There's no obligation to read things about yourself.
If you did what you thought was right, stand by it and take the heat.
Disconnect. Go to work. Do the work. Read a book or watch some TV after work. Go to bed. Wait a few weeks. $&#@ the world.
He is now the 'effective CEO' of OpenAI. He still has to go to work tomorrow, faced with an incredibly angry staff who just got their equity vaporized, with majority in open rebellion and quitting to join Microsoft.
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?
Now its guaranteed to generate 0 profits, so all that 'profit share/pseudoequity' is worth nothing.
Was it though? I'd agree that it was almost guaranteed to have a very high valuation. However profitability is a slightly different matter.
Depending on their arrangements/licensing agreements/etc much of those potential profits could've just went to MS/Azure directly.
Literal fan fiction
You've just pointed out the big issue with a non-profit. There is no equity to vaporize, so no one is kept in check with their fantastical whims. You and I can say 'safe AI' and mean completely different things, but profitable next quarter has a single meaning.
It's difficult to see how that would have been a surprise.
At least Microsoft thought it bought something for $13B.
Just as wealthy donors to medical research don't get to own the results of the research their money funded.
Just as Microsoft doesn't get to own a part of Linux, for donating to The Linux Foundation.
Etc...
> 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
What if it turned out to totally wrong? standing by it would just make thing even worse.
If only it was that simple.
The internet mob will happily harass your friends and family too, for something they feel you did wrong.
And on top of that are people in the mob who feel compelled to take real world action.
It is actually dangerous, to be the focus point of the anger of any large group of people online.
Some people change their minds, maybe they made a mistake, nobody knows. It’s like fog of war, and everyone just makes speculations without any evidence.
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.
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.
Text doesn't convey emotions, and our empathy doesn't work well for emotions we have never experienced. You can see a guy that got kicked in the balls got hurt, but that doesn't mean you are prepared to endure the pain of getting kicked in your balls or that you even understand how painful it is.
Also watching politicians it looks like you can just brush it off, because that is what they do. But that requires a lot of experience, not anyone can do it, it is like watching a boxing match and think you can easily stand after a hard punch in your stomach.
Sure, but you do your best not to be kicked in the balls.
I mean, he didn't have a button on his desk that said, "torch the shares", but he ousted the CEO as a way to cut back on the things that might have meant profit. Did he think that everyone was going to continue to want to give them money after they signal a move away from profit motives? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to think that one through.
I think he was just preoccupied with AI safety, and didn't give a thought to the knock on effects for investors of any stripe. He's clearly smart enough to, he just didn't care enough to factor it into his plans.
If you project your personal hopes which are different from this into the hype, this is your personal problem.
So whose experiences was he supposed to read about?
I would say the answer is, demonstrably yes:
To think it would grow just as fast, or in the ways it did? Acquires are seldom left alone to do magic.
Sutskever didn't get on the board by cunning politicking and schmoozing like most businesspeople with that sort of position. He's an outstanding engineer without upper management skills. Every meet one of those?
I haven't people any reasonably intelligent person so unaware of real world that they can berate a colleague so publicly and officially and think "Hey! I am sorry man" will do the trick.
Has OpenAI been burnt to the ground?
And it's just Monday afternoon.
3 CEOs in 3 days, isn’t burny, either. There’s the guy they fired, the person they had take on the role so they have someone in the role, and then someone they hired to be CEO. I guess they could have gotten that down to 2 by jumping immediately to their intended replacement, but not having them ready to start immediately doesn’t seem odd.
And yeah, it’s just Monday afternoon. If in the next few days, a sizable chunk of those who threatened to quit do so, then that would be burny. But we ain’t there yet.
It's impressively operatic. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.
"Terraform raised prices, losing customers"? whatever, I never heard about it.
"ChatGPT's creators have internal disagreement, losing talent"? OH NO what if ChatGPT dies, who is going to answer my questions?? panic panic hate hate...
This is the cheapest and most cost-effective way to run things as an authoritarian -- at least in the short term.
If one is not "made of sterner stuff" -- to the point where one is willing to endure scorn for the sake of the truth: - Then what are you doing in a startup, if working in one - One doesn't have enough integrity to be my friend