leo

Yeah, it was about money: “[The letter] was an audacious bluff and most staffers had no real interest in working for Microsoft.” “Many OpenAI employees "felt pressured" to sign the open letter.” “Another OpenAI employee openly laughed at the idea that Microsoft would have paid departing staffers for the equity they would have lost by following Altman.” "It was sort of a bluff that ultimately worked." “The letter itself was drafted by a group of longtime staffers who have the most clout and money at stake with years of industry standing and equity built up, as well as higher pay. They began calling other staffers late on Sunday night, urging them to sign, the employee explained.” Despite nearly everyone on staff signing up to follow Altman out the door, "No one wanted to go to Microsoft." This person called the company "the biggest and slowest" of all the major tech companies. "The bureaucracy of something as big as Microsoft is soul crushing." "Even though we have a partnership with Microsoft, internally, we have no respect for their talent bar," the current OpenAI employee told BI. "It rubbed people the wrong way to entertain being managed by them." Beyond the culture clash between the two companies, there was another important factor at play for OpenAI employees: money. Lots of it was set to disappear before their eyes if OpenAI were to suddenly collapse under a mass exodus of staff. "Sam Altman is not the best CEO, but millions and millions of dollars and equity are at stake," the current OpenAI employee said. Microsoft agreed to hire all OpenAI employees at their same level of compensation, but this was only a verbal agreement in the heat of the moment. A scheduled tender offer, which was about to let employees sell their existing vested equity to outside investors, would have been canceled. All that equity would have been worth "nothing," this employee said. The former OpenAI employee estimated that, of the hundreds of people who signed the letter saying they would leave, "probably 70% of the folks on that list were like, 'Hey, can we, you know, have this tender go through?'" Some Microsoft employees, meanwhile, were furious that the company promised to match salaries for hundreds of OpenAI employees.”

I fully support this stance and line of thinking. If you are going to eliminate your potential future family from the human race because you are so pessimistic about what the world is and can become, it’s probably for the best that you don’t have kids.

Famous Chicago nightclub Berlin closes its doors after its union demands $70/hr for its bartenders, up from $57/hr. Kind of inevitable if you just repeatedly hire people whose entire political ideology consists of indiscriminately lashing out at businesses. Still, unfortunate.

We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.

This isn't EA vs e/acc. It's Longtermists vs. Utilitarians. Longtermists are against coin flip bets to double or destroy the world. Risk neutral Benthamites like SBF are for them. If you think the p(doom) from superintelligence is non-trivial but the upside makes it worth accelerating anyway, you're closer to the EA, Singerite ideal of a sociopathic utility maxer. In this sense, SBF and Altman are more the same than different. They're the true EAs marinating in the ego death of abstract utility calculations, while the Longtermists are the true human loving civilizationalists. Civilizationalists understand the intergenerational value of growth and development, but for that very reason reject the myopic, high time preference logic behind games of Russian Roulette. To be a literal accelerationist, in contrast, is to be the 17 year old in their dad's car who, in a vain attempt to impress their friends, ends their life wrapped around a telephone poll.