RE: the board’s vague language in their initial statement
Smart people who have an objective of accumulating and keeping control—who are skilled at persuasion and manipulation —will often leave little trace of wrongdoing. They’re optimizing for alibis and plausible deniability. Being around them and trying to collaborate with them is frustrating. If you’re self-aware enough, you can recognize that your contributions are being twisted, that your voice is going unheard, and that critical information is being withheld from you, but it’s not easy. And when you try to bring up concerns, they are very good at convincing you that those concerns are actually your fault.
I can see a world where the board was able to recognize that Sam’s behaviors did not align with OpenAI’s mission, while not having a smoking gun example to pin him on. Being unskilled politicians with only a single lever to push (who were probably morally opposed to other political tactics) the board did the only thing they could think of, after trying to get Sam to listen to their concerns. Did it play out well? No.
It’s clear that EA has a problem with placing people who are immature at politics in key political positions. I also believe there may be a misalignment in objectives between the politically skilled members of EA and the rest of us—politically skilled members may be withholding political advice/training from others out of fear that they will be outmaneuvered by those they advise. This ends up working against the movement as a whole.
Yeah, I’m getting that vibe. EAs keep going “hell yeah, we got an actual competent mafioso on our side, but they’re actually on our side!”, and then it turns out the mafioso wasn’t on their side, any more than any other mafioso in history had ever been on anyone’s side.
Ok, but then why the statement implying severe misconduct rather than a generic “the board has decided that the style of leadership that Mr. Altman provides is not what OpenAI needs at this time”?
RE: the board’s vague language in their initial statement
Smart people who have an objective of accumulating and keeping control—who are skilled at persuasion and manipulation —will often leave little trace of wrongdoing. They’re optimizing for alibis and plausible deniability. Being around them and trying to collaborate with them is frustrating. If you’re self-aware enough, you can recognize that your contributions are being twisted, that your voice is going unheard, and that critical information is being withheld from you, but it’s not easy. And when you try to bring up concerns, they are very good at convincing you that those concerns are actually your fault.
I can see a world where the board was able to recognize that Sam’s behaviors did not align with OpenAI’s mission, while not having a smoking gun example to pin him on. Being unskilled politicians with only a single lever to push (who were probably morally opposed to other political tactics) the board did the only thing they could think of, after trying to get Sam to listen to their concerns. Did it play out well? No.
It’s clear that EA has a problem with placing people who are immature at politics in key political positions. I also believe there may be a misalignment in objectives between the politically skilled members of EA and the rest of us—politically skilled members may be withholding political advice/training from others out of fear that they will be outmaneuvered by those they advise. This ends up working against the movement as a whole.
Feels sometimes like all of the good EAs are bad at politics and everybody on our side that’s good at politics is not a good EA.
Yeah, I’m getting that vibe. EAs keep going “hell yeah, we got an actual competent mafioso on our side, but they’re actually on our side!”, and then it turns out the mafioso wasn’t on their side, any more than any other mafioso in history had ever been on anyone’s side.
Ok, but then why the statement implying severe misconduct rather than a generic “the board has decided that the style of leadership that Mr. Altman provides is not what OpenAI needs at this time”?