Microsoft has hired OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to head up a "new advanced AI research team," the software conglomerate's chief Satya Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and many of their former OpenAI colleagues will join Microsoft, Satya Nadella said.
I like your take. Altman is a Valley hustler, albeit a talented one who ran YC. But, he’s not technologist or a theorist, and I suspect he’s not that interested in attempting to de-risk AGI anymore, particularly now that he’s experienced the market hype. The staff who want to be billionaires clotted to him; the staff who are committed to the original ethical vision stuck with Ilya.
My little theory is that he was in cahoots with Microsoft re some product roadmap, against the wishes of the board.
Microsoft was not consulted re his firing as not to alert him or because there’s no point asking the revealed adversary.
Microsoft was “furious” and desperately tried to reinstate him.
Immediately offered him a job. Effectively undermining their investment in open ai.
Good points all around. There was a headline a day or two ago suggesting Microsoft is ready to put $50 billion into AI. If they are truly as all-in on AI as Meta is/was with VR, then something like this would make sense. OpenAI is of course at the front of things, but Microsoft still owns less than half and still has to answer to other investors.
But while OpenAI has valuable tech, the real value is the researchers who are building the next golden goose. Microsoft seems to understand that.
Look at that open letter. 500 out of 700 employees signed it and are threatening to leave. I think the key there is their equity compensation- many if not most of those 500 people were getting equity, and if OpenAI loses its place at the front of the pack that equity loses a lot of value. And the board just essentially killed their golden goose. So those 500 people are worried about the future of their stock. If it looks like the company is going down, the rats will dessert the sinking ship faster than you can snap your fingers as there will be no shortage of very lucrative offers.
I bet Microsoft is offering a very attractive life preserver for those who jump ship. Wouldn’t be surprised if, if a bunch of those people defect, the AI division get some sort of quasi autonomous status or perhaps even its own corporate entity for those employees to own stock in.
Point being- there’s a very good chance Microsoft will essentially buy OpenAI for mere pennies by simply hiring the majority of their employees.
Good points for you also.
However, as the situation unfolds… from the amount of effort being put in trying to get a hold of openAI by Altman/Microsoft…
It seems to me that there’s a lot of claimed real-estate (eg training data and weights, ongoing subscriptions, income streams, exclusive agreements etc) that would be nontrivial or impossible to be gotten hold of or recreated from scratch.
And as we know Altman is not involved in the nittty gritty, aka doesn’t know shit about shit in recreating what was there - so the initial bravado of “I’m just going to do my own” - was clearly a bluff that didn’t pay off.
Hence now is trying different ways to get back on the ship / get another hold of the golden goose.
To be honest the more I see his frantic manoeuvring the more I think he’s inconsequential to the endeavour and he just happened to be lucky - and these jerky moves, to me, demonstrate that he’s well aware of it.