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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

#601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for the OpenAI employees, they can just switch the badge in a blink second, it almost feel like a no-brainer to many. I think Sam just took the easier route to rebuild OpenAI within MSFT. Now the trouble comes to the SV VCs they now will be furious.

Did Sam build OpenAI in the first place?

Yes? Each person OpenAI hired is passed through Sam.

Or you think Ilya wrote every line of code of GPT4?

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

#602

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…

I really don't understand the argument here, why are Altman and Brockman the most formidable AI team? I would wager a substantial sum that Altman has not touch anything technical (let alone related to AI) in a very long time. He certainly showed he is a very good operator, networker and executer, but that doesbt give you the technical expertise to build state of the art AI.

If he manages to get a significant amount of the OpenAI engineers to jump ship maybe, but even for those who are largely motivated by money, how is MS going to offer the same opportunity as when they joined for equity with OpenAI? Are they going to pay then >$1M salaries?

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

#603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are engineers who care about the kinds of values that OpenAI was founded on, which have just been – arguably – reaffirmed and revalidated by this latest drama. OpenAI's commercialization was only ever a means to have sufficient compute to chase AGI… If you watch interviews of Ilya you'll see how reluctant he is on principle to yield to the need for profit incentives, but he understands it is a necessary evil to…

I'm sure they care. The question is how will they stay liquid if there is a similar or better offer by another party? The kind of interface they use makes it trivial to move from one supplier to another if the engine is better.

OpenAI existed for years before ChatGPT. Granted, at much smaller size and with hundreds fewer employees.

I imagine that the board wants to go back to that or something like it.

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

#604
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.

Guess who'll be running Microsoft after Satya, and what Microsoft's core offering / cash cow will be.

Never gonna happen.

Satya runs the biggest race track.

Altman trains pure breds trying to win the Kentucky derby repeatedly.

Totally diff games. Both big bosses. Not equivalent and never will be. Totally diff career tracks.

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

#605

In 1990 Microsoft hired all of the important talent from Borland who up until that point had been outpacing them in terms of product development. We got Access, Visual Studio, and .Net / C# as a direct result. Borland faded into obscurity. Hard not to feel like there will be a parallel here.

Microsoft also acquired LinkedIn and Github. Both of which have been run as largely seperate entities.

Is it true for Zenimax and Mojang as well?

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

#606
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.

Satya is saying they'll be an independent "startup" within Microsoft https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344811

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

#607
post #505
post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary - I will now be actively looking for opportunities to join OpenAI, while I wasn't particularly interested beforehand.

What makes you think you’re more competent than the type of people who were interested in joining OpenAI before? What if the type of people who made the company successful are leaving and the type of people who have no track record become interested?

A bit surprised by this pseudo ad hominem, but just for one data point I have (now ex-)coworkers in the same role as me who've recently moved to OpenAI. I'm not suggesting I'm more competent than them, but I don't think my hiring was based on luck while they got it on merit either.

> What if the type of people who made the company successful are leaving and the type of people who have no track record become interested?

What if it's the opposite? What if sama was basically a Bezos who was in the right place/time but could've realistically been replaced by someone else? What if Ilya is irreplaceable? Not entirely sure what the point of this is - if you want to convey that your conjecture is far more likely than the opposite, then make a convincing argument for why that's the case.

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

#609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 billion was potential investment. They transfer that in tranches, so lot of it is still in MS bank. They already have access to GPT3/4/turbo + Dalle 2/3. Plus with its hordes of lawyers, it will be an uphill battle for OpenAI to make MS lose.

Make the model open source and lets see what MS can do with army of lawyers

Sure, they can but that would be against all the safe alignment values they are pushing. They'll lose billions in current and potential investment and will spend the life in lawsuits. Also, govt may not like giving away cutting age tech to China.

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

#610

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…

Agreed, Satya is a first rate executive, other than Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX, I can't really think of anyone in the same league.

There was a lot of discussion on HN the past few days regarding the importance (or lack thereof) of a CEO to an organization. It may be the case that most executives are interchangeable and attributing success to them is not merited, but in the case of the aforementioned, I think it is merited.

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