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At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

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Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#111

Post by satvikpendem »

warshinder wrote: post #108
williamdclt wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure that I do prefer the AI train to the social media / ad train. I certainly would if the direction was "we're throwing ourselves blindly in AI so to gradually free citizens from the need to work", but right now it's "we're throwing ourselves blindly in AI so that we can sacrifice workers for higher corporate profits".

Not to mention how they will be used by terrorists and evil people to create biological weapons and other tools of mass slaughter. Or how it will be/is being used by criminals to target vulnerable people and businesses. Or how coupled with drone warfare the world becomes an unlivable hellhole in the next decade. But Marc Andreesan said only losers are against “tech accelerationiism” on twitter so here we are. Edit: a…

Sounds like you're reading into Amodei's propaganda as to why they should control AI. The information to make biological weapons for example is nothing new, it has been on the Internet for decades.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#112

Post by twister2920 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #110
dgellow wrote: post #68

Whatever you think of AI for your own work, the fact that the entire economy is betting everything on it is really concerning. It’s not just the fact that it may not work well economically speaking and would end up with a market crash, or all the negative externalities from AI development, it’s also the opportunity cost we are paying. With so much human capital and resources dedicated to developing and running LLMs a…

Researchers are increasingly using LLMs and other transformer based AI. My friend at a well known research institution asked Anthropic for access to their biology model (not sure if it's Mythos or some other sort of uncensored model) and recently made breakthroughs with it and other AI.

what a delightfully vague story!

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#113

Post by satvikpendem »

cliglot wrote: post #57
consumer451 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah, but being a CTO at a major org isn't exactly a low-paying gig. The interesting thing to me is that the belief that Anthropic is going achieve something like AGI appears to have really spread through SV. If not AGI, at least greatly disturb their old cushy SaaS jobs. Also, I still do believe some people just want to work on "cool" stuff. edit: not just CTOs and CPOs, I mean John freakin Jumper, who got the…

> Also, I still do believe some people just want to work on "cool" stuff. One thing I’ve noticed more and more is all the “cool” jobs require you to already be an established domain expert. Another things I’ve noticed, and this is probably mostly just my opinions evolving, but all the “cool” stuff that catches my interest these days is not in software. Software is boring.

What catches your interest these days?

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#114

Post by justinmarsan »

alentred wrote: post #109
dgellow wrote: post #68

Whatever you think of AI for your own work, the fact that the entire economy is betting everything on it is really concerning. It’s not just the fact that it may not work well economically speaking and would end up with a market crash, or all the negative externalities from AI development, it’s also the opportunity cost we are paying. With so much human capital and resources dedicated to developing and running LLMs a…

I fear another related possibility. With *so* much money on the table, if this new industry shrinks or collapses, it is hard to believe that it will collapse same way dot-com did, and instead investors will seek to protect their capital who knows at what cost. Given the influence they have it is not hard to imagine the impact on policies, etc. I fear that tax payers are not the winners in either case, whether this in…

This reminds me of the office rental leases during and after lockdowns where it seemed like the idea that owners might loose money was just not even on the table and we needed people to be back at the office otherwise the value of office buildings would fall and that'd be terrible...

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#115

Post by satvikpendem »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #76
Aurornis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would do that in a heartbeat if I was in that situation. Having a major leadership role at a big company is kind of a slog. Getting a chance to go back to a fast growing startup as an IC in a way that will only benefit their career (ex-Anthropic or ex-OpenAI makes your resume gold plated) is an easy choice. They can go back to any job they want after this. I think this might only be shocking to some people who have…

I disagree. I'd immediately have a ton of questions for most ex-OpenAI and ex-Anthropic people as my default position would be "poor business/economics judgement in role, chose to ride a hype cycle, now sat in front of me for a reason". I'm not saying it's toxic to have it on your work history, but it's far from gold plated. They'd have work to do for me, and for many, many people in the industry, to prove that I'd w…

Are you a hiring manager?

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#116

Post by TrackerFF »

nickysielicki wrote: post #45

The question I have is why are these companies hiring these people and what does it say about their hiring practices and the amount of capital they’re poorly spending? It’s exceedingly unlikely that any of the people who were working on YC startups previously have any real professional experience with any of the following: slurm, collectives, NUMA systems, RDMA, compilers, systems programming, general HPC performance…

It isn’t that long ago that AI was heavily gatekept and had some serious barriers of entry, due to its origins from academia.

I figure most of these are working on products, rather that deep frontier research.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#117

Post by satvikpendem »

twister2920 wrote: post #112
satvikpendem wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Researchers are increasingly using LLMs and other transformer based AI. My friend at a well known research institution asked Anthropic for access to their biology model (not sure if it's Mythos or some other sort of uncensored model) and recently made breakthroughs with it and other AI.

what a delightfully vague story!

Yes, I don't have their permission to dox them, so it will have to be vague for now. Still, there are many news articles outlining the same point I made, except with real examples.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#118

Post by codingdave »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #106
florakel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer that scenario to the one we had before where too many smart people were building out social networks and similar services trying to maximize ad impressions. We are still dealing with the consequences…

> too many smart people were building out social networks and similar services trying to maximize ad impressions. Honest question: where should these very smart people work then in your opinion? Nearly all suitable-looking, "smarter" ideas that come to my mind will bring less revenue/profit in expectation than, for example, letting them maximize ad impressions. I of course wish we lived in a "more intelligent" world…

> will bring less revenue/profit

Call me crazy, but the smartest people I know have rejected maximizing their employer's revenue and profit as their goal. Or even their own company if they go that route. Find a niche, work it, enjoy it, and enjoy the rest of your life, too.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#119

Post by unsupp0rted »

dgellow wrote: post #68

Whatever you think of AI for your own work, the fact that the entire economy is betting everything on it is really concerning. It’s not just the fact that it may not work well economically speaking and would end up with a market crash, or all the negative externalities from AI development, it’s also the opportunity cost we are paying. With so much human capital and resources dedicated to developing and running LLMs a…

Moonshots are concerning until you consider the alternative.

AI is the one and only possibility for saving millions (likely billions) of lives from “old age”, cancers, Alzheimer’s, ALS… you name it.

It’s a big bet. The alternative is we all die anyway: sadly after a gradual decline at best or horribly after long undignified suffering at worst.

I’ll take the economic risk.

Re: At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic

#120

Post by cliglot »

I’ve been in a bit of creative/intellectual rut the last few years, but before that there were a handful of things that intrigued me in the last 5-10 years.

Most recently, I became interested in the field of photonics/optics, particularly in the field of novel optical communications research.

I’ve had mild interests in things like Biology and History since I was a child. The latter particularly hooked me a few years back.

Neuroscience is a pretty cool one as well. The human brain is of course one of the most fascinating pieces of hardware in existence and understanding it (to whatever level we currently can) is incredibly interesting to me.

At one point I thought about going into security research, but now that everyone and their mother is headed that direction, it’s become less feasible.

Unfortunately I don’t even have a bachelors degree, and most of the fields are research heavy and not very accessible to hobbyists, so my actual interaction with these things remains relegated to reading papers/pop sci articles/etc.

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