a net positive”, not “it’s going to take over our minds and turn us into paperclips.”
Social media already did that.
Not the paperclips part, that might actually be of some use.
The author did a poor job of explaining that. He’s referencing the thought experiment of a businessman instructing a super effective AI to make paperclips. Given a terse enough objective and an effective enough AI, one can imagine a scenario in which the businessman and the whole world in fact are turned into paperclips. This is obviously not the businessman’s goal, but it was the instruction he gave the AI. The implication of the thought experiment is that AI needs guardrails, perhaps even ethics, or else it can unintentionally result in a doomsday scenario.
I don’t know a lot about the background but this article feels super biased against one side.
Can somebody explain the following quote in the article for me please?
Rationalists’ chronic inability to talk like regular humans may even explain the statement calling Altman a liar.
Imagine “roko’s basilisk”, but extended into an entire philosophy. It’s the idea that “we” need to anything and everything to create the inevitable ultimate super-ai, as fast as possible. Climate change, wars, exploitation, suffering? None of that matters compared to the benefits humanity stands to gain when the ultimate super-ai goes online
That was an entertaining read. Thank you.
Even better, though, was this linked article about humans running AI behind the curtain.
https://amycastor.com/2023/09/12/pivot-to-ai-pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain/
A duel between hucksters and the delusional makes sense. The delusional rely on the hucksters for funding whether they want to or not though. No heroes.
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I don’t think msft convinced him with money, but rather opportunity. He clearly still wants to work with AI and 2nd best place for that after openAI is Microsoft
Second best would be Google, but for him it’s Microsoft because he’s probably getting a sweetheart deal as being in control of his destiny (not really, but at least for a short while)
Microsoft has access to a lot of OpenAI’s code, weights etc. and he’s already been working with them. It would be much better for him than to join some other company he has no experience with.
He’s not the guy who writes code, he’s a VC or management guy. You might say he has good ideas, as ChatGPT interface is attributed to him, but he didn’t make it.
You’re not going to develop AI for the benefit of humanity at Microsoft. If they go there, we’ll know "Open"AI’s mission was all a lie.
Yeah Microsoft is definitely not going to be benevolent. But I saw this as a foregone conclusion since AI is so disruptive that heavy commercialization is inevitable.
We likely won’t have free access like we do now and it will be enshittified like everything else now and we’ll need to pay yet another subscription to even access it.
“Hey Bing AI can I get a recipe that includes cinnamon”
“Sure! Before we begin did you hear about the great Black Friday deals at Sephora”
“Not interested”
“No problem. You’re using query 9 of 20 this month. Do you want to proceed?”
“Yes”
“Before we begin, Bing Max+ has a one month trial starting at just $1 for your first month*. Want to give that a try?”
“Not now”
“No problem. With cinnamon you can make Cinnamon Rolls”
“What else?”
“Sure! You are using query 10 of 20 this month. Before I continue did you hear the McRib is back for a limited time at McDonald’s. (ba, da, ba, ba, ba) I’m lovin’ it.”
Please drink one verification can!
Fuckin’ eerie.
You don’t have free access. The best models have always been safeguarded behind paywalls, you have access to parlor tricks and demo shows. This product was born enshittified already. It’s crap that’s only has passable use for mega corporations.
For a while we did with ChatGPT 3.5 before 4.0 came out. I’m not sure what to make of Bing’s AI since they have ulterior motives and is likely a demo for their ultimate form.
We only have free access now because it’s still in development and they’re using our interactions to train from, but when they are on more solid ground I fully expect enshittification.
Should be training AI on teaching models, lecture recordings and textbooks
it will be enshittified like everything else now and we’ll need to pay yet another subscription to even access it.
Yeah this is why I’m so skeptical about the way it will presumably change the world. It will change things, but the economic relations that determine it’s ability to do so will overrule the technological capabilities, since it will be infeasible or not economically viable to deliver on a lot of the hype.
Open AI has been a farce ever since they disabled access to GPT3 for the sake of security.
Facts.
OpenAi’s majority share holder is Microsoft, and they’ve already given OpenAI billions
The way I understand it, Microsoft gave OpenAI $10 billion, but they didn’t get any votes. They had no say in their matters.
On paper, sure. They gave them $10B. They absolutely have some sort of voice here
MS owns 49% of the for profit subsidiary and has no votes on the non-profit overseeing body.
“Go on Sam, make the users enter all their marketable secrets.”
