Update 2: this is kind of stale given more recent developments and I’m not planning to update it further; probably any further discussion should happen in OpenAI: Facts from a Weekend or other newer posts.
Update: un-paywalled article from the Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23967515/sam-altman-openai-board-fired-new-ceo
This is still breaking as of 9:30 PT on Sunday, but according to a Bloomberg journalist:
Paywalled article: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/breaking-sam-altman-will-not-return-as-ceo-of-openai
Emmett Shear, co-founder of Amazon-owned video streaming site Twitch, will take over as interim CEO, Sutskever said.
Manifold is not totally convinced:
But I think this is mainly due to the permanent vs. interim issue.
More context: https://twitter.com/ashleevance/status/1726469283734274338
Emmett’s twitter: https://twitter.com/eshear
Emmett’s appearance on The Logan Bartlett show: https://twitter.com/liron/status/1672986864297578501
Can someone make predictions on the rate of progress of Sam’s newco.
Will it exist? My take: 95%+
Will it surpass OpenAI for SoTA model progress? My take: 5% if timelines are very short, 65-70% otherwise
Corporate structure:
Probably similar to anthropic on the scale of non profit to for profit.
Safety adherence:
More than Perplexity/Inflection, less than OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind
Some justifications for the above:
Sam seems to want to make it a standard growth focused tech company but obviously believes in X-risk pretty seriously.
A couple of researchers seem to have resigned, if the bod can’t come up with a compelling reason for their decision, I expect a lot of other researchers to follow, especially outside of the superalignment team.
Edit: 1. was wrong. I’m shocked
Not quite wrong, just a “post-acquisition corporate structure” already ;-)
Now, a lot depends of how close to reality this tweet will be: https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1726516824597258569
Of course, a feel of being within a big corp can easily kill any creativity whatsoever, but they do a good job shielding people from that, they can move very fast even conditional on short timelines.
Of course, if they actually start competing for SOTA, safety will become a big issue, there is a danger of them being less careful than OpenAI has been so far, so what has happened is not necessarily a win for safety.
e/acc thought leader Beff Jezos thinks the new interim CEO is a doomer and a decel.
“thought leader”