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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

#151

Post by hodgesrm »

BobbyJo wrote: post #131
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…

1000000% this. I remember lamenting all through the 2010s that all the high paying jobs were basically ad revenue supported. Now its AI. Maybe AI doesn't materialize the way we want, but I'll take that bet over business as usual before every time.

> I remember lamenting all through the 2010s that all the high paying jobs were basically ad revenue supported.

That's never been true for financial services, many of which offer very high-paying jobs for high-frequency trading, hedge fund management, market operations, etc. There are many other industries with high value IT jobs that are not ad-supported.

(Edit: typo)

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

#152

Post by vkou »

florakel wrote: post #81
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 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…

Social networks only destroyed discourse.

This both destroys discourse, and centralizes the means of production into ~4 companies, with everyone else paying them an economic tax in order to be competitive.

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

#154

Post by lbriner »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #144
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If I had one wish, it would be to make 'common good' more incentivizing than 'maximize revenue/profit' but sadly it's not the world we live in.

The problem with this is people investing their time/expertise/money/energy into the common good and then have a small number of people ruining the benefit for their own ends, knocks the well-meaning out of the most positive people. The common good only works well when everyone wants the common good.

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

#155

Post by lotsofpulp »

vkou wrote: post #152
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…

Social networks only destroyed discourse. This both destroys discourse, and centralizes the means of production into ~4 companies, with everyone else paying them an economic tax in order to be competitive.

Whatsapp provides tremendous utility. I remember paying far more “economic tax” before Whatsapp to communicate, with basically anyone in the world.

Facebook Marketplace also provides me with quite a bit utility.

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

#156

Post by acedTrex »

jayd16 wrote: post #142
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…

The consequences are different this time because why? Seems like an even bigger opportunity to inject ads, influence thought, and scrape user information.

I mean, I am no LLM lover but in the possible "success case" there are also many many other cool/good to humanity use cases.

Whereas ads are almost exclusively negative.

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

#157

Post by hvb2 »

palmotea wrote: post #77
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…

> 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. It's worth pointing out that "entire economy is betting everything on [AI]" you'r…

But you do realize that the entire 2008 financial crisis was also just financial 'wizards' increasing leverage more an more.

The real economy didn't change at all, but confidence was gone and so was lending.

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

#158

Post by jedberg »

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…

They are hiring HPC experts too. It’s a small community and you just don’t hear about it.

These 100 people repress a tiny fraction of the people who work at these labs. And many of the people that work at the labs are building on top of the models, not building the models themselves.

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

#159

Post by wubbawibba »

jayd16 wrote: post #142
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…

The consequences are different this time because why? Seems like an even bigger opportunity to inject ads, influence thought, and scrape user information.

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