Live data from Hacker News

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

wired.com

611–620 of 734 posts

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

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalists don't like markets, or at least not the markets that we're told capitalism will bring about. Those markets are supposed to increase competition and drive down prices until companies are making just barely enough to survive. What capitalist wants that for himself? He wants decreased competitions and sky high prices for himself, and increased competition and lower prices for his competitors and suppliers.

> Capitalists don't like markets, or at least not the markets that we're told capitalism will bring about. The "markets" most people learn about are artificial Econ 101 constructions. They're pedagogical tools for explaining elasticity and competition under the assumption that all widgets are equally and infinitely fungible. An assumption which ignores marginal value, individual preferences, innovation and other thin…

> An assumption which ignores marginal value, individual preferences, innovation and other things that make real markets.

If those things mattered we'd have a lot fewer people mad about the state of things.

> The capitalist wants to be left to trade as he sees fit without state intervention.

If that were true you'd see a lot fewer lobbyists in DC and state capitols. Non-compete and non-disparagement clauses wouldn't exist. Patents and copyright wouldn't either.

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

#612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be a sad type of fun watching him become another disgusting and disconnected bazillionaire. Remember when Mark was a Honda Fit driving Palo Alto based founder focused on 'connecting people' and building a not yet profitable 'social network' to change the world? This is a repeat of the fight for talent that always happens with these things. It's all mercenary - it's all just business. Otherwise they'd remain an…

> Remember when Mark was a Honda Fit driving Palo Alto based founder focused on 'connecting people'…? That Mark must have come after the Mark that created a site in college where the visitor compared two women and ranked which of the two were "hotter".

That's fair. Legend is Sam was the guy applying to YC at 17 with "I am Sam Altman and I am coming"

So yeah. Naked ambition. They're both just creaming their pants for power.

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

#613

Mercenaries over missionaries. Many employers want employees to act like cult members. But then when going gets tough, those are often the first laid off, and the least prepared for it. Employers, you can't have it both ways. As an employee don't get fooled.

Missionaries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt7BPxHqbkU

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

#614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should still have to pay damages for possessing the copyrighted material. That's possession, which courts have found is copyright violation. Remember all the 12 year olds who got their parents sued back in the 2000s? They had unauthorized copies.

I don't know what exactly you're referring to here. The model itself is not a copy, you can't find the copyrighted material in the weights. Even if you could, you're allowed under existing case law to make copies of a work for personal use if the copies have a different character and as long as you don't yourself share the new copies. Take the Sony Betamax case, which found that it was legal and a transformative use…

> The model itself is not a copy,

Agreed

> the Sony Betamax case, which found that it was legal and a transformative use of copyrighted material to create a copy of a publicly aired broadcast

Good thing libgen is not publicly aired in broadcast format.

> So on those grounds, they're as screwed as the 12 year olds and their parents.

Except they have deep enough pockets to actually pay the damages for each count of infringement. That's the blood most of us want to see shed.

You cannot have trained the model without possession of copyrighted works. Which we seem to be in agreement on.

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

#615

Mercenaries over missionaries. Many employers want employees to act like cult members. But then when going gets tough, those are often the first laid off, and the least prepared for it. Employers, you can't have it both ways. As an employee don't get fooled.

I think there's more to work than just taking home a salary. Not equally true among all professions and times in your life. But most jobs I took were for less money with questionable upside. I just wanted to work on something else or with different people.

The best thing about work is the focus on whatever you're doing. Maybe you're not saving the world but it's great to go in to have one goal that everyone goes towards. And you get excited when you see your contributions make a difference or you build great product. You can laugh and say I was part of a 'cult', but it sure beats working a misearble job for just a slightly higher paycheck.

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

#616

Mercenaries over missionaries. Many employers want employees to act like cult members. But then when going gets tough, those are often the first laid off, and the least prepared for it. Employers, you can't have it both ways. As an employee don't get fooled.

Only place you can say if you are an employee and a missionary is well if you are a missionary or working in a charity/ NGO etc trying to help people/animals etc.

The rest of us are mercenaries only.

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

#617
post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not a company, we are a family

These CEOs will be the first to say "we are a team, not a family" when they do layoffs.

Relevant Silicon Valley Scene:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u48vYSLvKNQ

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

#618

Mercenaries over missionaries. Many employers want employees to act like cult members. But then when going gets tough, those are often the first laid off, and the least prepared for it. Employers, you can't have it both ways. As an employee don't get fooled.

Only place you can say if you are an employee and a missionary is well if you are a missionary or working in a charity/ NGO etc trying to help people/animals etc. The rest of us are mercenaries only.

or if you own the company

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

#619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would normally agree, but we're instantially talking about the company that made Pytorch and played an instrumental role in proliferating usable offline LLMs. If you can make that algebra add up to "bad guy" then be my guest.

It seems like you're claiming that Pytorch + an open-weight LLM > everything on this wiki page, especially the anchored section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_content_management_co...

I am. I genuinely don't understand how Meta's LLM contributions have anything to do with Myanmar.

It's like telling an iPhone user that iCloud isn't trustworthy because of the Foxconn suicide nets. It's basically the definition of a non-sequitur.

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

#620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Capitalists don't like markets, or at least not the markets that we're told capitalism will bring about. The "markets" most people learn about are artificial Econ 101 constructions. They're pedagogical tools for explaining elasticity and competition under the assumption that all widgets are equally and infinitely fungible. An assumption which ignores marginal value, individual preferences, innovation and other thin…

> An assumption which ignores marginal value, individual preferences, innovation and other things that make real markets. If those things mattered we'd have a lot fewer people mad about the state of things. > The capitalist wants to be left to trade as he sees fit without state intervention. If that were true you'd see a lot fewer lobbyists in DC and state capitols. Non-compete and non-disparagement clauses wouldn't…

In fairness, non-competes are evidence of both what the commenter you're replying to said and what I said to instigate the reply. The capitalist absolutely does want to be left alone to trade as he sees fit. He also wants his competitors harassed by regulators and all of their potential employees bound by non-competes. He also doesn't consider subsidies and grants to be interference. Unless they go to competitors.
Post reply on HN