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Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft
- floor_ 3y agoShengjia Zhao's deleted tweet: https://i.imgur.com/yrpXvt9.png https://i.imgur.com/yrpXvt9.png
- lannisterstark 3y agoListen. I was confused when the whole thing was going down. I was more confused when the whole "board wants to backtrack and maybe resign" thing was going down. I got even more confused when Emmett Shear was announced as the CEO. ...but never in a hundred years would I have imagined "haha just join Microsoft" as an actual alternative. I remain, confused.
- Maxion 3y ago> I remain, confused. I think everyone is confused.
- quotemstr 3y agoBy joining Microsoft, they retain access to all the data, weights, and infrastructure they had at OpenAI. They don't have to start from scratch and ramp up. They can start up right where they left off.
- alvis 3y agoNot sure about the IP, but the team can get whatever they have access in the past. It certainly speed up the restart process
- narag 3y agoNot only that, Microsoft in practice is OpenAI's customer. So somehow OpenAI will be working for them.
- xiwenc 3y agoCare to elaborate? Microsoft funding OpenAI doesn’t grant them right to just grab intellectual properties.
- quotemstr 3y agoMicrosoft's deal with OpenAI grants Microsoft access to OpenAI's technology --- at least until AGI arrives
- mullingitover 3y agoThis is like a spacecraft research nonprofit working on faster than light travel promising Boeing 100% of the rights to any of their technology that's sub-light speed. I give even odds that they'll never achieve "AGI," or when it happens it'll be an incremental gain made by simply wiring existing technologies together that'll be obvious to any engineer competent in the field and thus easily duplicated.
- bagels 3y agoHow is it decided that "AGI" has arrived?
- quotemstr 3y agoThe OpenAI nonprofit board does, AIUI. That means OpenAI can, in theory, cut off everything from this day forward (by declaring GPT-5 or whatever as "AGI"), but they can't cut off access to GPT-4.
- tempusalaria 3y agoMicrosoft also doesn’t give many GPUs to internal researchers so this has a long way to run yet. Wouldn’t surprise me if Sam and Greg are back on the startup path by week end. This just seems like PR to give MS a way to paper things over after such an abrupt firing.
- alsodumb 3y ago
- frabcus 3y agoDoes the Microsoft deal let Microsoft continue training from e.g. the GPT-4 weights? I guess at least it gives them access to the OpenAI models to use internally, which they kinda need as their ways of working (Greg especially) will be highly dependent on having them now.
- alsodumb 3y agoYour comment got me thinking, it's not just all the current access to all the data, weights, and infrastructure they had at OpenAI, it's also everything that will come out of OpenAI in the future. Remember, Microsoft has an exclusive license to all models that come out of OpenAI until they reach the pre-agreed income threshold, which given the current trajectory of OpenAI, will not happen anytime soon.
- clhodapp 3y agoI wonder if the OpenAI board will shut down the for-profit to avoid handing the tech to Microsoft now...
- quotemstr 3y agoI wouldn't put it past them. There's never in history been as large and as wilful destruction of value as what we saw this weekend. The lawsuits will be fascinating.
- hef19898 3y agoSam joining MS was actually one of the theories I read in the initial, or one of the first, threads about his ouster. 10 billion dollar seems like a pretty steep recruiting cost, but MS knows what they are doing, right? Right?
- abhinavk 3y agoWhat Sam is going to bring to MS? Recruits? MS already has all the money and infra they need.
- hef19898 3y agoAnd still they are hiring him. Different take: You are a CEO who just spend 10 billion to bevome a minority shareholder in the latest, hotest tech start up the world has ever seen. This start-up is controlled by a non-profit so. And then this non-profit kicks out the poster child of the whole industry, and you cannot do a thing about it. Well, you have to answer to a board as well. And what do you think that board will ask you about this whole affaire?
- tempusalaria 3y agoIt’s called damage control. Classic corporate playbook to control the narrative. Satya and the MSFT team are geniuses in that respect. Sam will leave soon enough to start his own thing, but in the meantime there is no narrative problem for MSFT to deal with
- karmasimida 3y agoAnd for the OpenAI employees, they can just switch the badge in a blink second, it almost feel like a no-brainer to many. I think Sam just took the easier route to rebuild OpenAI within MSFT. Now the trouble comes to the SV VCs they now will be furious.
- smooc 3y agoHe wasn't the guy who built it, he was the guy who got things funded. Let's see how many of the core OpenAI people join. I.e. the ones that weren't (just) there for the money / post ChatGPT.
- peanuty1 3y agoDo OpenAI staff want to work for Microsoft?
- tdeck 3y agoAnd then they get to say one of the most depressing sentences in an engineer's lexicon: "It's almost like we're a startup within a big company!"
- karmasimida 3y agoI actually don't think OpenAI being a startup is beneficial for them at this moment. OpenAI already has a very clear business model, that is selling completion/chat/agent API based on their model. What they need is to productize it. Their roadmap is GPT4/5/6/7
- tempusalaria 3y agoImagine thinking that top AI researchers are going to start choosing to work for MSFT after years of them being second class citizens there. Like if they don’t like OpenAI they can go to 10 other places that pay more and treat researchers better than MSFT
- karmasimida 3y ago
- bitcharmer 3y agoI am confused why everyone is freaking out about some business person being let go from a tech shop.
- abhinavk 3y agoThe business person is a SV darling. And previously the President of YCombinator.
- hef19898 3y agoEvery once in a while, and I actually do not care much about soccer, I read comment sections in a German newspaper about soccer (please don't ask why, I have actually no clue myseld). And there, you basically have the same discussion: that player / trainer is great / sucks / rightfully / wrongfully lost his job, that club will never ever win again without person A... It is quite intrigueing to see tge same fan / cheerleading going on when it comes to comapnies and managers. But then everything is entertainment by now...
- b800h 3y agoThis isn't even remotely confusing now. This move makes it exactly clear what was going on. Microsoft is doing to AI what they tried to do to Internet browsers back in the day. I wonder if they'd have been successful if they'd managed to buy the board of Netscape. I suspect it's rather possible that there will be an ungodly-massive lawsuit in the offing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vatueil 3y agoAll the claims about how OpenAI's board desperately wanted Altman back were based on leaks from "people close to Altman" which the press uncritically lapped up. If it wasn't clear before, it should be clear in hindsight that the board's desire to welcome Altman back was, at best, overstated. The leaks were probably an attempt to pressure the board or, failing that, undermine OpenAI.
- mjan22640 3y agoThe whole situation likely arose due to Microsoft attempting to cross the boundaries set by OpenAI.
- hackerbeat 3y agoLol. I can relate.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gog-ma-gog 3y agoThis actually seems like a decent compromise. Sam and Greg can retain velocity on the product side without having to spin up a whole new operation in direct competition with their old levers of power, and Ilya + co can remain in possession of the keys to the kingdom.
- AbrahamParangi 3y agoIlya and co are going to get orphaned, there’s no point to the talent they have if they intend to slow things down so it’s not like they’ll remain competitive. The capacity that MSFT was going to sell to OpenAI will go to the internal team.
- thunkshift1 3y agoMaybe they want it that way and want to move on from all the LLM hype that was distracting them from their main charter of pushing the boundaries of AI research? If yes, then they succeeded handsomely
- ps256 3y ago"Don't get distracted by the research which actually produces useful things"
- aneutron 3y agoMaybe I'm reading too much into it, but for me it is us framed as if they won't be working on GPT-based products, but on research. The whole thing reads like this to me: "In hindsight, we should've done more due diligence before developing a hard dependency on an organization and its product. We are aware that this was a mistake. To combat this, we will do damage control and continue to work with OpenAI, while developing our in-house solution and ditching this hard dependency. Sam & Co. will reproduce this and it will be fully under our control. So rest assured dear investors."
- nga911 3y ago
- throwaway_5753 3y agoWonder how long this will last. This team doesn't seem like a good fit for big corp Microsoft. Good get by MS though!
