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OpenAI: Cofounders Greg Brockman, John Schulman, along with others, to leave (theinformation.com)
89 points by wavelander 6 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 20 comments



What's fascinating here is not the ongoing drama at OpenAI.

What I believe is most fascinating is that many people are fairly sure that history is being written (assuming Microsoft/OpenAI/sama remain a/the leader on the AI front).

But there is so much secrecy and uncertainty that it's completely unclear what meaning the drama will have in hindsight.

Maybe we reach utopia by 2050 and it all goes down in history as "wow, it was an epic ride worthy of a Hollywood hero story!"

Or we have a few years before a panopticon dystopia where we're all thinking "damn, we came so close to saving it all!"

Or, as is the most likely outcome in everything, it's mostly business as usual for 100 more years, and most of the drama is completely forgotten, while a couple of stories end up as Netflix docu-fiction series to watch on a rainy Sunday.

What's everyone's bet at the moment?


The entire industry is overhyped. It’s going to crash burn. Hundreds of billions of dollars and many terrawatts burned (ie, entire countries worth of electricity) for a slightly better chatbot. It’s highly unsustainable

This timeline is god awful.


The industry always has information before-hand, all those AI capable datacenters aren't being built just because a hunch.

It is possible that the next iteration of GPT4 level technology has already ocurred a year ago, august 2023. The Q* thing was built around that time, probably went online some time after that. Word "in the street" says it is an exponential jump from GPT4 level of "AI cognition".

The whole conversation - papers, press articles - about datawalls, billions sunk "for no reason", etc. could be just empty words since maybe october 2023.

We'll see in couple of months probably.


They've been saying this for years, I'll believe it when I see it.


In a panopticon dystopia, it's likely if humans are left alive, they won't be allowed to know there was a better world before.


Yea this is what Americans who didn’t go through Mao or Stalins erasure of history don’t fully appreciate.


I'm pretty interested in this kind of thing - any resources you could suggest?


Adam Curtis’s Cant get you out of my head and Trauma Zone.

They are a commitment but ultra rewarding.


That AI will be democratized with the free models and every big player like OpenAI will implode at some point because they’re burning too much capital.


fairly sure that history is being re-written


Possibly related to Elon's new lawsuit? https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/5/24213557/elon-musk-openai-...

> The new lawsuit filed in federal court in Northern California on Monday says that Altman and Brockman “assiduously manipulated Musk into co-founding their spurious non-profit venture” by promising that OpenAI would be safer and more transparent than profit-driven alternatives. The suit claims that assurances about OpenAI’s nonprofit structure were “the hook for Altman’s long con.”


lmao amazing


greg seems to take a leave of absence, but the way I see it, he's pulling an ilya due to legal reasons. IOW, he's not allowed to found another company for now.


I'm really interested in the reasons behind Greg leaving. IIUC he was doing great engineering related work.


My guess is internal arguing and different vision paths for things.


Gardening leave eh?


So how toxic is Sam Altman?


OpenAI is falling apart due to its non-profit root.

No sane founder would take a leave during a hyper growth.

If OpenAI wasn't non-profit, the founders would have been billionaires easily.

Greg and co. still have a chance to reach the billionaire status by leaving and founding a new company. Could easily be funded. They would also have much more fun building the tech without the non-profit craps.

The founders start realizing this. They get chastised and criticized without much benefit (e.g. billion dollar). People even thought Sam was a billionaire.

Once OpenAI's lead is squashed by competitors, the company will collapse.






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