Greg Brockman: Inside the 72 Hours That Almost Killed OpenAI

Greg Brockman: Inside the 72 Hours That Almost Killed OpenAI(fs.blog)

39 points by prakashqwerty 3 hours ago | 17 comments

Not feeling like 1 hour of my Sunday is worth listening to this, do anyone have the non-clickbait answers to the two "previews" mentioned in the description?

> Greg explains how the original Napa offsite produced the three-step technical plan OpenAI has followed for a decade and the real reason OpenAI had to abandon its pure nonprofit structure

What was the technical plan and what was the "real reason" they couldn't achieve their original goals?

applfanboysbgon 49 minutes ago | |

> What was the technical plan

"1. Solve reinforcement learning

2. Solve unsupervised learning

3. Gradually learn more complicated 'things'"

That three point list is verbatim the extent of the technical plan mentioned.

> what was the "real reason" they couldn't achieve their original goals?

Paraphrasing, "we needed more money for compute and didn't think we could get enough as a non-profit". Brockman's diary might be a stronger indicator of the real real reason, though.

cma 25 minutes ago | | |

Unsupervised

bblb 1 hour ago | |

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JoUcQ1qmAc

    00:00:00 Introduction
    00:00:49 Meeting Sam Altman and Starting OpenAI
    00:02:40 Building the Founding Team
    00:04:25 DeepMind's Lead Over OpenAI
    00:04:54 The Change from a Pure Non-Profit
    00:06:05 Breakthrough Moments at OpenAI
    00:08:22 What Dota 2 Meant for OpenAI
    00:10:04 Reasoning Versus Prediction
    00:11:59 Tensions Grow at OpenAI
    00:15:44 Sam Altman's Firing
    00:17:49 Greg Quits OpenAI
    00:19:56 Sam Explores Deal with Microsoft's Satya
    00:20:28 OpenAI Employees Sign Petition for Altman's Return
    00:23:43 Ilya Sutskever Leaves OpenAI
    00:24:59 Lessons Learned in Leadership after Sam Ousting
    00:28:22 The Thing Ilya Said that Greg Can't Forget
    00:32:22 Is AI Going Parabolic?
    00:33:24 How Much of OpenAI's Code is Written by AI?
    00:36:21 Are AI Chatbots Just Telling Us What We Want to Hear?
    00:38:06 The Global AI Race to Reach AGI
    00:38:40 What Happens if US Doesn't Reach AGI First?
    00:39:49 Are Competing Countries Stealing AI Advancements from U.S?
    00:40:38 Why ChatGPT No Longer Shows Reasoning
    00:41:47 The Finite Constraints of Compute
    00:43:38 On Investing Early in Data Centers
    00:46:31 The Future of Data Center Specialization
    00:47:52 How OpenAI Will Decide Whose Queries to Serve
    00:49:08 OpenAI on Consumer vs Enterprise Models
    00:53:05 Data Centers in Space?
    01:00:56 What Should AI Regulation Look Like?
    01:04:33 The Future of AI-Powered Entrepreneurship
    01:04:44 AI and Job Loss
    01:07:15 The Skills Young People Should Invest In
    01:11:30 What Does Success Look Like For You?

dave1010uk 52 minutes ago | |

1. Solve reinforcement learning.

2. solve unsupervised learning.

3. gradually tackle more complicated things.

> what was the "real reason" they couldn't achieve their original goals?

I assume this is referring to why they gave up being a non-profit. The answer is that they needed more money.

embedding-shape 47 minutes ago | | |

Huh, I guess ML people weren't aware of "divide and conquer" that has been successfully employed in software engineering since basically forever?

> I assume this is referring to why they gave up being a non-profit. The answer is that they needed more money.

Ugh, that was more boring than even I expected, thanks a lot for saving me the time though, seems avoiding watching the full thing was worth it.

siva7 24 minutes ago | |

> Not feeling like 1 hour of my Sunday is worth listening to this, do anyone have the non-clickbait answers to the two "previews" mentioned in the description?

