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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'

#471

Post by tim333 »

antupis wrote: post #414
Festro wrote: post #409

What an odd turn of phrase. Historically speaking, mercenaries have absolutely slaughtered missionaries in every confrontation. If missionaries could be mercenaries, they would.

The term comes from John Doerr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6iwEYmbCwk . But Altman kicked most missionaries out during corporate turmoil in 2023, so not sure where this comes from.

From that by the way

>...one hand The Mercenaries they have enormous Drive they're opportunistic like Andy Grove they believe only the paranoids survive they're really sprinting for the short run but that's quite different I suggest to you than the missionaries who have passion not paranoia who are strategic not opportunistic and they're focused on the big idea in partnerships. It's the difference between focusing on the the competition or the customer.

It's a difference between worshiping at the altar of Founders or having a meritocracy where you get all the ideas on the table and the best ones win it's a difference between being exclusively interested in the financial statements or also in the mission statements it's a difference between being a loner on your own or being part of a team having an attitude of entitlement versus contribution or uh as Randy puts it living a deferred Life Plan versus a whole life that at any given moment is trying to work difference between just making money anybody tells you they don't want to make money is lying or making money and making meaning Al also or my bottom line is it's the difference between success or success and significance.

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

#472

Post by conartist6 »

avidphantasm wrote: post #454
Festro wrote: post #409

What an odd turn of phrase. Historically speaking, mercenaries have absolutely slaughtered missionaries in every confrontation. If missionaries could be mercenaries, they would.

And both missionaries and mercenaries are responsible for the abuse and obliteration of many millions. Neither are forces for good.

The force has a light side and a dark side. Apparently Switzerland is so famously neutral because their national export was mercenaries. You can't take sides in wars of you want to sell soldiers to both sides...

But also I imagine that it helps when you wish to stay neutral if people are afraid of what you could do if you were directly involved in a conflict.

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

#473

Post by tim333 »

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'm not sure that's true. I've never heard of a human being done for copyright for reciting a book passage.

I daresay the difference with AI is that pretty much no human can do that well enough to harm the copyright holder, whereas AI can churn it out.

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

#474

Post by tim333 »

saubeidl wrote: post #444
jrm4 wrote: post #76

Big picture, I'll always believe we dodged a huge bullet in that "AI" got big in a nearly fully "open-source," maybe even "post open-source" world. The fact that Meta is, for now, one of the good guys in this space (purely strategically and unintentionally) is fortunate and almost funny.

What's even crazier is that China are the good guys when it comes to open source AI.

One private company in China, funded by running a quant hedge fund. I'm not sure China as in Xi is good.

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

#475

Post by qwertox »

saubeidl wrote: post #444
jrm4 wrote: post #76

Big picture, I'll always believe we dodged a huge bullet in that "AI" got big in a nearly fully "open-source," maybe even "post open-source" world. The fact that Meta is, for now, one of the good guys in this space (purely strategically and unintentionally) is fortunate and almost funny.

What's even crazier is that China are the good guys when it comes to open source AI.

It's really hard to tell. If instructions like the current extreme trend of "What a great question!" and all the crap that forces one to put

  * Do not use emotional reinforcement (e.g., "Excellent," "Perfect," "Unfortunately").
  * Do not use metaphors or hyperbole (e.g., "smoking gun," "major turning point").
  * Do not express confidence or certainty in potential solutions.
into the instructions, so that it doesn't treat you like a child, teenager or narcissistic individual who is craving for flattery, can really affect the mood and way of thinking of an individual, those Chinese models might as well have baked in something similar but targeted at reducing the productivity of certain individuals or weakening their beliefs in western culture.

I am not saying they are doing that, but they could be doing it sometime down the road without us noticing.

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

#476

Post by luqtas »

bit1993 wrote: post #416
somenameforme wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason Machiavellianism is stupid is that the grand ends the means aim to obtain often never come to pass, but the awful things done in pursuit of them certainly do. So the motivation behind those means doesn't excuse them. And I see no reason the inverse of this doesn't hold true. I couldn't care less if Zuckerburg thinks open sourcing Llama is some grand scheme to let him to take over the world to become its go…

Machiavellianism is not for everyone. It is specifically a framework for people in power. Kings, Heads of States, CEOs, Commanders. Competitive environments with allot at stake (peoples lives, money, future), in these environments it is often difficult to make decisions. Having a framework in place that allows you to make decisions is very useful.

Mitch Prinstein wrote a book about power and it shows that dark traits aren't the standard in most leaders, nor they are the best way to get into/stay in power

author is "board certified in clinical child and adolescent psychology, and serves as the John Van Seters Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and the Director of Clinical Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill" and the book is based on evidence

edit: you can't take a book from 1600 and a few alive assholes with power and conclude that. there's a bunch of philanthropists and other people around

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

#478

Post by sksrbWgbfK »

Festro wrote: post #409

What an odd turn of phrase. Historically speaking, mercenaries have absolutely slaughtered missionaries in every confrontation. If missionaries could be mercenaries, they would.

The Knights Templar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templar) were kinda both, but modern AI is more mercenary in order to grab all the profits and become a monopoly nowadays.

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

#479

Post by malfist »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #264
burroisolator wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI only got big, especially for coding, because they were able to train on a massive corpus of open source code. I don't think it is a coincidence.

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.

Legally or illegally gained access too. Lest we forget Meta pirating books

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

#480

Post by achrono »

keeeba wrote: post #428

Just checking my notes here. This is the same Sam Altman who abandoned OpenAI’s founding mission in favour of profit? No it can’t be

The word "beat" and "mercenaries" are also quite important here -- to me, this is Altman's way of saying "you losers who left OpenAI, you will pay a steep price, because we will mess with you really deeply". The threat to Meta is just a natural consequence of that, to the extent that Meta clings onto said individuals.
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