Twitter is full of people laying into EA for being behind Sam Altman's firing. However, if it's true that this happened because the board thought Altman was trying to take the company in an 'unsafe' direction then I'm glad they did this. And I'm glad that for the time being considerations other than 'shareholder value' are not the defining motivation behind AI development.
This is incredibly short-sighted. The board’s behavior was grossly unprofessional and the accompanying blog post was borderline defamatory. And Altman is one of the most highly-connected and competent people in the Bay Area tech scene. Altman can easily start another AI company; in fact, media outlets are now reporting that he's considering doing just that, or might even return to OpenAI by pressuring the board to resign.
In fact, Manifold is at 50% that Altman will return as CEO, and at 38% that he'll start another AI company. It seems that the board...
Hi Ozzie, while I agree it's true that there aren't many high-performing organizations which use democratic decision making. I believe Bridgwater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, does use such a system. They use a tool called the dot collector to gather real time input from a wide base of employees and use that to come up with a 'believability weighted majority'. The founder of the company Ray Dalio has said that he will generally defer to this vote even when he himself does not agree with the result. https://www.principles.com/...
We know now that Sam is a pathological liar which makes it hard to take anything he says (including this interview) at face value. He's facing serious jail time for this mess and has a strong incentive to present himself/FTX as incompetent vs deliberate frauds. I'm pretty skeptical of his claim that they just 'happened' to make a sequence of decisions which were above board in isolation but added up to gambling with FTX customer deposits
I agree that EA likely wasn't a major causal factor for FTX/SBF's likely fraud. Unfortunately, it's a situation where even if it's not our fault it is our problem. People are trashing EA across the internet because of Sam's position in the movement. His Twitter profile pic still has him wearing an EA shirt for christ sake!
So are people who never attacked EA before suddenly doing so? That isn't what I've seen. I've seen lots of bad-faith takes about how this is proof of what they always thought, and news reporting which is about as accurate as you'd expect - that is, barely correct on the knowable facts, and misleading or confused about anything more complicated than that.
Interesting ideas and post! First a critique. It didn't sound right that we should wait 50 years for improved governance. Governance isn't something that just improves on its own over time, it's not a force of nature. It manifests and changes in response to human needs. The aftermath of WW1 brought the League of Nations, WW2 brought on the UN and EU, the Cold War created NATO. If anything it seems that changes to governance happen AFTER a need arises, not preemptively. I know we all wish that weren't the case but it is what is.
The deve...
Great post. I totally agree with the framing of meritocratic vs inclusive orgs and their inherent tension. It may be an awkward analogy but EA is more or less a modern religion and religion has already figured out how to navigate this dynamic.
Basically you have churches as the inclusive geographic community center where believers come on a regular basis. There's a sermon to reaffirm and bring perspective to their faith/ideology. There's art in multiple forms such as music, sculpture to connect at an emotional level. There's rituals to lend ...
Nice ideas here Sebastian. I wanted to clarify what you mean by professional core groups, the example you gave of EA London's finance community sounds like a professional group within a local group. In my view the current challenge is that many cities don't even have community groups at all much less the ability to subdivide based on profession.
I think it makes sense for EA to build community both along the lines of geography but also in professions (without respect to geography) e.g. EA's in Healthcare. Of these two I think the priority sh...
I love all the self-reflection that has been happened in EA recently regarding what should everyone be doing. I agree that earning to give shouldn't be the person's primary involvement in EA.
I think EA needs to further develop cause areas to encompass wider domains e.g. as a resident in SF I want to know what are the most effective causes and solutions for the USA, for California, and for my city. I think having these domains will both grow the tent of people in EA and also opportunities to contribute. Things like global catastrophic risk is probably always going to be a niche field for direct work.
Such a structure would also form a natural hierarchy from localized issues -> universal issues.
My guess is that the letter is largely a bluff. I don’t think these people want to work for Microsoft. I’m surprised Altman decided that was his best move vs starting his own company. Perhaps this implies that starting from scratch is not as easy as we think. Microsoft has the license to most (all?) of OpenAIs tech so they would be able to hit the ground running.