And if they don’t, we’re supposed to keep on believing all of this is somehow benefiting us?
If they released their models Open Source, we wouldn’t have to just believe anything.
It’s supposed to be a nonprofit benefiting humanity, not a pay day for owners or workers. The board isn’t making money off of it.
Giving microsoft control is a bad idea. (duh?)
Giving a single person control is a bad idea, per sam altman.
My take on what happened (we are now at step 8):
- Sam wants to push for more & quicker profit with MS and VC backing, but board resists, constant conflicts
- Sam aligns with MS, hatch a plan on how to gut OpenAI for its know-how, ppl, and tech, leaving the non-profit part bleeding out in the gutter
- Sam & MS set a trap: Sam crosses some red lines, maybe taking commercial decisions without board approval. Potentially there was also some whispering in key ears (e.g, Ilya) by seemingly helpful advisors/VCs to push & pull at the same time on both sides
- Board has enough after Sam doesn’t back down, fires him & other co-founder guy
- MS and VCs go full attack to discredit board. After some info gathering, they realize they have been utterly fucked
- Some chaos, quick decision of appointing/replacing ppl, trying to manage the fire, even talking to Sam (btw this might have been a fallback option for MS, that the board reinstates him with more control and guardrails, weakening the power of the non-profit)
- Sam joins MS, masks are off
- Employees on the sinking ship revolt, even Ilya realizes he was manipulated/fucked
- OpenAI dead, key ppl join MS, tech and rest of the company bought for scraps. Non-profit part dead. Capitalist victory
Source: subjective interpretation/deduction based on the available info and my experience working as a management consultant for 10 years (dealing with lot of exec politics, though nothing this serious)
You’re wrong on point #1. This isn’t being done per Sam Altman for commercial purposes. It’s being done per Microsoft in an attempt to remove the OpenAI board completely. Facebook recently shutdown its AI Ethics division.
All of this is happening in conjunction with each other. Large corporations are trying to privatize AI and using key personnel in the industry to make it seem like a good thing. This wasn’t just Sam Altman. Whoever drafted the letter demanding the board steps down is working with Microsoft to do this.
More than likely, that group went around spreading doomsday to the other employees in an attempt to scare them into fleeing the company.
Sam Altman is just a pawn.
Facebook recently shutdown its AI Ethics division.
Meta is the only player that’s releasing its models to public. Ironically, it is the one being the most ethical in the AI space right now.
“AI Ethics” teams in the Silicon Valley are nothing but rent-seeking doomer cults that leech off on the effort of others and hold back progress with bullshit gatekeeping. There was not a single positive contribution Facebook’s AI “ethics” team ever made.
This is exactly my thoughts on it too, unfortunately.
This is precisely the take I’ve been coming to on this. It fits all the fuckery going on. You can rest assured there is nothing in writing that can back this up, but one day there will be an unrelated lawsuit where it all comes out.
You might very well be correct. The thing that people need to remember is that just because something involves conspiracy doesn’t mean that it’s false. The more people required to be involved in a conspiracy is typically what makes it false. I think it is very within human nature. Especially those of programmers who have traditionally been better treated and paid than most other workers. To side with the profit motive against actual altruism. It’s the tech bro thing to do. I’m going to wait and see what happens. Not take any sides. Even though typically I’m always for supporting the workers.
They have a for profit arm in addition to the non profit.
More like a for profit arm ruled by an non profit head.
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This only makes sense if the goal is to transfer all the profitable technologies to the for-profit arm and then give it to Microsoft and call it ethics.
It makes sense if you can still objectively look at it without the capitalist profit-above-all
Profit plus minimum standards of life lol
You also informed the leadership team that allowing the company to be destroyed “would be consistent with the mission.”
You are God damned right that shutting everything down is one of the roles of a non-profit Board focused on AI safety.
Later: All 195 employees of OpenAI in support of board of directors.
Theydidthemath
They did the monster math
It was a graveyard graph
https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/
To get those labels, OpenAI sent tens of thousands of snippets of text to an outsourcing firm in Kenya, beginning in November 2021. Much of that text appeared to have been pulled from the darkest recesses of the internet. Some of it described situations in graphic detail like child sexual abuse, bestiality, murder, suicide, torture, self harm, and incest.
OpenAI’s outsourcing partner in Kenya was Sama, a San Francisco-based firm that employs workers in Kenya, Uganda and India to label data for Silicon Valley clients like Google, Meta and Microsoft. Sama markets itself as an “ethical AI” company and claims to have helped lift more than 50,000 people out of poverty.