- ChatGTP 3y agoWhat value does Sam bring now? They have all the money they could want. All the connections they’d need. Weird situation for him.
- beoberha 3y agoAgreed. Sam isn’t some AI visionary, he’s a startup guy. Unless he’s leading a team that’s going to spin out a new company, I don’t get it.
- frabcus 3y agoI guess he'll make the consumer hardware product he's been developing with Jony Ive, and also spin up the chip company he was working on anyway.
- fooker 3y agoResearchers can not be 'AI visionaries', almost by definition, as you focus on depth instead of breadth as a competent researcher. Someone like Sam Altman is indeed more of a visionary than every hardcore AI researcher. The job here is to not push the boundaries of science, it is to figure out and predict the cascading effects of a new invention.
- capttruckerdave 3y agoHe was the face of OpenAI, MSFT is basically trying to signal: Business as usual, nothing to see here, move along and please don't tank our stock
- beoberha 3y agoIt really does feel like that. Like it’s mutually beneficial for Sam and MSFT to team up in the short term while Sam figures out his next move and MSFT tries to keep OpenAI afloat for the time being
- icelancer 3y agoOpenAI is destined to learn the story of Xerox PARC the hard way. I commend them.
- exizt88 3y agoIf your goal is to produce a lot of value and you don’t care about others capturing it, then it may actually be a good way to go, especially with the non-profit setup.
- waihtis 3y agoAnyone else find it strange that startup founders of the magnitude of Sam & Greg would join a gigantic corporation as employees? It sounds very out of line of what you'd expect.
- eddtries 3y agoMaybe Sam thinks OpenAI will be so important he has a shot at CEO of Microsoft in a couple years?
- jakey_bakey 3y agoBut Satya is making a few 100 mil a year, tops. Sam could easily make himself a billionaire with one raise. And who wants to control all of Microsoft, that's a whole lot of headaches
- haldujai 3y agoAs in liquidate a billion in one raise? Is that kosher these days?
- sekai 3y agoExactly, he could just launch a new company, most of the current OpenAI staff would follow him.
- hef19898 3y agoShould tell you something that he didn't. And no, I am not talking about ethics here.
- eddtries 3y agoThere must be an insane number of non-competes though, to stop that? Especially with the amount of VC funding - that must have been included?
- airspresso 3y ago
- hello2 3y agoGood work for Microsoft, moving swiftly to take advantage!
- alvis 3y agoIt’s really safe to say the big loser is OpenAI. Microsoft is effectively getting the team under their own overnight
- lucubratory 3y ago"OpenAI, the next huge tech company to rival Google" is a huge loser of this whole process, probably dead. "OpenAI, the non-profit who only has a for-profit subsidiary to get enough resources to fund its mission to develop AGI" is probably a winner, and gets to live instead of slowly die.
- karmasimida 3y agoOMG, it is 12am in SF. I need to sleep. But what a play, MSFT the winner here. They now owns the actual OpenAI Edit: PM->am
- WestCoastJustin 3y agoThe next QBR with MS is going to be interesting.
- PunchTornado 3y agoSeems like a very big step down to them.
- peanuty1 3y agoFrom OpenAI founders to Microsoft employees
- abhinavk 3y agoThis was most unexpected. Hopefully it's a compromise reached mutually. Now OpenAI can fulfill what their mission is and these guys can work on AI products at MS. Again. Very unexpected.
- omarfarooq 3y agoFriday was a year ago.
- swimwiththebeat 3y agoI thought for sure the only two outcomes were that Altman raises money for a new startup or he comes back to OpenAI with a new governance structure (which is still a wild and crazy outcome, but crazier things have happened). Now that this happened though, I feel stupid for not considering this as a possible outcome at all. The whole timeline of events over the last two events still leaves me scratching my head though.
- ssnistfajen 3y agoIt's confusing because no one beyond the direct negotiating parties knows exactly why any of this is happening in the first place. The media scoops about commercialization disputes don't seem that important to warrant such a dramatic showdown
- forgingahead 3y agoDid Microsoft just effectively acquire 100% of OpenAI without actually needing to cross the 49% regulatory hurdle? Depending on who follows them to MSFT, that might actually be the outcome here. And OpenAI is suddenly Xerox Parc.
- Barrin92 3y ago>Did Microsoft just effectively acquire 100% of OpenAI No, Ilya alone is like 75% of the brains and I'm fairly certain he's not going anywhere.
- throwaway69123 3y agoTime will tell
- ps256 3y agoI don't know, way before all of this drama started, the rumors were that he was barely contributing any original or significant ideas to research and the grounbreaking ideas had come from lower level researchers.
- gardenhedge 3y agoExcept OpenAI didn't write the attention paper.. Google did. So Google is the Xerox
- tempusalaria 3y agoSam and Greg obviously haven’t heard that Microsoft Research doesn’t get any GPU access (:
- aneutron 3y agoHaven't worked at Microsoft, but usually, when folks up high have their balls at stake, resources and budgets magically start getting approved faster than the Concorde.
- tempusalaria 3y agoMore like this is a PR stunt and Sam will launch a startup once the furore dies down
- raverbashing 3y agoFrom the start I assumed that Sam was the (street) smarter guy here, and that only confirms it Meanwhile Google remains oblivious
- throwaw12 3y agoOthers from OpenAI team, maybe can lead the AI research, but how does Sam can lead a research group? IMO, to lead a research group you need some decent research skills, Sam is good at business
- elcomet 3y agoIt will be an applied research group obviously to develop products based on AI
- karmasimida 3y agoMy guess: This is no research group, this is OpenAI 2.0, Sam/Greg will have enormous autonomy. It will be foolish to think Satya just recruited them to tangle them in MSFT bureaucracy
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoBigCos generally have a hard time keeping their autonomous groups actually isolated from bureaucracy. Lab126 has been thoroughly corporatized, and Area 120 got outright reabsorbed.
- tempestn 3y agoSam might be a good product manager.
- siva7 3y agoHe did lead together with greg at openai. Not as researchers. For that they hired the initial research team.
- AbrahamParangi 3y agoI think people underestimate how much of a company’s value is in their key leadership, select talent, and technology. When a company is acquired those are typically the reasons to do so other than pure revenue acquisition. Microsoft already has their technology, now has the key leadership, and will soon have the select talent. Satya wins, OpenAI is walking dead.
- gpt5 3y ago> When a company is acquired those are typically the reasons to do so other than pure revenue acquisition Large companies are primarily purchased for their moats
- UrineSqueegee 3y ago[dead]
- raverbashing 3y agoSatya wins Sam wins Ilya and the board continue to look like fools
- karmasimida 3y agoSatya really goated here. He takes advantage of this situation and make OpenAI's assets in his control more than ever. He is the genius, scary even.
- peteradio 3y agoPirate more like. He's not just poaching "talent" he has likely stolen IP and will hope to destroy OpenAI in court costs. Microsoft is a terrible company and I hope this backfires on them.
- AmericanOP 3y agoWhy jockey for a board seat when you can harbor the org
- JimDabell 3y agoNadella was heavily involved in the talks to get Altman et al. back in OpenAI. This must have been brought up, so I’m guessing the OpenAI board made their decision knowing this would be the outcome?
- chirau 3y agoI suspected this. OpenAI was always going towards Microsoft and Sam was leading that charge. Who else but them to bankroll his next vision. Great pickup by MSFT. The exodus is only beginning and MSFT will not have to buy OpenAI for the billions in valuation it was getting. East win.
- Joeri 3y agoThis might turn out to be a lot more stable structure long term: the commercialization of AI under Microsoft's brand, with Microsoft's resources, and the deep research into advanced AI under OpenAI. This could shield the research division of OpenAI from undue pressure from the product side, in a way that it probably couldn't when everything was under one roof.
- skygazer 3y agoUgh. I’m not keen on AGI being an eventual Microsoft product, or after this circus, even the hangers on at Open AI. Hope it’s still decades off and this all is a silly side show footnote.
- gtirloni 3y agoI 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.
- Mentlo 3y agoMS/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
- gtirloni 3y ago"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.
