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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

#591

Post by vaxman »

leobg wrote: post #408
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…

Isn't Microsoft in breach of contract here? Not by the word (parties hadn't forseen such event, and so there won't be anything about this explicity in the contract). But one could argue that MS isn't acting in good faith and acting counter to the purpose of the agreement with OpenAI. The argument would go something like this: MS were contractually obliged to assist OpenAI in their mission. OpenAI fired Altman for wha…

> MS is positioning itself as an opponent to OpenAI

They were positioned that way by the OpenAI board, which has effectively committed corporate suicide and won’t be around much longer.

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

#592

Post by coolkoala »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #349
mo_42 wrote: post #280

This might be good for society. If there are multiple entities that develop such AI technology, there's some kind of competition and a distribution of power. Of course I'd prefer if everyone could just train such a model on their smartphone with a public dataset and an open source software. At least in terms of compute, companies will always be ahead.

Microsoft has become the commercial arm of OpenAI

Better than OpenAI becoming the commercial arm of Microsoft.

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

#593

Post by Athari »

jug wrote: post #444
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…

Ilya should just go to Anthropic AI at this point. They have better momentum at this point after all this, and share his ideals. But it would be funny because they broke off of OpenAI because of their Microsoft ventures already in 2019, haha. He'd be welcomed with a big "We told you so!"

I don't consider Anthropic's approach to safety fantastic. They train the model to lie, play cat and mouse with jailbreakers, run moderation on generations with delay etc. This makes the model appear safer, as it's harder to jailbreak, but this approach solves nothing fundamentally.

If Ilya is concerned about safety and alignment, he probably has a better chance to get there with OpenAI, now the he has more control over it.

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

#594

Post by jfoster »

waihtis wrote: post #8

Anyone else find it strange that startup founders of the magnitude of Sam & Greg would join a gigantic corporation as employees? It sounds very out of line of what you'd expect.

They won't have to worry about raising capital or getting access to GPUs, and they've likely been promised a high degree of autonomy, almost certainly reporting directly to Nadella.

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

#595

Post by blitzar »

esskay wrote: post #213
mirzap wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satya will probably allow them to run a startup under the MS umbrella without interference and with full MS backing.

Highly unlikely. Instead they'll be working on internal Windows AI tools for chatbots and random AI features in Windows. We all lose in this situation.

Optimization of Microsoft Edge (tm) icon placement to win the browser wars.

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

#596

Post by nopromisessir »

pyb wrote: post #265
waihtis wrote: post #8

Anyone else find it strange that startup founders of the magnitude of Sam & Greg would join a gigantic corporation as employees? It sounds very out of line of what you'd expect.

Curious to see how long Sam lasts as an employee.

It's gonna be a special unit. He's not gonna be an employee.

Once you lead at that level... It's max autonomy going forward. Source: Elon. Guy hates a board with power as much as Zuckerberg. Employee? Ha .. Out of the question.

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

#597

Post by jacquesm »

kwant_kiddo wrote: post #527

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 ca…

It takes billions to get this off the ground. Next stop: if this is going to be an independent entity they may well go around the usual suspects to give them much more money. I wonder if any of the VCs that have invested in OpenAI have something in their charter about investing in competing entities.

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

#599

Post by cherryteastain »

altacc wrote: post #370
imgabe wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might notice that Microsoft shareholders are also part of humanity and destroying humanity would be highly detrimental to Microsoft's profits, so maybe their interests are not as misaligned as you think. I am always bemused by how people assume any corporate interest is automatically a cartoon supervillain who wants to destroy the entire world just because.

The mega rich have been building bunkers and preparing for the downfall of humanity for a long time now. Look around and you'll notice that greed wins out over everything else. We're surrounded by companies doing nothing or only small token gestures to protect humanity or the world we live in and instead focusing on getting rich, because getting rich is exactly why people become shareholders. Don't rely on those guys…

Why would even the people employed in those bunkers listen to some billionaire after the world collapses? At that point there's no one to enforce your ownership of the mega bunker, unlike the government from before. And all the paper money is worthless of course.

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

#600

Post by blackoil »

ps256 wrote: post #277
blackoil wrote: post #219

MS is betting the company on AI. It is everywhere across the org. They won't play with kiddie glove. You want to see ruthless businessmen in action sure pick up the fight. They'll be happy to lose 10 billion plus some more if it means they win the war.

> MS is betting the company on AI. This doesn't mean anything when they have multiple non-AI revenue streams generating billions.

Share Market values growth. Board won't like if MS is rerated as utility. MS is behaving as if AI will be as big as the Internet and wants to capture the biggest slice in it. Hence betting the company and will respond appropriately.
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