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Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

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Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#191

Post by kulahan »

billyhoffman wrote: post #173
zachthewf wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, inference costs have decreased like 1000x in a few years. OpenAI is the fastest growing startup by revenue, ever. How foolish do you have be to be worrying about ROI right now? The companies that are building out the datacenters produce billions per year in free cash flow. Maybe OP would prefer a dividend?

> OpenAI is the fastest growing startup by revenue, ever. No it's not. Facebook hit $2B in Revenue in late 2010 - early 2011, ~5 years after its founding. https://dazeinfo.com/2018/11/14/facebook-revenue-and-net-inc...

Finding one example of him being wrong still kinda supports his point, don't you think?

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#192

Post by kulahan »

_yb2s wrote: post #157
arandomusername wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The development of commercial launch systems has substantially reduced the cost of space launch. NASA’s space shuttle had a cost of about $1.5 billion to launch 27,500 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), $54,500/kg. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 now advertises a cost of $62 million to launch 22,800 kg to LEO, $2,720/kg. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093 Why do you lie?

It is required to assume good faith in you HN replies… which imo makes it a nicer place to discuss things. People can be wrong about things or be referring to different information without intentionally lying.

This is pretty egregious, but I agree that assuming noble intent is the way to maintain civil discussion. No need to call him a liar - just downvote.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#193

Post by jkaptur »

ben_w wrote: post #128
lsy wrote: post #58

I guess it's not news but it is pretty wild to see the level of millenarianism espoused by all of these guys. The board of OpenAI is supposedly going to "determine the fate of the world", robotics to be "completely solved" by 2020, the goal of OpenAI is to "avoid an AGI dictatorship". Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? So far we are multiple years in with much investment…

> Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? Yes, frequently and loudly. When Altman was collecting the award at Cambridge the other year, protesters dropped in on the after-award public talk/Q&A session, and he actively empathised with the protestors . > So far we are multiple years in with much investment and little return, and no obvious large-scale product-market fit, much l…

Can you expand on your spreadsheet analogy?

I think Joel Spolsky explained the main Office moat well here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/02/19/why-are-the-micros...

> ... it might take you weeks to change your page layout algorithm to accommodate it. If you don’t, customers will open their Word files in your clone and all the pages will be messed up.

Basically, people who use Office have extremely specific expectations. (I've seen people try a single keyboard shortcut, see that it doesn't work in a web-based application, and declare that whole thing "doesn't work".) Reimplementing all that stuff is really time consuming. There's also a strong network effect - if your company uses Office, you'll probably use it too.

On the other hand, people don't have extremely specific expectations for LLMs because 1) they're fairly new and 2) they're almost always nondeterministic anyway. They don't care so much about using the same one as everyone they know or work with, because there's no network aspect of the product.

I don't think the moats are similar.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#194

Post by yard2010 »

this_user wrote: post #161
ben_w wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? Yes, frequently and loudly. When Altman was collecting the award at Cambridge the other year, protesters dropped in on the after-award public talk/Q&A session, and he actively empathised with the protestors . > So far we are multiple years in with much investment and little return, and no obvious large-scale product-market fit, much l…

> When Altman was collecting the award at Cambridge the other year, protesters dropped in on the after-award public talk/Q&A session, and he actively empathised with the protestors. He always does that to give himself cover, but he has clearly shown that his words mean very little in this regard. He always dodges criticism. He used to talk about the importance of him being accountable to the OpenAI board and them bei…

This guy is outright scary. He gives me the chills.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#195

Post by 9dev »

elif wrote: post #140
Calavar wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've seen a Segway in close to ten years. Also I suspect most people under 25 have never even heard of Segway.

One wheels (Segway evolutionary grandchild) are almost as popular as electric skateboards.

So… not much? If anything, people drive electric scooters around here. Those seem to hit the sweet spot.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#196

Post by agnosticmantis »

From Musk's email:

"Frankly, what surprises me is that the AI community is taking this long to figure out concepts. It doesn’t sound super hard. High-level linking of a large number of deep nets sounds like the right approach or at least a key part of the right approach."

Genuine question I've always had is, are these charlatans conscious of how full of shit they are, or are they really high on their own stuff?

Also it grinds my gears when they pull out probabilities out of their asses:

"The probability of DeepMind creating a deep mind increases every year. Maybe it doesn’t get past 50% in 2 to 3 years, but it likely moves past 10%. That doesn’t sound crazy to me, given their resources."

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#197

Post by [deleted] »

arandomusername wrote: post #113
computerex wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That same space company said that they'd do point to point commercial travel using rockets. As for significantly outperforming: Ask NASA, price per launch has gone UP not DOWN. What's the point of reusability if it doesn't affect the bottom line in a positive way?

> The development of commercial launch systems has substantially reduced the cost of space launch. NASA’s space shuttle had a cost of about $1.5 billion to launch 27,500 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), $54,500/kg. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 now advertises a cost of $62 million to launch 22,800 kg to LEO, $2,720/kg. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093 Why do you lie?

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#199

Post by kulahan »

marcosdumay wrote: post #175
NetOpWibby wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This made me laugh but also made me think, "...that's it? That's all it takes?"

Land on Mars is cheap... But no, I really doubt that's all it takes. Unless you discount all of the R&D costs as SpaceX operational expenses.

I imagine that's what he's doing. He's willing to put a lot of company money into getting the city on Mars started, because if he's first there, he's gonna set himself (or his dynasty?) up to make hundreds of billions of dollars. Being effectively in control of your own planet? Neat. Scary too.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#200

Post by samvher »

kulahan wrote: post #186
this_user wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Altman was collecting the award at Cambridge the other year, protesters dropped in on the after-award public talk/Q&A session, and he actively empathised with the protestors. He always does that to give himself cover, but he has clearly shown that his words mean very little in this regard. He always dodges criticism. He used to talk about the importance of him being accountable to the OpenAI board and them bei…

Wasn't he fired for questionable reasons? I thought everyone wanted him back, and that's why he was able to return. It was, as I remember, just the board that wanted him out. I imagine if he was doing something truly nefarious, opinions might have been different, but I have no idea what kind of cult of personality he has at that company, so I might be wrong here.

Define everyone. I was delighted when they fired him. I don't believe he has humanity's best interest at heart.
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