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

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481–490 of 734 posts

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

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>he's just commoditizing the complement That's a cool smaht phrase but help me understand, for which Meta products are LLMs a complement?

Meta's primary business is capturing attention and selling some of that attention to advertisers. They do this by distributing content to users in a way that maximizes attention. Content is a complement to their content distribution system. LLMs, along with image and video generation models, are generators of very dynamic, engaging and personalised content. If Open AI or anyone else wins a monopoly there it could be…

So, imagine a world where everyone but Meta has access to generative AI.

There's two products:

A) (Meta) Hey, here are all your family members and friends, you can keep up with them in our apps, message them, see what they're up to, etc...

B) (OpenAI and others) Hey, we generated some artificial friends for you, they will write messages to you everyday, almost like a real human! They also look like this (queue AI generated profile picture). We will post updates on the imaginary adventures we come up with, written by LLMs. We will simulate a whole existence around you, "age" like real humans, we might even get married between us and have imaginary babies. You could attend our virtual generated wedding online, using the latest technology, and you can send us gifts and money to celebrate these significant events.

And, presumably, people will prefer to use B?

MEGA lmao.

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

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, OpenAI ain't missionaries, it's a for profit company full of people working there for a fat paycheck and equity.

Both are orthogonal concepts.

Anchoring the reader’s opinion by using the phrase “Missionaries” is pure marketing. Missionaries don’t get paid huge dollars or equity, they do it because it’s a religion / a calling.

Ultimately why someone chooses to work at OpenAI or Meta or elsewhere boils down to a few key reasons. The mission aligns with their values. The money matches their expectations. The team has a chance at success.

The orthogonality is irrelevant because nobody working for OpenAI or Meta is a missionary.

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

#483

Sam vs Zuck... tough choice. I'm rooting for neither. Sam is cleverly using words here to make it seem like OpenAI are 'the good guys' but the truth is that they're just as nasty and power/money hungry as the rest.

And thus far, considerably less “open”.

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

#484

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.

Explain how AGPL would prevent AI from being trained on it or AI-generated code competing with it. I have used AGPL for a decade and still not sure.

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

#485

Sam vs Zuck... tough choice. I'm rooting for neither. Sam is cleverly using words here to make it seem like OpenAI are 'the good guys' but the truth is that they're just as nasty and power/money hungry as the rest.

Sam Altman literally casts himself a God apparently and that's somehow to be taken as an indictment of his rivals. Maybe it's my GenX speaking but that's CEO bubblespeak for "OpenAI is fucked, abandon ship".

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

#486
When you hear him saying it, it's funny.

When you hear this reiterated by employees, who actually believe it, then it's sad. Obviously not in this situation, but I've actually heard this from people. Some of them were even pros. "There is no fool like an educated fool."

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

#487
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, they're actually the bad guys, just folks haven't thought far enough ahead to realise it yet.

OK, lay it on us.

I wouldn't call mass piracy [0], for their own competitive gain, to be a "good" act. Especially when it seems they know they were doing the wrong thing - and that they know that the copyright complaints have grounds.

> The problem is that people don’t realize that if we license one single book, we won’t be able to lean into fair use strategy.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/libge...

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

#488
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source could also be a bait and switch. ie - Zuck has no intention to keep opening up the models he creates. Thus, he knows he can spend the money to get the talent. Because he has every intention to make it back.

Zuck has the best or the second best distribution on the planet. If he neutralizes the tech advantage of other companies his chances of winning rise.

How well was Zuck able to use his massive distribution channels to win in his cryptocurrency project, or the Metaverse after that?

Meta has become too fickle with new projects. To the extent that LLAMA can help them improve their core business, they should drive that initiative. But if they get sidetracked on trying to build “AI friends” for all of their human users, they are just creating another “solution in search of a problem”.

I hope both Altman and Zuck become irrelevant. Neither seems particularly worthy of the power they have gained and aren’t willing to show a spine in face of government coercion.

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

#489

Sam Altman is not a bit different than Mark Zuckerberg. His mission is to make money and get as much information to process about individuals, to be used for his benefit, all the rest is just blah blah.

I think half of him truly believes that his work ultimately will benefit humanity as a whole and half of him is a cynical bastard like the rest of them.

Ultimately, he’ll just realize that humanity doesn’t give a fuck, and that he’s in it for himself only.

And the typical butterfly-to-caterpillar transition will be complete.

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

#490
post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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