Live data from Hacker News

Hi everyone yes, I left OpenAI yesterday

twitter.com

61–70 of 472 posts

Re: Hi everyone yes, I left OpenAI yesterday

#62

"I told them Xerox has got to get itself together, because there's no way a big company can take advantage of things moving this fast. People will get frustrated and start their own companies." —Carver Mead, 1979 (employee at Xerox PARC), discussing why Xerox needed to focus more on adopting integrated circuits into the computers they had already developed, instead of continuing to just make increasingly-obsolete cop…

> 1979 ... increasingly-obsolete copiers.

In 1979, I doubt copiers were 'increasingly obsolete'; I'd expect the market was growing rapidly. Laser printers, email, the Internet, didn't yet exist; PCs barely existed, and not in offices. Almost everywhere would have used typewriters, I suppose.

Re: Hi everyone yes, I left OpenAI yesterday

#63

"I told them Xerox has got to get itself together, because there's no way a big company can take advantage of things moving this fast. People will get frustrated and start their own companies." —Carver Mead, 1979 (employee at Xerox PARC), discussing why Xerox needed to focus more on adopting integrated circuits into the computers they had already developed, instead of continuing to just make increasingly-obsolete cop…

Where is this quote from? Can't easily Google it

Re: Hi everyone yes, I left OpenAI yesterday

#64

"I told them Xerox has got to get itself together, because there's no way a big company can take advantage of things moving this fast. People will get frustrated and start their own companies." —Carver Mead, 1979 (employee at Xerox PARC), discussing why Xerox needed to focus more on adopting integrated circuits into the computers they had already developed, instead of continuing to just make increasingly-obsolete cop…

I don't mean to detract from your point (if anything, I suppose I'm obliquely supporting it), but I feel compelled to say that it's really weird to see Carver Mead cited in the context of "employee at Xerox PARC", because I mostly know him as one half of "Mead/Conway", i.e. the duo who arguably supplied the computational (dare I say "algorithmic"?) rocket fuel for the unbelievably wild progress of chips in the 1990s [1] [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead%E2%80%93Conway_VLSI_chip_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway

Re: Hi everyone yes, I left OpenAI yesterday

#65
Looking at the thread, it is quite amusing to see some founders hopelessly begging Karpathy to work at their tiny startup to realize that they can't afford him as he is exceptionally brilliant in the AI industry.

If OpenAI, Tesla and Google cannot retain him, then probably nobody can. Probably he'll be doing YouTube videos all day long.

Re: Hi everyone yes, I left OpenAI yesterday

#66

"I told them Xerox has got to get itself together, because there's no way a big company can take advantage of things moving this fast. People will get frustrated and start their own companies." —Carver Mead, 1979 (employee at Xerox PARC), discussing why Xerox needed to focus more on adopting integrated circuits into the computers they had already developed, instead of continuing to just make increasingly-obsolete cop…

> 1979 ... increasingly-obsolete copiers. In 1979, I doubt copiers were 'increasingly obsolete'; I'd expect the market was growing rapidly. Laser printers, email, the Internet, didn't yet exist; PCs barely existed, and not in offices. Almost everywhere would have used typewriters, I suppose.

Xerox's copier sales peak was in the early 70's, and then multiple international companies [primarily in Japan] began creating better, less expensive copiers. By the late 70's, Xerox was massively losing marketshare [to both competitors, and to blossoming word processing technologies].

>Laser printers, email, the Internet, didn't yet exist

Actually, all three did; the latter was in the form of ARPANET [to be technical, not "The Internet"].

Re: Hi everyone yes, I left OpenAI yesterday

#68

"I told them Xerox has got to get itself together, because there's no way a big company can take advantage of things moving this fast. People will get frustrated and start their own companies." —Carver Mead, 1979 (employee at Xerox PARC), discussing why Xerox needed to focus more on adopting integrated circuits into the computers they had already developed, instead of continuing to just make increasingly-obsolete cop…

Where is this quote from? Can't easily Google it

Dealers of Lightning; the best "tech sociology" book I've read, yet; was recommended here on HN as "must read" and it is absolutely a MUST READ.

Re: Hi everyone yes, I left OpenAI yesterday

#69

Let me say, he's a great teacher! I took a CV class with him. He should teach more, and take it seriously. Being a popular AI influencer is not necessarily correlated with being a good researcher though. And I would argue there is a strong indication that it is negatively correlated with being a good business leader / founder. Here's to hoping he chills out and goes back to the sorely needed lost art of explaining co…

b-lined?

Re: Hi everyone yes, I left OpenAI yesterday

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-deterministic outputs... For one (rather important) thing.

I can think of lots of reasons why non-deterministic outputs at the OS level is a bad idea, but what are the benefits?

Not to jump in for someone else but your use of “OS level” prompts me to opine: I think the features of a meaningful new OS would extend far beyond the programmatic level of the kernel, the drivers, the dependencies, etc. A “new OS” could just be Linux with some cool UX innovations on top enabled by ensembles of lightweight, purpose built LLMs. Think window management, file management, password management, etc.

For one potentially compelling example that happily (sadly?) isn’t using LLMs: the SimulaVR people are developing their own Linux fork of some kind, claiming it’s necessary for comfortable VR use for office work. And I sorta believe them!

Post reply on HN