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Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

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101–110 of 478 posts

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#101
post #10

Wow. What could possibly have caused him to quit so soon after coming back? I hope this is not accurate but I'm afraid it is: https://x.com/signulll/status/2067446889956430273

This reads like an episode of Silicon Valley. I wish that show was rebooted, they'd have so much funny material nowadays.

Gilfoyle was really ahead of the times with Son of Anton.

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#102

Very bad news for Gemini - the brief comeback with 2.5 Pro last year looked to be driven by Noam

Don't think it matters in the long run to be honest. The models have no moat, they are becoming a commodity. Besides that, Google is in a pretty good position, they're not bleeding money on AI like Anthropic/OpenAI, and they own product verticals where they can integrate it. Plus they have a mature ads-model which is what might actually drive a bit of revenue for LLMs.

I feel like the models have no moat paradigm died when a single model expanded past the memory of single GPU slices. The moat is hosting the model. Even paying a server host to run a rack of GPUs has immense upstart cost, and then you're still struggling to compete on the add-ons of the things on top of the model (prompts, validation loops, etc). You can only throw so much money at a problem.

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#103
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Companies are not your friend who you need to be loyal to. There's a reason noncompetes are illegal in California.

Think of it like if this:

Novo Nordisk hired you to find a cure for obesity.

- This is your full time job, and this is what you are paid for. The company also invests in a lab, in machines, in other employees, etc, so all of you together can figure out.

You find Wegovy, and poof, you run away with the recipe and sell the product on your own.

- Yes, you just scammed your boss, you made him believe that you were working for him, but actually you were using the company resources to your sole benefit.

It's not about loyalty, it's about integrity.

It's the same type of people whom you hire and pay to develop a platform, and then they steal the code, and never deliver this platform to you. Terrible business practices, but isn't it how Facebook happened too ?

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#104
post #28
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is accurate. Confirmed by Noam himself on X https://x.com/i/status/2067400851438932297

Love the choice of words by Noam- exceptional team for OpenAI, amazing team for GDM.

it would sound weird to say either word twice in such a short blurb.

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#106
[Edit: note that my comment was reparented, it was originally a response to someone claiming Noam was another "Scam Altman". I don't mind the reparenting or the killing of the original subthread, but I feel like this is necessary context to understand this.]

Noam is the real deal, he was pretty legendary within old-time ('00s) Google engineering. Paul Buchheit had a story about interviewing him with the "how to write a spellchecker" question and then him coming up with something better than the state-of-the-art, then basically delivering Google's spell corrector in his first 2-week Noogler project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gilk-76W9rE&t=60

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to make a guess, money played a role lol.

He is close or already a billionaire, not sure much more money will be do much heavy-lifting

you'd be surprised! people seem to have a limitless appetite for that money stuff. they just can't get enough of it, i've found

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there was a scene in Silicon Valley about a developer fantasy league.

Krazam already has a video covering this exact idea.

Fantasy FAANGball

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIZt9YPAPZo

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#109
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are not your friend who you need to be loyal to. There's a reason noncompetes are illegal in California.

Think of it like if this: Novo Nordisk hired you to find a cure for obesity. - This is your full time job, and this is what you are paid for. The company also invests in a lab, in machines, in other employees, etc, so all of you together can figure out. You find Wegovy, and poof, you run away with the recipe and sell the product on your own. - Yes, you just scammed your boss, you made him believe that you were workin…

This is not at all what happened. They did deliver, in the form of the "Attention Is All You Need" paper, which Google made public. They took nothing from Google that wasn't already public.

Unless you think that employees are like indentured servants, and Novo Nordisk owns not only Wegovy but the people who work on it.

Re: Noam Shazeer Joins OpenAI

#110
post #76
post #48

Some context for people who haven’t followed the full loop: Shazeer was a long-time Google researcher, joined Google in 2000, and was one of the co-authors of “Attention Is All You Need.” He left Google in 2021 to co-found Character.AI. In 2024, Google brought him and some Character.AI researchers back via a licensing/talent deal with Character.AI (reportedly around $2.7B). He was then made a Gemini co-lead. Now he’s…

this character.ai? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3xgwyywe4o

Oui!
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