"As part of a compromise deal to return to OpenAI, neither Altman nor former OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who also departed Friday, will reclaim their seats on the company's board, this person said."

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/breaking-sam-altman-to-return-as-openai-ceo

"A person with direct knowledge of the negotiations says that the sole job of this small, initial board is to vet and appoint a new formal board of up to 9 people that will reset the governance of OpenAI. Microsoft, which has invested over $10 billion into OpenAI, will likely have a seat on that expanded board, as will Altman himself."

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/22/23967223/sam-altman-returns-ceo-open-ai

From OpenPhil's $30m to firing Sam, EA helped to create and grow one of the most formidable AI research teams, then handed it over to Clippy!

Is there a camp of people who think that there is no "secret sauce"? For example, they might argue that ChatGPT is basically how intelligence works, when something like that is placed in the human body we collectively do all the wonders of the modern world. In chimps, not so much maybe because they can't talk. In computers, they get the ability to chat like us. There is no secret sauce, just statistical pattern matching wired to a set of biological or digital APIs.

Can someone please explain why we're still forecasting the weak AGI timeline? I thought "sparks" of AGI as Microsoft claimed GPT-4 achieved should already be more than the level of intelligence implied by "weak".

Re "consider working on foundational AI forecasting questions as an alternative", what opportunities are available for people who are interested?

No comment on whether it's best to contact through connections, but I think the best person for contacting through connections is Benjamin Todd, who according to this post, speaks basic conversational Chinese, had lived for almost a year in China, and had been doing research into the intersection between effective altruism in China over the year before 2018.

Due to these highly relevant experiences, and his caution about translating EA materials into Chinese, most such efforts were delayed for many years. He has been without doubt the most influential China expert in our community!

A high real rate doesn’t necessarily imply a high nominal rate, it could also come with huge deflation, in which case shorting government debt won’t get you anywhere.

I don't disagree but I also don't find them evidently true.

For a beginner billionaire of precisely $1b net worth, why is giving away $900m and only spending $100m not the best thing for wellbeing? How to do better?

And why is spending on reputation-boosting donations better than on luxuries? I get that donations to effective charities are better, but other donations can be orders of magnitudes less effective. On the other hand, luxury brands like LV and Hermès have a gross profit margin of around 70%, buying them is essentially a wealth transfer to the brands' owners, who usually engage in substantial philanthropic activities. Maybe their activities are more effective to offset the cost of goods?

Why does Anthropic have a valuation at all? "Anthropic is a public benefit corporation", according to its homepage. Is it still allowed then to distribute profits?