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Comment by throw20away | Hacker News Reader

Ms. Toner’s motive is now clearer for being criticized about her research. Mr. D’Angelo had a competing commercialization product with Poe. Mr. Sutskever seems easy to manipulate emotionally and is in constant ideological battles. Mrs. McCauley AKA Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s wife, what’s her motive?

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Apparently she is also an "Effective Altruist" (along with Toner) so they are ideologically aligned.

EA hadn’t had a good run in the corporate world, over the last year or so

First SBF gets busted for being too greedy, and now Helen Toner gets busted because she's not greedy enough. EA just can't catch a break.

People with a child’s view of the world, in charge of $billions of other people’s money, is the common theme.

There's been a ton of criticism of Helen here in this thread and elsewhere, but I haven't seen anyone clearly articulate what Helen should have done. Everyone says she did the wrong thing, but no one has said what the right thing actually was.

Here's my guess: I think OpenAI should have prioritized character more in its hiring. Ending up with an organization full of employees who cared more about making money than upholding the charter was a mistake. Ultimately it's not enough for the people on the board to have character. The CEO and employees need to have character too.

I don't know nearly enough about the OpenAI situation to suggest what she should have done (apart from "not help to press the self-destruct button," with the benefit of hindsight). However, I've read a bit about EA since the SBF debacle, and a childlike naivete does seem to be baked into the DNA of many of its followers.

You would prefer that $billions be managed by the same snakes in suits who destroy the environment, market products that give people lung cancer, etc.?

Is that worse than people who defraud and steal from users and hold entire companies hostage for their own motives?

In EA, the ends always justify the means, so that includes doing any or all of the things you mention if it achieves some ideological goal.

SBF was roundly criticized in EA. The most upvoted post of all time on the EA forum is a post denouncing him: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/allPosts?timeframe=allTi...

The only person I've seen advocate "ends justify the means" in this discussion is someone criticizing Toner: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38373319

You’re going to have to show me where I said that champ

> I think OpenAI should have prioritized character more in its hiring.

I think OpenAI should have prioritized sanity more in its board member selection.

Toner is unpopular on Twitter because a lot of people in Silicon Valley have a financial stake in OpenAI. For example, employees with equity have a strong financial incentive to discredit the board: https://nitter.net/JacquesThibs/status/1727134087176204410#m

Just because you're unpopular doesn't mean you're insane.

Why do we have to assume these people are so temperamental. All this competing product, criticized for research. Can't they be acting in less selfish reasons?

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