15 comments

  • embedding-shape 2 hours ago
    Not feeling like 1 hour of my Sunday is worth listening to this, do anyone have the non-clickbait answers to the two "previews" mentioned in the description?

    > Greg explains how the original Napa offsite produced the three-step technical plan OpenAI has followed for a decade and the real reason OpenAI had to abandon its pure nonprofit structure

    What was the technical plan and what was the "real reason" they couldn't achieve their original goals?

    • jstummbillig 53 minutes ago
    • applfanboysbgon 1 hour ago
      > What was the technical plan

      "1. Solve reinforcement learning

      2. Solve unsupervised learning

      3. Gradually learn more complicated 'things'"

      That three point list is verbatim the extent of the technical plan mentioned.

      > what was the "real reason" they couldn't achieve their original goals?

      Paraphrasing, "we needed more money for compute and didn't think we could get enough as a non-profit". Brockman's diary might be a stronger indicator of the real real reason, though.

    • tcp_handshaker 43 minutes ago
      >> What was the technical plan and what was the "real reason" they couldn't achieve their original goals?

      Because they were still downloading from Anna's Archive and the lawyers were in panic?

    • bblb 2 hours ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JoUcQ1qmAc

          00:00:00 Introduction
          00:00:49 Meeting Sam Altman and Starting OpenAI
          00:02:40 Building the Founding Team
          00:04:25 DeepMind's Lead Over OpenAI
          00:04:54 The Change from a Pure Non-Profit
          00:06:05 Breakthrough Moments at OpenAI
          00:08:22 What Dota 2 Meant for OpenAI
          00:10:04 Reasoning Versus Prediction
          00:11:59 Tensions Grow at OpenAI
          00:15:44 Sam Altman's Firing
          00:17:49 Greg Quits OpenAI
          00:19:56 Sam Explores Deal with Microsoft's Satya
          00:20:28 OpenAI Employees Sign Petition for Altman's Return
          00:23:43 Ilya Sutskever Leaves OpenAI
          00:24:59 Lessons Learned in Leadership after Sam Ousting
          00:28:22 The Thing Ilya Said that Greg Can't Forget
          00:32:22 Is AI Going Parabolic?
          00:33:24 How Much of OpenAI's Code is Written by AI?
          00:36:21 Are AI Chatbots Just Telling Us What We Want to Hear?
          00:38:06 The Global AI Race to Reach AGI
          00:38:40 What Happens if US Doesn't Reach AGI First?
          00:39:49 Are Competing Countries Stealing AI Advancements from U.S?
          00:40:38 Why ChatGPT No Longer Shows Reasoning
          00:41:47 The Finite Constraints of Compute
          00:43:38 On Investing Early in Data Centers
          00:46:31 The Future of Data Center Specialization
          00:47:52 How OpenAI Will Decide Whose Queries to Serve
          00:49:08 OpenAI on Consumer vs Enterprise Models
          00:53:05 Data Centers in Space?
          01:00:56 What Should AI Regulation Look Like?
          01:04:33 The Future of AI-Powered Entrepreneurship
          01:04:44 AI and Job Loss
          01:07:15 The Skills Young People Should Invest In
          01:11:30 What Does Success Look Like For You?
    • dave1010uk 1 hour ago
      1. Solve reinforcement learning.

      2. solve unsupervised learning.

      3. gradually tackle more complicated things.

      > what was the "real reason" they couldn't achieve their original goals?

      I assume this is referring to why they gave up being a non-profit. The answer is that they needed more money.

      • arvid-lind 11 minutes ago
        > The answer is that they needed more money.

        isn't it still an odd choice for a nonprofit? it's hard to imagine a world without OpenAI and ChatGPT now, but at some point they decided being the best is most important. and presumably most profitable, since why just need a little more money?

        • gizajob 6 minutes ago
          Trivial to imagine everyone switching to Anthropic or Google or on-device LLMs.
      • embedding-shape 1 hour ago
        Huh, I guess ML people weren't aware of "divide and conquer" that has been successfully employed in software engineering since basically forever?

        > I assume this is referring to why they gave up being a non-profit. The answer is that they needed more money.

        Ugh, that was more boring than even I expected, thanks a lot for saving me the time though, seems avoiding watching the full thing was worth it.

        • adastra22 12 minutes ago
          Not that they wanted more money personally, but that they needed more money for compute.
    • siva7 1 hour ago
      > Not feeling like 1 hour of my Sunday is worth listening to this, do anyone have the non-clickbait answers to the two "previews" mentioned in the description?

      I know HN is built around mostly not reading the articles linked but how about you click on the link and surprise, there is already exactly another link providing what you're asking for.

