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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

#321

Post by yodon »

pixelesque wrote: post #242
CSMastermind wrote: post #166

In 1990 Microsoft hired all of the important talent from Borland who up until that point had been outpacing them in terms of product development. We got Access, Visual Studio, and .Net / C# as a direct result. Borland faded into obscurity. Hard not to feel like there will be a parallel here.

Anders Hejlsberg didn't move to MS until 1996...

>Anders Hejlsberg didn't move to MS until 1996...

The point of the comment wasn't the specific date, it was the impact of hiring a competitor's team AND equipping that team to be even more impactful.

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

#322

Post by threeseed »

CSMastermind wrote: post #166

In 1990 Microsoft hired all of the important talent from Borland who up until that point had been outpacing them in terms of product development. We got Access, Visual Studio, and .Net / C# as a direct result. Borland faded into obscurity. Hard not to feel like there will be a parallel here.

Microsoft also acquired LinkedIn and Github.

Both of which have been run as largely seperate entities.

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

#323

Post by gzer0 »

fsckboy wrote: post #138
nostromo wrote: post #82

This 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.

It is the only way they can continue the work they have already contributed at OpenAI. Otherwise, it would mean they spend months or up to a year training their own model which in this arms race isn't feasible with viable competitors like Anthropic closing the gap quickly. This was the only way forward. I'm sure Sam Altman + Greg were offered an incredibly lucrative deal and autonomy.

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

#324

Post by peanuty1 »

loveparade wrote: post #233
impulser_ wrote: post #118

I'm guessing this is the end of OpenAI. People aren't going to want to work at OpenAI anymore due to the value destruction that just occurred. It's going to be hard for them to raise money now because of the bad rep they have now. It going to be hard for them to hire top talent. You have two leaders, top engineers and researchers leaving the company. Google and Facebook come in a grab up any top talent that still the…

I agree, any potential hire who has the choice between OpenAI and the new team at MSFT will now choose the latter. And a lot of the current team will follow as well. This is probably the end of OpenAI. Can't say I'm too sad, finally a chance to erase that misleading name from history.

Do leading AI researchers at Google/Meta/OpenAI/Anthropic/HuggingFace want to work at Microsoft?

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

#325

Post by Legend2440 »

9dev wrote: post #288

I don’t quite buy your Cyberpunk utopia where the Megacorp finally rids us of those pesky ethics qualms (or ”shackles“, as you phrased it.) Microsoft can now proceed without the guidance of a council that actually has humanities interests in mind, not only those of Microsoft shareholders. I don’t know whether all that caution will turn out to have been necessary, but I guess we’re just gleefully heading into whatever…

OpenAI's ideas of humanities best interests were like a catholic mom's. Less morals are okay by me.

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

#327

Post by kmlevitt »

_mh56 wrote: post #141

[This is not in response to the satya's tweet but the general articles or opinions in social media.] Please keep in mind that the articles you read are PR pieces, last few being from Sam's Camp. msft/sequioa/khosla has no power to remove the board or alter their actions. There is no gain for board by reinstating Sam and resigning themselves. swaying employees who have 900k$ comp is pretty hard. and not giving money t…

The whole point of this is that Microsoft doesn't even need to remove the board anymore. From their standpoint, the whole fear was openAI was about to lose a lot of their best people, including their CEO, who they had the most trusted.

That would've greatly harmed their investment Now they get to have their cake and eat it too: they can keep their existing relationship with open AI and continue to get access to their models, and yet at the same time they potentially get all the best people in-house and benefit from their work directly. This whole turn of events might turn out to be a net win for Microsoft.

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

#328

Post by abkolan »

summerlight wrote: post #264

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 giv…

Satya just tweeted saying that Sam Altman would be the CEO of this new group.

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

#329

Post by nopromisessir »

TechnicolorByte wrote: post #50

Incredible how much has changed in one weekend… or not? Confused what this really means. So Microsoft still has access to OpenAI’s pre-AGI tech that Sam and Greg can leverage for their more product-focused visions. More than that, it looks like Microsoft has become a major AI player (internal research) overnight up with the likes of Meta, Google, and OpenAI. Incredible.

Just FYI...

Microsoft was already set to spent 27 billion usd on research for 2023. They dedicate huge standout double digit percentages of budget to research every year. Their in house AI research division was already huge.

They didn't become a major AI player overnight... They already were long ago.

OpenAI is small, in raw numbers of AI researchers, compared to the big players in the space. That's a major reason why it's so compelling that they have been able to consistently set the bar for state of the art.

They were a dream team... But small. Msft is adding AAA+ talent to their existing A+ deck. Also they won't have to rewrite the code base. Can hit the ground running.

Lastly, there is no evidence that openai has the greatly quoted and so hard to define 'agi'. That's Twitter hearsay and highly unlikely... If folkes can even agree what that is. By the overwhelming percentage of definitions... Even gpt-5 is unlikely to meet that bar. Highly speculative. Twitter is a cesspool of conspiracy theory... Don't believe everything you read.

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

#330

Post by rounakdatta »

shubhamjain wrote: post #99

Have 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…

> can capture a bigger slice of THE FUTURE History says that the future is actually written by the nerds and not the drumbeaters (ah read CXOs).

In all this drama, the deep work interruption of the nerds is the net loss (and effectively slight deceleration) for the future.

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