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

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

#311

Post by hardwaresofton »

jorvi wrote: post #303
hardwaresofton wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another funny possibly sad coincidence is that the licenses that made open source what it is will probably be absolutely useless going forward, because as recent precedent has shown, companies can train on what they have legally gained access to. On the other hand, AGPL continues to be the future of F/OSS.

Yup. The book torrenting case is pretty nuts. If I can reproduce the entirety of most books off the top of my head and sell that to people as a service, it's a copyright violation. If AI does it, it's fair use. Pants-on-head idiotic judge.

This was immediately my reaction as well, but I'm not a judge so what do I know. In my own mind I mark it as a "spice must flow" moment -- it will seem inevitable in retrospect but my simple (almost surely incorrect) take is that there just wasn't a way this was going to stop AI's progress. AI as a trend has incredible plot armor at this point in time.

Is the hinge that the tools can recall a huge portion (not perfectly of course) but usually don't? What seems even more straight forward is the substitute good idea, it seems reasonable to assume people will buy less copies of book X when they start generating books heavily inspired by book X.

But, this is probably just a case of a layman wandering into a complex topic, maybe it's the case that AI has just nestled into the absolute perfect spot in current copyright law, just like other things that seem like they should be illegal now but aren't.

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

#312

Post by motorest »

zmmmmm wrote: post #259

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 $?

> It says something that he still believes he has "missionaries" after betraying all the core principles that OpenAI was founded on.

What I find the most troubling in this reaction is how hostile it is to the actual talent. It accuses everyone and anyone who is even considering to join Meta in particular but any competitor in general as being a mercenary. It's using the poisoning the well fallacy to shield OpenAI from any competition. And why? Because he believes he is in a personal mission? This emits "some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make" energy. Not cool.

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

#313

Post by chvid »

zmmmmm wrote: post #259

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 $?

It is a widely accepted definition of AGI that it is something that is either really smart (or generates more than 100B usd in revenue).

It is also clear Sam Altman and OpenAI’s core values remain intact.

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

#314

Post by cubancigar11 »

beebmam wrote: post #281
zmmmmm wrote: post #259

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 $?

A company's mission is not an individual's mission. I personally would never hire an engineer whose main pursuit is money or promotions. These are the laziest engineers that exist and are always a liability.

"I would never give me money to someone who wants money."

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

#315

Post by petesergeant »

ath92 wrote: post #285
petesergeant wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

Only because everyone believes it’s a winner takes all game and this perfect competition will only last for as long as the winner hasn’t come out on top yet.

> everyone believes it’s a winner takes all game

Why would anyone think that, and why do you think everyone thinks that?

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

#316

Post by fragmede »

jorvi wrote: post #303
hardwaresofton wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another funny possibly sad coincidence is that the licenses that made open source what it is will probably be absolutely useless going forward, because as recent precedent has shown, companies can train on what they have legally gained access to. On the other hand, AGPL continues to be the future of F/OSS.

Yup. The book torrenting case is pretty nuts. If I can reproduce the entirety of most books off the top of my head and sell that to people as a service, it's a copyright violation. If AI does it, it's fair use. Pants-on-head idiotic judge.

I didn't see the part of the trial where they got the "entirety of most books" out of Llama. What did you see that I didn't?

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

#317

Post by fragmede »

TheRoque wrote: post #258
plemer wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

don't call them open source when they're not. it's shared model.

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

#318

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

bigyabai wrote: post #288
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggesting that the AI doom crowd is building up a narrative for Altman is sort of like saying the hippies protesting nuclear weapons are in bed with the arms makers because they're hyping up the destructive potential of hydrogen bombs.

It's a real negotiating tactic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinkmanship If you convince people that AGI is dangerous to humanity and inevitable, then you can force people to agree with outrageous, unnecessary investments to reach the perceived goal first. This exactly happened during the Cold War when Congress was thrown into hysterics by estimates of Soviet ballistic missile numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

Chief AI doomer Eliezer Yudkowsky's latest book on this subject is literally called "If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies". I don't think he's secretly trying to persuade people to make investments to reach this goal first.

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

#319

Post by godelski »

angst wrote: post #274

“I don’t think Sam is the guy who should have the finger on the button for AGI.” - Ilya Sutskever, Co-founder, co-lead of Superalignment Team , Departed early 2024 - May 15, 2025, The Atlantic Anyway, I concur it's a hard choice as one other comment mentions.

Is this a button any one person should have their finger on?

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

#320

Post by hliyan »

zmmmmm wrote: post #259

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 $?

It's absoluely ridiculous that investors are driven (and are expected to be driven) by maximisation of return of investment, and that alone, but when labour/employees exhibit that same behaviour, they are labeld "mercenaries" or "transacitonal".
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