I know HN is built around mostly not reading the articles linked but how about you click on the link and surprise, there is already exactly another link providing what you're asking for.

embedding-shape 23 minutes ago | | |

You mean the transcript that is behind a account/paywall? Or is there some other link I'm missing?

H8crilA 1 hour ago |

As far as Brockman account of the past goes, there's also his personal diary which was made public as a part of that lawsuit by Musk. Includes for example the line: "Financially what will take me to $1B?". BTW, if you don't know, Musk lost it because he filed too late, lol.

nba456_ 38 minutes ago | |

If his entire personal diary got exposed and that's the worst that's in it, good for him.

Kinrany 34 minutes ago | | |

How did the diary end up in the court files in the first place?

applfanboysbgon 32 minutes ago | | |

I'm curious what you're writing in your diary that's worse than blatantly admitting to fraud of this scale. He publicly misled people about OpenAI's "mission" as a nonprofit, while seeking to enrich himself to the tune of $1 billion(!!!) dollars.

Also, his entire diary was not in fact made public. The attorneys only quoted the parts that were relevant to the case, which pertained to OpenAI's transition from non-profit.

cold_harbor 32 minutes ago |

what's wild is they accidentally solved it — pretraining IS unsupervised learning at scale, RLHF IS reinforcement learning. they just didnt know the recipe yet

optimalsolver 1 hour ago |

>So many people were trying to sign the petition at once that it actually crashed Google Docs

I still wonder how much peer pressure was behind that. Like, what if you think Sam is a scumbag and you're glad he's gone, but people are waving this petition in your face. What would you do? It would be really bad for you if the emperor returned and you were one of the few who didn't sign it.

Also, going by this video, the first order of business for an AGI should be finding a cure for hair loss.

bmitc 1 hour ago |

So firing a grifter means it would kill the company? Doesn't that mean the company is grifting? If no one else can possibly lead the supposedly the most important company, with billions/trillions (?) of so called value, do you have a good company and product?

Or do I forget that this guy sleeps with an Ayn Rand doll tucked under his arms?

okr 40 minutes ago | |

ChatGPT or CoPilot were awesome products at the time. I do not use them anymore these days. But to me it felt never like i was abused. And Investment into companies is what it is, a risk. But the results remain forever, whoever wins.

00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:49 Meeting Sam Altman and Starting OpenAI 00:02:40 Building the Founding Team 00:04:25 DeepMind's Lead Over OpenAI 00:04:54 The Change from a Pure Non-Profit 00:06:05 Breakthrough Moments at OpenAI 00:08:22 What Dota 2 Meant for OpenAI 00:10:04 Reasoning Versus Prediction 00:11:59 Tensions Grow at OpenAI 00:15:44 Sam Altman's Firing 00:17:49 Greg Quits OpenAI 00:19:56 Sam Explores Deal with Microsoft's Satya 00:20:28 OpenAI Employees Sign Petition for Altman's Return 00:23:43 Ilya Sutskever Leaves OpenAI 00:24:59 Lessons Learned in Leadership after Sam Ousting 00:28:22 The Thing Ilya Said that Greg Can't Forget 00:32:22 Is AI Going Parabolic? 00:33:24 How Much of OpenAI's Code is Written by AI? 00:36:21 Are AI Chatbots Just Telling Us What We Want to Hear? 00:38:06 The Global AI Race to Reach AGI 00:38:40 What Happens if US Doesn't Reach AGI First? 00:39:49 Are Competing Countries Stealing AI Advancements from U.S? 00:40:38 Why ChatGPT No Longer Shows Reasoning 00:41:47 The Finite Constraints of Compute 00:43:38 On Investing Early in Data Centers 00:46:31 The Future of Data Center Specialization 00:47:52 How OpenAI Will Decide Whose Queries to Serve 00:49:08 OpenAI on Consumer vs Enterprise Models 00:53:05 Data Centers in Space? 01:00:56 What Should AI Regulation Look Like? 01:04:33 The Future of AI-Powered Entrepreneurship 01:04:44 AI and Job Loss 01:07:15 The Skills Young People Should Invest In 01:11:30 What Does Success Look Like For You?