- TechnicolorByte 3y agoIncredible how much has changed in one weekend… or not? Confused what this really means. So Microsoft still has access to OpenAI’s pre-AGI tech that Sam and Greg can leverage for their more product-focused visions. More than that, it looks like Microsoft has become a major AI player (internal research) overnight up with the likes of Meta, Google, and OpenAI. Incredible.
- nopromisessir 3y agoJust FYI... Microsoft was already set to spent 27 billion usd on research for 2023. They dedicate huge standout double digit percentages of budget to research every year. Their in house AI research division was already huge. They didn't become a major AI player overnight... They already were long ago. OpenAI is small, in raw numbers of AI researchers, compared to the big players in the space. That's a major reason why it's so compelling that they have been able to consistently set the bar for state of the art. They were a dream team... But small. Msft is adding AAA+ talent to their existing A+ deck. Also they won't have to rewrite the code base. Can hit the ground running. Lastly, there is no evidence that openai has the greatly quoted and so hard to define 'agi'. That's Twitter hearsay and highly unlikely... If folkes can even agree what that is. By the overwhelming percentage of definitions... Even gpt-5 is unlikely to meet that bar. Highly speculative. Twitter is a cesspool of conspiracy theory... Don't believe everything you read.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mrtksn 3y agoHopefully this motivates a lot of people who don't want Microsoft to be the AI company. Slowing down research would mean Microsoft wins everything. MS now has both the accelerationists and the deccelerationists. They can keep accelerating themselves when pushing for regulatory capture through their deccelerationist branch to slow down any competition.
- hscodlsla 3y agoSatya Nadela confirms that sama and team, presumably anyone who walked from OpenAI will be funded as part of a new advanced research team at Microsoft
- ReptileMan 3y agoNot unexpected, MS is betting everything on AI. On the other hand, MS is a corporation in which lions are lead by donkeys. We had windows phones that was excellent and in the right place and then couple of product managers fucked it up. We have windows that is becoming even better underneath and then you have people that thought Cortana and Bing search in the bar were good ideas. So Ilya can be safe that whatever potential nuclear capabilities they give sama, the Microsoft quagmire will not let them fully develop.
- duccinator 3y agoimo Satya is a different ball game compared to Ballmer. I wouldn't put a lot of emphasis on msft's track record pre-Satya personally.
- firefoxd 3y agoWelcome to the TikTok generation. The current video was just about to end and now we are at the climax of the next video.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y agoPresumably Sam and Greg now get to pick up where they left off and keep productizing GPT-4 since Microsoft has the IP and is hosting their own GPT-4 models on Azure, right? The more interesting thing is whether or not they'll be able to build and release something equivalent to GPT-5, using Microsoft's immense resources, before OpenAI is able to.
- famouswaffles 3y agoGPT-5 is almost certainly already done. But considering they sat on 4 for 8 months with Altman as head, who knows if it'll see the light of day.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y agoDo you think Microsoft gets access to it?
- famouswaffles 3y agoThey will unless the board declares it AGI. I'm not joking lol. That was part of the agreement.
- user_named 3y agoHave fun defining and proving AGI lol
- famouswaffles 3y agoThey already defined it - a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work. There's some vagueness here sure but if they can demonstrate something to that effect, fair play to them i guess.
- mighmi 3y ago5 months ago they said they hadn't started training: https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/07/openai-gpt5-sam-altman/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/07/openai-gpt5-sam-altman/ and had no intention to do so within the next 6 months: https://the-decoder.com/gpt-5-is-nowhere-close-says-openai-chief-sam-altman/ https://the-decoder.com/gpt-5-is-nowhere-close-says-openai-c... They just started development in the last week or so: https://decrypt.co/206044/gpt-5-openai-development-roadmap-gpt-4 https://decrypt.co/206044/gpt-5-openai-development-roadmap-g...
- user_named 3y agoYou could both say that this gives Sam less power over OpenAI, and more.
- reducesuffering 3y agoThis confirms that Sam and Greg don't belong as heads of a non-profit who's sole objective is to develop AGI for the benefit of all of humanity. Because if your Plan B is to join Microsoft, whose mission is to make profit for shareholders, then your heart wasn't really in it, as that won't achieve your original goal.
- lucubratory 3y agoYeah, this is a huge validation of what Ilya and the Board did. If Sam and Greg had started another company with similar aims, even if it wasn't non-profit, they would probably keep arguing that what they were doing was only to get enough resources to be able to solve the problem of AGI with a broad benefit to humanity, and it probably would have turned into a big ideological schism between Sam's side insisting that a profit-seeking company was okay to pursue the goal, and OpenAI insisting on pursuing the goal and not getting distracted by greed. Sam and Greg joining up with Microsoft settles that debate cleanly, they clearly aren't serious about developing AGI without a profit motive or military control determining the development process if they're docking with Microsoft. I don't think Ilya and the Board would have had any doubts about Sam if they fired him, but if they did this would remove them.
- user_named 3y agoAltman pulling an Elop
- nostromo 3y agoThis is sorta brilliant. Microsoft has access to almost everything OpenAI does. And now Altman and Brockman will have that access too. Meanwhile, I imagine their tenure at MSFT will be short-lived, because hot-shot startup folks don’t really want to work there. They can stabilize, use OpenAI’s data and models for free, use Microsoft’s GPUs at cost, and start a new company shortly, of which Microsoft will own some large share. Altman doesn’t need Microsoft’s money - but Microsoft has direct access to OpenAI, which is currently priceless.
- mirzap 3y agoSatya will probably allow them to run a startup under the MS umbrella without interference and with full MS backing.
- dagmx 3y agoI really don’t think that’s in the Microsoft DNA to do
- mirzap 3y agoThis is not Ballmer era. It's Satya.
- jampekka 3y agoThis is not Melkor era. It's Sauron.
- mirzap 3y agoAs I was saying, Satya justt confirmed it: https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1726516824597258569 https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1726516824597258569
- toomuchtodo 3y agoThis was inevitable and the only path forward. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38318205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38318205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38337522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38337522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38342882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38342882
- loveparade 3y agoOver time, the new team at Microsoft will slowly drain the OpenAI talent as MS will provider fewer and fewer resources to OAI and prioritize their own team they have full ownership owner. OAI will die a slow death due to the talent and resource drain. In a year or two, Sam and Greg will end up with the same people at MS that are now still at OAI. Okay, perhaps minus Sutskever.
- qwertox 3y agoSo Microsoft just won the lottery.
- vijaybritto 3y agoSo Microsoft gets co-founders and employees too. This is a great win for them!!
- Handy-Man 3y agoHaha Satya won the game of chess lol
- thatsadude 3y agoWhat motivates Sam to join Microsoft? Could it be the proximity of achieving AGI and his desire to remain competitive without starting from scratch?
- alsodumb 3y agoOne word: GPUs
- pknerd 3y agoWeird. Why did not he start a new company?
- pearjuice 3y agoBecause OpenAI has first mover advantage, an actual product, the household "ChatGPT" name and starting anything from 0 would mean you start with a 3-0 disadvantage. Even if you threw a few billion dollars at it and attracted all of the top minds for at least a year - probably longer - you will be seen as the "ChatGPT alternative". How long before you can capture the momentum they have now with OpenAI? It's also a legal minefield, even when the majority of employees of OpenAI migrate, there will be all kinds of no-competes and conflicts of interest. Strategically, this is probably a better move. Microsoft doesn't see their investment implode and they probably have some sort of plan to inject or absorb Sam and/or Microsoft back into OpenAI to prevent this in the future. Perhaps replacing the board of directors to prevent further infighting.
- ssnistfajen 3y agoBeing able to raise money doesn't necessarily translate into success. Perhaps his new crew won't be able to replicate the secret sauce. Or Satya just gave terms favourable enough to convince him at least for now to avoid giving off the impression that Microsoft's investment in OpenAI is incinerated.
- jazzyjackson 3y agoWhat's the lead time on a gross of H100s these days?
