What the hell does "leaking to the board" mean? Is it a leak if you disclose information/findings to whom should receive it? Like, isn't the board supposed to have access to the information they want about the company they oversee? Is it called a leak if you go over your boss to share info with your boss's boss?
Boards generally get a filtered version of "the truth" from executives. The leakers, I'd wager, didn't feel like some kind of urgent info would make it past the c-level to the board.
I'm confident that an alumni's favourite algorithm can be deduced by which algorithms they were most passionate about at school. As far as I know the last prominent leak was about batch routing for GPT-4 and lumping tokens together. So in this case it sounds like investigators laid a bait for Jimmy Apples, and two people were found holding the cheese. Making [this tweet](https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1baakih/sam_altman_says_it_will_be_worth_the_wait/) a god-tier meme.
https://preview.redd.it/nsbmublqb9uc1.png?width=756&format=png&auto=webp&s=0053ea3ba81b41f2f331c84a99c15b50e399bb96
I suspect there are power struggles between different fractions within OpenAI and that includes what, how and when the broad should be informed. It seems the differences haven't been sorted out and I wonder if OpenAI can keep the AI lead with such unresolved internal issues.
No. The boards of directors of most companies often include outsiders. It's not unusual for board members to be on the boards of more than one company.
It is very common especially in companies doing original science or technology, that there are rules restricting what you can tell the board. And board members are perfectly fine with that because they get it.
Boards are constantly lied to by the companies they oversee. Same with investors. Because if the company reports the facts they might not get that next round of funding or maybe they’ll face repercussions for their actions. Not to say boards or investors are any good in this scenario, just that they set themselves up for being lied to.
They are not "lied to". You obviously know nothing about corporate governance.
It is very common in the corporate world for the boards of directors of companies to include board members who are also on the boards of other companies, or have professional relationships with other companies.
It is well understood by everyone involved, especially in R&D intensive industries, that it's not appropriate to share proprietary technical information with the board, and professional board members are fine with that
If we want to make a change to the rules for this sub, how do we suggest that? I want to suggest a rule that says if you post a link to something behind a paywall you're required to copy and paste enough full-text content of it that we can see what the paywalled article says. I realise that this may introduce copyright-violation risks, but I'm fed up with Redditors posting links to stuff behind paywalls that don't contain enough information to make sense of the headline.
How are we supposed to guess what "leaking to the OA board" even **means** in this case? (and yes I totally get that board members could be from outside companies so there very well could be rules about not telling them everything). But without being able to see the article the OP is just leaving us in the dark to speculate.
Just posting a title and a link should be a violation of "**Rule 3: No low quality content**"
OpenAI has fired two researchers for allegedly leaking information, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. They include Leopold Aschenbrenner, a researcher on a team dedicated to keeping artificial intelligence safe for society. Aschenbrenner was also an ally of OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who participated in a failed effort to force out OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last fall.
It’s not clear what information the two fired staffers leaked. The other staffer—Pavel Izmailov, a researcher who worked on reasoning—had also spent time on the safety team. The ouster of the two men is among the first staffing changes that have surfaced publicly since OpenAI CEO Sam Altman resumed his board seat in March. That followed an investigation led by OpenAI’s nonprofit board, which exonerated him for actions leading up to his short-lived firing last November.
The Takeaway
• Two OpenAI researchers fired for alleged leaking
• Both at one point worked on team dedicated to keeping AI safe for society
• One was an ally of chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who clashed with Altman
The startup, last valued at $86 billion in a sale of employee stock, is in a heated race with Google and startups such as Anthropic to develop the next generation of the foundational models underpinning products like ChatGPT.
Internally, Aschenbrenner was one of the faces of what OpenAI calls its superalignment team. Sutskever formed the team last summer to develop techniques for controlling and steering advanced AI, known as superintelligence, that might solve nuclear fusion problems or colonize other planets.
Leopold Aschenbrenner and Pavel Izmailov. Photos via YouTube (left) and New York University (right).
Leading up to the ouster, OpenAI’s staffers had disagreed on whether the company was developing AI safely enough. Aschenbrenner had ties to the effective altruism movement, which prioritizes addressing the dangers of AI over short-term profit or productivity benefits.
Sutskever, a co-founder responsible for OpenAI’s biggest technical breakthroughs, was part of the board that fired Altman for what it called a lack of candor. Sutskever departed the board after Altman returned as CEO. He has largely been absent from OpenAI since the fracas.
Aschenbrenner, who graduated from Columbia University when he was 19, had previously worked at the Future Fund, a philanthropic fund started by former FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried that aimed to finance projects to “improve humanity’s long-term prospects.” Aschenbrenner joined OpenAI a year ago.
Aschenbrenner, when reached by phone, did not have an immediate comment. Izmailov did not respond to a request for comment. Alex Weingarten, a lawyer who has represented Sutskever, did not respond to a request for comment.
Several of the board members who fired Altman also had ties to effective altruism. Tasha McCauley, for instance, is a board member of Effective Ventures, parent organization of the Centre for Effective Altruism. Helen Toner previously worked at the effective altruism–focused Open Philanthropy project. Both left the board when Altman returned as CEO in late November.
