[HN Gopher] Greg (2017) ___________________________________________________________________ Greg (2017) Author : admp Score : 137 points Date : 2023-11-18 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.samaltman.com) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.samaltman.com) | moralestapia wrote: | :') | unglaublich wrote: | I see an analogy with AI becoming _so good_ that it will attempt | to remove the human to improve its reward. | someperson wrote: | Very effusive and well-written praise for Sam Altman's friend and | colleague, Greg Brockman. | thepablohansen wrote: | > with an average email response time of about 5 minutes to | anything. | | Seems like he's always considered this a good measure of a | founder's quality. | | From a 2019 interview- | https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/sam-altman/ | | > You know, years ago I wrote a little program to look at this, | like how quickly our best founders -- the founders that run | billion-plus companies -- answer my emails versus our bad | founders. I don't remember the exact data, but it was mind- | blowingly different. It was a difference of minutes versus days | on average response times | jacquesm wrote: | That seems a bit simplistic and 'bad founders' begs for a | definition because it can't just be 'answers email slowly'. | shrimpx wrote: | I take it bad founders means the founders that run less than | billion-plus companies. | kevinmchugh wrote: | I would absolutely believe that founders who (go on to) run | billion dollar companies make a point of replying to YC | partners very quickly. "Successful executives are highly | responsive to investor and advisor emails" seems eminently | plausible. It doesn't suggest that they're equally responsive | to all emails, but they've got a sense of who's | important/needs to feel important. | jacquesm wrote: | I'm sure they do. But you can also interpret that as | 'bootlickers are the kind of people I like'. And that is | not necessarily equivalent to 'good founders'. So I think | it is a bit of a thin element to judge people by. | nwiswell wrote: | I think it is maybe best reframed as "good founders from | the perspective of those who control capital". | | Whether these people ultimately improve society, or | create a better sense of purpose for their employees, or | provide visionary direction for the company at a higher | rate than other founders is kind of orthogonal (or | perhaps anticorrelated) to being good stewards of | invested capital. | | Founders can, to some extent, get help with the other | things, but I think it can be reasonably argued that if | they're not _personally_ regarded as good stewards of | capital, then the whole enterprise is in doubt. | jacquesm wrote: | Precisely. Good founders, bad founders, in the eyes of | the beholder. | | I'm pretty sure I have a completely different opinion on | what constitutes a good founder and what constitutes a | bad one compared to Sam Altman, fortunately I don't have | enough clout to make authoritative statements on the | subject. | sprobertson wrote: | P|Q != Q|P | snowwrestler wrote: | One thing to keep in mind is that this was the email response | time to _Sam Altman, the head of YC._ What competent startup | founder waits to reply to that? | | Responsiveness as a general approach to all email is a bad | idea. But one needs to know who are the high-priority emailers, | and how much they value quick replies. | nopromisessir wrote: | I read alot. Saw many rumors. I'm aware of the various 'insider | scoops'. I still maintain we really don't know what happened, | more or less. | | I'm certain of this though... when Greg Brockman walked out the | door, they lost a major piece of talent. | | That guy was a true believer. His enthusiasm was infectious. It | traveled across the video link... You could feel how passionate | he was about the future of artificial intelligence and it's | capacity to change humanity for the better. | | I'm sure he'll throw himself at something very cool for the next | run. | andygeorge wrote: | > I read alot. | jackblemming wrote: | So what did Sam actually do besides a social media startup that | was more or less a flop into being gifted a high position at | ycombinator where he then had a few good investments during | literally the easiest time to invest in tech history? I'm sure | there's something I'm missing, but there's not much public info. | Mithriil wrote: | Do you even understand how much work is necessary to put in, to | influence a whole industry massively and with the biggest | players? | jackblemming wrote: | Maybe some want to celebrate BSers like Adam Neumann or | Elizabeth Holmes who are good at pretending to be important | and conning investments, but it never really impressed me, | sorry. | | I'll stick to celebrating the actual brains, like Ilya | Sutskever. | csours wrote: | As the farmer said, "We'll see" | | https://impossiblehq.com/well-see/ (or google "we'll see | story") | ignoramous wrote: | This is a common retort, but