661–670 of 754 posts
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Non-zero time, but not a lot either. Main hangup would be acquiring data for training, as their engineers would remember the parameters for GPT-4 and Microsoft would provide the GPUs. But Microsoft with access to Bing and all its other services ought to be able to help here too. Amateurs on hugging face are able to match OpenAI in impressively short time. The actual former-OpenAI engineers with unlimited budget ought…
Amateurs ?
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If the rumors are correct and ideological disagreement was at the core of this, OpenAI is not going to be open anyway, as Sutskever wants more safety, which implies being as closed as possible. Whether it's "public good" is in the eye of the beholder, as there are multiple mutually incompatible concerns about AI safety, all of which have merit. The future balance between those will be determined by unpredictable even…
A company named openai choosing safety is bad because safety means as closed as possible, is a very questionable linguistic contortion. Most unsafe things happen behind closed doors.
Full interview here ("No Priors Ep. 39 | With OpenAI Co-Founder & Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever" from 2 weeks ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft0gTO2K85A
I know everybody is going nuts about this, but just from my personal perspective I’ve worked at a variety of companies with “important” CEOs, and in every single one of those cases had the CEO left I would not have cared at all. The CEO always gets way too much credit externally for what the company is doing, it does not mean the CEO is that important. OpenAI might be different, I don’t have any personal experience,…
I think the problem is, this is not just about dumping the CEO. It’s signalling a very clear shift away from where OpenAI was heading - which seemed to be very focussed on letting people build on top of the technology. The worry now is that the approach is going to be more of controlling access to just researchers who are trusted to be “safe”.
A non-profit immediately makes the values of OpenAI's PPUs (their spin on RSUs) to zero. Employees will be losing out of life changing sums on money.
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PayPal had an exit, but it absolutely did not succeed in the financial revolution it was attempting. People forget now that OG PayPal was attempting the digital financial revolution that later would be bitcoin’s raison d'être.
Yep. PayPal was originally a lot like venmo (conceptually -- of course we didn't have phone apps then). It was a way for people to send each other money online.
What stood out:
1. The whole non-profit vs for-profit is like a recipe for problems. Taking billions in investor money, hyper scaling to hundred-millions of users, and partnering with a $1T tech company… you’re already too late to reverse course and say “I changed my mind”.
2. Seeing who runs the OpenAI board is more shocking than the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. That was really never an issue to partners or investors before? Wow…
3. If OpenAI continues down the “we’re a business / startup” path, their board just shot all their leadership credibility with investors and other potential cloud partners. The one thing people with money and corporate finance offices hate is surprises.
4. You don’t pull a corporate “Pearl Harbor” like this and just blissfully move along without consequences. With such a polarizing move, there’s going to be a fight.
What are the odds Sam can work the phones this weekend and have $10B lined up by Monday for a new AI company which will take all of the good talent from OpenAI?
I'm guessing he has verbal commitments already.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-in...
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How are you still hireable? If I knew you orchestrated two coups at previous companies and I was responsible for hiring, you would be radioactive to me. Especially knowing that all that effort went into putting together a successful coup over other work. Coups, in general, are the domain of the petty. One need only look at Ilya and D'Angelo to see this in action. D'Angelo neutered Quora by pushing out its co-founder,…
Are you the sort of person that hires someone that can successfully organize a coup against corporate leadership? It feels like there is an impedance mismatch here.
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How are you still hireable? If I knew you orchestrated two coups at previous companies and I was responsible for hiring, you would be radioactive to me. Especially knowing that all that effort went into putting together a successful coup over other work. Coups, in general, are the domain of the petty. One need only look at Ilya and D'Angelo to see this in action. D'Angelo neutered Quora by pushing out its co-founder,…
The regular HN commenter says "ceos are bad useless and get paid too much" but now when someone suggests getting rid of one of them suddenly its the end of the world
2. CEO's at fast growing startups are very different than at large tech.
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Yet they need massive investment from Microsoft to accomplish that? > restoration Wouldn’t that mean that over the longterm they will just be outcompeted by the profit seeking entities. It’s not like OpenAI is self sustainable (or even can be if they chose the non-profit way)
> Yet they need massive investment from Microsoft to accomplish that? massive spending is needed for any project as massive as "AI", so what are you even asking? A "feed the poor project" does not expect to make a profit, but, yes, it needs large cash infusions...