90 karma · joined November 18, 2023
I think the rest had possible reasons ranging from 'I'm sure Altman is dangerous' to 'I'm sure Altman shouldn't be running this company'.
Ofc there's big conflict of interest talk surrounding the Quora guy. Can't speak to that other than it looks bad on the surface.
he was poorly informed by the board
Or
He agrees that they are off the rails with respect to safety.
See the Atlantic article, if you havn't read. Lots of context.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38341399
The new guy believes that there is a 5-50 percent chance of full AI Armageddon. I get the impression that the two women on the board may agree. The quora guy I don't have enough background on. Ilya obviously got extremely worried and communication with Altman and Brockman broke down. Now since repaired during negotiations it would appear.
The new ceo more or less stated that he took the role as a (paraphrase) 'responsibility for mankind'. That says a lot about that whole 5-50 percent risk number imo.
This is AAA talent. They can always land elsewhere.
I doubt there would even be hard feelings. The team seems super tight. Some folks aren't in a position to put themselves out there. That sort of thing would be totally understandable.
This is not a petty team. You should look more closely at their culture.
There seem to be red flags.
The team seems to currently not fully recognize the official corporate structure, though I'm sure they are still doing their jobs as instructed by the interim ceo.
MIT license for that idea, someone go do it. I've got some car work to do today.
Including their head researcher.
I'm not continuing this. Your position is about as tenable as the boards. Equally rigid as well.
The broader point is that considering short term personal financial gain is beneath an exec at Satya's level.
He has a responsibility to do more than just maximize value though. Corporate values are a real thing and msft has pretty clearly integrated them in various ways for a long time.
They pledged to carbon capture all carbon going back to their founding... For example. What does that have to do with profit? Nada... Outside of making folkes feel less climate guilt when they buy a share. Now that... Very clever for profit.
In semantic terms I agree.
The negative connotation is the baggage I bring. I recind my implied critism. Pursuit of power is not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps I need to think on this.
You are imagining I fall in a crowd you've observed. Maintaining statute of the art ofc is a constant battle.
Google could be top dog in 2 weeks. Never insinuated otherwise. (though I predict otherwise, if we're gonna speculate)
Its not even relevant because each big firm is specializing to a degree. Anthropic is going for context window and safety... Bard is all about Google priorities... Ect
Even they prob had some friend come flying over and jump out of some autonomous car to knock on their door in sf.
That team had set state of the art for years now.
Every major firm that has a spot for that company's chief researcher and can afford him would bid.
This is the team that actually shipped and continues to ship. You take him every time if you possibly have room and he would be happy.
Anyone whose hired would agree in 99 percent of cases, some limited scenarios such as bad predicted team fit ect set aside.
MSFT looks classy af.
Satya is no saint... But evidence seems to me he's negotiating in good faith. Recall that openai could date anyone when they went to the dance on that cap raise.
They picked msft because of the value system the leadership exhibited and willingness to work with their unusual must haves surrounding governance.
The big players at openai have made all that clear in interviews. Also Altman has huge respect for Satya and team. He more or less stated on podcasts that he's the best ceo he's ever interacted with. That says a lot.
Also all these cats arn't petty. They are friends. I'm sure Ilya feels terrible. Satya is a pro... Won't be hard feelings.
The guy threw in with the board... He's not from startup land. His last gig was Google. He's way over his head relative to someone like Altman who was in this world the moment out of college diapers.
Poor Ilya... It's awful to build something and then accidentally destroy it. Hopefully it works out for him. I'm fairly certain he and Altman and Brockman have already reconciled during the board negotiations... Obviously Ilya realized in the span of 48hrs that he'd made a huge mistake.
Now up to 600+/770 total.
Couple janitors. I dunno who hasn't signed that at this point ha...
Would be fun to see a counter letter explaining their thinking to not sign on.
Its speculative. Others might disagree. I spoke to this in a comment above.
Your skepticsm seems reasonable to me, but I think my broader point is defensible, though I just don't really care to go further with it. Now I'm reading 85 percent of them have revolted lol.
Maybe we meet again in the other post.
(edit: 'perpetual license to openai ip short of agi'
Not sure of the details. This is was I see being written.
https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-micros...'
Its obvious that they have to redo less of the stack if the go to msft. At the very least, they already wrote everything to scale with azure.
With respect to IP... My comment was mostly suggesting they could enjoy privaledge to leave msft at some point in the future with IP with them.
How much of the source do they get to avoid rewriting on day 1 at msft? No idea. Could be all of it... But again... At least they already scaled into azure compute architecture and don't have to reinvent the wheel. That's not a small thing.