after his run at YC (hand-picked | by Paul Graham) and OpenAI (taking on Google at AI is no mean | feat, despite the backing), and his ongoing work with Helion | Energy and WorldCoin, it is safe to say Sam has more than | earned his place, perhaps may be twice over, among SV royalty. | And he's not even 40. | | http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html | polygamous_bat wrote: | > WorldCoin | | Is that supposed to make him look good? Because it doesn't, | in fact it makes him look very out of touch at best and a | complete fool at worst. | torginus wrote: | I just realized it's THAT Helion. Their fusion experiments | are not without controversy. | | Here's a video on explaining how it works: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38 | | And here's a video explaining what's wrong with the scheme: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vUPhsFoniw | | But the TLDW version is that environment required for fusing | He3 with deuterium also leads to deuterium fusing with | itself, a reaction that creates neutron radiation that | irradiates its environment. | shakow wrote: | > that irradiates its environment. | | What is the issue, as long as the containment containers | are properly designed? | codethief wrote: | Radiation damage to the reactor structure and radioactive | waste, among other things. | joak wrote: | The second video is just a nonsense troll, if you want good | level conversations and skepticism about Helion you'd | better check what the fusion subreddit says about it https: | //old.reddit.com/r/fusion/search/?q=helion&restrict_sr... | | Long story short: Helion plans a net-electricity demo in | 2024 and to start selling to the grid in 2028. The timeline | seems too good to be true but no one says it's impossible. | Many says they have not enough publications and that there | are many scientific unknowns. Failure is a possibility, | success also. Given the timeline we'll know soon. | stonogo wrote: | "Hand-picked by so-and-so" used to have another name: "one of | the good ole boys." Before that, in England, one was "sound." | It's not a qualification, it's an anointing. | | So we have "handing out money," OpenAI, a typical fusion | outfit (breakeven next year, every year), and a | cryptocurrency that has already been chased out of the one | country that tried to adopt it. | | I like Sam Altman and he seems to be a genuine person with | laudable goals, but OpenAI is the only place where he really | seemed to deliver, and even then there are a lot of people | unhappy with the non-profit/private subsidiary surprise | structure. | bmitc wrote: | I just want to clarify that it isn't "his" work, is it? It's | more that he's attached himself to those projects. | roflyear wrote: | I haven't worked for Sam, and expect most people commenting | on him haven't either, so they only have his interviews and | his public commentary to judge him by. From that commentary | he seems extremely ... vanilla? But that is probably good for | an exec. | | I haven't read any of his blogs and thought "wow, how | insightful?" - rather, they read similar to press releases I | see constantly on LinkedIn. "You have to put something out | there" type of stuff. Just doing it to do it, not to share | insight. | | That's my take, anyway, from basically all I've seen of him, | and this gives a "not special" vibe, but my gut tells me | that's very, very intentional ... | shmatt wrote: | Sounds like they were the perfect fit in the pre GPT-3, ChatGPT, | DALL-E world | | Honestly I don't understand the drama around 2 executives who | have not done any transformer research or whatever will come | after transformers | | The GenAI world will be fine without the ceo of cryptoballs or | whatever his other company is | polygamous_bat wrote: | > whatever will come after transformers | | I feel like this is a point that is not being talked about | enough. Yes, OpenAI gave us GPT and DALL-E. But had sama and | gdb remained there, would we have gotten anything new that is | as groundbreaking as the original GPT and DALL-E, or would we | have continued getting GPT-12 and DALL-E-19? Sure, iPhone 15 | sells, but some may say Apple has stagnated since iPhone was | released. | AussieWog93 wrote: | But now, are we even going to get GPT-4 or GPT-5 with the | same level of polish that sama would have put into it? | | I'd argue right now that we're at the "iPhone 3G" point on | the technology curve, with significant improvements to come | over the next few years as the tech gets polished. | dlivingston wrote: | Sorry to nitpick, but -- | | OpenAI was releasing innovations in the GenAI space at a | breakneck pace. Remember, GPT-1 didn't change the world, it | was GPT-3.5/4 from _earlier this year_. OpenAI was at peak | innovation when sama and gdb left. | | And folks used to say Apple was stagnant, but after Apple | Silicon completely upended the personal computer world (along | with some other things) the dissidents have been mostly | silent. | davidy123 wrote: | Apple