Sauron declares: Saruman to join Mordor.
Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
131–140 of 1001 posts
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#132Anyone else find it strange that startup founders of the magnitude of Sam & Greg would join a gigantic corporation as employees? It sounds very out of line of what you'd expect.
Worked(?) for Carmack and Luckey
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#133This actually seems like a decent compromise. Sam and Greg can retain velocity on the product side without having to spin up a whole new operation in direct competition with their old levers of power, and Ilya + co can remain in possession of the keys to the kingdom.
Except they only had AI model velocity and not product velocity. The user-side implementation of chatGPT is actually quite below what would be expected based on their AI superiority. So the parts that Sam & Greg should be responsible for are actually not great.
Just curious what do you think is bad about the user side experience of chatgpt? It seems pretty slick to me and I use it most days.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#134This confirms that Sam and Greg don't belong as heads of a non-profit who's sole objective is to develop AGI for the benefit of all of humanity. Because if your Plan B is to join Microsoft, whose mission is to make profit for shareholders, then your heart wasn't really in it, as that won't achieve your original goal.
Yeah, this is a huge validation of what Ilya and the Board did. If Sam and Greg had started another company with similar aims, even if it wasn't non-profit, they would probably keep arguing that what they were doing was only to get enough resources to be able to solve the problem of AGI with a broad benefit to humanity, and it probably would have turned into a big ideological schism between Sam's side insisting that a profit-seeking company was okay to pursue the goal, and OpenAI insisting on pursuing the goal and not getting distracted by greed.
Sam and Greg joining up with Microsoft settles that debate cleanly, they clearly aren't serious about developing AGI without a profit motive or military control determining the development process if they're docking with Microsoft. I don't think Ilya and the Board would have had any doubts about Sam if they fired him, but if they did this would remove them.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#135Anyone else find it strange that startup founders of the magnitude of Sam & Greg would join a gigantic corporation as employees? It sounds very out of line of what you'd expect.
Satya probably offered the one resource they couldn’t buy at the scale/speed they need: GPUs. Both time on Azure’s cloud, as well as promise of some of the first Azure Maia 100 and Cobalt 100 chips.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#136Have to give it to Satya. There's a thin possibility that Microsoft would have to write-off its whole $10B (or more?) investment in OpenAI, but that isn't Satya's focus. The focus is on what he can do next. Maybe, recruit the most formidable AI team in the world, removed from the shackles of an awkward non-profit owning a for-profit company? Give enough (cash) incentives and most of OpenAI employees would have no qua…
And this kind of thinking seems to be the exact reason he was pushed away. “The future” as envisioned by a megacorp might not be that great.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#137This is sorta brilliant. Microsoft has access to almost everything OpenAI does. And now Altman and Brockman will have that access too. Meanwhile, I imagine their tenure at MSFT will be short-lived, because hot-shot startup folks don’t really want to work there. They can stabilize, use OpenAI’s data and models for free, use Microsoft’s GPUs at cost, and start a new company shortly, of which Microsoft will own some lar…
Satya will probably allow them to run a startup under the MS umbrella without interference and with full MS backing.
I really don’t think that’s in the Microsoft DNA to do
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#138This is sorta brilliant. Microsoft has access to almost everything OpenAI does. And now Altman and Brockman will have that access too. Meanwhile, I imagine their tenure at MSFT will be short-lived, because hot-shot startup folks don’t really want to work there. They can stabilize, use OpenAI’s data and models for free, use Microsoft’s GPUs at cost, and start a new company shortly, of which Microsoft will own some lar…
if hot shot startup folks don't want to work there, why would they even go there? If you're flat broke, you need a job; they're not flat broke, they don't need a job. The deal at MS is worth it, or it's not, it's not something they need to decide over the course of a weekend... unless it's what they were already not being candid about.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#139I think people underestimate how much of a company’s value is in their key leadership, select talent, and technology. When a company is acquired those are typically the reasons to do so other than pure revenue acquisition. Microsoft already has their technology, now has the key leadership, and will soon have the select talent. Satya wins, OpenAI is walking dead.
Satya wins
Sam wins
Ilya and the board continue to look like fools
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#140Anyone else find it strange that startup founders of the magnitude of Sam & Greg would join a gigantic corporation as employees? It sounds very out of line of what you'd expect.
No. They need a lot of money and computation resources to work on. In order to continue their work, they either A). raise a massive fund B). be employed by a big corp. There's no surprise they chose the latter. After all, MS has a research department on this domain.