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I broke my own rule of not betting on Ernie markets. Another sketchy and wrong resolution.

This is his LinkedIn showing employment at OpenAI...do you have anything tangible that would call this into doubt?

@Domer damn I find this domer guy everywhere.

I'm gonna adopt this ernie rule.

@Domer Messaged Ilya...we'll see if he responds. My strong guess is he is an employee, under contract, at OpenAI.

@Domer people who quit my company five years ago still have it in their linked in. That means little. My evidence is sama refusing to even confirm he is doing anything + lack of any info. Canonical "off the radar" with enough doubt to move us away from "working at openai"

This seems like nearly the canonical situation for "unknown since off the radar." Nobody will go on the record of having seen him doing anything or working and people who should be doing so, aren't. His previously busy schedule of interviews and podcast appearances has ceased without explanation. He's liked a few tweets but nothing uniquely him and none which gives any indication of where he is or what he's doing. His previous boss openly refused to respond or clarify when he was asked if ilya was working at openai.

Has any more info come out? Has anyone watched in the morning to see who at least is showing up at their main door?

Geez you guys are crazy going deeper here when it's going to be so hard to judge....... I would rather just buy everyone out at a profit than go on with this.

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/17/sam-altman-davos-ai-future-interview

This is a pretty surprising thing to have printed.

EDIT: the article seems to have editorialized on what Sam actually said, which was to not answer "Is Ilya working at OpenAI" and say there's no update on his status, but that he likes him etc.

@Ernie you can hear what sama said

@firstuserhere wow. hmm, refusal to acknowledge he's working at OpenAI at the moment at all.

@Ernie yep, would be good to know how you would judge if this is the status quo on Feb 1! For now, I'm distributing between "It will be unknown since he will be totally off the radar" and "Other" (i.e., It will be unknown, but he will not be totally off the radar).

@Jacy looking over the options here is how I see it now:

• That statement is pretty strong evidence against him working there now. That's not at all what a CEO would say if an employee were working at a company.

• But, he's not totally off the radar, if he really is liking tweets.

• The only matching option seems to be Other?

Is there a norm about adding new options at such a late date?

I think at least I should let traders know if that is going to happen, so they can choose to hold other during that time or not.

@Ernie Here's a link to the full interview at the question timestamp, if that helps. The whole exchange and Sam's response is kind of vague, since the the original question was about finding a specific role for Ilya after he was removed from the board but then the follow-up was about general employment. It's then unclear if sam is responding to the original question or the follow-up, and if he's talking about the present moment or what he knows will be true for the future.

His LinkedIn and Twitter still say he's at OAI, but yeah is exact job title post-crisis is still undecided and I assume if he doesn't get a title he's happy with, then he'll leave the company. Sam can't say he's sure Ilya is going to still be working at OAI if they haven't finished negotiating the specifics, because if Ilya doesn't like the specifics then he'd obviously leave.

@Joshua I also really want to know if he's even logging in from home or coming in to the office... does he still have network access, etc. The short clips I saw do not support that. But I'll watch the full interview.

Re: LinkedIn, 90% of my colleagues don't update their LinkedIn after leaving a company, sometimes for years at a time, until they get a new job or start applying. So I'm not going to rely on that very much.

@Joshua the statements, "exact job title post-crisis is still undecided ... I assume if he doesn't get a title he's happy with, then he'll leave the company" pretty strongly imply he's currently employed, which I think is exactly what's being debated.

And yes, people don't update LinkedIn and social media (or even personal websites) very reliably, especially if things are in flux, so they don't want to switch back and forth.

@Ernie @Jacy

Yeah I don't think questions like these should resolve just based on linked-in, and I agree things are murky. I think this interview is obviously a sign that negotiations are going poorly. @Ernie would you resolve your other questions about Ilya leaving OAI based on this though?

@Ernie in particular, if this question does not resolve to "working at openai" then does this other question by you immediately resolve no?

@Joshua Not knowing the exact status of if someone is working at a company is a pretty strong sign that they're not working there.

I hear this as:

• (I haven't received any reports or updates about work stuff from him, or been in meetings with him) OR I'm denying everything due to lawyers

• This, about someone who he likely used to talk to daily and viewed as almost an equal cofounder

I need to watch the full interview.

If there is any other info, it'd be nice to know for all these markets, so please share!

@Joshua good question. What do you all think? The problem is that Sam may just be denying everything because of a legal case, and that Ilya actually is still coming in and submitting work. Or, Ilya may still be getting paid but has no security access to see or submit code or get on their network, and his employee badge may be deactivated. ("legally" still employed by them but not really doing any work). So it's hard to instantly resolve a claim to NO just because the evidence they're working at a place has softened

@Ernie Ideally, markets about real-world events that aren't consistently public (e.g., the status of a contract on a specific date) would just prespecify what happens when that information isn't public by a certain date. With the "Will Ilya Sutskever continue at OpenAI til end 2024?" markets that have no specific criteria, I think the status quo shouldn't resolve NO on Jan 31st because the close date already includes plenty of time for the current dust to settle. Of course, a new dust-up later in the year could create an issue, so you could add clarification to the description now about that, e.g.

If I'm not reasonably confident about the employment status by Dec 31st, I will extend the market until March 31st, 2025. If I'm still not reasonably confident, this market will N/A.

@Ernie Personally I would define employment as "still getting his paycheck", and I'm very confident he is still getting his paycheck as of right now but not 100% sure that will still be the case at the end of the month. Sounds like negotiations are going poorly.

@Joshua I feel a transformation in how I view language here. https://manifold.markets/Ernie/can-you-be-working-for-someone-with

I agree that 6 months ago I'd have defined it that way, too. But that just seems insane as a way to operate, now.

@Joshua yes, that's what employed is. People can be stuck without a role for a while during transitions between teams, but they're employed as much as anyone else.

@firstuserhere The question is "what is he doing". if he's not doing any code or going to meetings or actually anything at all, it's super strange that we all act like oh yeah, he's totally working. uh huh.

The question is not "is he employed by OpenAI". the question is "what is he doing" and the option is "Working for OpenAI". If we all agree he's been staying at home not shipping code or doing anything, am I insane to think it's a bit weird to say he's been working the whole time?

@Ernie Sorry, I'm just hung up on this new insight that I don't actually have to apply legalism to everything.

@Ernie yes!

@Ernie I'm certianly not in favor of pure legalism. For example, if Ilya announced that he was taking a sabbatical to spend time with his family but we believed he was still receiving a paycheck then I think traders would expect this to resolve to "spending time with his family". I did expect that the "still figuring out a role" status quo we knew about in November/December would count as employment, though. But I'm surprised that has continued for as long as it has, so this is a weird situation.

Actually, if we think he's not currently doing any work at OAI despite being paid then maybe "spending time with his family" is a candidate for resolution?

@Joshua yes, thanks for the example. exactly, in that situation we would use the normal definition of "actually doing work". I see the reason people default to legalism, because it at least gives some kind of answer, but it's just so crappy and makes a lot of claims meaningless. I do have doubts about proceeding with antilegalism since the world after that is a lot less predictable. but legalism itself, to work, would require us to actually go to law school. the kind of amateur legalism i see here (me included) just seems primitive and wrong - 1st year law school level at best. Like, you can't just read a contract and then apply civilian interpretations to it. I think to play the law game you should really study, and also have professional judges evaluate the claims.

@Ernie I'm curious, was the intent to resolve the "working at openai" option to NO if no drama had happened and the date fell on a Sunday?