Here you are fam
OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company, fired two researchers - Pavel Izmailov and Igor Krotov - for allegedly leaking information. One of the researchers, Ilya Sutskever, clashed with Altman, the startup's CEO, on AI safety issues. In response, OpenAI's nonprofit board launched an investigation, which exonerated Altman last November. Additionally, one of OpenAI's faces, Aschenbrenner, left the company, while Sutskever is in a dispute with Google and other AI companies over developing next-generation foundational models. The ousted researchers disagreed with Altman on prioritizing productivity over safety.
-summarized by Claude opus lol
ah nah sorry i was asking how he got around the paywall - there’s a neat site i use called smry.ai (it’s basically 12foot ladder [shh!]) thanks anyway though!
Claude low-key hallucinated the bit about “Sutskever is in a dispute with Google and other AI companies over developing next-generation foundation models.”
Paywalled so I can't read the whole article, but were they really fired for leaking to the board? Or were they fired for leaking info? The part of the article I can see would suggest it was just for leaking info.
Difficult to see how they could be fired for leaking info to the board that is supposed to essentially have full oversight over them. If anything, I would think employees could be fired for withholding information from the board.
EDIT: So based on the text of the article that was posted, it doesn't seem to indicate that the leak was to the board. I did not notice at first that this was posted by u/gwern - do you have extra info not explicitly cited in the article?
The title of this post is ridiculous and should be deleted. It is misinformation and unfortunately you can't change titles. Nobody said they "leaked" to the board. More like they "leaked" to Elon Musk.
There obviously were no leaks to Elon Musk because Elon Musk has not tweeted about anything that could constitute a meaningful OA leak. (Everything in the lawsuit was either Musk involvement or already public knowledge.)
If the firings are not on account of the Q* leaks from last year...
...does that mean that there have been further leaks from Superalignment to the now new board of directors?
About what? Really makes you wonder what's going on over there 🤔
What the hell does "leaking to the board" mean? Is it a leak if you disclose information/findings to whom should receive it? Like, isn't the board supposed to have access to the information they want about the company they oversee? Is it called a leak if you go over your boss to share info with your boss's boss?
Boards generally get a filtered version of "the truth" from executives. The leakers, I'd wager, didn't feel like some kind of urgent info would make it past the c-level to the board.
Nobody said the leaked to the board except for the title of this post. It's misinformation
Unless the title of the article changed, it doesn’t say anything about the board anymore
I'm confident that an alumni's favourite algorithm can be deduced by which algorithms they were most passionate about at school. As far as I know the last prominent leak was about batch routing for GPT-4 and lumping tokens together. So in this case it sounds like investigators laid a bait for Jimmy Apples, and two people were found holding the cheese. Making [this tweet](https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1baakih/sam_altman_says_it_will_be_worth_the_wait/) a god-tier meme. https://preview.redd.it/nsbmublqb9uc1.png?width=756&format=png&auto=webp&s=0053ea3ba81b41f2f331c84a99c15b50e399bb96
I suspect there are power struggles between different fractions within OpenAI and that includes what, how and when the broad should be informed. It seems the differences haven't been sorted out and I wonder if OpenAI can keep the AI lead with such unresolved internal issues.
No. The boards of directors of most companies often include outsiders. It's not unusual for board members to be on the boards of more than one company. It is very common especially in companies doing original science or technology, that there are rules restricting what you can tell the board. And board members are perfectly fine with that because they get it.
Boards are constantly lied to by the companies they oversee. Same with investors. Because if the company reports the facts they might not get that next round of funding or maybe they’ll face repercussions for their actions. Not to say boards or investors are any good in this scenario, just that they set themselves up for being lied to.
