{"id":26113,"date":"2023-11-18T20:35:13","date_gmt":"2023-11-18T20:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=26113"},"modified":"2023-11-20T11:12:31","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T11:12:31","slug":"pivot-to-ai-replacing-sam-altman-with-a-very-small-shell-script","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2023\/11\/18\/pivot-to-ai-replacing-sam-altman-with-a-very-small-shell-script\/","title":{"rendered":"Pivot to AI: Replacing Sam Altman with a very small shell script"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <b><i>Amy Castor<\/i><\/b><i> and <\/i><b><i>David Gerard<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">We need your support for more posts like this. Send us money! Here\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/amycastor\"> Amy\u2019s<\/a> Patreon, and here\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/davidgerard\/\">David\u2019s<\/a>. Sign up today!<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">If you liked this post, please <i>tell one other person<\/i>. Thank you!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2023\/11\/18\/pivot-to-ai-replacing-sam-altman-with-a-very-small-shell-script\/sam-and-ilya\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-26114\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-26114\" src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/sam-and-ilya.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/sam-and-ilya.jpg 680w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/sam-and-ilya-300x185.jpg 300w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/sam-and-ilya-348x215.jpg 348w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><small><i>Sam and Ilya, back in the happier days of June 2023<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2023\/06\/03\/crypto-collapse-get-in-loser-were-pivoting-to-ai\/\">Sam Altman<\/a>, the CEO of OpenAI, was unexpectedly fired by the board on Friday afternoon. CTO Mira Murati is filling in as interim CEO. [<a href=\"https:\/\/openai.com\/blog\/openai-announces-leadership-transition\"><i>Press release<\/i><\/a><i>, <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/ZQ7Gs\"><i>archive<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>OpenAI is a nonprofit with a commercial arm. (This is a common arrangement when a nonprofit finds it\u2019s making too much money. Mozilla is set up similarly.) The nonprofit controls the commercial company \u2014 and they just exercised that control. [<a href=\"https:\/\/openai.com\/our-structure\"><i>OpenAI<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft <a href=\"https:\/\/amycastor.com\/2023\/09\/12\/pivot-to-ai-pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain\/\">invested $13 billion<\/a> to take ownership of 49% of the OpenAI for-profit \u2014 but not of the OpenAI nonprofit. Microsoft found out Altman was being fired <i>one minute<\/i> before the board put out its press release, half an hour before the stock market closed on Friday. MSFT stock dropped 2% immediately. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2023\/11\/17\/microsoft-openai-sam-altman-ouster\"><i>Axios<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>This board decision just cost Microsoft billions. We wonder if they\u2019ll sue.<\/p>\n<p>So what caused this?<\/p>\n<p>The board wasn\u2019t specific, but their statement reads like fighting words:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You just don\u2019t call your CEO a liar in the press release! Even CEOs who get fired for malfeasance, sexual misconduct, or lying their asses off to their board are let go with polite fake smiles!<\/p>\n<p>The news came out of nowhere for almost everyone. OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman was kicked off the board as well and quit the company immediately. Multiple OpenAI researchers have also quit their jobs. [<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/gdb\/status\/1725736242137182594\"><i>Twitter<\/i><\/a><i>, <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/aq1D1\"><i>archive<\/i><\/a><i>; <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hellokillian\/status\/1725797467315486902\"><i>Twitter<\/i><\/a><i>, <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/Un5P3\"><i>archive<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>OpenAI executive Brad Lightcap told employees on Saturday morning that \u201cthe board\u2019s decision was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety or security\/privacy practices. This was a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board.\u201d [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2023\/11\/18\/openai-memo-altman-firing-malfeasance-communications-breakdown?stream=technology\"><i>Axios<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>The world is presuming that there\u2019s something absolutely awful about Altman just waiting to come out. But we suspect the reason for the firing is much simpler: the AI doom cultists kicked Altman out for not being enough of a cultist.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s Wired on OpenAI from September 2023: [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/what-openai-really-wants\/\"><i>Wired<\/i><\/a><i>, <\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/archive.today\/2023.11.18-015905\/https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/what-openai-really-wants\/\"><i>archive<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s not fair to call OpenAI a cult, but when I asked several of the company\u2019s top brass if someone could comfortably work there if they didn\u2019t believe AGI [<i>artificial general intelligence<\/i>] was truly coming \u2014 and that its arrival would mark one of the greatest moments in human history \u2014 most executives didn\u2019t think so. <i>Why would a nonbeliever want to work here<\/i>? they wondered.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What if it was fair to call OpenAI a cult, though?<\/p>\n<p>Until Friday, OpenAI had a board of only six people: Greg Brockman (chairman and president), Ilya Sutskever (chief scientist), and Sam Altman (CEO), and outside members Adam D\u2019Angelo, Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner.<\/p>\n<p>Sutskever, the researcher who got OpenAI going in 2015, is deep into \u201cAI safety\u201d in the sense of Eliezer Yudkowsky. Toner and McCauley are <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2023\/02\/06\/ineffective-altruism-ftx-and-the-future-robot-apocalypse\/\">Effective Altruists<\/a> \u2014 that is to say, part of the same cult.