The data labelers employed by Sama on behalf of OpenAI were paid a take-home wage of between around $1.32 and $2 per hour depending on seniority and performance. For this story, TIME reviewed hundreds of pages of internal Sama and OpenAI documents, including workers’ payslips, and interviewed four Sama employees who worked on the project. All the employees spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for their livelihoods.
[…]
Documents reviewed by TIME show that OpenAI signed three contracts worth about $200,000 in total with Sama in late 2021 to label textual descriptions of sexual abuse, hate speech, and violence. Around three dozen workers were split into three teams, one focusing on each subject. Three employees told TIME they were expected to read and label between 150 and 250 passages of text per nine-hour shift. Those snippets could range from around 100 words to well over 1,000. All of the four employees interviewed by TIME described being mentally scarred by the work. Although they were entitled to attend sessions with “wellness” counselors, all four said these sessions were unhelpful and rare due to high demands to be more productive at work. Two said they were only given the option to attend group sessions, and one said their requests to see counselors on a one-to-one basis instead were repeatedly denied by Sama management.
[…]
One Sama worker tasked with reading and labeling text for OpenAI told TIME he suffered from recurring visions after reading a graphic description of a man having sex with a dog in the presence of a young child. “That was torture,” he said. “You will read a number of statements like that all through the week. By the time it gets to Friday, you are disturbed from thinking through that picture.” The work’s traumatic nature eventually led Sama to cancel all its work for OpenAI in February 2022, eight months earlier than planned.
[…]
That month, Sama began pilot work for a separate project for OpenAI: collecting sexual and violent images—some of them illegal under U.S. law—to deliver to OpenAI. The work of labeling images appears to be unrelated to ChatGPT.
Gonna leave this here.
So they paid Kenyan workers $2 an hour to sift through some of the darkest shit on the internet.
Ugh.
What? And here I am doing it for free…
They could have just given 4chan a $1 bounty per piece and they would have gleefully delivered until Lambo.
They are problaby the ones writing those pieces literature
All while getting all high and mighty about how AI is poised to rid humanity of the need to make humans do degrading jobs, mind you.
In some countries 2 bucks an hour puts you above the median
“Above the median” should not be the standard for having to spend all day reading about racism and rape.
I strongly disagree. I have read and seen a lot of messed up things on the internet, I much, much, prefer it to the couple weeks I spent helping out a friend at a part-time service job. (And I was doing it with good friends in a casual environment.)
You’re welcome to strongly disagree that this:
One Sama worker tasked with reading and labeling text for OpenAI told TIME he suffered from recurring visions after reading a graphic description of a man having sex with a dog in the presence of a young child. “That was torture,” he said. “You will read a number of statements like that all through the week. By the time it gets to Friday, you are disturbed from thinking through that picture.” The work’s traumatic nature eventually led Sama to cancel all its work for OpenAI in February 2022, eight months earlier than planned.
Is not worth high pay, but I would say psychologically damaging your employees and then not even giving them the counseling tools to help them is absolutely worth high pay. You should not have to endure things like that for an ‘above the median’ wage in a country where ‘the median’ is still being very poor. I see this as not much better than defending other corporations making poor people in Africa work in mines for a decent wage relative to others in their country but not giving them safety equipment. And they still die poor.
I obviously prefer people aren’t in poverty at all. But I have far more sympathy for the miner risking their lives than someone reading something disgusting/disturbing on the internet, it is not anywhere near close.
You don’t understand how massive psychological damage can be as bad as seriously endangering someone’s physical health?
Just because a graphic description of a dog being raped while a child watches doesn’t bother you doesn’t mean it won’t bother anyone else. In fact, I would wager that it would be pretty disturbing for most people to read that, let alone read that sort of thing for hours every day.
And then there are the ones who are just as low-paid but have to look at images instead. Again, you may not be bothered by CSAM, but I would wager that most people would find looking at that all the time very hard to deal with and it could easily result in PTSD.
What about spending all day being abused by people in a call center?
I mean sure we’d all like to make enough money to live a full life with any job but that’s sadly not a reality and the point you’re missing is that economies don’t work the same as the US in every country.
I live in Argentina, I make 25k a year as a software developer and I’m on the top 1% of highest earners on the country
What about it? It’s nowhere near the same as spending all day reading graphic rape and racist screeds, let alone look at CSAM, which is what they’re paying them to do now. Did you miss the part where they are psychologically damaged from this work and the counseling they have been offered is insufficient? Call centers don’t usually result in that sort of thing.