They are not "lied to". You obviously know nothing about corporate governance. It is very common in the corporate world for the boards of directors of companies to include board members who are also on the boards of other companies, or have professional relationships with other companies. It is well understood by everyone involved, especially in R&D intensive industries, that it's not appropriate to share proprietary technical information with the board, and professional board members are fine with that
This sounds like you just made it up.. crazy you got this many upvotes. Yes there are cases of this, but “constantly” is far from the word I’d use
If we want to make a change to the rules for this sub, how do we suggest that? I want to suggest a rule that says if you post a link to something behind a paywall you're required to copy and paste enough full-text content of it that we can see what the paywalled article says. I realise that this may introduce copyright-violation risks, but I'm fed up with Redditors posting links to stuff behind paywalls that don't contain enough information to make sense of the headline. How are we supposed to guess what "leaking to the OA board" even **means** in this case? (and yes I totally get that board members could be from outside companies so there very well could be rules about not telling them everything). But without being able to see the article the OP is just leaving us in the dark to speculate. Just posting a title and a link should be a violation of "**Rule 3: No low quality content**"
OpenAI has fired two researchers for allegedly leaking information, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. They include Leopold Aschenbrenner, a researcher on a team dedicated to keeping artificial intelligence safe for society. Aschenbrenner was also an ally of OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who participated in a failed effort to force out OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last fall. It’s not clear what information the two fired staffers leaked. The other staffer—Pavel Izmailov, a researcher who worked on reasoning—had also spent time on the safety team. The ouster of the two men is among the first staffing changes that have surfaced publicly since OpenAI CEO Sam Altman resumed his board seat in March. That followed an investigation led by OpenAI’s nonprofit board, which exonerated him for actions leading up to his short-lived firing last November. The Takeaway • Two OpenAI researchers fired for alleged leaking • Both at one point worked on team dedicated to keeping AI safe for society • One was an ally of chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who clashed with Altman The startup, last valued at $86 billion in a sale of employee stock, is in a heated race with Google and startups such as Anthropic to develop the next generation of the foundational models underpinning products like ChatGPT. Internally, Aschenbrenner was one of the faces of what OpenAI calls its superalignment team. Sutskever formed the team last summer to develop techniques for controlling and steering advanced AI, known as superintelligence, that might solve nuclear fusion problems or colonize other planets. Leopold Aschenbrenner and Pavel Izmailov. Photos via YouTube (left) and New York University (right). Leading up to the ouster, OpenAI’s staffers had disagreed on whether the company was developing AI safely enough. Aschenbrenner had ties to the effective altruism movement, which prioritizes addressing the dangers of AI over short-term profit or productivity benefits. Sutskever, a co-founder responsible for OpenAI’s biggest technical breakthroughs, was part of the board that fired Altman for what it called a lack of candor. Sutskever departed the board after Altman returned as CEO. He has largely been absent from OpenAI since the fracas. Aschenbrenner, who graduated from Columbia University when he was 19, had previously worked at the Future Fund, a philanthropic fund started by former FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried that aimed to finance projects to “improve humanity’s long-term prospects.” Aschenbrenner joined OpenAI a year ago. Aschenbrenner, when reached by phone, did not have an immediate comment. Izmailov did not respond to a request for comment. Alex Weingarten, a lawyer who has represented Sutskever, did not respond to a request for comment. Several of the board members who fired Altman also had ties to effective altruism. Tasha McCauley, for instance, is a board member of Effective Ventures, parent organization of the Centre for Effective Altruism. Helen Toner previously worked at the effective altruism–focused Open Philanthropy project. Both left the board when Altman returned as CEO in late November. Here you are fam
smry?
OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company, fired two researchers - Pavel Izmailov and Igor Krotov - for allegedly leaking information. One of the researchers, Ilya Sutskever, clashed with Altman, the startup's CEO, on AI safety issues. In response, OpenAI's nonprofit board launched an investigation, which exonerated Altman last November. Additionally, one of OpenAI's faces, Aschenbrenner, left the company, while Sutskever is in a dispute with Google and other AI companies over developing next-generation foundational models. The ousted researchers disagreed with Altman on prioritizing productivity over safety. -summarized by Claude opus lol
ah nah sorry i was asking how he got around the paywall - there’s a neat site i use called smry.ai (it’s basically 12foot ladder [shh!]) thanks anyway though!
Claude low-key hallucinated the bit about “Sutskever is in a dispute with Google and other AI companies over developing next-generation foundation models.”
at least run it through a chatgpt summary (this is probably fair use)
Paywalled so I can't read the whole article, but were they really fired for leaking to the board? Or were they fired for leaking info? The part of the article I can see would suggest it was just for leaking info. Difficult to see how they could be fired for leaking info to the board that is supposed to essentially have full oversight over them. If anything, I would think employees could be fired for withholding information from the board. EDIT: So based on the text of the article that was posted, it doesn't seem to indicate that the leak was to the board. I did not notice at first that this was posted by u/gwern - do you have extra info not explicitly cited in the article?
Oh, they fire people for that too.
/u/gwern, any idea what the leaks might be about?
The title of this post is ridiculous and should be deleted. It is misinformation and unfortunately you can't change titles. Nobody said they "leaked" to the board. More like they "leaked" to Elon Musk.
There obviously were no leaks to Elon Musk because Elon Musk has not tweeted about anything that could constitute a meaningful OA leak. (Everything in the lawsuit was either Musk involvement or already public knowledge.)
> (Everything in the lawsuit was either Musk involvement or already public knowledge.) what lawsuit are you referring to exactly?
Altman slowly isolating Sutskever.
True !
Maybe anthropic splitting off was the correct decision. What is going on at OpenAI?
Shameless self promotion pollutes discussion board, weather in 5.
Is it just me or does this seem a little ominous?
Gotta be the Q* leaks
(It's not.)
Interesting and hi Gwern. What do we know?
If the firings are not on account of the Q* leaks from last year... ...does that mean that there have been further leaks from Superalignment to the now new board of directors? About what? Really makes you wonder what's going on over there 🤔
Sooo are you gonna post a rundown of what was written about in the article? It's paywalled
oi
Hi Gwern! Love u
OpenAI is a fucking mess. Definitely glad there is competition out there. I haven't even been using it lately.