- shubhamjain 3y agoHave 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 qualms about following Sam and Greg. It will take time for sure, but Microsoft can now capture even a bigger slice of THE FUTURE than it was possible with OpenAI investment.
- bottlepalm 3y agoMaybe the next move is an open offer to any OpenAI employees to join Sam’s team at their current compensation or better.. call it the ‘treacherous 500’ or something.
- bottlepalm 3y agoWow I even got the number right.
- blackoil 3y ago10 billion was potential investment. They transfer that in tranches, so lot of it is still in MS bank. They already have access to GPT3/4/turbo + Dalle 2/3. Plus with its hordes of lawyers, it will be an uphill battle for OpenAI to make MS lose.
- sampli 3y agohttps://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23968829/microsoft-hires-sam-altman-greg-brockman-employees-openai https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23968829/microsoft-hires...
- osti 3y agoAltman's value is in business, how does bringing him to Microsoft to lead a research team help?
- dorkwood 3y agoHe can court developers he has existing relationships with.
- osti 3y agoHow many is that gonna be? 20% of the devs would be a generous estimate imo.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dorkwood 3y agoAccording 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-altman/ https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-al...
- caycep 3y agoMaybe some will come out of loyalty. But then again, when you look at the choice of becoming a MS employee vs. being poached by FAIR, Google Brain or Deepmind, it's no guarantee all 500 will come over to follow the sales guys.
- dudeinhawaii 3y agoMany of them game from Google. Furthermore, if the choice is "create AI that no one ever uses" vs "create AI that people use" then it's a no-brainer to go with Microsoft. Compute + products + research freedom.
- greentext 3y agoThe only way to keep AGI safe is to put it on the Zune.
- epups 3y agoMicrosoft is likely betting that they can build the next GPT with a bag of money and a few food people. They control a massive amount of GPUs, this could be a major factor for Altman and Brockman here.
- miohtama 3y agoWe will see if OpenAI team can stand on its own legs. My bet is 70% they will start to humble and lose in long term. AI satety people may not those who know how to create a feasible business. At some point, Microsoft can make a purchase offer to get the remaining OpenAI. We have seen similar stories with Nokia, Slack, others.
- sagman 3y agoLooking forward to reading Sam and Greg's connects.
- impulser_ 3y agoI'm guessing this is the end of OpenAI. People aren't going to want to work at OpenAI anymore due to the value destruction that just occurred. It's going to be hard for them to raise money now because of the bad rep they have now. It going to be hard for them to hire top talent. You have two leaders, top engineers and researchers leaving the company. Google and Facebook come in a grab up any top talent that still there because they can offer them money and equity. The company will probably still exist, but the company isn't going to be worth what it is today.
- bagels 3y agoThey're going to have to give up control of the board to get more investment. No investor wants these loose cannons in charge of their investments.
- nicce 3y ago> No investor wants these loose cannons in charge of their investments. The board just proved to stay on the companys core values.
- loveparade 3y agoI agree, any potential hire who has the choice between OpenAI and the new team at MSFT will now choose the latter. And a lot of the current team will follow as well. This is probably the end of OpenAI. Can't say I'm too sad, finally a chance to erase that misleading name from history.
- peanuty1 3y agoDo leading AI researchers at Google/Meta/OpenAI/Anthropic/HuggingFace want to work at Microsoft?
- loveparade 3y agoYes, for most AI researchers the umbrella organization (or university) doesn't matter nearly as much as the specific lab. These people are not going to work at Microsoft, they are going to work at whatever that new org is going to be called, and that org is going to have a pretty high status.
- lajawfe 3y agoMicrosoft is the winner here. They will probably use Sam/Greg's technical know how to reproduce GPT4 internally, and also direct future research based on current OpenAI approaches which they are certainly aware of. This also shields Microsoft from being dependent on an external entity that they cannot control. Anyways, Satya played very smart with the hands he was dealt, got what he needed.
- blackoil 3y agoNot just Sam and Greg. From all rumors, they'll get a cream of researchers from OpenAI, plus access to most of already developed tech. Not sure about training data etc. that they may have to recreate. And from my understanding, in LLM tech know how is more valuable than actual data. If you know what to get, few 100 million should get them that.
- jampekka 3y agoSauron declares: Saruman to join Mordor.
- _mh56 3y ago[This is not in response to the satya's tweet but the general articles or opinions in social media.] Please keep in mind that the articles you read are PR pieces, last few being from Sam's Camp. msft/sequioa/khosla has no power to remove the board or alter their actions. There is no gain for board by reinstating Sam and resigning themselves. swaying employees who have 900k$ comp is pretty hard. and not giving money to OpenAI is akin to killing your golden goose. The idea is that Altman and/or a bunch of employees were demanding the board reinstate Altman and then resign. And they’re calling it a “truce.” Oh, and there’s a deadline (5 pm), but since it’s already passed the board merely has to “reach” this “truce” “ASAP.” This is by far my favourite example of PR piece. I'd recommend not reading rumors and waiting for things to come out officially. Or atleast re-evaluating after a week, how much you read was false.
- kmlevitt 3y agoThe 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 models, and yet at the same time they potentially get all the best people in-house and benefit from their work directly. This whole turn of events might turn out to be a net win for Microsoft.
- ric2b 3y agoThis whole saga will be a great demonstration of how much value a CEO does or doesn't bring to a company. I'm of the mind that CEO's are like parents, an awful CEO can cause a lot of harm but the difference between an ok CEO and an excellent one isn't that big and doesn't guarantee anything.
- mkii 3y ago> 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.
- skc 3y agoThey could spin-off their own OpenAI competitor with Microsoft being in pole position for another sweet deal.
- MichaelRazum 3y agoNever change a good running system. OpenAI ran quite good, even if things heated up, it sound kind of stupid to fire the CEO when the company is winning on every front.
- dagmx 3y agoSeems like a logical choice. Microsoft’s next big play is generative AI, and they’ve put a lot of money into that. They need to show they’re taking steps to stabilize things now that their hype factory has come unraveled. I don’t think they particularly need these people , because they likely already have in house talent that is competitive. But having these people on board now will allow them to paint a much more stable picture to their shareholders.
- throwaway4good 3y agoWouldn’t there be employment contracts and laws around competitive behavior that come into play here?
- samspenc 3y agoIf Sam had left OpenAI on his own accord to do this, certainly. Since the board fired him and basically nuked his best-effort plan to return - I highly doubt that OpenAI's legal team has anything of substance here. Even if they do, I wouldn't doubt for a second that Microsoft already has its entire legal team ready to play hardball defense. Overall, a complete loss-loss for OpenAI's board. What a weekend.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- filmgirlcw 3y agoNon-competes illegal in California.
- rvz 3y agoSo essentially a promotion at Microsoft to create an AI division, the real OpenAI, Sam and Greg have been tasked to create another DeepMind / OpenAI inside of Microsoft. Might as well have acquired OpenAI in the first place given that it was 49% owned by Microsoft anyway but taken over by a coup. Now we'll see if the employees who are quitting will follow Sam and Greg. Google is still at risk without Gemini being released.
- nopromisessir 3y agoNo offense, but please consider getting off Twitter. Read about their structure. Msft doesn't own anything. They are an investor. This is different, in thus case. The non profit owns the for profit. Msft has 49 percent of the for profit. Sunset clause after profit benchmarks. Ownership returns 100 percent to non profit. Stop getting meme'd on by the crowd. That goes to the 90 plus percent of other commenter's spreading misinformation on hn.
- jimsimmons 3y agoHot new startup just dropped:MSFT
- hilux 3y agoWell, this definitely isn't the "internet is fad" Microsoft of Gates/Ballmer ...
- mfiguiere 3y agoBen Thompson: The most extraordinary weekend of my career https://twitter.com/benthompson/status/1726514608234746003 https://twitter.com/benthompson/status/1726514608234746003
- rainyMammoth 3y agoBen who?