Also, maybe you shouldn’t expect and defend wages that low for being in the top 1%?
They’re in the top 1% for Argentina, not globally. I mean, it would be nice if every worker made US wages. It’s kinda fucked though that even the lowest paid workers in America can live like kings in the Philippines. I make $42k/yr as an electrical assembler at a plant that manufactures environmental test chambers. If I take my PTO and go to almost any other country, especially Argentina, I can live like royalty for a week.
That’s actually about 3x what the average Kenyan makes, sadly.
This reminds me of an NPR podcast from 5 or 6 years ago about the people who get paid by Facebook to moderate the worst of the worst. They had a former employee giving an interview about the manual review of images that were CP andrape related shit iirc. Terrible stuff
I’m shocked and I shouldn’t be… Poor people
No, you’re right, you should be. We don’t want to normalize this shit, it should continue to shock and offend.
These are the dark sides of modern technology. The kids working cobalt mines. The workers being paid pennies to categorize data so bad that it is traumatic to even read it. I can’t imagine how the people who have to look at pictures can do it.
I feel like I could handle some dark text here or there, but if I had to do it for 40-50 hours a week? Hundreds of passages every day. That would warp me pretty quickly.
The last quote danced around it but if the implication is that they were seeking out and collecting CSAM which is a sex crime to access, possess and distribute, why the fuck are the boards of both companies not in prison and on the sex offender list?!
I mean, I know why, but
I’m sure there’s some loophole there, maybe between countries’ laws. And if there isn’t, Hey! We’ll make one!
They could be working with the governments of relevant countries to develop filters and detection systems.
Isn’t CSAM classed as images and videos which depict child sexual abuse? Last time I checked written descriptions alone did not count, unless they were being forced to look at AI generated image prompts of such acts?
That month, Sama began pilot work for a separate project for OpenAI: collecting sexual and violent images—some of them illegal under U.S. law—to deliver to OpenAI. The work of labeling images appears to be unrelated to ChatGPT.
This is the quote in question. They’re talking about images
IIRC there are a few legitimate and legal reasons to seek CSAM, such as journalism, and definitely developing methods to prevent it’s spread.
I really find this a bit alarmist and exaggerated. Consider the motive and the alternative. You really think companies like that have any other options than to deal with those things?
If absolutely nothing else and even assuming for the sake of the argument that work of this nature is completely justified, they still have to answer for the fact that they severely underpaid foreign workers in clickfarms to do this and traumatize themselves on their behalf presumably so no one in the West had to.
Personally, my opinion is very strongly that if you can’t develop a technology without committing such serious ethical breaches, for example seeking out and accumulating CSAM, then it’s either too early to develop that technology or it’s not worth developing at all. One may counter this with something like “well it’s basically inevitable that unscrupulous people will harm others to develop technology” but I would also argue that while that is true, the inevitability of something doesn’t make the act itself any less unethical.
As a bit of context: The reason why even accessing and possessing CSAM is illegal almost everywhere in the world is because the generally accepted philosophy around this kind of material is that every time someone views it for any reason, it victimizes that child all over again, which is also very consistent with the opinions of actual CSAM survivors so I don’t feel it’s something that the rest of us can really question. I obviously cannot speak on their behalf in any way, but my guess would be the vast majority of CSAM victims do not want photos and videos the most terrifying and traumatic moments of their lives being used in this way, especially not by a for-profit company so they can develop a product with the goal of making themselves richer.
Consider the impact on human psychology. Not everyone has the guts to read and even look through these. And even though they appear to have, it still scars them inside.
Maybe There is no alternative for now, but don’t do that to people with such low paycheck. Consider even the background of these people who may work on these tasks to not even live, but to survive. I would have preffered to wait 10 years than to indulge these horrifying tasks to those persons.
I’m sure there are lots of people who are in jail for creating/sharing or even making a profit off of these content. They could do that work ? But then again, even though it bothers me less than people who has no choice to live their lives, that is still an Idea I find ethically very questionable.
Very much yes police authorities have CSAM databases. If what you want to do with it really is above board and sensible they’ll let you access that stuff.
I don’t doubt anything that OpenAI could do with that stuff can be above board, but sensible is another question: Any model that can detect something can be used to train a model which can generate it. As such those models are under lock and key just like their training sets, (social) media platforms which have a use for these things and the resources run them, under the watchful eye of the authorities. Think faceboogle. OpenAI could, in principle, try to get into the business of selling companies at that scale models they can, and have, trained themselves, I don’t really see that making sense from the business POV, either.
