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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

#961

Post by Maken »

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…

It's not like MS could do any other thing after being wiped out of the smartphone market. Locking Office to Windows in an age where virtually everybody is using a smartphone or a tablet with either Android or iOS is useless. The situation of Office in either Mac or Linux never improved, it just got turned into a cloud service like almost any other software suite and tried to cash in the legacy name to compete with Google Docs and Zoho. I don't really see any brilliant move there.

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

#962

Post by creer »

zurfer wrote: post #253

I don't buy it. If you listen to Sam and Greg, they want to change the world and bring us into a world of abundance that everyone can participate in. They were the ideators of this "awkward non-profit owning a for-profit company". Microsoft is setup to create shareholder value. That's it. Both of them will eventually find it moot to advance tech so a few folks get richer.

Microsoft created shareholder value by selling stuff people like. Many techies argue it was the exact wrong thing they were selling and the world would be a better place if MSFT followed rather than led - but there is no arguing that people wanted and used what they were selling. Also it's hard to find a company with more shareholders than MSFT.

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

#963

Post by dang »

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…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344458. Nothing wrong with your comment—I'm just trying to prune the heaviest subthreads.

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

#964

Post by kmlevitt »

mkii wrote: post #486
kmlevitt wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of this is that Microsoft doesn't even need to remove the board anymore. From their standpoint, the whole fear was openAI was about to lose a lot of their best people, including their CEO, who they had the most trusted. That would've greatly harmed their investment Now they get to have their cake and eat it too: they can keep their existing relationship with open AI and continue to get access to their…

> This whole turn of events might turn out to be a net win for Microsoft. Given that the OpenAI board has to act via mandate from its non-profit charter, what's the likelihood that this was Microsoft's plan in the first place? E.g. getting Sam to be less than "candid", triggering a chain of events, etc.

I think the simplest explanation is the most likely. In this case, that the hold out board members are idiots.

Even if Sam deliberately provoked them and this was a set up, no normal person would be this obstinate about it. They would’ve given up now if this was anybody’s doing but their own.

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

#965

Post by dang »

All: this madness makes our server strain too. Sorry! Nobody will be happier than I when this bottleneck (edit: the one in our code—not the world) is a thing of the past.

I've turned down the page size so everyone can see the threads, but you'll have to click through the More links at the bottom of the page to read all the comments, or like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344196&p=2

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344196&p=3

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344196&p=4

etc...

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

#966

Post by dang »

zurfer wrote: post #253

I don't buy it. If you listen to Sam and Greg, they want to change the world and bring us into a world of abundance that everyone can participate in. They were the ideators of this "awkward non-profit owning a for-profit company". Microsoft is setup to create shareholder value. That's it. Both of them will eventually find it moot to advance tech so a few folks get richer.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344458.

There's nothing wrong with your post! I just need to prune the heaviest subthreads—sorry!

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

#969

Post by siliconc0w »

While this is a coup for Microsoft, the problem is that this splits resources MS has to train models. They were already GPU constrained and I assume they have to honor their agreement w/ OpenAI so there is now N/2 GPUs to go around.

(an interesting fiction would be if all the AI companies agreed to combine their efforts to skip a level and advance the world to GPT-6, maybe through a mixture of experts model)

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

#970

Post by SoftTalker »

NanoYohaneTSU wrote: post #956
belter wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when they did this? "Microsoft Buys Skype for $8.5 Billion" - https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/ To then write down their assets? "How Skype lost its crown to Zoom" - https://www.wired.co.uk/article/skype-coronavirus-pandemic Or when they did this ? Or how in 2014... "Microsoft buying Nokia's phone business in a $7.2 billion bid for its mobile future" - https://www.theverge.com/2013/9/2/46…

The Skype purchase was good for itself. It lead to Teams, which is dominating.

The only people I know using Teams are the ones who are forced to by management fiat. I guess that's dominating, but not really in a positive way.
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