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2023\/06\/03\/crypto-collapse-get-in-loser-were-pivoting-to-ai\/\">Eliezer Yudkowsky<\/a> founded a philosophy he called \u201crationality\u201d \u2014 which bears little relation to any other philosophy of such a name in history. He founded the site LessWrong to promote his ideas. He also named \u201cEffective Altruism,\u201d on the assumption that the most effective altruism in the world was to give him money to stop a rogue superintelligent AI from turning everyone into paperclips.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;ethical AI&#8221; side of OpenAI are Yudkowsky believers, including Mira Murati, the CTO who is now CEO. They are AI doomsday cultists who say they don\u2019t think ChatGPT will take over the world \u2014 but behave like they do think that. [<a href=\"https:\/\/openai.com\/blog\/introducing-superalignment\"><i>OpenAI<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>D\u2019Angelo doesn\u2019t appear to be an AI doomer \u2014 but presumably Sutskever convinced him to kick Altman out anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Yudkowsky endorsed Murati\u2019s promotion to CEO: \u201cI&#8217;m tentatively 8.5% more cheerful about OpenAI going forward.\u201d [<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ESYudkowsky\/status\/1725628554099216667\"><i>Twitter<\/i><\/a><i>, <\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/archive.today\/2023.11.17-215532\/https:\/\/twitter.com\/ESYudkowsky\/status\/1725628554099216667\"><i>archive<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve written before about how everything in machine learning is hand-tweaked and how so much of what OpenAI does <a href=\"https:\/\/amycastor.com\/2023\/09\/12\/pivot-to-ai-pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain\/\">relies on underpaid workers in Africa<\/a> and elsewhere. This stuff doesn\u2019t yet work as any sort of product without a hidden workforce of humans behind it, pushing. The GPT series are just powerful autocomplete systems. They aren\u2019t going to turn you into paperclips.<\/p>\n<p>Sam Altman was an AI doomer \u2014 just not as much as the others. The real problem was that he was making promises that OpenAI could not deliver on. The GPT series was <a href=\"https:\/\/amycastor.com\/2023\/09\/12\/pivot-to-ai-pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain\/\">running out of steam<\/a>. Altman was out and about in the quest for yet more funding for the OpenAI company in ways that upset the true believers.<\/p>\n<p>A boardroom coup by the rationalist cultists is quite plausible, as well as being very funny. Rationalists&#8217; chronic inability to talk like regular humans may even explain the statement calling Altman a liar. It\u2019s standard for rationalists to call people who don\u2019t buy their pitch liars.<\/p>\n<p>So what from normal people would be an accusation of corporate war crimes is, from rationalists, just how they talk about the outgroup of non-rationalists. They assume non-believers are <i>evil<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>It is important to remember that Yudkowsky&#8217;s ideas are dumb and wrong, he has zero technological experience, and he has never built a single thing, ever. He&#8217;s an ideas guy, and his ideas are bad. OpenAI\u2019s future is absolutely going to be wild.<\/p>\n<p>There are many things to loathe Sam Altman for \u2014 but not being enough of a cultist probably isn\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n<p>We think more comedy gold will be falling out over the next week.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, Worldcoin, Altman\u2019s eyeballs-on-the-blockchain token, dropped 10% on news of his firing from OpenAI. [<a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/11\/17\/worldcoins-future-uncertain-sam-altman-fired-from-openai\/\"><i>TechCrunch<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><b>Update:<\/b> Venture capitalists who depend on OpenAI are trying to get Microsoft to strong-arm the OpenAI board into taking Altman back as CEO. Failing that, they&#8217;ll try to fund Altman and Brockman to start a new company they can hook their startups to. [<i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/alexkonrad\/2023\/11\/18\/openai-investors-scramble-to-reinstate-sam-altman-as-ceo\/\">Forbes<\/a><\/i>]<\/p>\n<p><b>Update 2:<\/b> Microsoft has hired Altman and Brockman to head up their AI efforts. OpenAI has hired Emmett Shear, former CEO of Twitch, as the new interim CEO of OpenAI. [<i><a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2023\/11\/20\/tech\/sam-altman-joins-microsoft\/index.html\">CNN<\/a><\/i>]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2023\/11\/18\/pivot-to-ai-replacing-sam-altman-with-a-very-small-shell-script\/villa-openai\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-26126\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-26126\" src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/villa-openai.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"647\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/villa-openai.png 721w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/villa-openai-278x300.png 278w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><small><i><a href=\"https:\/\/social.coop\/@luis_in_brief\/111432479079679195\">Luis Villa<\/a><\/i><\/small><\/p>\n<br><br><div align=\"center\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\"><img src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/become_a_patron_button.svg\" alt=\"Become a Patron!\" title=\"Become a Patron!\" width=217 height=51><\/a><br><p style=\"align:center;\" class=\"patreon-badge\"><i>Your subscriptions keep this site going. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\">Sign up today!<\/a><\/i><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The autocomplete will turn you into paperclips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3668,3515,3666,3426,3665,3669,3667,350,3671,3517,2905,3670,2904],"class_list":["post-26113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-adam-dangelo","tag-ai","tag-brad-lightcap","tag-eliezer-yudkowsky","tag-greg-brockman","tag-helen-toner","tag-ilya-sutskever","tag-microsoft","tag-mira-murati","tag-openai","tag-sam-altman","tag-tasha-mccauley","tag-worldcoin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/sam-and-ilya.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26113"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26138,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113\/revisions\/26138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}