Hold on, why exactly do they need people to label this shit?
How else will the AI be able to recognize that such text is “bad”?
This is actually extremely critical work, if results are going to be used by ai’s that are going to be used widely. This essentially determines the “moral compass” of the ai.
Imagine if some big corporation did the labeling and such, trained some huge ai with that data and it became widely used. Then years pass and eventually ai develops to such extent it can be reliably be used to replace entire upper management. Suddenly becoming slave for “evil” ai overlord is starting to move from being beyond crazy idea to plausible(years and years in future, not now obviously).
Extremely critical but mostly done by underpaid workers in poor countries who have to look at the most horrific stuff imaginable and develop lifelong trauma because it’s the only job available and otherwise they and their family might starve. Source This is one of the main reasons I have little hope that if OpenAI actually manages to create an AGI that it will operate in an ethical way. How could it if the people trying to instill morality into it are so lacking in it themselves.
True. Though while its horrible for those people, they might be doing more important work than they or us even realize. I also kind of trust moral judgement of oppressed more than oppressor(since they are the ones who do the work). Though i’m definitely not condoning the exploitation of those people.
Its quite awful that this seems to be the best we can hope for regarding this. I doubt google or microsoft are going to give very positive guidance whether its ok for people to suffer if it leads to more money for investors when they do their own labeling.
The biopic on this whole thing is going to be hilarious. The rumors are that the board didn’t like how fast the CEO is moving with AI and they’re afraid of consequences of possible AGI (which I don’t think these new LLMs are even close to) but that doesn’t feel like what modern boards of directors are so I don’t trust it.
It’s just baffling how this golden goose was half way strangled in the nest.
They are a non-profit board set up precisely to exercise caution over rapid AI development.
Or this is essentially a hostile takeover by Microsoft. OpenAI is a non-profit with non-shareholders as it’s board. They don’t have a profit motive to develop AI quickly and without safety measures. But the tech they’ve developed has quickly become the hottest product on the planet.
Microsoft was clearly prepared to take on all the employees the second this happened.
Microsoft is huge. They’re always prepared to take on a few hundred new employees.
These will come at a premium. Not only are they high-demand jobs, but they’ll absolutely be sued by OpenAI if they hire away half the staff of a company with which they had a business relationship. Those legal fees alone will be 8 figures even if they win.
they spent 10 figures on openai already. 8 figures for the whole openai team is pennies
I’m positive that lawyers will get super involved and a lot will depend on the various contracts which we don’t have any visibility into. But from an ethical standpoint, the openai board shat in the bathwater and can’t really complain if people get out and move over to a cleaner pool.
Maybe they are not doing it to move to cleaner water but maybe they were promised more fish if they do by certain fisherman conglomerate. But i could be wrong.
Muuuhahahaha… What a shitshow this organisation has become.
With great power comes great corruption.
I find it interesting that you guys are assuming it is the board acting out of greed and not the employees.
OpenAI was, shockingly, built as an open source non-profit. Under the CEO it became close-sourced and profit-driven thanks in large part to the investment from Microsoft.
You will note this letter says nothing about the “mission” of OpenAI. It does, however, talk a lot about reach and being in a “strong position.”
Translation, $$$.
The board’s letter does, however, mention its goal to serve humanity, and its role as a non-profit, while being extremely clear the board members have no equity in the company.
I find it very, very interesting that the employee letter mentions nothing of any greater responsibility.
You will note this letter says nothing about the “mission” of OpenAI. It does, however, talk a lot about reach and being in a “strong position.”
The letter explicitly mentions the “mission” of OpenAI. It’s in three of the five paragraphs.
you guys are assuming
I am not assuming anything, Rookie.
Your reference is lost on me, old man!
The great thing about it is it doesn’t matter what their motives are. They’re gonna get what they want, and i like the overall trend
What makes you think that?
Think what?
That they will get what they want.
Or that motives don’t matter, dealer’s choice, because I don’t believe either tbh.
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So that didn’t take long. Would you care to discuss the reasons why i was right? It doesn’t take a Nostradamus, i just saw 500+ workers actually understanding their worth and showing their power.
And it took like a day. Though not every board member is leaving, yet, if the workers demand it, they will.
Isn’t it great when the parasite class gets shown who’s in charge?
