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Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

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Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#521

Post by davedx »

dragonwriter wrote: post #335
zurfer wrote: post #253

I don't buy it. If you listen to Sam and Greg, they want to change the world and bring us into a world of abundance that everyone can participate in. They were the ideators of this "awkward non-profit owning a for-profit company". Microsoft is setup to create shareholder value. That's it. Both of them will eventually find it moot to advance tech so a few folks get richer.

> If you listen to Sam and Greg, they want to change the world and bring us into a world of abundance that everyone can participate in. Sam is a serial startup (co)founder who has spent additional time at YC -- in the startup world, that kind of talk is so common as to be a stereotype . It's a good way to get people who do care about that kind of stuff to accept equity in a firm that is statistically likely to fail (…

How is Sam a serial startup founder?

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#522

Post by jacquesm »

belter wrote: post #471
shubhamjain wrote: post #99

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…

You are looking forward to a self-aware, self-replicating, unregulated Clippy?

At least it will be a broken paperclip maximizer.

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#523

Post by divbzero »

cphoover wrote: post #414
nostromo wrote: post #82

This 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.

It makes perfect sense for Satya, Sam, and Greg, but I doubt many of us thought deeply enough to have predicted it in advance.

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#525

Post by sumitkumar »

thom wrote: post #447
altacc wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had hoped nobody read cyberpunk books and thought that was a description of utopia but consistently we see billionaires trying to act out the sci-fi novels from their youth or impose dystopian world views from Ayn Rand.

https://x.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538

Reverse psychology? Look where you want to go and not at what you want to avoid? I think it is important where humanity collectively points its cognitive torch because that's where it is going to go.

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#526

Post by andyjohnson0 »

1. People concerned about them working for a profit-oriented business: there isn't a way to insist otherwise. Personally I'd rather it was Microsoft that Meta or Google or even Amazon.

2. I wonder what the AI teams at MSR think about this move? Looks like they'll be operating separately to the research division.

3. OAI could potentially make life difficult for Microsoft re the IP that those joining MS carry in their heads. I wonder if the future of OAI is just licencing their IP?

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#527

Post by kwant_kiddo »

Still the aftermath leaves a bitter taste in my mouth about Sam and Greg joining MS. Regardless of whether the AI development in OpenAI was responsible, I think they succeeded in making a product and a culture I have not 'felt' since the early Google days.

Naively, I had really hoped for Sam and Greg to start their own and not join MS. I think a lot of the value was being coherent and to some extent independent. I can't help to think that the same will happen to the 'new' OpenAI as what happend to DeepMind once they became Google DeepMind (again).

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#528

Post by thunkshift1 »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #23
gog-ma-gog wrote: post #4

This actually seems like a decent compromise. Sam and Greg can retain velocity on the product side without having to spin up a whole new operation in direct competition with their old levers of power, and Ilya + co can remain in possession of the keys to the kingdom.

Ilya and co are going to get orphaned, there’s no point to the talent they have if they intend to slow things down so it’s not like they’ll remain competitive. The capacity that MSFT was going to sell to OpenAI will go to the internal team.

Maybe they want it that way and want to move on from all the LLM hype that was distracting them from their main charter of pushing the boundaries of AI research? If yes, then they succeeded handsomely

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#529

Post by pug_mode »

shubhamjain wrote: post #99

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…

It's more than that, OpenAI had many people aligned with the decel agenda, MSFT managed to take the accel leadership and likely their supporters. Does anyone know any large AI competitors that don't have a big decel contingent? Also interesting that META took the opportunity to close one of their decel departments on Saturday.

Re: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

#530

Post by calf »

shubhamjain wrote: post #458
9dev wrote: post #288

I don’t quite buy your Cyberpunk utopia where the Megacorp finally rids us of those pesky ethics qualms (or ”shackles“, as you phrased it.) Microsoft can now proceed without the guidance of a council that actually has humanities interests in mind, not only those of Microsoft shareholders. I don’t know whether all that caution will turn out to have been necessary, but I guess we’re just gleefully heading into whatever…

I am not claiming how right or wrong the final outcome would be, but owning the technology with a clear "for-profit" objective is definitely a better structure for Microsoft and for Sam Altman as well (considering, his plans for the future). I have no opinion on AI risk. I just think that a super valuable technology under a non-profit objective was simply an untenable structure, regardless of potential threats.

This super-valuable technology would not have existed precisely because of this unstable (metastable) structure. Microsoft or Google did not create ChatGPT because internally there would have been too many rules, too many cooks, red tape, etc., to do such a bold--and incautionary--thing as to use the entirety of the Internet as the training set, copyright law be damned and all. The crazy structure is what allowed the machine of unprecedented scale to be created, and now the structure has to implode.
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