Ex-OpenAI Director Says Board Learned of ChatGPT Launch on Twitter 57
Helen Toner, a former OpenAI board member, said that the board didn't know about the company's 2022 launch of its chatbot ChatGPT until afterward -- and only found out about it on Twitter. From a report: In a podcast, Toner gave her fullest account to date of the events that prompted her and other board members to fire Sam Altman in November of last year. In the days that followed Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman's sudden ouster, employees threatened to quit, Altman was reinstated, and Toner and other directors left the board. "When ChatGPT came out in November 2022, the board was not informed in advance about that," Toner said on the podcast. "We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter."
In a statement provided to the TED podcast, OpenAI's current board chief, Bret Taylor said, "We are disappointed that Ms. Toner continues to revisit these issues." He also said that an independent review of Altman's firing "concluded that the prior board's decision was not based on concerns regarding product safety or security, the pace of development, OpenAI's finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners." [...] In the podcast, Toner also said that Altman didn't disclose his involvement with OpenAI's startup fund. And she criticized his leadership on safety. "On multiple occasions, he gave us inaccurate information about the formal safety processes that the company did have in place," she said,"meaning that it was basically impossible for the board to know how well those safety processes were working or what might need to change."
In a statement provided to the TED podcast, OpenAI's current board chief, Bret Taylor said, "We are disappointed that Ms. Toner continues to revisit these issues." He also said that an independent review of Altman's firing "concluded that the prior board's decision was not based on concerns regarding product safety or security, the pace of development, OpenAI's finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners." [...] In the podcast, Toner also said that Altman didn't disclose his involvement with OpenAI's startup fund. And she criticized his leadership on safety. "On multiple occasions, he gave us inaccurate information about the formal safety processes that the company did have in place," she said,"meaning that it was basically impossible for the board to know how well those safety processes were working or what might need to change."
Re:Missing context (Score:4, Insightful)
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And now that the gag has been lifted and the ex-board members can't be legally threatened any longer the disparaging comments will attack them personally.
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I don't know anything about Ms. Toner but anytime i hear 32 year old board member of a multibillion corporation I would usually give good odds it comes down to "my parents are big shots somewhere and I've been given every networking opportunity my entire life". Could be wrong and maybe it was totally grit, moxie and hard work but I bet I am pretty close.
Re:Missing context (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know anything about Ms. Toner but anytime i hear 32 year old board member of a multibillion corporation I would usually give good odds it comes down to "my parents are big shots somewhere and I've been given every networking opportunity my entire life". Could be wrong and maybe it was totally grit, moxie and hard work but I bet I am pretty close.
Or we could use Google to look up her background instead of rampant speculation. Her wikipedia [wikipedia.org] article notes work and research in AI at the University of Oxford and her current role at Georgetown University. While that does not preclude any nepotism, I could not find any reference to family wealth in her native Australia.
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Yup, that's why I said it was just odds and not a guarantee. But even from what you just said we can glean a couple details: studying abroad at not one but two very prestigious universities, that alone has a pretty strong selection filter. Just that alone offers someone opportunities the 99.9% of people on Earth would not have access to.
I am certainly not saying she is not smart of undeserving of the role. It's like all the nepo-baby actors, in order to make it you still have to be able to act, your par
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Yup, that's why I said it was just odds and not a guarantee.
No, you said it was "odds" because you were too lazy to do a one minute google search.
"I'm just asking" [rationalwiki.org]
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I did the Google search and came up with scant details. Nothing has been presented that counter my bet, it actually only moved it closer to my hypothesis.
I wasn't just asking questions, I actually presented a theory and I could be wrong but nobody has demonstrated that.
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I wasn't just asking questions, I actually presented a theory and I could be wrong but nobody has demonstrated that.
Yep, that's the "I'm just asking questions" [medium.com] approach.
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Sure call me bad faith if you want. I disagree but you can read that if you want. "Just asking questions" typically doesn't come with a prescriptor or descriptor as well, that's what makes the meme, not actually just asking a question. My theory is easily, very easily falsifiable.
"Out of norms young board member of multi billion corporation might have had a more wealthy and connected familial upbringing and atypical networking opportunities" is not exactly a wild conspiracy.