I have an inkling its not that you didn’t think they’d succeed, but that they shouldn’t have. Why?
I find it interesting that you guys are assuming it is the board acting out of greed and not the employees.
I find it interesting that I simply said that there was “corruption”, and the comment I responded to simply said the organization was a “shitshow”, and you interpreted that to mean that one or both of us were saying that the board was acting out of greed.
The great thing about the comment I replied to is that it’s correct really regardless of the situation. My comment was building on that, suggesting that the power of their product led to this, without directly saying who is responsible.
I think you can tell a lot about a person based on how they respond to ambiguity. Do they assume the person is agreeing with them, or do they assume that the person is disagreeing with them?
Edit: You can also tell a lot about a person based on whether they respond to criticism or simply try to silence it with a downvote, for example.
I think you can tell a lot about a person based on how they respond to ambiguity.
You got that precisely correct, but I’m afraid it was too much for many of the simple minds that climb around in the trees here :-)
I feel like this is Satya’s wet dream. He woke up on Friday like normal and went to bed on Sunday owning what, 85% of OpenAI’s top people? Acquisitions aren’t usually that easy.
It seems obvious Sam would want to grow his company to infinity. That’s what VC people do. The board expecting otherwise is strange in hindsight. Now they can oversee the slow, measured adoption of much smaller business while the rest of the team shoots for the stars.
Anyways, RIP y’all. Skynet launches next year.
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It’s just weird when it’s employees standing up against management on behalf of a rich scumbag scammer.
Why do people treat Sam Altman like a villain? He only wanted to use his proprietary mechanical orb to scan the iris of every Kenyan in exchange for proprietary cryptocurrency!
Isn’t he also on Reddit’s board? As far as I’m concerned he enabled Spez.
You know, normie stuff!
That and raping his sister.
Hackernews appears… Divided.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38311509
Between this and the Worldcoin stuff… And the boundless bad ethics of the OpenAI stuff… I wonder how close we are to courting the next Elon Musk
The site hosted by y-combinator defends the former president of y-combinator. Weird
Oh, he was that venture capitalist!
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I’ve never heard of much other news about Altman, what’s wrong?
Do you need to when he’s gone to Microsoft as a reaction to all this?
How is that weirder than regular corporate evils?
Aah, in this case the board is non-profit, so in that context and given the origins of OpenAI as global good open source AI (though the open source part is gone, in part due to his actions). For actual details on what he’s done specifically, others have shared, but again most of that is in context of OpenAI for-profit arm being a subsidiary of the non-profit one is what makes it weird.
Image Text:
To the Board of Directors at OpenAl,
OpenAl is the world’s leading Al company. We, the employees of OpenAl, have developed the best models and pushed the field to new frontiers. Our work on Al safety and governance shapes global norms. The products we built are used by millions of people around the world. Until now, the company we work for and cherish has never been in a stronger position.
The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company. Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAl.
When we all unexpectedly learned of your decision, the leadership team of OpenAl acted swiftly to stabilize the company. They carefully listened to your concerns and tried to cooperate with you on all grounds. Despite many requests for specific facts for your allegations, you have never provided any written evidence. They also increasingly realized you were not capable of carrying out your duties, and were negotiating in bad faith.
The leadership team suggested that the most stabilizing path forward - the one that would best serve our mission, company, stakeholders, employees and the public - would be for you to resign and put in place a qualified board that could lead the company forward in stability. Leadership worked with you around the clock to find a mutually agreeable outcome. Yet within two days of your initial decision, you again replaced interim CEO Mira Murati against the best interests of the company. You also informed the leadership team that allowing the company to be destroyed “would be consistent with the mission.”
Your actions have made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing OpenAl. We are unable to work for or with people that lack competence, judgement and care for our mission and employees. We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAl and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary run by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAl employees at this new subsidiary should we choose to join. We will take this step imminently, unless all current board members resign, and the board appoints two new lead independent directors, such as Bret Taylor and Will Hurd, and reinstates Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.
- Mira Murati
- Brad Lightcap
- Jason Kwon
- Wojciech Zaremba
- Alec Radford
- Anna Makanju
- Bob McGrew
- Srinivas Narayanan
- Che Chang
- Lillian Weng
- Mark Chen
- Ilya Sutskever
Am ai missing smg: Ilya was one of the ppl ousting him, is now signing the leter?
Ain’t that simply a curtain drama for practical acquisition of OpenAI by Microsoft, circumventing potential legal issues?
This started months ago.