Silicon made x86 silicon look bad, but what has it | really upended? Macs are taking over more of the personal | computer market, but hard to say what the factor is there. | I think it's mostly network effects, partially due to their | shameless proprietary approach. PCs, Apple or other, are | kinda generally good, no matter what the price or combo, | and disappearing at the same time, a lot can be done with | just a browser on any foundation. Apple seems to be years | behind or nonexistent where things are really changing, AI | and cloud. | bmitc wrote: | > Apple Silicon completely upended the personal computer | world | | How did it upend the personal computer world? Apple's chip | developments are an amazing technological achievement, but | they don't have anything innovative to put them in. Apple | slaps them in grossly thermally limited form factors, where | the chips can't operate anywhere close to their capability. | It's kind of a silly exercise, in my opinion. At the end of | the day, Apple has made the same computers, phones, and | tablets for the past 10 years. I'm not sure where the | innovation is. | gdhkgdhkvff wrote: | From the various sources it appears that they're being fired | because they were trying to push the envelope TOO HARD, not | the other way around. | | And, outside of the Cynicism-Is-Intelligence hackernews | crowd, basically everyone has been fawning over the breakneck | speed of progress coming out of OpenAI, even at the recent | OpenAI devdays. | sctb wrote: | I don't know gdb very well, but I did get to chat with him a | bit about what he was working on around the time of this | article, which was mostly infrastructure grunt work, removing | obstacles and procedural rough edges--basically anything to | make the researchers and engineers as happy and productive as | possible. It is so, so easy to undervalue that kind of work | done by a totally brilliant and capable technologist. For an | early stage startup it's gold. For a later stage startup it's | gold. | avindroth wrote: | Why do you think people undervalue it? Very curious. | sctb wrote: | It's the impression I got from "who have not done any | transformer research", as well as the fact that sama wrote | this article. | d3ckard wrote: | You can't demo it and sell it. | swatcoder wrote: | It's gold, but it's not singular. There are many people who | have been doing that work for decades and are able to step | into the role. The same can't be said for the R&D work he's | supporting, as comparatively few have deep insight or | experience for working with the innovative tech yet. | | So while Greg's work would have been extremely valuable, it's | value is on a lesser order of magnitude than many of the | other researchers and engineers who OpenAI had collected into | its ranks. More essential innovative value will be lost to | the bleed of loyalists and startup bettors who will peel off | from those ranks. | sctb wrote: | I'm suggesting that there are not many people who have been | doing that work, at least not at the same level or to the | same effect. He did it with Stripe and OpenAI, back to | back. | Nidhug wrote: | I think that there is some kind of elitism around AI | researchers. Yes they are very valuable, but someone | helping everyone else be more productive is absolutely | critical. | swatcoder wrote: | Having a car might be critical and acquiring a car might | be expensive, but there are a lot of them and they are | ultimately replaceable. If yours is lost and you still | have cash, you can generally go find a new one the same | day and borrow a ride from someone if you really need to. | | That's not necessarily true for (say) the rare high-end | graphics board you use for running local inferences. It's | also expensive -- even less expensive than the car -- but | replacing it can be a bigger deal and cause a complete | interruption. | | There are countless experienced late-career generalists | who can keep projects moving by contributing to critical, | smart support. I'm one of them. We're extremely valuable | indeed. | | But there really are far fewer people who were ahead of | the curve and years-deep into the AI research central to | OpenAI's entire existence. Those people are beyond | _critical_ , they're _essential_. | | That doesn't make them better people, or smarter people, | or in any other way elite. It just means that _in the | context of OpenAI_ those people are much harder to come | by and can be much more disruptive when lost. | mnky9800n wrote: | That's the job of any good professor for their PhDs and | postdocs. | bmitc wrote: | I don't even know how people like this get valued so much. Why | do people treat Silicon Valley "entrepreneurs" and investors as | if they're made out of some sort of intellectual adamantium? | Aren't they, generally speaking, just people looking to make a | name and buck for themselves, primarily driven by ego rather | than intellectual or philosophical pursuits? Most of them got | lucky with some relatively dumb or