this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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I mean, there was all that drama where the board formed to prevent this from happening kicked out the CEO trying to do this stuff, then the board got booted out and replaced with a new board and brought back that CEO guy. So this was pretty much going to happen.
And some people pointed it out even back then. There were signs that the employees were very loyal to Altmann, but Altmann didn't meet the security concerns of the board. So stuff like this was just a matter of time.
People pointed this out as a point in Altmann's favor, too. "All the employees support him and want him back, he can't be a bad guy!"
Well, ya know what, I'm usually the last person to ever talk shit about the workers, but in this case, I feel like this isn't a good thing. I sincerely doubt the employees of that company that backed Altmann had taken any of the ethics of the tool they're creating into account. They're all career minded, they helped develop a tool that is going to make them a lot of money, and I guarantee the culture around that place is futurist as fuck. Altmann's removal put their future at risk. Of course they wanted him back.
And frankly I don't think you can spend years of your life building something like ChatGBT without having drunk the Koolaid yourself.
The truth is OpenAI, as a body, set out to make a deeply destructive tool, and the incentives are far, far too strong and numerous. Capitalism is corrosive to ethics; it has to be in enforced by a neutral regulatory body.
The engineers are likely seeing this from an arms race point of view. Possibly something like the development of an a-bomb where it’s a race against nations and these people at the leading edge can see things we cannot. While money and capitalistic factors are at play, foreseeing your own possible destruction or demise by not being ahead of the game compared to china may be a motivating factor too.
Bless your heart, sweet summer child.
Effective altruism is just capitalism camoflauge, it's also just really bad at being camoflauge
helps you get a lot of community support and publicity during startup and then you don't have to give a damn about them once you take off
Effective altruism could work if the calculation of "amount of good" an action creates wasn't performed by the person performing that action.
E.g. I feel I'm doing a lot of good buying this $30m penthouse in the Bahamas.
Did they kick the CEO out for doing this or was it because of something else?
This summary article says the board stated:
The article also says:
As far as I know the exact issue was not made public, but basically the board is there to make sure the company puts ethics over profits. Altman was hiding stuff from the board (presumably because they would consider it in conflict with their goal), and so the board fired him. But then there was an uproar from the investors, Microsoft almost ended up hiring half the company as they threatened to resign in droves, and in the end the board resigned and was replaced.
Does that answer the question?