Not really debating it further. Seems really obvious to me that broadly speaking, for all kinds of reasons, probably access to source inckuded, they will be able to get up to speed substantially faster at msft vs anywhere else.
It's too speculative to be worse discussing in depth. We don't have enough details, but my broader assertion is more or less defensible imo. Others might disagree. Not worth a debate imo.
(edit: 'perpetual license to openai ip short of agi'
Not sure of the details. This is was I see being written.
https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-micros...'
Gates keeps repeating. Noone hears it.
Buddhists die in the Armageddon same as others.
The bunkers are in new Zealand which is an island and less likely to fall into chaos with the rest of the world in event of ww3 and/or moderate nuclear events.
I'm sure the bunkers are nice. Material notions got little to do with it. The bunker isn't filled with Ferraris. They are filled with food, a few copies of the internet and probably wierd sperms banks or who knows what for repopulating the earth with Altman's and Theils.
See openai investment with technology transfers and sunset clauses. They just did a new dance.
They'll prod do something special for these guys.
They would never be employees. That's for non Sam Altman's and non Brockmans. Brockman is prob already a billionaire from openai shares. No employees here. Big boys.
This was the 2nd. I like the guy already.
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 voluntarily.
They couldn't keep nice under the tent. Now two tents.
Little diff because this time an investor with special privaleges made a new special tent quick to bag talent.
Easy decision for msft. No talent to competitors. Small talent pool. The other big boys were already all over that. Salty bosses at other outfits. No poach for them. Satya too clever and brought the checkbook plus already courted the cutest girls earlier for a different dance. Hell he was assisting in the negotiation when the old dance got all rough and the jets started throwing hooks about safety and scale and bla bla we all know the story.
Satya hunts with an elephant gun with one of those laser sites and the auto trigger that fires automatically when the cross hair goes over the target. Rip sundar. 2 rounds for satya. One more and I feel bad for Google... Naw... Couldn't feel bad for Google. Punchable outfit. They do punchable things. We all know it... I'm just saying it.
The guy was born in the cloud compute division.
The board saw cloud compute was gonna be big. They made him the king. Good bet. The whole company went all in on cloud. Now they print more money than before.
Marketing person lol. He's an engineer. The guy literally gets back into VS code sometimes to stay in touch.
Gpt4 is included in bing man... Bing creative mode and balanced mode both.
This is widely known. The investment included access to openai technology for integration in msft services.
Its not a traditional arrangement. This is also widely known. Its a complicated investment with a profitability sunset triggering return of equity to the nonprofit. Also included is technology transfer as long as the sunset doesn't trigger.
This is why Ilya felt comfortable to do it. He did many interviews where he explained this.
Mate... Just because you don't bat perfect doesn't make you a tarpit.
MSFT is a technological powerhouse. They have absolutely killed it since they were founded. They have defined personal computing for multiple generations and more or less made the word 'software' something spoken occasionally at kitchen tables vs people saying 'soft-what?'
Definitely not a tarpit. You are throwing out whole villages of babies because of some various nasty bathwater over the years.
The picture is bigger. So much crucial tech from MSFT. Remains true today.
Finger placed on duplicity.
Arguably only some of his time is spent on that kind of instability promoting activity. Most law enforcement agencies agree... Palantir good.
Most reasonable people agree... Funding your own senators and donating tons to Trump and friends... Bad.
Bad Thiel! Stick to wierd seasteading in your spare time if you want to get wierd. No 0 regulation AI floating compute unit seasteading. Only stable seasteading.
All kidding aside, you make a good point. Some of these guys should be a bit more responsible. They don't care what we think though. We're wierd non ceo hamsters who failed to make enough for the New Zealand bunker.
Maybe it's risk mitigation without cost sharing to achieve the same economies of scale that insurance creates.
Its a rich man's way of removing risks that we are all exposed to via spending money on things that most couldn't seriously consider due to the likelihood of said risks.
I don't think it's duplicitous. I do resent that I can't afford it. I can't hate on them though. I hate the game, not the players. Some of these guy would prob let folks stay in their bunker. They just can't build a big enough bunker. Also most folks are gross to live with. I'd insist on some basic rules.
I think we innately are suspicious when advantaged folks are planing how they would handle the deaths of the majority of the rest of us. Sorta just... Makes one feel... Less.
Chief Executive Officer.
They execute. Objectives. Changing stuff. It's addictive. Ask me how I know.
(edit: big shot Wendy's night shift manager. When you roll up at 2am our ice-cream machine was never being cleaned, that'll be 89 cents please. Enjoy your ice-cream sir/ma'am.
You never go back. I changed the world for the better)
What moon are y'all on.
He can secure billions with a text message.
Love ya anyway, cya this evening for the fuzzy meetup.