Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

This is somewhat ingenious.

Microsoft holds the keys to almost all endeavors of OpenAI. Soon, such privileges will also be enjoyed by Altman and Brockman.

Concurrently, it seems reasonable to speculate that their stint at Microsoft might not be drawn-out, as startup prodigies are often not inclined to work in such established firms.

They have the chance to achieve stability, leverage OpenAI’s invaluable data and models devoid of any expenditure, access Microsoft's GPUs at minimal cost, and eventually set up another venture. As a result, Microsoft stands to gain a substantial equity stake in the new enterprise.

While Altman requires no financial backing from Microsoft, the corporation now has an invaluable direct link to OpenAI.

A bit surprised, and maybe even disappointed, that he didn't start his own company. Rarely in history did someone have a better shot at becoming a billionaire of their own making. But you have to give it to Nadella, that's quite the coup.

This was essentially already in the cards as a possible outcome when Microsoft made it's big investment in OpenAI, so in my view it was a reasonable outcome at this juncture as well. For Microsoft, it's just Nokia in reverse.

If you looked at sama's actions and not his words, he seems intent on maximizing his power, control and prestige (new yorker profile, press blitzes, making a constant effort to rub shoulders with politicians/power players, worldcoin etc). I think getting in bed with Microsoft with the early investment would have allowed sama to entertain the possibility that he could succeed Satya at Microsoft some time in the distant future; that is, in the event that OpenAI never became as big or bigger than Microsoft (his preferred goal presumably) -- and everything else went mostly right for him. After all, he's always going on about how much money is needed for AGI. He wanted more direct access to the money. Now he has it.

Ultimately, this shows how little sama cared for the OpenAI charter to begin with, specifically the part about benefiting all humanity and preventing an unduly concentration of power. He didn’t start his own separate company because the talent was at OpenAI. He wanted to poach the talent, not obey the charter.

Peter Hintjens (ZeroMQ, RIP) wrote a book called "The Psychopath Code", where he posits that psychopaths are attracted to jobs with access to vulnerable people [0]. Selfless talented idealists who do not chase status and prestige can be vulnerable to manipulation. Perhaps that's why Musk pulled out of OpenAI, him and sama were able to recognize the narcissist in each other and put their guard up accordingly. As Altman says, "Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.”[1] Perhaps this apply to him as well.

Amusingly, someone recently posted an old tweet by pg: "The most surprising thing I've learned from being involved with nonprofits is that they are a magnet for sociopaths."[1] As others in the thread noted, if true, it's up for debate whether this applies more to sama or Ilya. Time will tell I guess.

It'll also be interesting to see what assurances were given to sama et al about being exempt from Microsoft's internal red tape. Prior to this, Microsoft had at least a little plausible deniability if OpenAI was ever embroiled in controversy regarding its products. They won't have that luxury with sama's team in-house anymore.

[0] https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/psychopathcode/content/chapter8...

[1] https://archive.is/uUG7H#selection-2071.78-2071.166

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38339379

In the end it's just labels. What matters is what kind of funds will they be given, what they can work on, what sort of control they have over it.

I would expect most people to be concerned about how AGI can be really useful to most of humanity without creating power concentration and more inequality, but these goals seem to be implicitly conflated for some reason with the value of MS stock and Sam Altman's and others' career paths. At least those seem to be the emphasis of most of the drama; admittedly they are much simpler and familiar topics to tackle than what path forward would better suit humanity as a whole.