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You tried to bury that lack under the "just askin'" pretext, a ploy to force other people to show evidence against your assertion (your "theory") rather than for you to provide evidence.
Oh, and Ted Cruz is the Zodiac killer. Ya think? Just askin.
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I have plenty of evidence, its just circumstantial, and circumstantial evidence is still evidence. We have some facts given and I am drawing an inference from them. Again, if anyone has direct evidence you could "win this case" as it were. Let's remember the original question "why/how is someone born in 1992 on the board of a multi-billion company" and I gave what most would consider a reasonable answer.
Oh, and Ted Cruz is the Zodiac killer. Ya think? Just askin.
The canyon of probability between what I am suggestion and this are well, a pretty big canyon. Or is
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I don't know anything about Ms. Toner
usually give good odds
Could be wrong
but I bet I am pretty close
I guess we are in the post-"words have meaning" era so qualifiers don't mean anything. Every claim is a strong claim no matter how you qualify it right? But hey, takes one good pedant to recognize another.
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Exactly. And George HW Bush was born to a US Senator.
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From Australia, Oxford, Georgetown... Yeah, it's a safe bet that family has wealth.
Have your heard of something called merit? She did research at Oxford and works for Georgetown. Please explain how that indicates family wealth as opposed to merit. That is why Kim Kardashian gets all sorts of research grants at Cambridge: family wealth.
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i don;t know about kim's family wealth, but it does revolve around assets, considerable ass-ets
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Probably owns a good pair of knee pads too.
She is a Director of Strategy at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
Give me 1 accomplishment/work experience/training that she has that qualifies her and word 'security' in the same sentence, let along emerging technology.
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i was talking about Kardashian
Helen is "Director of Strategy and Foundational Research Grants" which means she knows the right people to collect money from.does not require any security qualifications.
also there is no security without money, so perhaps qualification achieved.
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Yes I'd like to hear her elevator pitch:
"Security = good. Hackers = bad! Give money! *knee pads out of the purse* I'll sweeten the deal (wink wink)"
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Shut your bitch ass up.
Also, explain to me what qualifications she has for these roles.
All I hear was whining, deflection, and ad hominem.
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Give me 1 accomplishment/work experience/training that she has that qualifies her and word 'security' in the same sentence, let along emerging technology.
According to her bio [georgetown.edu] she holds a Master's degree in Security. Is that enough to satisfy your requirements?
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If you actually need this explained to you, you are either painfully naive or willfully ignorant. A foreign student attending the prestigious English school and then being a postdoc at another prestigious US university isn't something poor people get to do. The very point of those institutions is elite reproduction. (If you need the term "elite reproduction" explained to you, go read the wiki.) Her involvement with the effective altruism movement --a movement explicitly about providing moral cover for rich
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If you actually need this explained to you, you are either painfully naive or willfully ignorant. A foreign student attending the prestigious English school and then being a postdoc at another prestigious US university isn't something poor people get to do.
1) I think you are confusing the idea that prestigious schools can cost a lot money sometimes with the reality that is not always true in every case. 2) Again do you know what merit is? You are absolutely sure than she did not receive a scholarship, fellowship, etc. 3) You do know that things like student loans exist, right?
Some of my TAs at university were international students. None of them came from money. They got scholarships; they got grants.
The very point of those institutions is elite reproduction. (If you need the term "elite reproduction" explained to you, go read the wiki.) Her involvement with the effective altruism movement --a movement explicitly about providing moral cover for rich people to be as greedy as they want do to an unrealized and unenforceable promise to be generous later to people who helpfully don't actually exist rather than being altruistic to actual, real human beings now-- only further indicts her.
And what does your unhinged rant based on speculation on
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This is flat out wrong. Technical graduate programs have stipends and are awarded based on merit. The professors at these institutions want people who can help them publish papers and get tenure. They don't care if they are poor.
Of course this do
Re:Missing context (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Missing context (Score:4, Insightful)
And why does when she was born matter to the substance of her complaint? If her complaint is true, the CEO of company launched a major product without telling the board.
There are a lot of folks in the "older" column that think nobody under the age of fifty has even the tiniest shred of life experience, nor can they offer any sort of insight into anything. Especially not when it comes to technology, which is moving too fast already and should be slowed down, as should all progress, because old is better and blah blah blah.
