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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

#661

Post by Bishonen88 »

DavidKarlas wrote: post #495
BSDobelix wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, why is he the best CEO?

I will never forget something I read in his "Hit Refresh" book(I'm Microsoft employee)... He wrote something along the lines, Office should write best app for iPhone, Mac or even Linux if that helps them grow. They should not help Windows sell Windows copies by doing better Office features on Windows, it is up to Windows team to make Windows best operating system, it should not rely and keep back Office team... This…

That's a nice vision, but as someone who transitioned from a windows to mac a few years ago, I'm sad to report that reality isn't anything like it. Office for mac is lightyears behind what windows has. Both excel and outlook miss critical features (just last week I was looking to change the background of an email - seems that's impossible on mac), or are so much worse in terms of performance (~20mb file with pivot tables) that I'm not sure if I'm running Excel on my m1 mac or if it's a raspberry pi.

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

#662

Post by jkhdigital »

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…

My understanding was that a large tranche of that $10B consisted of Azure compute credits, not actual cash.

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

#663

Post by esoterica »

zoogeny wrote: post #190

All of the naysayers here seem convinced this is Altman and Microsoft looking to destroy OpenAI. Normally I am the cynic but this time I’m seeing a potential win-win here. Altman uses his talent to recruit and drive forward a brilliant product focused AI. OpenAI gets to refocus on deep research and safety. Put aside cynicism and consider Nadella is looking to create the best of all worlds for all parties. This might…

What about the people who got paid equity for the past few years of work and now might see all of their equity intentionally vaporized? They essentially got cheated into working for a much lower compensation than they were promised.

I get that funny money startup equity evaporates all the time, but usually the board doesn’t deliberately send the equity to zero. Paying someone in an asset you’re intentionally going to intentionally devalue seems like fraud in spirit if not in law.

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

#664

Post by DebtDeflation »

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…

> possibility that Microsoft would have to write-off its whole $10B

There was an article that came out over the weekend that stated that only a small part of that $10B investment was in cash, the vast majority is cloud GPU credits, and that it has a long time horizon with only a relatively small fraction having been consumed to date. So, if MSFT were to develop their own GPT4 model in house over the next year or so they could in theory back out of their investment with most of it intact.

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

#665

Post by cma »

robbywashere_ wrote: post #644

Satya's strategic insight deserves recognition. Certainly, there's a slight risk that Microsoft might fail to yield its substantial investment speculated to be around $10B in OpenAI. However, that's not Satya's principal concern. Rather, his focus is on the next move. Possibly, assemble the most elite AI collective globally, unhindered by the constrictions of a non-profit operating a profit-oriented entity? Offer the…

$10B largely in cloud credits that have a 70% margin back to MS, so more towards $3B.

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

#666

Post by nicce »

sumitkumar wrote: post #645

In retaliation Ilya/team should just open source everything OpenAI has. The only way to make genAI(GPT the can opener) safe is to make it democratic and available for everyone. Then others can pick it up and make it more efficient. At least MS servers will get a break.

They can’t anymore if Microsoft has exclusive licence?

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

#667

Post by [deleted] »

calf wrote: post #530
shubhamjain wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not claiming how right or wrong the final outcome would be, but owning the technology with a clear "for-profit" objective is definitely a better structure for Microsoft and for Sam Altman as well (considering, his plans for the future). I have no opinion on AI risk. I just think that a super valuable technology under a non-profit objective was simply an untenable structure, regardless of potential threats.

This super-valuable technology would not have existed precisely because of this unstable (metastable) structure. Microsoft or Google did not create ChatGPT because internally there would have been too many rules, too many cooks, red tape, etc., to do such a bold--and incautionary--thing as to use the entirety of the Internet as the training set, copyright law be damned and all. The crazy structure is what allowed the…

[deleted]

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

#668

Post by soderfoo »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #656
soderfoo wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mer…

Tim Cook is not in the same league?

Yes, oversight on my part, as a supply chain guy, he has really pivoted well in to a generalist leading Apple in to the entertainment biz.

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

#670

Post by thworp »

altacc wrote: post #386
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…

I had hoped nobody read cyberpunk books and thought that was a description of utopia but consistently we see billionaires trying to act out the sci-fi novels from their youth or impose dystopian world views from Ayn Rand.

Eh, so far they have nothing on the people trying to act out utopias in the 20th century. I will wake up when the billionaire Zeitgeist goes past resource allocation and into "cleanse the undesirables".
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