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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'

#401

Post by mlazos »

petesergeant wrote: post #315
ath92 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Everyone always thinks this at least in big tech I’ve never heard a PM or exec say a market is not winner take all. It’s some weird corpo grift lang that nothing is worth doing unless its winner take all.

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

#402

Post by BoorishBears »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #93
ASalazarMX wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet 100 quatloos that your comment will not have honest arguments below. You can't nurture missionaries in an exploitative environment.

Not to mention, missionaries are exploitative. They're trying to harvest souls for God or (failing the appearance of God to accept their bounty) to expand the influence of their earthbound church. The end result of missionary activity is often something like https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/feb/25/us-evang... . Bottom line, "But... but I'm like a missionary !" isn't my go-to argument when I'm trying to co…

There's one slightly more common outcome of your so-called "missionary activities".

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

#403

Post by diggan »

impossiblefork wrote: post #186
diggan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Btw Sam has tweeted about an open source model. Stay tuned... https://x.com/sama/status/1932573231199707168 Sneaky wording but seems like no, Sam only talked about "open weights" model so far, so most likely not "open source" by any existing definition of the word, but rather a custom "open-but-legal-dept-makes-us-call-it-proprietary" license. Slightly ironic given the whole "most HN posters are confidently wrong"…

Open weights is unobjectionable. You do get a lot. It's nice to also know what the training data is, and it's even nicer to be aware of how it's fine-tuned etc., but at least you get the architecture and are able to run it as you like and fine tune it further as you like.

> Open weights is unobjectionable

Yeah? Try me :)

> but at least you get the architecture and are able to run it as you like and fine tune it further as you like.

Sure, that's cool and all, and I welcome that. But it's getting really tiresome of seeing huge companies who probably depend on actual FOSS to constantly get it wrong, which devalues all the other FOSS work going on, since they wanna ride that wave, instead of just being honest with what they're putting out.

If Facebook et al could release compiled binaries from closed source code but still call those binaries "open source", and call the entire Facebook "open source" because of that, they would. But obviously everyone would push back on that, because that's not what we know open source to be.

Btw, you don't get to "run it as you like", give the license + acceptable use a read through, and then compare to what you're "allowed" to do compared to actual FOSS licenses.

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

#404

Post by rightbyte »

BoorishBears wrote: post #398
thih9 wrote: post #378

What I hear is: “The person that profits from employees who don’t prioritize money encourages employees to not prioritize money.” Unsurprising, unhelpful for anyone other than sama, unhealthy for many.

This concept is not at all tied to trying to depress salaries and goes back decades: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/mercenaries-vs-m... I don't imagine Sam Altman said this because he thinks it'll somehow save him money on salaries down the line.

The 2000 article seem to refer to prospect capitalists and Altmam refers to workers.

I don't think the context is the same. In the context of Altman, he wants 'losers'.

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

#405

Post by lonesword »

mbac32768 wrote: post #238
sitkack wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anytime someone tells you to be in it for the mission, you are expendable and underpaid.

Could Facebook hire away OpenAI people just by matching their comp? Doubtful. Facebook is widely hated and embarrassing to work at. Facebook has to offer significantly more. And if someone at OpenAI says hey Facebook just offered me more money to jump ship, that's when OpenAI says "Sorry to hear, best of luck. Seeya!" In this scenario, you're only underpaid by staying at OpenAI if you have no sense of shame.

> Facebook is widely hated and embarrassing to work at.

Not sure it's widely hated (disclaimer: I work there), despite all the bad press. The vast majority of people I meet respond with "oh how cool!" when they hear that someone works for the company that owns Instagram.

"Embarassing to work at" - I can count on one hand the number of developers I've met who would refuse to work for Meta out of principle. They are there, but they are rarer than HN likes to believe. Most devs I know associate a FAANG job with competence (correctly or incorrectly).

> Could Facebook hire away OpenAI people just by matching their comp?

My guess is some people might value Meta's RSUs which are very liquid higher than OAI's illiquid stocks? I have no clue how equity compensation works at OAI.

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

#406

Post by DebtDeflation »

hliyan wrote: post #320
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".

These examples of double standards for labor vs capital are literally everywhere.

Capital is supposed to be mobile. Economic theory is based on the idea that capital should flow to its best use (e.g., investors should withdraw it from companies that aren't generating sufficient returns and provide it to those who are) including being able to flow across international borders. Labor is restricted from flowing across international boundaries by law and even job hopping within a country is frowned upon by society.

We have lower rates of taxation on capital (capital gains and dividends) than on labor income because we want to encourage investment. We're told that economic growth depends on it. But doesn't economic growth also depend on people working and shouldn't we encourage that as well?

There's an entire industry dedicated to tracking investment yields for capital and we encourage the free flow of this information "so that people can make informed investing decisions". Yet talking about salaries with co-workers is taboo for some reason.

The list goes on and on and on.

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

#407

Post by smokel »

surfingdino wrote: post #394
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.

And if they AI companies don't like the license, they will ignore it or pay to be given a waver. Long may they rot in hell for doing that.

The people running AI companies have figured out that there is no such thing as hell. We have to come up with new reasons for people to behave in a friendly way.

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

#410

Post by graemep »

bookv wrote: post #356
grafmax wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He claims to be advancing progress. He believes that progress comes from technology plus good governance. Yet our government is descending into authoritarianism and AI is fueling rising data center energy demands exacerbating the climate crisis. And that is to say nothing of the role that AI is playing in building more effective tools for population control and mass surveillance. All these things are happening becaus…

[flagged]

> Also the only way multiculturalism can work is through a totalitarian state which is why surveillance and censorship is so big in the UK. Also the reason why Singapore works.

Singapore, if anything, is evidence against your claim about the UK. Singapore has multiple cultures, but it does not promote multi-culturalism as it is generally understood in the UK. Their language policy is:

1. Everyone has to speak reasonably good English. 2. Languages other English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil are discouraged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning_and_policy_i...

The language policy is more like the treatment of Welsh in the 19th century, or Sri Lanka's attempt to impose a single national language from the 60s to the 80s (but more flexible as it retains more than one language). A more extreme (because it goes far beyond language) and authoritarian example would be contemporary China's suppression of minority cultures. I do not think anyone would call any of those multiculturalism.

The reason for surveillance and censorship in the UK is very different. It is a general feeling in the ruling class that the hoi polloi cannot be trusted and centralised decision making is preferable to local or individual decision making. The current Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill is a great example - the central point is that the authorities will make more decisions for people and organisations and decide what they an do to a greater extent than at the moment.

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