- samspenc 3y agoFounder of https://stratechery.com/ https://stratechery.com/ More about him and his blog at https://stratechery.com/stratechery-plus/ https://stratechery.com/stratechery-plus/
- rainyMammoth 3y agoSeems like last minute news to avoid a MSFT stock dive tomorrow morning.
- thom 3y agoSo Altman now has a backer for his NVIDIA killer, and one who can use it not just for LLMs but Azure too, and one day possibly consumer GPUs? Forget Xbox, subsidised graphics cards as a loss-leader for Game Pass subscriptions would be an interesting play. What will the antitrust people think?
- KeplerBoy 3y agoYou're not beating Nvidia if you aim for GPUs. The more plausible approach is developing more specialized chips, which are only good at Tensor Ops. Heck, that's what Nvidia's top of the line chips are. The A100 and H100 don't support OpenGL or any other Graphics Api.
- thom 3y agoI agree that is the most pressing need, and the one Microsoft has already started producing like all the other big players. I’d be very surprised if this topic hasn’t come up in conversations with Altman either now or even before the current blowup. But after that, a consumer play would fit so well! Start off with custom silicon for a couple of generations of Xbox and Surface, get DirectX working nicely with it. Then go after the rest of the market. Good use for Microsoft’s cash pile because it benefits basically all their product lines in one way or another.
- broken_clock 3y agoBiggest question: How much of OpenAI's IP do they get to access at Microsoft? (and perhaps take with them to whatever new startup they would obviously found after?)
- clhodapp 3y agoDue to Microsoft's very generous licensing agreements, this may be the best shot Altman, Brockman, and Nadella have to launder the technology that is currently owned by the OpenAI non-profit. If they manage to poach key staff, they may be able to resume their attempts at rapid commercial growth outside of the confines of the OpenAI mission.
- CSMastermind 3y agoIn 1990 Microsoft hired all of the important talent from Borland who up until that point had been outpacing them in terms of product development. We got Access, Visual Studio, and .Net / C# as a direct result. Borland faded into obscurity. Hard not to feel like there will be a parallel here.
- pixelesque 3y agoAnders Hejlsberg didn't move to MS until 1996...
- yodon 3y ago>Anders Hejlsberg didn't move to MS until 1996... The point of the comment wasn't the specific date, it was the impact of hiring a competitor's team AND equipping that team to be even more impactful.
- CSMastermind 3y agoSorry I should have phrased that as starting in 1990... In 1990 they poached Brad Silverberg who then spent the next 7 years poaching all of Borland's top talent in the most prominent example of a competitive 'brain drain' strategy that I'm aware of. https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Borland-Says-Microsoft-Raided-Staff-2841016.php https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Borland-Says-Microso...
- pixelesque 3y agoFair point!
- threeseed 3y agoMicrosoft also acquired LinkedIn and Github. Both of which have been run as largely seperate entities.
- GaryNumanVevo 3y agoYep, if you wanted to move to MSFT from LinkedIn or vice versa, you needed to re-interview although finding a job rec and internal hiring manager was easier.
- beAbU 3y agoMicrosoft is swiftly moving on to the third "E" with OpenAI. First time I get to witness this process first-hand.
- vore 3y agoI don't see how this is applies. OpenAI fired the CEO themselves. What extinguishing is Microsoft doing here?
- charlierguo 3y agoI guess it really did come down to the GPUs in the end. Funding and talent matter a lot less when it takes you 12 months to get H100s.
- Satam 3y agoPurely business-wise, it sure does seem like it's a race down to the bottom. A disproportionate amount of the sharpest minds are working on this, burning ungodly amounts of money but no one has so far has really managed to capture that value in a profitable way either. The public positions of these people are opaque, inconsistent, and intellectually dishonest too. They're apparently not here to make money but they need a lot of it until they create a superintelligence (but money will be obsolete by then, apparently). And AI may destroy humanity so we will try to build it faster than anyone else so it doesn't..? WTF. It's okay to want to make money and cement your name in history, but what is up with these public delusions?
- divo6 3y agoSo let me get this straight, the OpenAI and Microsoft deal does work until AGI is achieved. But that would mean that some sort of source code is restricted for Microsoft at the moment even, otherwise Microsoft would have access to the code right until AGI is achieved (which would be weird). Regarding Sam and Greg joining MSFT I see this announcement as damage control from Satya. It's still unclear on what exactly they will work on and if Sam and the rest of the team can just continue where they left off at MSFT. It's Satyas way of showing the shareholders that they still back the face of OpenAI. We will see how this whole thing develops.
- g42gregory 3y agoWow. This sounds like an amazing coup for Microsoft. They are getting Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, "together with colleagues". With this team, they will be able to rebuild GPT in-house. I fear that with this development, the commercial side of the OpenAI is pretty much gone. Which sounds like what the OpenAI board has intended to do all along. I think this will also spark a big exodus from OpenAI. I am also curious about how OpenAI board is planning to raise the money for non-profit for further scaling. I don't think it would be that easy now. An internet meme from Lord of the Rings comes to mind: "One does not simply fire Sam Altman."
- ffgjgf1 3y agoPresumably they still have the deal with MS and will continue to receive funding as long as they meet their obligations? (Of course no clue what they are..)
- g42gregory 3y agoPresumably yes, depending on what's in the legal documents. I am guessing that Microsoft will transition slowly, in order to provide continuity to the Azure customers. But OpenAI will not "thrive" from this deal anymore. Partnerships tend to only work when both sides are interested, regardless of the agreements. If OpenAI needs several more $billion to train GPT-5, this will get sabotaged. The scaling party is basically over. Or rather, it has moved to Redmond.
- neel8986 3y agoThis is where other big tech giants need to move. MSFT provides nothing extra which Google/Amazon/Meta can not move. Make it multi platoform and make it more open source.
- lawn 3y agoWhy are people so excited about Sam and Greg joining Microsoft? The only value Sam brought to OpenAI was connections and being able to bring funding. But that's not something Microsoft needs, so what value does Sam give them?
- bagels 3y agoThey're bringing the talent with them, I'm sure that's part of it.
- peanuty1 3y agoWill be interesting to see how many OpenAI employees leave OpenAI to work at Microsoft.
- thinkingemote 3y agoPutting on my lateral thinking hat, by hiring Altman and Brockman they ensure that they cannot compete against them in whatever enterprise they were thinking of doing. It gives the corporation incredible breathing room of at least a year to catch up while also being able to mine them for their knowledge. Additionally they will serve as beacons for hiring devs into their corporation.
- threeseed 3y ago> The only value Sam brought to OpenAI was connections and being able to bring funding OpenAI was last week a $100b company. You need to do more than just "build an AI model" for that to happen.
- jonbell 3y agoCorrect answer
- zoogeny 3y agoAll 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 just be it. All of the product focused engineering peeps have a great place to flock to. Those who believe in the original charter of OpenAI can get back to work on the things that brought them to the company in the first place. Big props to Nadella. He also heads off a bloodbath in the market tomorrow. So big props to Altman too for his loyalty. By backing MS instead of starting something brand new he is showing massive support for Nadella.
- quickthrower2 3y agoDamn was looking forward to picking up some cheap MSFT
- esoterica 3y agoWhat about the people who got paid equity for the past few years of work and now might see all of their equity intentionally vaporized? They essentially got cheated into working for a much lower compensation than they were promised. I get that funny money startup equity evaporates all the time, but usually the board doesn’t deliberately send the equity to zero. Paying someone in an asset you’re intentionally going to intentionally devalue seems like fraud in spirit if not in law.
- sanderjd 3y agoThere is probably a lawsuit here, I would not disagree, but I don't think the board will have too much trouble arguing that they didn't intentionally send the equity to zero. I certainly haven't seen any of them state that that was their intention here. But the counter argument that theyshould have known that their actions would result in that outcome may be a strong one. But I think it is probably sufficient to point to the language in the contracts granting illiquid equity instruments that explicitly say that the grantee should not have any expectation of a return. But I think this is an actual problem with the legal structure of how our industry is financed! But it's not clear to me what a good solution would even be. Without the ability to compensate people with lottery tickets, it would just be even more irrational for anyone to work anywhere besides the big public companies with liquid stock. And that would be a real shame.
