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Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

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Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#261

Post by dragonwriter »

tw1984 wrote: post #200

[flagged]

> OpenAI's board should book themselves for an IQ test, it is just beyond my understanding why they hate their own successful business so much.

OpenAI's board doesn't run a business, they run a nonprofit with a mission oriented around safety and public benefit, not private profit.

It has a for-profit subsidiary, explicitly subordinated to the nonprofit's mission, as a funding mechanism, but being successful at bringing in money is only a net benefit if the method by which the funding is generated isn't more harmful to the mission than what it enables is beneficial.

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#262

Post by aneutron »

nga911 wrote: post #80
aneutron wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but for me it is us framed as if they won't be working on GPT-based products, but on research. The whole thing reads like this to me: "In hindsight, we should've done more due diligence before developing a hard dependency on an organization and its product. We are aware that this was a mistake. To combat this, we will do damage control and continue to work with OpenAI, while develo…

How do you conduct research with sales people? even if they manage to bring in researchers from OpenAI, the only gain here is microsoft getting some of the researchers behind the products and/or product developers.

Well, the same way a man with drive, discipline and money but very little in the way of technical expertise can build a company.

Sometimes you need someone who can drive a project and recruit the right people for the project. That person does not always need to be a subject matter expert.

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#263

Post by karmasimida »

tempusalaria wrote: post #181
karmasimida wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for the OpenAI employees, they can just switch the badge in a blink second, it almost feel like a no-brainer to many. I think Sam just took the easier route to rebuild OpenAI within MSFT. Now the trouble comes to the SV VCs they now will be furious.

Imagine thinking that top AI researchers are going to start choosing to work for MSFT after years of them being second class citizens there. Like if they don’t like OpenAI they can go to 10 other places that pay more and treat researchers better than MSFT

MSFT isn't as much as an underdog you would think.

MSRA invented ResNet. MSFT also contributed DeepSpeed to the open source, which is critical in OSS LLM scene.

It is now more of just a branding thing. It will become the new cool again.

And OpenAI? After this week, how would the people view them? Definitely not envious or prestige.

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#264

Post by summerlight »

This looks like a short term compromise to defend MSFT before the market opens. A number of members will follow Sam and Greg, but I doubt if it will be the majority given it's yet another big tech rather than a brand new startup. And what would be their roles? Yet another VP/SVP? Those folks are not really AI guys and don't fit very nicely into all the bureaucracy rampant in big techs. Satya will of course try to give them as much room as possible, but it will be considerably smaller and slower thanks to all those corporate politics and external regulations.

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#266

Post by blueblisters »

BSDobelix wrote: post #222
LewisVerstappen wrote: post #201

Satya is the best CEO in tech and it isnt even close

Honest question, why is he the best CEO?

The CEO's job is to enrich the shareholders and by that metric he has done a pretty good job. More qualitatively, being able to change Microsoft's trajectory from boring enterprise tech company to a tech leader with strategic deals (OpenAI, Github) is very impressive.

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#270

Post by mjan22640 »

lannisterstark wrote: post #2

Listen. I was confused when the whole thing was going down. I was more confused when the whole "board wants to backtrack and maybe resign" thing was going down. I got even more confused when Emmett Shear was announced as the CEO. ...but never in a hundred years would I have imagined "haha just join Microsoft" as an actual alternative. I remain, confused.

The whole situation likely arose due to Microsoft attempting to cross the boundaries set by OpenAI.
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