Microsoft was not a winner of the events of the last few days around OpenAI

I think, where feasible (to fit in HN’s length limit), tweet submissions should include the name of the person and/or title. This tweet is by Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare.

While being terribly annoyed with the events since Friday (not because they affect me directly but because of the sheer amount of useless noise created by them), I was thinking that these folks joining Microsoft are short sighted and won’t last or stay very long there. I’m glad to see an echo of that here.

> and execution risk (see DeepMind within Google for how all the smartest people in AI can still get stymied by the bureaucracy of a giant company).

> I think the chances of the senior OpenAI folks still being at Microsoft in 3 years is asymptotically approaching zero. Where the independence and clear mission of OpenAI was exactly what could have kept that group of incredible talent motivated and aligned over the long term, making Office365 spreadsheets a bit more clever isn’t something that rallies a team like their’s. Sure they’ll try and have some level of independence, but the machinery of a trillion dollar+ business software behemoth is hard to not get caught up in and ground out by.

I’d give them one year, maximum, before they all split up and either go back to OpenAI or form new companies in alliance with other money-minded devils with deep pockets.

Now might be a good opportunity for others in this space to take advantage of the chaos, and in making things worse for OpenAI and Microsoft. And I can’t wait for this to get out of the news cycle.

Microsoft before: no claim over AGI Microsoft now: will invent AGI

Seems like a pretty sweet deal to me.

It might not yield results, in the way you've correctly described. But the stock market is going to like this opportunity to "steal" the founders / stakeholders in OpenAI "For Free". The money Microsoft pays them is just petty cash compared to the perceived value of getting this talent on board.

Let's say that these folks leave in a year, as you suggest. So what? Microsoft gets to ride this wave even further. If there's a chance they get some meaningful benefit, even better.

And, I'm not sure, but the "new" Microsoft might be able to actually keep their newly acquired talent. Imagine if Microsoft is able to cater to them like a "startup" would, but then be backed with real money (e.g. not VC money) Companies that can support a "startup culture" inside of the traditional business, this really can create some powerful outcomes. Think of Apple on many occasions, for example.

So who knows. I doubt the old (cough Ballmer) Microsoft could pull this off. And maybe there's just too much Softy still in there, but I tend to think that maybe the Nadella Microsoft might have a chance and can benefit from this OpenAI shakeup.

I disagree, Microsoft have a habit of coming out of these things on top. They will end up either with more control of OpenAI and/or employing some of it's people directly.