- pjmlp 3y agoI guess OpenAI is done now.
- throwaway69123 3y agoMicrosoft will now perform parallel development and once they no longer need open ai the free azure credit spigot will run dry and OpenAI will choke on its largess
- bezout 3y ago“Microsoft always lands on top”
- tw1984 3y ago[flagged]
- alvis 3y agoIndeed. Sutskever should have been able to foresee the move. It's just not hard to see Altman will just get another place to continue what he has done in OpenAI. Maybe his hope is he can slow him down like a year or so? But now by joining MS, it's effectively no much difference.
- yanis_t 3y agoI was thinking exactly this. If the original idea was to slow things down, then that kind of turmoil is exactly what was required. OpenAI will slow down under the new CEO and because talent is leaving. Altman will slow down, because he will need to build thing from the ground up.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> OpenAI's board should book themselves for an IQ test, it is just beyond my understanding why they hate their own successful business so much. OpenAI's board doesn't run a business, they run a nonprofit with a mission oriented around safety and public benefit, not private profit. It has a for-profit subsidiary, explicitly subordinated to the nonprofit's mission, as a funding mechanism, but being successful at bringing in money is only a net benefit if the method by which the funding is generated isn't more harmful to the mission than what it enables is beneficial.
- ffgjgf1 3y agoThey won’t be able to accomplish their mission without external funding, though (longterm anyway). Seemingly what they did significantly compromised their ability to obtain it in the future. So I guess they’d prefer not accomplishing their mission at all instead of only partially (and having to compromise/change parts of it)? Which is not unreasonable if you assume nobody else will ever be able to catch up with them…
- LewisVerstappen 3y agoSatya is the best CEO in tech and it isnt even close
- BSDobelix 3y agoHonest question, why is he the best CEO?
- blueblisters 3y agoThe CEO's job is to enrich the shareholders and by that metric he has done a pretty good job. More qualitatively, being able to change Microsoft's trajectory from boring enterprise tech company to a tech leader with strategic deals (OpenAI, Github) is very impressive.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- skc 3y agoPresumably because MSFT is the most highly diversified tech company on the planet and he's overseeing multiple billion dollar businesses there without breaking a sweat. Not to mention the only big tech that seems to have a coherent AI strategy at the moment.
- Arainach 3y agoTo be fair, MSFT was the most diversified tech company prior to his arrival - Google had Search, Facebook had Facebook, Apple had hardware. Microsoft by then had perhaps a dozen products with a billion dollars or more of revenue (Windows, Office, Sharepoint, Exchange, XBox, Azure, Surface, among others). Satya did well to focus on the cloud and grow opportunities there, but he hasn't significantly increased the diversity of the product lineup.
- chucke1992 3y ago
- bugglebeetle 3y agoSay it with me, folks - Embrace, extend, extinguish.
- esskay 3y agoThis isnt the win people seem to think it is, at least not for end users. Micosoft dont buy companies and people to keep releasing free standalone products. They buy them to integrate into Windows. Cortana 2.0 incoming.
- ffgjgf1 3y agoWho’s talking about free? And I think it’s Azure rather than Windows these days.
- jug 3y agoI think the whole problem that sparked all this was that Sam & Co. wasn't enough about being open and research, but more into closed products. I'm surprised over this particular solution because they enter Microsoft with a ton of knowledge of OpenAI internals which seems to open the floodgates for an array of lawsuits if they so much touch their codebases, unless it is under mutual and friendly terms. But now THAT it happened, I'm not surprised Sam is willing to build for Microsoft Copilot.
- penguin_booze 3y agoPlot twist: it was Satya who planted the idea in the OpenAI's board's mind to fire Sam in the first place... Inception-style.
- neutrono 3y agoHow to kill your company in one week?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lyre-lyre 3y agoI don't see why people want to race to build AGI at all costs. On the balance this probably slows things down, so: good. Not sorry about Sam, first off I'm not assuming we know everything and second I'm more inclined to trust the board. Also it seems he was trying to do a secret hardware venture on the side, which would be several kinds of unethical. Again: good.
- bmitc 3y ago> I don't see why people want to race to build AGI at all costs. People will sell their souls and the souls of others for power and greed.
- Dalewyn 3y ago>I don't see why people want to race to build AGI at all costs. It's simple: He who wins first place writes the rules, for everyone. If Microsoft gets the first place win, they (and more broadly the USA) are who get to write the rulebook. We are already witnessing this with "AI", it's OpenAI/Microsoft and the USA who dragged the rest of the west into the rules that they wrote because they got past the finish line first.
- blackoil 3y agoMS is betting the company on AI. It is everywhere across the org. They won't play with kiddie glove. You want to see ruthless businessmen in action sure pick up the fight. They'll be happy to lose 10 billion plus some more if it means they win the war.
- ps256 3y ago> MS is betting the company on AI. This doesn't mean anything when they have multiple non-AI revenue streams generating billions.
- blackoil 3y agoShare Market values growth. Board won't like if MS is rerated as utility. MS is behaving as if AI will be as big as the Internet and wants to capture the biggest slice in it. Hence betting the company and will respond appropriately.
- glun 3y agoWould Altman shine within Microsoft? Seems like raising capital is his main skill set, and theres no need for that now. But from Microsofts point of view this prevents a new competitor from popping up.
- redsaber 3y agoI guess Satya Nadella really like this guy
- NetOpWibby 3y agoI am confusion. What a whirlwind weekend.
- mighmi 3y agoWhat 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.
- omarfarooq 3y agoThe exodus of personnel behind him.
- rashidrafeek 3y agoTo pull out engineers from OpenAI?
- alvis 3y agoLeadership - To stay top of the game, you can't just rely on brunch of engineers, but a person/team to pull everything into shape. Seeing how many employees are leaving for sama, you get the sense.
- bananapub 3y agowhat leadership? what examples of his leadership have been visible to the outside world? as far as I can tell, his entire career was: 1. failed startup 1. YC staff member 1. very creepy cryptocurrency grifter 1. openai ceo where has he demonstrated such enormous value?
- andrejguran 3y agothe last one in your list
- bananapub 3y agowhat observable value has he displayed? he's just the ceo, he's not designing or implementing products, and I don't think I've ever even seen him say anything particularly insightful in public. can you link me to something particularly impressive? I must be missing something based on the huge amount of praise people heap on him, but no one ever seems to elaborate on why.
- bozhark 3y agoThis Silicon Valley Soap Opera is going to be great
- zurfer 3y agoI 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.
- MrDresden 3y agoI say this without having really looked into what their latest stance is, but did the fame and money since forming OpenAI perhaps change their initial tune?
- anonymous_sorry 3y ago> Both of them will eventually find it moot to advance tech so a few folks get richer. What does the word "moot" mean in this context?
- cherryteastain 3y agoPointless
- anonymous_sorry 3y agoThanks. In British English it means something like "debatable" or "contested".
- comboy 3y agoYeah I'm surprised about Sam joining MS based on he usually says. But on the other hand, that's a pretty neat move - you fire me - now I own you (simplification, maybe).
- diputsmonro 3y agoActions speak louder than words, and should give you pause to re-evaluate your trust
- mighmi 3y agoCan someone help me understand what Sam's actual value is? He doesn't seem to be a particularly important practitioner/researcher re: AI and is "just" 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.
- pjmlp 3y agoThe people that would rather have him as boss. I know several people that keep changing company when their favourite leardership changes into another one.
- anonymous_sorry 3y agoMicrosoft would at least like him not to do that job for a competitor. Given they paid for a big stake in the market leader, and their stock price movements when this drama erupted, keeping these people in-house can be seen as damage control.
- WiSaGaN 3y agoSure. But Sam Altman is an ambitious man. Why would he accept this instead of fundraising and creating another company? I think there would be more details of this arrangement surfacing these coming days. It is unlikely a traditional team within a large corporation.
- 15457345234 3y agoMaybe he needs a salary!
