Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 264 posts

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#231

Post by wkat4242 »

jrockway wrote: post #177
mrtksn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously MS does some great things but I wonder what do you think about their culture? MS is trying to make me use Edge Browser by randomly refusing to let me use Bing chat in any other browser. This makes me think that MS is still evil and will force me to do things the moment they can. I gave up Bing Chat because of this and was using Perplexity.ai instead, until Bing got integrated into ChatGPT. Another thing is…

I don't think any of that really affects the day-to-day at OpenAI if they got bought. There are plenty of counter-examples for forcing you to use Edge or ads in the Start menu. They made Typescript. They made VS Code. Those teams are just doing their thing, and it's very likely that OpenAI would be like that. Microsoft is past the world of "everyone must use our browser and OS", they really just want to sell any of t…

> Microsoft is past the world of "everyone must use our browser and OS"

OS maybe but browser? They're going to great lengths to push Edge. Including harassing customers trying to download Chrome or Firefox.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#232

Post by anuraaga »

mrtksn wrote: post #106
xazzy wrote: post #40

Am an employee, signed the letter. I can't read the article so maybe the content is more nuanced, but the framing irks me. This all happened really fast and the offer was informal. I can only speak for myself but I do have a lot of respect for modern MS, and would have seriously considered the move if that's what kept the team together and comp was reasonable. I would be surprised if most people felt differently.

Obviously MS does some great things but I wonder what do you think about their culture? MS is trying to make me use Edge Browser by randomly refusing to let me use Bing chat in any other browser. This makes me think that MS is still evil and will force me to do things the moment they can. I gave up Bing Chat because of this and was using Perplexity.ai instead, until Bing got integrated into ChatGPT. Another thing is…

I suspect many developers, including OpenAI engineers are using VSCode, maybe TypeScript for frontend engineers, GitHub for sure which had no real features like pull request approvers before Microsoft money came in. Less at OpenAI most likely, but C# and .NET are going strong with bleeding edge tech like .NET chisel containers support. And I've seen great support from their engineers working on OSS, best of FAANG.

Google created the meme that a company could be evil or not but we're past that age. Let's focus on the experiences, and while not forgetting the past (yes the 90s do not paint MS well), be forgiving. MS seems to continue to develop and even innovate on a lot of this tech, painting them as an evil dinosaur seems frankly ridiculous. Yes as with any large company, there will be parts that are good and parts that are not.

Disclaimer: I have never worked at Microsoft and own no stock directly though so have ETFs. And through OSS I have some friends there that I strongly respect and think are awesome and always think of them any time I see hate talk towards MS, which is unfortunately common...

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#233

Post by bdavbdav »

wkat4242 wrote: post #231
jrockway wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of that really affects the day-to-day at OpenAI if they got bought. There are plenty of counter-examples for forcing you to use Edge or ads in the Start menu. They made Typescript. They made VS Code. Those teams are just doing their thing, and it's very likely that OpenAI would be like that. Microsoft is past the world of "everyone must use our browser and OS", they really just want to sell any of t…

> Microsoft is past the world of "everyone must use our browser and OS" OS maybe but browser? They're going to great lengths to push Edge. Including harassing customers trying to download Chrome or Firefox.

Yeah I don’t think that’s true at all. It’s a minor nightmare as well in an enterprise setting trying to lock down their attempts to change defaults, push copilot, lock down office smart services etc.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#234

Post by ben_w »

gwern wrote: post #157
ben_w wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're using the word "psychopath" when you're talking about something different, though I can't guess what. 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 re…

> (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). Elon Musk actually matches several of those poorly, and matches bipolar disorder much better (most of those are also bipolar or billionaire symptoms, while psychopathy is inconsistent with many Musk symptoms like catatonia): https://gwern.net/note/…

Thanks; I certainly hope that's closer to the truth.

(Since my original comment, I've remembered that even professionals in this field don't remote-diagnose people like I kinda did).

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#235

Post by marvin »

fireflash38 wrote: post #197
marvin wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A majority of the OpenAI board members were heavily sympathetic to the AI doomsday cult mostly known through MIRI. A novel discovery spooked them, made them believe that The End Is Near, and that continuing on the path led by Altman would lead to imminent disaster. OpenAI is designed so that the board do pretty much whatever they deem necessary if this happens, and the board interpreted the necessary action as unilat…

This doesn't sound biased at all

It's obviously a hypothesis, stitched together from extremely incomplete data. I've said from day one that I'm looking forward to read about this in the history books in 20 years. Maybe Altman's eventual bio will contain the truth.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#236

Post by wkat4242 »

bdavbdav wrote: post #233
wkat4242 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft is past the world of "everyone must use our browser and OS" OS maybe but browser? They're going to great lengths to push Edge. Including harassing customers trying to download Chrome or Firefox.

Yeah I don’t think that’s true at all. It’s a minor nightmare as well in an enterprise setting trying to lock down their attempts to change defaults, push copilot, lock down office smart services etc.

Yes it's a game of whack-a-mole.

Even though they are in fact considering the enterprise market as a key customer. I used to manage Apple devices (iPhone but also Mac which was much more work) for a long time and that was much harder.

For example, for a federated Apple ID you can still, after 5 years since release, not use federated Apple IDs if your Azure AD UPN and E-mail are not the same. In like 90% of enterprises this is not the case but they just won't fix this. Apple thinks we should just change our entire org for them. Well with Macs taking up 0,5% of our installed base that's just not going to happen (and this way it's not going to be much higher either).

Not to mention all the terrible Mac ports of windows software like VPN, Security etc that don't follow Mac concepts or installers. You have to pile workaround upon workaround.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#237

Post by Nthringas »

xcv123 wrote: post #216
Nthringas wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the only way to settle this is to sum the market cap of both companies over their entire history while adjusting all values for inflation keep in mind that IBM[0] is over a hundred years old, and microsoft isn't even half of that [0] [0] wikipedia

The only way to settle this once and for all, is an arm wrestle between Arvind Krishna and Satya Nadella.

that would not settle it "once and for all"

it would merely settle "for now" becuase as soon as either of them get succeded you will have to repeat the contest

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#238

Post by andsoitis »

scarface_74 wrote: post #173
andsoitis wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the conversation in this thread makes me wonder about whether the right incentives for OpenAI should be to make tons of money. Personally, I prefer to make tons of money, but as someone who will not have a say in whether to participate in an AI-driven world, I would prefer if there were non-profit counterweights. Perhaps governments will have the wherewithal to steer things but I am somewhat concerned.

You really think “non profits” are any less power hungry than for profits?

> You really think “non profits” are any less power hungry than for profits?

It is human nature for people to want power, whether it is power over others or the power to have autonomy, or anything in-between.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#239

Post by scarface_74 »

Grimblewald wrote: post #221
scarface_74 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you taking into account they are also paying far below market costs for compute or even what a large customer could negotiate?

So because their costs are lower than that of competitors, customers should pay more? Ok.

There costs are lower…for now. Do you think Microsoft is going to subsidize them forever?

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#240

Post by blackmesaind »

Nthringas wrote: post #95
airstrike wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to argue IBM is bigger

I'm factoring in their legacy and history i.e. since they're older they're bigger

This could be a product of your own PoV & history with IBM. Not many consider IBM's legacy noteworthy, they became complacent and got beat out the market.
Post reply on HN