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Comment by ren_engineer | Hacker News Reader

The leak about Q* feels like an olive branch to let the former OpenAI board and Ilya save a bit of face, probably part of the terms for Sam coming back plus it distracts from all the drama and puts a positive spin on things.

>"The board didn't handle things well, but they were right to be concerned because OpenAI did have some sort of research breakthrough"

Not coincidence that this leaks after Sam comes back, rather than before when it could have made the board look more justified in their decision. This changes the story from incompetence to "it's a problem only OpenAI has because they are so far ahead and close to AGI". Masterful PR move to leak this and shift the narrative

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I don't buy this at all. Just going to leave a previous comment I wrote about people coming up with semi-outlandish reasonings behind why something occurs, when there is nothing wrong with the straightforward assumption (that is, the board was concerned about the direction of AI, which is wholly unsurprising given the board's makeup, the Q* stuff was just another concerning point, and there were obviously personality clashes): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38350377

Seriously! The “anything except safety concerns” theses are getting more outlandish by the hour, now bordering on actual conspiracy theory stuff.

> The “anything except safety concerns” theses are getting more outlandish by the hour, now bordering on actual conspiracy theory stuff.

Interesting claim. We know with certainty that there was a conspiracy to move against Sam Altman. What does "conspiracy theory" mean?

A conspiracy is an understanding between people to facilitate action toward a purpose. A theory about a conspiracy is when outsiders to the conspiracy try to reason about motives without being privy to the actual motives (if any) of the conspiracy. By their nature, conspiracy theories can be far more wide ranging than the actual motives of any conspiracy will be. This is one of the things that makes conspiracy theories problematic.

Given that we already know that there was a conspiracy (by the now-ousted OpenAI board to remove Sam Altman), and that people here on HN have been theorizing about this for almost a week now, your definition makes everyone who commented about it a "conspiracy theorist".

In actual "language game" usage, it's just a derogatory term meaning "I don't like these unproven claims, even though I can't disprove them".

No it’s actually a derogatory term meaning “excessively complicated theory to support my priors.”

Such as casting clear evidence toward the “safety/commercialization of next gen tech was a point of contention among the board” thesis instead as:

> The leak about Q* feels like an olive branch to let the former OpenAI board and Ilya save a bit of face, probably part of the terms for Sam coming back plus it distracts from all the drama and puts a positive spin on things.

What if there's multiple overlapping but distinct meanings of the term conspiracy theory? Wouldn't that be a conspiracy in itself to diffract the meaning? Or would would the mere suggestion that it were itself be a conspiracy theory hiding a far less sinister reality? Or what if, like a fractal, it's everything everywhere all at once? :) hahaha

> A theory about a conspiracy is when outsiders to the conspiracy try to reason about motives without being privy to the actual motives (if any) of the conspiracy. By their nature, conspiracy theories can be far more wide ranging than the actual motives of any conspiracy will be. This is one of the things that makes conspiracy theories problematic.

This seems like it would apply equally well to all theories.

Motives are a lot more difficult to reality check than are physical properties. Especially if, as ethanbond indicates, the person with the theory doesn't believe what the other people say about their motives.

You're trying to use a definition of "conspiracy theory" that, even if you exclude natural phenomena -- which you're only managing to do by special pleading -- says that a conspiracy consists of one or more people cooperating with "each other" in public.

And the conclusion you draw is fully general. There are more possibilities for why something happened than there are reasons for it. What are we supposed to have learned?

> Especially if, as ethanbond indicates, the person with the theory doesn't believe what the other people say about their motives.

The modal case is that, when someone makes a claim about their own motives, they are lying.

The second most common case after that is that they don't know their own motives and their reported motive is not accurate.

I'm "special pleading" because I way overgeneralized in my initial attempt at a definition.

> conspiracy consists of one or more people cooperating with "each other" in public.

Public doesn't have to have anything to do with it.

> What are we supposed to have learned?

Yes, I overgeneralized. In general the thing to learn is to try to reality check as much as possible.

> The modal case is that, when someone makes a claim about their own motives, they are lying.

Granting this point, a razor would attribute base motivations over complex motivations.

Oh, come on. This is the part where overly-literal engineers play the equivalent of the 8-year-old siblings "But I'm not touching you!!" game.

Does anyone really question what the parent commenter was referring to with the phrase "conspiracy theory" given the context of this thread?

Quite frankly the wild speculation is the part of this entire event that I have found most fascinating. When it comes to the business side of things I am far enough removed to not really have an opinion. I don't know the internal thoughts of any of the players and I know sufficiently little about them that I couldn't guess. So I'm not in a position to tell what should have happened. I'm naturally inclined to believe that everyone was doing what they thought was right.

In contrast to that have been these wild theories that are mutually exclusive claiming to know the beliefs, emotions, and plans of practically anybody involved.

In all I have found it to reveal far more about the speculators than it has about events themselves.

People always, always want random human bullshit to be intentional, rational, or preplanned by people smarter than the pliable masses. So they claim there's a secret grand motive behind every piece of information that gets leaked.

It's to save face.

It's all a cover to hide a big R&D discovery they made but don't want to reveal, so they made it about personal dispute with Sam.

It's a marketing ploy to hype people up about a new OpenAI product.

etc etc

To be fair, Altman separately alluded to a recent big discovery/breakthrough in a talk shortly before all the drama went down.

Could it have been due to him breaking some kind of NDA? After all that would make sense then that they're so mysterious about it, after all they don't want to release more information.

If the original reasoning of Sam's lack of honest communication with the board was an indication, it would make more sense if that comment tipped the board off to a breakthrough they weren't made aware of.

That's not to say it must be deeper than the usual power plays and politics, but breaking an NDA doesn't seem to fit well fromwhat I've seen.

There were leaks/hints of a breakthrough (though nothing specific) before the whole firing fiasco.

Good point about timing of the leak. IMO the whole fiasco still reeks of incompetence and no PR move can wash that clean.

In my opinion, the fiasco is still a reliable warning sign and is drawing attention to OpenAi/Sama/Microsoft dynamics. It may keep on giving even if things appear to have stabilized now.

hope openAI prepared some physical mechanisms to make sure safety of human.

p.s., maybe bomb us a good idea.

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