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoHiring famous well known big names of the industry (even if they're useless and will just coast for crazy money) sends a strong signal to investors and will most likely boost MSFT stock price during this ongoing AI bubble. And once the AI bubble pops as everyone learns AGI indeed NOT 'around the corner', Microsoft will silently let him go with a golden parachute in the 8 figure ballpark. At least that's what I learned from watching the Silicon Valley satire.
- gzer0 3y agoOnly time will tell how this will play out. When I come back to this comment years down the road, I hope we all will be in a better place.
- rmrf100 3y agoWow
- summerlight 3y agoThis looks like a short term compromise to defend MSFT before the market opens. A number of members will follow Sam and Greg, but I doubt if it will be the majority given it's yet another big tech rather than a brand new startup. And what would be their roles? Yet another VP/SVP? Those folks are not really AI guys and don't fit very nicely into all the bureaucracy rampant in big techs. Satya will of course try to give them as much room as possible, but it will be considerably smaller and slower thanks to all those corporate politics and external regulations.
- abkolan 3y agoSatya just tweeted saying that Sam Altman would be the CEO of this new group.
- dkrich 3y agoYep feels like a desperate attempt by nadella to restore confidence in him and Microsoft’s massive investment and news like this can easily change on a dime
- tills13 3y agoMicrosoft could literally burn $10B and not even notice it. They just wrapped up spending $70B in a smaller division (gaming). I don't think this has anything to do with saving face for investors.
- vagabund 3y agoTo what extent can they lead research that builds off of existing OpenAI models?
- benkarst 3y agoThis plays perfectly into the narrative that Sam wanted to take this godlike tech that Ilya created and commercialize it. Sam chose greed over safety.
- tarruda 3y agoNovember 17th OpenAI blog post: "The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." The fact that they agreed to join as MS employees kinda proves that money was a big motivator.
- GaryNumanVevo 3y agoSam's NW is north of $500 mil, he doesn't need the money. He needs GPU compute and MSFT has mountains of it
- meepmorp 3y ago> Sam's NW is north of $500 mil, he doesn't need the money. Needing more money and wanting more money aren't at all the same thing.
- GaryNumanVevo 3y agoI mean he's proven he's not in it for the money. He had zero equity in OpenAI.
- lwneal 3y agoIn five years, he'll be the CEO. [1] [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/fundraising.html http://www.paulgraham.com/fundraising.html
- peanuty1 3y agoI'm not sure the Microsoft shareholders would like that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- firecall 3y agoQuelle Surprise.
- mo_42 3y agoThis might be good for society. If there are multiple entities that develop such AI technology, there's some kind of competition and a distribution of power. Of course I'd prefer if everyone could just train such a model on their smartphone with a public dataset and an open source software. At least in terms of compute, companies will always be ahead.
- fancyfredbot 3y agoMicrosoft has become the commercial arm of OpenAI
- coolkoala 3y agoBetter than OpenAI becoming the commercial arm of Microsoft.
- baz00 3y agoNot sure what the big deal is here. The tech and engineering team is surely the most valuable asset, not the CEO. Edit: comment retracted. People going with him!
- ffgjgf1 3y agoDepends on what proportion of engineers/scientists follow the CEO to Microsoft. Also with a lack of direction (and by extension funding) even the best engineering team won’t be able to achieve that much (they might be able to hire better management, of course I have no clue)
- agevag 3y ago[dead]
- vanguardanon 3y agoPhil Spencer is CEO of Microsoft Gaming
- dharmab 3y agoYou see it all the time with conglomerates and subsidiaries. Microsoft is unusual in that the company has their largest "subsidiaries" are part of the same corporate legal entity.
- sys_64738 3y agoSatya is a CEO.
- brg 3y agoIts not uncommon. Instagram and Whatsapp had CEO's after purchase, as well as DeepMind and Youtube.
- mongol 3y agoThat is an an amazing turn of events that I did not see anyone predict. Or perhaps I did not just see it. But in retrospect, not surprising.
- vbezhenar 3y agoI thought Sam Altman is businessman, not researcher. What does he going to do in MS? MS does not need external investments. Probably that's the end of his career.
- 9dev 3y agoI 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 lies ahead without any concern whatsoever, and learn it the hard way. It’s a bit tragic that Ilya and company achieved the exact opposite of what they intended apparently, by driving those they attempted to slow down into the arms of people with more money and less morals. Well.
- Legend2440 3y agoOpenAI's ideas of humanities best interests were like a catholic mom's. Less morals are okay by me.
- rdtsc 3y ago> OpenAI's ideas of humanities best interests were like a catholic mom's How do you mean? Don’t see what OpenAI has in common with Catholicism or motherhood.
- ric2b 3y agoThey basically defined AI safety as "AI shouldn't say bad words or tell people how to do drugs" instead of actually making sure that a sufficiently intelligent AI doesn't go rogue against humanity's interests.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoI'm not sure where you're getting that definition from. They have a team working on exactly the problem you're describing. (https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment)
- 3y ago
- osti 3y agoAltman's value is in business, how does bringing him to Microsoft to lead a research team help?
- dddnzzz334 3y agoElon's swipe at Microsoft Teams is golden
- chimney 3y agoI'd have expected a lot of OpenAI employees to join whatever initiative Sam and gdb started next, but the profile of someone who joined OpenAI this past year and a Microsoft employee are...quite different.
- barrenko 3y agoEnough material here for Horowitz to write "The next hard thing about hard things".
- mirzap 3y agoThis was expected. Who would possibly think Sam would join MS to be a "senior research" or "VP of engineering"? They get to form a company and run a startup within Microsoft with full Microsoft backing. OpenAI is so over.
- BoorishBears 3y agoI was expecting MSFT to get a board seat and bring them back tbh
- alvis 3y agoAnd by seeing how Satya praise it ``` We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap ... We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI's new leadership team ``` You know OpenAI is now overly done. I'd say it's now in archive. https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1726509045803336122 https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1726509045803336122
- avindroth 3y agoSatya wins by letting Ilya win. Wow.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- coahn 3y agoIt's really telling of US tech culture, how AI hype quickly turned from "Open" and "we're doing it for humanity" into a mega-corp cash grab *show. I understand what money does to principles, but this is comical.
- nicce 3y agoAll parties involved are already millionaires or more. It gets even more comical.
- pembrook 3y agoWhat’s ironic is how backwards people here have the narrative. Not sure you’re fully aware of what happened at OpenAI. The “Open” types, ironically, wanted to keep LLMs hidden away from the public (something something religious AGI hysteria). These are the people who think they know better than you, and that we should centralize control with them for our own safety (see also, communism). The evil profit motive you’re complaining about, is what democratized this tech and brought it to the masses in a form that is useful to them. The “cash grab show” is the only incentive that has been proven to make people do useful things for the masses. Otherwise, it’s just way too tempting to hide in ivory towers and spend your days fantasizing about philosophical nonsense.
- suslik 3y ago"Open"AI indeed was, and is, ironic, but in reality, MS acquisition of Altman and co is not going to change anything for anybody besides a bunch of California socialites. Not sure what sort of democratisation you are referring to, but I can bet my firstborn that whatever product MS develops will be just as open as GPT4.
- ramblerman 3y ago> I understand what money does to principles, That's kind of the point, we all do. What is harder to understand are the low stakes whims of academics bickering over their fiefdoms. This move is bringing the incentives back to a normal and understood paradigm. And as a user of AI, will likely lead to better, quicker, and less hamstringed products and should be in our benefit.
- crones 3y agoMicrosoft's board made the right call when they promoted Satya to CEO. Their share price on the day he became CEO was $36.35 and is now $369.84 (and likely to increase again on this news). Putting together a deal like this whilst maintaining the relationship with OpenAI is impressive enough, but to do it as a cricket tragic when India was losing to Australia is even better.
- jug 3y agoSo from scratch but with a TON of insight and miles of read code from OpenAI? Haha. This will be so awful for Microsoft's lawyers.
