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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

#841

Post by aeyes »

cycomanic wrote: post #602
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…

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 o…

Looking at the list of people who have resigned it's quite obvious that the team goes where he goes.

Even if he does nothing, he keeps the team together and that is worth quite a bit.

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

#842

Post by saiya-jin »

gruturo wrote: post #619
BSDobelix wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, why is he the best CEO?

He performed an unbelievable turnaround. His predecessor, famed for sweating a lot, yelling (sometimes positively, not necessarily in anger), throwing chairs and insisting on giving the keynote speech every year at MWC while being irrelevant, was driving the company into the ground. Satya reverted the course spectacularly - and most importantly, he did NOT miss the "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity which he had. Unlik…

As a user and not shareholder, I simply can't agree with this sentiment.

Windows got massively worse during his tenure in literally everything that can get worse including half-legal snooping on all users including Enterprise ones (I stand by the statement that this is idiotic long term strategy driven by childish emotions like FOMO - no way he didn't have a direct say in this).

Office is certainly PITA and getting worse in my experience, but that can be corporate modifications/restrictions I am exposed to.

Teams was, is and probably forever will be pathetic, buggy, slow and just a bad joke compared to some competition with 1% of their budget.

These are core extremely visible products and for most of mankind 100% of the surface with MS. There is not even an attempt for corrections, direction is set and rest are details.

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

#843

Post by gtirloni »

Mentlo wrote: post #830
gtirloni wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your theory more plausible. Microsoft, Google and Amazon were lagging in AI. You can simply look at their voice assistants for an example. That's why they started investing billions in OpenAI and other think tanks in this space. Now capital turns things around to be as they should (from their perspective) and reacquires control. Anthropic is probably next in line.

MS/G/A didn’t put this into voice assistants not because they don’t have it, but because it doesn’t scale to fit the commercials at the moment. Google invented transformers and Deepmind had GPT scale LLM’s at least a year before CGPT came out. Altman just rushed everyone’s hand by publishing it into the world at cost

"just" is an understatement.

My friends and family had an awful opinion of AI in general because it was the voice assistants were sold to them as the best example of AI. That changed with ChatGPT.

Google invented really useful AI but failed to deliver. OpenAI did so in record time. Now it's Google that's playing catching up with the technology they invented themselves, ironically.

But my comment applies more to Microsoft and Amazon, tbh.

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

#844

Post by softwaredoug »

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…

TBH We are living in the outcome of the $10B investment. Google is in a weaker position in search, with egg on their face. Microsoft appears (with or without ChatGPT) uniquely positioned to monopolize on this new AI future we're heading into with or without OpenAI as a company.

Yes directly, the $10B investment in the company itself may be a write off. But it's not just about that.

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

#845

Post by sys_64738 »

mighmi wrote: post #247

What is Sam's actual value re: AI and not just as a CEO/salesman-evangelist to get funding, which Microsoft doesn't need? Is he particularly apt at leading/managing research teams? OpenAI's slow productization doesn't imply he's a product/idea guy a la Jobs.

There's an implication that he's more of a leader than just pure lucky. Sort of more like Bill Gates than Zuck I guess.

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

#847

Post by visarga »

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…

I'm wondering how Sam is going to work with Demis. Two master cooks in a kitchen/

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

#848

Post by mlrtime »

cycomanic wrote: post #602
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…

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 o…

If I was a SE/MLE at OpenAI , and I had a choice between the nonprofit OpenAI and MS, I'd follow Sam to MS. This is assuming I had profit sharing contracts in place.

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

#849

Post by denton-scratch »

manojlds wrote: post #582
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…

> The board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that. https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1726526112019382275

> Our partnership with Microsoft remains strong

Did he say that before or after Microsoft announced they'd hired Altman and Brockman, and poached a lot of OpenAI's top researchers?

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

#850

Post by voitvodder »

cycomanic wrote: post #602
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…

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 o…

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