As one of the people in that older column myself? It's bullshit. *ESPECIALLY* in a case like this where you see her arguments plain as day and they are legitimately, if they weren't presented by a younger person, and *clutches pearls* a *FEMALE* at that? *GASP* Any excuse to dismiss the person rather than address the argument is latched onto and beaten into the ground.
A company president took a major action without consulting, or even announcing it to, the board? That should merit investigation at the very least. Not dismissed because it was brought up someone young. "She was born in '92. What does she know?" <-- This is not a refutation of her concerns. It's a defensive denial.
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There are a lot of folks in the "older" column that think nobody under the age of fifty has even the tiniest shred of life experience, nor can they offer any sort of insight into anything. Especially not when it comes to technology, which is moving too fast already and should be slowed down, as should all progress, because old is better and blah blah blah.
The ironic thing is most of the time the basic bias is the reverse. Old farts don't understand technology, it takes a young mind, blah blah blah.
In any case the entire premise of this discussion is horseshit and the OP should be ashamed for having contributed nothing but an ad hominem attack - by his own admission not even reading what is being discussed. This age related level of bias and judgement has no place on Slashdot.
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++++1 I don't know where that kind of thing would fly. The board had more reasons for firing Altman, one of them being the halo effect doesn't qualify Sam Altman to run anything with so much impact on humanity.
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For one, it's a non-profit with a leaning towards effective altruism, so putting a bunch of boomers who will be dead before the impending robot takeover makes no sense. That board needs more people like her, IMO. People who think about humanity, not quarterly finances.
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Oh well, so much for humanity. We had a good run though.
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For one, it's a non-profit with a leaning towards effective altruism, so putting a bunch of boomers who will be dead before the impending robot takeover makes no sense.
Yeah, haven't they heard of the wisdom of youth?
No? :D
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she makes reasonable points, a sly look would be to put some one young on board to railroad the decision making process.
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She's a woman, she worked in AI related social sciences, she worked at an academic Washington think tank and she was willing to sit on the board for peanuts.
How many older women do you think you can find with that kind of background. Men maybe, but women are going to be slim pickings.
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"Toner was born in 1992" did not read the rest, does not matter.
Why was she a board member in the first place?
So you're the kind of person who would attack someone based entirely on their person rather than judge and assess what they say? Based on that I conclude that your low UID makes you an old boomer not worth listening to on matters of emerging tech or new companies.
Is that the level of discourse you're hoping to generate here? Just flinging ad-hominem attacks around without bothering to learn about (or in your case even bothering to read) what is being discussed?
Time to retire from Slashdot ol' fart.
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/he... [linkedin.com]
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Well, unless she is of the lesbian persuasion...I'd put money down she's sucked a dick or two in her lifetime.
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Yeah im married broski. Could be a guy, ill still fling the same shit.
You read that page and you see a striver? Really? All i see is soft jobs and then all of the sudden leadership.
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Either rich daddy, or sucked cock in one form or another.
Shoot the lot.
Sigh. Let me guess. You're one of the people upset that the younger generations don't respect you. Aren't you? Gee, it's really hard to put my finger on why that could possibly be.
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I am the younger generation. I always looked at how people the same age as me that were so far ahead. I wanted to know how.
I found out.
OpenAI is now pot committed (Score:3)
I wonder how happy all the investors and OpenAI employees will be who forced Altman back in in the end, now it will be almost impossible to get rid of him.
Can he actually act out his public persona in the future or will the barely covered skeletons in the closet just keep piling up?
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I wonder how happy all the investors and OpenAI employees will be who forced Altman back in in the end, now it will be almost impossible to get rid of him.
Can he actually act out his public persona in the future or will the barely covered skeletons in the closet just keep piling up?
His hope is likely that he can replace anybody who might oust him in the future with an AI brain fast enough to not have to worry about it.
Me first! (Score:2)
^ That's the usual AI safety analysis.
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^ That's the usual AI safety analysis.
There's nothing AI industry specific about that, it's the usual safety analysis for the entire free market system.
the board was not informed in advance about that (Score:1)
"the board was not informed in advance about that"
Let me rephrase that:
"I, at the highest level in the company hierarchy, did not hire, educate and instruct our subordinates in a way that we would get the information we needed. In other words, I personally as leader, failed miserably in my job."