Amazing to see this on the front page multiple times and reposted every 20 minutes, each time as the highest performer on new. I've never seen such story velocity before.
Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
411–420 of 1001 posts
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#412So Altman now has a backer for his NVIDIA killer, and one who can use it not just for LLMs but Azure too, and one day possibly consumer GPUs? Forget Xbox, subsidised graphics cards as a loss-leader for Game Pass subscriptions would be an interesting play. What will the antitrust people think?
You're not beating Nvidia if you aim for GPUs. The more plausible approach is developing more specialized chips, which are only good at Tensor Ops. Heck, that's what Nvidia's top of the line chips are. The A100 and H100 don't support OpenGL or any other Graphics Api.
I agree that is the most pressing need, and the one Microsoft has already started producing like all the other big players. I’d be very surprised if this topic hasn’t come up in conversations with Altman either now or even before the current blowup. But after that, a consumer play would fit so well! Start off with custom silicon for a couple of generations of Xbox and Surface, get DirectX working nicely with it. Then go after the rest of the market. Good use for Microsoft’s cash pile because it benefits basically all their product lines in one way or another.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#413Have to give it to Satya. There's a thin possibility that Microsoft would have to write-off its whole $10B (or more?) investment in OpenAI, but that isn't Satya's focus. The focus is on what he can do next. Maybe, recruit the most formidable AI team in the world, removed from the shackles of an awkward non-profit owning a for-profit company? Give enough (cash) incentives and most of OpenAI employees would have no qua…
Microsoft got Copilot. They were first to establish the brand. OpenAI technologies let them do it. I don't know how much Copilot brand cost, but right now when you're thinking about AI-assisted programming, Copilot is the first thing comes in mind. So probably they got something in return.
Not only Github copilot but the general copilot integrations announced at Ignite for Microsoft 365 and other apps means a much deeper full on assistant integration for whole ecosystem.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#414This is sorta brilliant. Microsoft has access to almost everything OpenAI does. And now Altman and Brockman will have that access too. Meanwhile, I imagine their tenure at MSFT will be short-lived, because hot-shot startup folks don’t really want to work there. They can stabilize, use OpenAI’s data and models for free, use Microsoft’s GPUs at cost, and start a new company shortly, of which Microsoft will own some lar…
"brilliant"
I think "predictable" is more apt.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#415[deleted]
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#416[This is not in response to the satya's tweet but the general articles or opinions in social media.] Please keep in mind that the articles you read are PR pieces, last few being from Sam's Camp. msft/sequioa/khosla has no power to remove the board or alter their actions. There is no gain for board by reinstating Sam and resigning themselves. swaying employees who have 900k$ comp is pretty hard. and not giving money t…
It’s an official statement from the CEO of a listed company, who would be ill advised to say they hired someone when they didn’t.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/11/19/a-statement-from...
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#417I don't see why people want to race to build AGI at all costs. On the balance this probably slows things down, so: good. Not sorry about Sam, first off I'm not assuming we know everything and second I'm more inclined to trust the board. Also it seems he was trying to do a secret hardware venture on the side, which would be several kinds of unethical. Again: good.
>I don't see why people want to race to build AGI at all costs.
It's simple: He who wins first place writes the rules, for everyone.
If Microsoft gets the first place win, they (and more broadly the USA) are who get to write the rulebook.
We are already witnessing this with "AI", it's OpenAI/Microsoft and the USA who dragged the rest of the west into the rules that they wrote because they got past the finish line first.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#418I'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…
The flip side perspective is people will love focusing on doing it right, without being rushed to market for moat building and max profit.
Does that not only work long-term with investment?
Unless they get philanthropic backers (maybe?), who else is going to give them investment needed for resources and employees that isn't going to want a return on investment within a few years?
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#419[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…
It was a negotiation. Did they have power... Ofc they did. Otherwise... Why were they negotiating? Its not about who had more power. They just couldn't find enough common ground. Now Satya bagged talent. They don't have to rewrite the whole codebase due to IP msft has already secured. I think those talks were real. You don't build something that long and then want to walk away unless huge differences came up. That's…
Will be interesting to see how many OpenAI employees leave OpenAI to work at Microsoft.
Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
#420Have 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…
Maybe the next move is an open offer to any OpenAI employees to join Sam’s team at their current compensation or better.. call it the ‘treacherous 500’ or something.