Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries' • Hacker News Board

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#251

Post by petesergeant » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:29 AM UTC

landl0rd wrote: post #106

pydry wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Mark Zuckerberg. He didnt open source anything because he's a "good guy", he's just commoditizing the complement. The "good guy" is a competitive environment that would render Meta's AI offerings to be irrelevant right now if it didnt open source.

The price tag on this stuff, in human capital, data, and hardware, is high enough to preclude that sort of “perfect competition” environment. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

> The price tag on this stuff, in human capital, data, and hardware, is high enough to preclude that sort of “perfect competition” environment.

I feel like we right now live in that perfect competition environment though. Inference is mostly commoditized, and it’s a race to the bottom for price and latency. I don’t think any of the big providers are making super-normal profit, and are probably discounting inference for access to data/users.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#252

Post by lynx97 » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:29 AM UTC

tomhow wrote: post #248

lynx97 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> This is hopelessly naive When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I agree, nobody should call anyone an idiot. However, naivity isn't a slur, its a personality trait.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#253

Post by Foobar8568 » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:29 AM UTC

_Algernon_ wrote: post #250

neilv wrote: post #29

Can someone make an honest argument for how OpenAI staff are missionaries, after the coup? I'd be very happy to be convinced that supporting the coup was the right move for true-believer missionaries. (Edit: It's an honest and obvious question, and I think that the joke responses risk burying or discouraging honest answers.)

Altman has to be the most transparently two-faced tech CEO there is. I don't understand why people still lap up his bullshit.

Money.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#254

Post by _Algernon_ » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:31 AM UTC

Foobar8568 wrote: post #253

_Algernon_ wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Altman has to be the most transparently two-faced tech CEO there is. I don't understand why people still lap up his bullshit.

Money.

What money is in it for the "rationalist", AI doom crowd that build up the narrative Altman wants for free?

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#255

Post by sebmellen » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:31 AM UTC

MaxPock wrote: post #244

jrm4 wrote: post #76

Big picture, I'll always believe we dodged a huge bullet in that "AI" got big in a nearly fully "open-source," maybe even "post open-source" world. The fact that Meta is, for now, one of the good guys in this space (purely strategically and unintentionally) is fortunate and almost funny.

[flagged]

Meta's open source AI strategy really did predate the frontier Chinese model wave.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#256

Post by bigyabai » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:32 AM UTC

arresin wrote: post #142

plemer wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, lay it on us.

It’s not unreasonable given the mountain of evidence of their past behaviour to just assume they are always the “bad guy”.

I would normally agree, but we're instantially talking about the company that made Pytorch and played an instrumental role in proliferating usable offline LLMs.

If you can make that algebra add up to "bad guy" then be my guest.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#257

Post by tomhow » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:32 AM UTC

lynx97 wrote: post #252

tomhow wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is hopelessly naive When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I agree, nobody should call anyone an idiot. However, naivity isn't a slur, its a personality trait.

It's not ok here. The comment loses nothing if that sentence is removed.

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#258

Post by TheRoque » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:32 AM UTC

plemer wrote: post #136

casebash wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, they're actually the bad guys, just folks haven't thought far enough ahead to realise it yet.

OK, lay it on us.

Come on... Is it still necessary to remind everyone how evil meta is ? The only reason they released "open source" models was to annoy the competition. They latest stunts: https://futurism.com/meta-sketchy-training-ai-private-photos

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#259

Post by zmmmmm » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:34 AM UTC

It says something that he still believes he has "missionaries" after betraying all the core principles that OpenAI was founded on. What exactly is their mission now other than generating big $?

Re: Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

#260

Post by somenameforme » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:35 AM UTC

pydry wrote: post #102

jrm4 wrote: post #76

Big picture, I'll always believe we dodged a huge bullet in that "AI" got big in a nearly fully "open-source," maybe even "post open-source" world. The fact that Meta is, for now, one of the good guys in this space (purely strategically and unintentionally) is fortunate and almost funny.

Dont make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Mark Zuckerberg. He didnt open source anything because he's a "good guy", he's just commoditizing the complement. The "good guy" is a competitive environment that would render Meta's AI offerings to be irrelevant right now if it didnt open source.

The reason Machiavellianism is stupid is that the grand ends the means aim to obtain often never come to pass, but the awful things done in pursuit of them certainly do. So the motivation behind those means doesn't excuse them. And I see no reason the inverse of this doesn't hold true. I couldn't care less if Zuckerburg thinks open sourcing Llama is some grand scheme to let him to take over the world to become its god-king emperor. In reality, that almost certainly won't happen. But what certainly will happen is the world getting free and open source access to LLM systems.

When any scheme involves some grand long-term goal, I think a far more naive approach to behaviors is much more appropriate in basically all cases. There's a million twists on that old quote that 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy', and with these sort of grand schemes - we're all that enemy. Bring on the malevolent schemers with their benevolent means - the world would be a much nicer place than one filled with benevolent schemers with their malevolent means.