straightforward product in | the middle of a bubble and are not responsible for some major | leap forward in technology. | someperson wrote: | So my understanding from reading the drama the past day is Sam | Altman was fired from OpenAI due to being too inclined to 'move | fast and break things' by commercializing OpenAI technology, with | Greg Brockman (cofounder/board member/close friend/ally) choosing | to resign in solidarity. The board coup was organized by | cofounder/Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever who apparently wants | OpenAI's original slow moving safety vision. | | It's speculated Sam Altman and Greg Brockman may start a new AI | company. | | So now seems like a good time to mention a few very high-level | points in case they read it: | | 1. I love Sam Altman's ship early and often inclinations, even if | that apparently got him fired. OpenAI was such a breath of fresh | air compared to sclerotic companies like Google that can invent | the Transformer architecture yet be organizationally incapable of | shipping ChatGPT-level tools for years due to overly conservative | safety concerns | | 2. I hate OpenAI (or Sam Altman's?) apparently puritanical | inclination to anything considered Not Safe For Work, especially | for paid API usage. Why not allow people to build and sell | virtual partner chat bots with explicit NSFW content? | | 3. I dislike his apparent inclination to build a regulatory moat | to block others from developing advanced AI -- it's easy to | interpret this as purely in the self-interest of OpenAI | shareholders | | Without Sam Altman's inclination to move fast I imagine OpenAI | may become slow, sclerotic and less capable of shipping early, | like what Google has become. | | Good luck Sam, and keep on shipping! | gkoberger wrote: | Minor note: Greg was first fired as chairman, and then | subsequently resigned from the company. They were separate | actions. | | Source: https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1725736242137182594 | browningstreet wrote: | And the board was ridiculous thinking they could demote him | and have him stick around. That was either weirdly short- | sighted or strategic theater. I kind of think it might have | been the former. | gkoberger wrote: | They knew he was going to leave. It's likely a combination | of the following: | | 1. They couldn't fire him as an employee (or felt it was an | overreach of their mandate) | | 2. They wanted to signal a clear distinction that they lost | faith in him as Chairman, while not losing faith in his | work as an employee. | | 3. They felt like it would play better with the company if | his ultimate departure was his decision rather than theirs. | | 4. Mira, as the new acting CEO (and someone who had nothing | to do with the actions), declined to fire him even though | she knew it was ultimately futile. | sroussey wrote: | They don't have to pay him an exit fee. | gkoberger wrote: | I doubt they care about this. This move already signals | they're not optimizing for financial outcomes, and the | independent board members (3/4 involved in this decision) | have no equity in OpenAI. | roflyear wrote: | My take is, Sam and Greg are not the executives they want | people to think they are. This was recognized, and they got | upset because of this, and things shook out this way. | gkoberger wrote: | Over the past decade, I've never heard a single bad thing | about Sam or Greg from anyone who has worked with them. | | The board may know something nobody else does, but I think | (given the current information) it's significantly more | likely that they _are_ who they purport to be... it's just | that the board wanted something different. | capableweb wrote: | > 2. I hate OpenAI (or Sam Altman's?) apparently puritanical | inclination to anything considered Not Safe For Work, | especially for paid API usage. Why not allow people to build | and sell virtual partner chat bots with explicit NSFW content? | | I don't think that is either's fault, the US is just very | puritan and a lot of it is because credit card companies and | banks don't like it. | | > it's easy to interpret this as purely in the self-interest of | OpenAI shareholders | | My guess is that this is probably what the board didn't like, | Altman focused too much on profits in various ways. | jsyang00 wrote: | An OpenAI which allowed NSFW content literally could not | exist. It would be shut down in under a week. Maybe possible | under a different regulatory regime (France?) but even then I | doubt it... any model developed by a company and offered as a | product will have some censorship which gets baked in. | wslh wrote: | Could you expand on why? There is a lot if NSFW content on | Internet. What could be different, regulatory wise, this | time? | someperson wrote: | But there's plenty of successful US-based sites that host | both SFW and NSFW content: Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr (before | Yahoo), DeviantArt, etc | | Even it seems Patreon (which I've actually