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Earlier quoted context omitted.
They didn't miss the cloud revolution, and certainly not the AI revolution either. Microsoft is doing absolutely great under Satya Nadella.
They were not first in either areas. They leveraged existing products like office to catch up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... and after the latest openai episode, we now know that msft was pulling the strings in the "shadows" (the "nah! I am just supporting without doing anything..." Do we? What evidence is there that Microsoft was "pulling the strings in the shadows"? As far as we know Microsoft only found out a minute before Sam did that he was being fired.
Well, we found out that Microsoft is able to reverse essentially any decision they feel strongly about, which is essentially what "pulling the strings" means, in common usage.
What specific decision did Microsoft reverse?
We already know that they had no say in Sam's firing or any specific pull in his rehiring.
Or is there any proof we have that Microsoft forced the reversal of Sam's firing?
How does crap like this get published? Not a shred of evidence is given for its assertions, and they sound pretty preposterous. Nobody actually wanted to go to Microsoft, and they didn't even think Altman was that great as a CEO. So why did they all sign the letter threatening to quit? Mysterious unspecified "pressure". Why did Microsoft claim it was willing to hire the OpenAI team at their current compensation level…
I probably wouldn't in an employment situation where it could come back to bite me. But lots of people sign, virtually or otherwise, petitions in the heat of the moment because emotions or it's just the path of least resistance. And "at current compensation levels" wasn't a contractual promise and would probably have had plenty of strings attached.
pg talks about how Sam Altman is the most powered person he's ever met. Seems we have a super powerful psychopath running perhaps the most important company in human history. I do think he legitimately believes he's doing the right thing though all throughout, which maybe makes it more scary. Sorta like how Mark Zuckerberg seemed to truly believe in Facebook's mission and wound up having all sorts of negative externa…
> This person called the company "the biggest and slowest" of all the major tech companies Could not be further from the truth.
Sounds about right to me. They missed the entire smartphone revolution because they were too slow to adapt their OS (literally their main product) to run on mobile devices.
The failure of Windows Mobile, and later Windows phone, had little to do with being "slow."
> 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?'"
If that one person's speculation is true, does the non-profit have an alignment problem, with employees who are doing the technical work -- that the employees are motivated more by individual financial situations, than by the non-profit's mission?
(Is it possible to structure things such that the people doing the work don't have to think about their individual financial situations, and can focus 100% on the actual mission? Can they hire enough of the best people for their mission that way? And maybe also keep key technical talent away from competitors that way?)
pg talks about how Sam Altman is the most powered person he's ever met. Seems we have a super powerful psychopath running perhaps the most important company in human history. I do think he legitimately believes he's doing the right thing though all throughout, which maybe makes it more scary. Sorta like how Mark Zuckerberg seemed to truly believe in Facebook's mission and wound up having all sorts of negative externa…
Psychopathy is a personality disorder indicated by a pattern of lying, cunning, manipulating, glibness, exploiting, heedlessness, arrogance, delusions of grandeur, sexual promiscuity, low self-control, disregard for morality, lack of acceptance of responsibility, callousness, and lack of empathy and remorse.
(Which, now I read it, is disappointingly pattern matching the billionaire who invested in both OpenAI and also a BCI startup currently looking for human test subjects).
I can see arguments for either saying Altman has delusions of grandeur or lack of acceptance of responsibility depending on if you believe OpenAI is going too fast or if it's slowing things down unnecessarily, but they can't both be true at the same time.
Is it actually news that 70% (or whatever) of the employees at a hot startup wouldn't go to work for Microsoft even if they kept their compensation packages (which would probably have a lot of asterisks attached) because of executive suite drama?
pg talks about how Sam Altman is the most powered person he's ever met. Seems we have a super powerful psychopath running perhaps the most important company in human history. I do think he legitimately believes he's doing the right thing though all throughout, which maybe makes it more scary. Sorta like how Mark Zuckerberg seemed to truly believe in Facebook's mission and wound up having all sorts of negative externa…
Everything else aside - in what world is Sam Altman “more effective” than Zuck? How do you even define effective?
I think they both believe they are good and doing good.
People tend to be more suspicious of Mark Zuckerberg's motives than Sam Altman's.
Sam Altman himself even said he can't be trusted but that was ok because of the company structure and then, when he needed to, overpowered that structure he claimed was necessary: https://x.com/tobyordoxford/status/1727624526450581571?s=20