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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

#931

Post by sidibe »

nopromisessir wrote: post #777
layer8 wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What choice did Satya have? Nothing much else he could have done in the present situation.

Choice? Are you framing this as though the whole situation didn't go pretty well toward msft's favor? Now they get 40 percent of open ai talent and 50 percent of the for profit openai subsidiary. Pretty sure when the market opens you'll see confirmation that they came out on top. It's a win for everyone honestly. Anthropic split all over again but this time the progressives got pushed out vs the conservatives leaving…

It's pretty naive IMO to think Google isn't going to come out with something that threatens OpenAI or Microsoft. It seems to be "they didn't do it yet so they won't ever" is the majority opinion here, but they have a ton of advantages when they finally do

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

#932

Post by pera »

pera wrote: post #402
truculent wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems reasonable to me that people who are motivated by the mission and working with or learning from the existing team will still want to work there.

I didn't believe that OpenAI was being honest in their mission statement before - I thought it was just the typical bay area "we want to make the world a better place" bs. This entire situation changed my mind radically and now I put the non-profit part in my personal top 3 dream jobs :)

Please disregard my last comment, it was a premature opinion on a situation that is still developing and very unclear from the outside

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

#933

Post by Zpalmtree »

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…

Don't think we should let crazy effective altruists hamstring development

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

#934

Post by bbu »

iteratethis wrote: post #924

So we have OpenAI, Microsoft, a whole bunch of capital, and a few "rock stars" moving. And it's these people holding the keys to the AI kingdom where they go to work to achieve AGI. Finally they got rid of this pesky idea of "safety". We're back in "break things" mode. Does nobody recognize the stakes here? AGI, which soon would accelerate into something far more capable, ends civilization. I'm not saying it would ki…

if AGI is as close as autonomous cars, I think we are going to be ok.

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

#936

Post by dorkwood »

osti wrote: post #170
dorkwood wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can court developers he has existing relationships with.

How many is that gonna be? 20% of the devs would be a generous estimate imo.

According to the latest developments, "nearly 500 employees of OpenAI have signed a letter saying they may quit and join Sam Altman unless the startup's board resigns and reappoints the ousted CEO". That seems like it's probably higher than your 20% estimate. https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-al...

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

#937

Post by sackfield »

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…

I suppose I don't see the case where large numbers of OpenAI employees follow these two to Microsoft. Microsoft can't possibly cover the value of the OpenAI employees equity as it was (and imminently to be), let alone what could have potentially been. There is a big difference between being on a rocket ship and just a good team at a megacorp.

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

#939

Post by dorfsmay »

dalbasal wrote: post #814
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…

IDK. Let's proceed with caution in gauging intentions and interests. Altamans', Microsoft's, the Jedi council's. "Humanity's interest at heart" is a mouthful. I'm not denigrating it. I think it is really important. That said, as a proverbial human... I am not hanging my hat on that charter. Members of the consortium all also claim to be serving the common good in their other ventures. So do Exxon. OpenAI haven't crea…

Can you explain what you mean in your second to last paragraph?

The GNU project and the Wikimedia Foundation are still non profit today, and even if you disagree with their results their goal is to server humanity for free.

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

#940

Post by sigmoid10 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #923
sigmoid10 wrote: post #896

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is just a matter of perspective. It's clearly a win-win if you're on team Sam. But if you're on team Ilya, this is the doomsday scenario: With commercialisation and capital gains for a stock traded company being the main driving force behind the latest state of the art in AI, this is exactly what OpenAI was founded to prevent in the first place. Yes, we may see newer better things faster and with better support…

Thinking this is clearly a big win for MSFT is like thinking it's easy to catch lightning in a bottle twice. There's been a lot of uncertainty created. It's interesting that others see so much "win" certainty.

From Microsoft's perspective, they have actually lowered uncertainty. Especially if that OpenAI employee letter from 500 people is to be believed, they'll all end up at Microsoft anyways. If that really happens OpenAI will be a shell of itself while Microsoft drives everything.
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