      • embedding-shape 1 hour ago
        You mean the transcript that is behind a account/paywall? Or is there some other link I'm missing?
        • siva7 12 minutes ago
          Yes, you're missing the link at the end of the article for free.
  • H8crilA 2 hours ago
    As far as Brockman account of the past goes, there's also his personal diary which was made public as a part of that lawsuit by Musk. Includes for example the line: "Financially what will take me to $1B?". BTW, if you don't know, Musk lost it because he filed too late, lol.
    • nba456_ 1 hour ago
      If his entire personal diary got exposed and that's the worst that's in it, good for him.
      • Kinrany 1 hour ago
        How did the diary end up in the court files in the first place?
      • _zoltan_ 22 minutes ago
        Worse? There is nothing wrong with wanting 1B. Anybody who said they wouldn't want it is lying.
        • exfalso 15 minutes ago
          Nonsense. What the hell would you do with 1B? Give it to charities maybe. Maybe set up an investment where dividends are paid to charity. Running out of ideas
          • jesterson 9 minutes ago
            There are a lot of greedy people thinking everyone would die for a bullion. They couldn’t comprehend another way of thinking due to narrow mindset
          • fragmede 10 minutes ago
            You've run out of ideas already? Try harder! What charities? Why? How much, to which ones? How involved with those charities are you going to be? What dent in history are you going to make with that billion? With or without your name attached. Build housing, cure cancer, feed the hungry, buy this simulator https://www.1940airterminal.org/news/liquidation-of-simulato...
            • gizajob 4 minutes ago
              Didn’t even buy a Yacht or a Warhol yet.
        • jesterson 11 minutes ago
          I wouldn’t want. I have enough. Not everyone is wanting money.

          But it is not the point. The point is, when you take high moral ground and talk about bug problems to help humanity, and then your own diary exposes you as avaricious simpleton, the whole high moral ground crumbles. And you expose yourself as another grifter.

          That’s what happened to Brockman. Although smart people could see these qualities in altman, brockman etcetera way before that happened

      • applfanboysbgon 1 hour ago
        I'm curious what you're writing in your diary that's worse than blatantly admitting to fraud of this scale. He publicly misled people about OpenAI's "mission" as a nonprofit, while seeking to enrich himself to the tune of $1 billion(!!!) dollars.

        Also, his entire diary was not in fact made public. The attorneys only quoted the parts that were relevant to the case, which pertained to OpenAI's transition from non-profit.

        • siva7 16 minutes ago
          How about wiping out an entire civilization? Not even necessary to hide this thought in your diary if you have enough power. I've seen today - in fact any day of this year - much worse things than his diary thoughts.
  • batu1509 53 minutes ago
    building products on top of their api makes these drama weekends terrifying. really makes you realize how fragile your whole stack is when a board decides to act up.
  • stuaxo 37 minutes ago
    Thankful for the mention of "AGI" in the first lines as I can bail out from reading the rest.

    Whatever AGI is, it "AGI" is not glueing a load of text prediction machines together.

    • dboreham 5 minutes ago
      How do you know that?
  • mikkkee 17 minutes ago
    not sure why but this episode feels v boring perhaps because he didn't share anything unexpected / unknown
  • throwaway_2494 20 minutes ago
    I remember when computer magazines were aimed at programmers and had code listings in them.

    Then there seemed to come a time when all they talked about was the IBM vs. Microsoft lawsuit. From then on they must have felt that they had discovered a formula, because all they ever yapped about after was insider baseball of computer companies.

    I find this sort of corp. vs. corp. coverage boring, sort of like techie reality TV. Who will be voted out tonight, Debra, or Debora...?

  • uxcolumbo 38 minutes ago
    > US leadership critical for preserving democratic values [0]

    And yet he supports a political group who have no problems dismantling democratic institutions and rule of law.

    I would take anything he says with a grain of salt.

    [0] From: https://notes.granola.ai/d/2c35c84f-6eb4-497a-8419-294d92141...

  • jonstewart 43 minutes ago
    Point of order: Anthropic is the most important AI company now.
  • YetAnotherNick 59 minutes ago
    Why can't someone ask what happened in Ilya's mind. Firing Sam and then signing the solidarity letter of Sam to leave OpenAI if was fired. Other than that, all other information seems kind of just going over the surface.
  • cold_harbor 1 hour ago
    what's wild is they accidentally solved it — pretraining IS unsupervised learning at scale, RLHF IS reinforcement learning. they just didnt know the recipe yet
    • jmalicki 48 minutes ago
      pretraining isn't unsupervised, it is self-supervised - meaning it is moderately more scale limited.
  • pjmlp 1 hour ago
    Unfortunately they survived, not going to spend time with this.

    From my point of view they are yet another big tech bros company.

  • PunchTornado 7 minutes ago
    isn't this the friend of scam altman? who cares of what he has to say?
  • optimalsolver 2 hours ago
    >So many people were trying to sign the petition at once that it actually crashed Google Docs

    I still wonder how much peer pressure was behind that. Like, what if you think Sam is a scumbag and you're glad he's gone, but people are waving this petition in your face. What would you do? It would be really bad for you if the emperor returned and you were one of the few who didn't sign it.

    Also, going by this video, the first order of business for an AGI should be finding a cure for hair loss.

    • fragmede 1 hour ago
      Nioxin shampoo generally works.
  • bmitc 2 hours ago
    So firing a grifter means it would kill the company? Doesn't that mean the company is grifting? If no one else can possibly lead the supposedly the most important company, with billions/trillions (?) of so called value, do you have a good company and product?

    Or do I forget that this guy sleeps with an Ayn Rand doll tucked under his arms?

    • okr 1 hour ago
      ChatGPT or CoPilot were awesome products at the time. I do not use them anymore these days. But to me it felt never like i was abused. And Investment into companies is what it is, a risk. But the results remain forever, whoever wins.
    • zemvpferreira 46 minutes ago
      Not a fan of Altman but the devil you know is a powerful argument. If you believe a CEO/Founder to be a grifter-position at its core (fake it till you make it etc etc), retaining the best grifter you can find is the optimal play.
  • throw6999 36 minutes ago
    Sky net from future protected itself.