heard it described | as an "NSFW launderer") -- is fundamentally built upon | interactions with credit card and banks. | | I don't know how true it is, but I've read that payment | processors like Visa and Mastercard are actually agnostic -- | it's the high-rates of chargebacks that they have a problem | with. | pixl97 wrote: | Reddit isn't what I would call successful in making money, | so there is that. | jug wrote: | The profit focus being wrong seems so weird to me. It's an | awfully expensive operation to run GPT-4 at scale and even | now, it's rumored they are running the services at a loss. I | understand the philosophical side, sure, but you can't just | disregard all those massive GPU farms and staff tuning their | models. AI is said to have created a new country in terms of | energy use and OpenAI no doubt accounts for a large portion | of that. | someperson wrote: | Certainly Microsoft's GPTv4 infrastructure is still eye- | wateringly expensive: | | > GitHub Copilot has reportedly been costing Microsoft up | to $80 per user per month in some cases as the company | struggles to make its AI assistant turn a profit. | | > According to a Wall Street Journal report, the figures | reportedly come from an unnamed individual familiar with | the company, who noted that the Microsoft-owned platform | was losing an average of $20 per user per month in the | first few months of 2023. | | https://www.techradar.com/pro/microsoft-is-reportedly- | losing... | jmerz wrote: | I'm hacking on some GPT-for-long-form-text stuff right | now and it is _eye wateringly_ expensive once you start | generating at anything close to "professional human" | token outputs. $80 per month sounds already pretty | optimized. | alsodumb wrote: | This article about copilot is BS. Nat Friedman refuted | this on twitter and made it clear that copilot wasn't | losing money. | earthboundkid wrote: | The web API based licensing scheme is dumb and bad. It's | including a buggy whip holder on a model T thinking. The | license should be that they sell a license for use of the | weights. They can also sell a SaaS that does a web API to use | the weights. But the weights are the thing other businesses | actually want and it's controlling and obviously a monopoly | play to not sell the weights. Other businesses have an obvious | incentive to only work with companies that sell weights so as | to prevent their being mere serf's on someone else's SaaS farm. | joanfihu wrote: | It's not about Ilya wanting to slow things down. | | Ilya is the technical mastermind behind OAI. The technical | breakthroughs needed for AGI are not there yet. Ilya, Yann, | Demis and many others are aware of it. | | An aggressive push for applied research and commercialisation | means less resources for technical breakthroughs. | | This is a tricky situation. | ChrisArchitect wrote: | (2017) | | Previous discussion: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13811403 | catlover76 wrote: | > Elon and I were both busy with day jobs | | Herr Musk was involved at the beginning? | mkl wrote: | Not sure why you think he's German, but yes: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI#History | charlie0 wrote: | Yup, my boss at old co had some similarities to Greg. He worked | long hours, was pretty much aware of everything happening at the | company both in the US and off-shore, could talk technical | details with the tech peeps, and business stuff with the non-tech | folks. He was always on top of things and unblocking people all | over the org. He also had this great ability to remember things | very well, even a few months had passed. | | Even though he was CTO and incredibly busy, he would find time to | spend with individual engineers. Once he spent an hour pair- | programming with me on a difficult issue. Even though his time | was obviously not spent coding, it was a very productive session. | | The founder acknowledged that he really couldn't have done it | without him, or someone like him on the team. I 100% agree they | couldn't have built the org without him. He was just on a | different level and it was awesome seeing him in action. | shrimpx wrote: | Near-100% certainty that Altman and Brockman cofound a new AI | company in the coming days. The question is will they be able to | recruit a team that can actually build competitive models? Ilya | Sutksevers don't grow on trees. Maybe they'll just get a team | good enough to specialize Llama2, since Altman/Brockman seem to | think what's lacking in this space is glitzy products, app | stores, b2b integrations, etc. Maybe OpenAI starts to open source | everything and Altman/Brockman can have their cake and eat it, | too. | drexlspivey wrote: | It will be very ironic when their new startup gets dragged down | by regulations due to them not having an AI license that sama | pushed heavily in congress. | willsmith72 wrote: | > Maybe OpenAI starts to open source everything | | I really doubt it ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-11-18 23:00 UTC)