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…
Microsoft is now the for-profit arm of OpenAI.
Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
341–350 of 1001 posts
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#342[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 bringi…
Also on their site...
"it may be difficult to know what role money will play in a post-AGI world"
This company is very different.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#343Can someone help me understand what Sam's actual value is? He doesn't seem to be a particularly important practitioner/researcher re: AI and is "just" a CEO/salesman-evangelist to get funding, which Microsoft doesn't need? Is he particularly apt at leading/managing research teams? OpenAI's slow productization doesn't imply he's a product/idea guy a la Jobs.
A lot of experienced OpenAI engineers/scientists apparently want to come with him. Those people clearly have a lot of value to Microsoft since they've invested heavily in OpenAI. Imagine having poured billions in to that firm to discover half the reason you invested is walking out the door...
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#344It's really telling of US tech culture, how AI hype quickly turned from "Open" and "we're doing it for humanity" into a mega-corp cash grab *show.
I understand what money does to principles, but this is comical.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question, why is he the best CEO?
He was a marketing person I believe when Bill was in MSFT. To become the CEO of MSFT is a huge political and competence firewall already. Then to do the most spectacular transformation of a mega-corp is next-level. MSFT is now the leading player in AI, while before it was still fucking around with office and Windows licenses. People who are young (not saying you are), and don't remember what MSFT was before Satya, do…
As far as I know, he actually came from an engineering background, making his career even more impressive. Despite my views on Microsoft and shareholder-oriented capitalism, he certainly seems like a brilliant and genuinely interesting guy.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#347Microsoft's board made the right call when they promoted Satya to CEO. Their share price on the day he became CEO was $36.35 and is now $369.84 (and likely to increase again on this news).
Putting together a deal like this whilst maintaining the relationship with OpenAI is impressive enough, but to do it as a cricket tragic when India was losing to Australia is even better.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#348Can someone help me understand what Sam's actual value is? He doesn't seem to be a particularly important practitioner/researcher re: AI and is "just" a CEO/salesman-evangelist to get funding, which Microsoft doesn't need? Is he particularly apt at leading/managing research teams? OpenAI's slow productization doesn't imply he's a product/idea guy a la Jobs.
Microsoft would at least like him not to do that job for a competitor. Given they paid for a big stake in the market leader, and their stock price movements when this drama erupted, keeping these people in-house can be seen as damage control.
Sure. But Sam Altman is an ambitious man. Why would he accept this instead of fundraising and creating another company? I think there would be more details of this arrangement surfacing these coming days. It is unlikely a traditional team within a large corporation.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#349This might be good for society. If there are multiple entities that develop such AI technology, there's some kind of competition and a distribution of power. Of course I'd prefer if everyone could just train such a model on their smartphone with a public dataset and an open source software. At least in terms of compute, companies will always be ahead.
Microsoft has become the commercial arm of OpenAI
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
Satya will probably allow them to run a startup under the MS umbrella without interference and with full MS backing.
Yeah... Not really how a mega-corp like MSFT does things. They LOVE to have control.
Microsoft is not a pyramid organization, but distributed into teams - like Google, for better or for worse.