- 0xakhil 3y agoThis sounds like a step down for both openai and sama. Microsoft probably wins here as they still have access to openai tech and now the only entity with access to the same talent pool as was there before last Friday.
- seydor 3y agoA) Does brockman own equity in openAI ? B) Can you please please please name the new company Clippy? C) What is it so unique about openAI employees that people think it makes them irreplaceable?
- beoberha 3y agoBased on Satya’s reply to Sam’s quote tweet, seems like Sam is going to run a subsidiary-style organization like LinkedIn, GitHub, and Minecraft. Can’t wait to see what he’s going to do.
- wildekek 3y agoThe GPT Golden Goose consists of 2 parts: 1. Smart people with the knowledge and motivation to build the Goose. 2. The compute required to create Eggs. MSFT now has both. I don't see how any regulatory framework could have prevented this now or in the future.
- ybob 3y agoSatya just pulled best move of 2023. Gets the hot names, whoever will follow Sam and Greg, to work in a startup like cocoon. Throws money at them, which is peanuts to Microsoft, both stock to keep them and unlimited compute. Sam wants to do custom chips? Do it with Microsofts money, size and clout. All doors are open. The new Maia100 chip can soon be followed by Sam200. Brings innovation and makes the company more attractive to future hires. Who cares if Same leaves after 2 years? Maybe that was part of the discussions, Satya wont be around forever and doesn't really have a good allround replacement inhouse. MSFT stock meanwhile goes from sideways movement to another all time high and onto 400. Genius move, would have never thought Sam accepts such arrangement but it makes sense.
- screye 3y agoThe most "When life give you lemons, make lemonade" move, if I've ever seen one.
- edandersen 3y agoSatya saves the stock price in time for Monday. Genius.
- codeptualize 3y agoIt seems that Microsoft is the big winner in this story, well played.
- ekojs 3y agoAdditional info from a Linked-in follow-up comment by Satya: "I’m super excited to have Sam join as CEO of this new group, setting a new pace for innovation. We’ve learned a lot over the years about how to give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft, including GitHub, Mojang Studios, and LinkedIn, and I’m looking forward to having Sam and team do the same."
- cubefox 3y agoI didn't know one can be "CEO" of some group within a company.
- bezbac 3y agoWell, Thomas Dohmke is officially the CEO of GitHub
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ponderings 3y agoi blame human error
- mighmi 3y agoAmazing to see this on the front page multiple times and reposted every 20 minutes, each time as the highest performer on new. I've never seen such story velocity before.
- LewisVerstappen 3y agoThis is probably the biggest single weekend in tech ever? And crazy news just keeps on coming…
- blowski 3y agoProbably the biggest story since the last one. And until the next one.
- ahahahahah 3y agoSome shitty crypto bro got fired and it's the biggest weekend in tech ever? ffs...
- LewisVerstappen 3y agoHacker News is so dumb it's actually hilarious.
- Herbstluft 3y agoIf this is supposed to be the biggest single weekend in tech ever I don't know what to say
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sidcool 3y agoReality is indeed stranger than fiction. I don't have an opinion on whether this is good or bad for whomsoever. But it's entertaining for sure. Best tech weekend I have ever had.
- divbzero 3y agoSatya Nadella must have been eager to get this news out before markets open for the week. As of 3 AM EST, MSFT was up 2% in pre-market trading.
- sidcool 3y agoA lot of techies will be left sleepless tonight and have a bad Monday morning :)
- mrafii 3y agoSatya pulls this together in 48 hours from a cold start and gets it signed and over the line before markets open, well played indeed.
- lewhoo 3y agoWhat I'm getting from all of this is the hype of AGI right around the corner got a bit exposed. I may be reading to much into it but if it were true then given an opportunity to be part of it you take it and put aside things that shouldn't matter at that point. I'm not even talking about Sam but the people who decided to leave with him. Of course this may be a completely false assumption given how little was disclosed, especially by Sutskever.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- neel8986 3y agoBest thing open AI can do is to align with Google and Amazon. This will keep MS on its toe.
- vegabook 3y agoI'm quite surprised that this point is not being made more. It's not like MSFT is the only shop that OpenAI can turn to, and you could argue that what will now happen is a full scale lobbying war will be now be waged by OpenAI backed by others who don't want MSFT to win (Goog? Musk?). Could be that OpenAI's principled stand will "win" regulation and MSFT will be in a very poor position.
- nicce 3y ago> I'm quite surprised that this point is not being made more. Ex-CEO made exclusive deal with Microsoft. OpenAI can’t share anything with new parties until old deal is over.
- djejdjh 3y ago[dead]
- keikobadthebad 3y agoI realized thismorning that this somewhat banal story of these guys being cast out from the place of the creators has some chance to become a core origin myth for GPT-5, which is being trained at the moment, presumably also on this schism. The rupture seems to literally be about GPT-5 itself, whether it will be good or evil. Whatever form its growth takes it must include introspection and this from Open AI about the thing itself is inevitably going to be relevant to it.
- jacquesm 3y agoIt's a never ending story. Wonder how much talent they'll hire away from OpenAI and in spite of Nadella's soothing words whether OpenAI will survive all this (probably yes, but in what form?). So it is safe to say that the negotiations didn't work out. See: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/11/19/a-statement-from-microsoft-chairman-and-ceo-satya-nadella/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/11/19/a-statement-from...
- krick 3y agoIt's really funny how just a couple of days ago people were commenting here how "no way it's gonna happen". Because, you know, they were working for idea, and wouldn't just sell off to Microsoft…
- rado 3y agoEmbrace, extend, and extinguish
- JaDogg 3y agogood for people who invested in MSFT.. this drama might not negatively affect it.
- 127 3y agoHaving read through a lot of the comments around this situation, seems nobody on HN cares that much about AI safety, and is much more focused on corporate profits? Am I reading this wrong?
- alvis 3y agoThe new Open AI CEO Emmett Shear just released a long statement and he says one of his top 30-day plan is to `Hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report` https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1726526112019382275 https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1726526112019382275 He adds even more drama lol
- tucnak 3y ago> PPS: Before I took the job, I checked on the reasoning behind the change. The board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that. I'm not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models.
- carabiner 3y agoIs he moving to Seattle?
- alvis 3y agoAlso Emmett Shear said on his statement `Before I took the job, I checked on the reasoning behind the change. The board did not remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that. I'm not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models.` https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1726526112019382275 https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1726526112019382275 Regardless it's a tragic for staff remaining in OpenAI...
- jacquesm 3y agoThat's very strange. He first says that he's going to hire an outside party to investigate the mess around the firing of Altman and then he pre-empts the outcome of that investigation by ruling out a bunch of stuff.
- layer8 3y agoStatement by Emmett Shear: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38345162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38345162
- andyjohnson0 3y ago1. People concerned about them working for a profit-oriented business: there isn't a way to insist otherwise. Personally I'd rather it was Microsoft that Meta or Google or even Amazon. 2. I wonder what the AI teams at MSR think about this move? Looks like they'll be operating separately to the research division. 3. OAI could potentially make life difficult for Microsoft re the IP that those joining MS carry in their heads. I wonder if the future of OAI is just licencing their IP?
- kwant_kiddo 3y agoStill the aftermath leaves a bitter taste in my mouth about Sam and Greg joining MS. Regardless of whether the AI development in OpenAI was responsible, I think they succeeded in making a product and a culture I have not 'felt' since the early Google days. Naively, I had really hoped for Sam and Greg to start their own and not join MS. I think a lot of the value was being coherent and to some extent independent. I can't help to think that the same will happen to the 'new' OpenAI as what happend to DeepMind once they became Google DeepMind (again).
- jacquesm 3y agoIt takes billions to get this off the ground. Next stop: if this is going to be an independent entity they may well go around the usual suspects to give them much more money. I wonder if any of the VCs that have invested in OpenAI have something in their charter about investing in competing entities.
- Racing0461 3y agoThis episode of sillicon valley was amazing. Can't wait to see what happens next season.
- meiraleal 3y agoI hope to see them failing miserably. People cheering for M$ to save the world is the end of the times.
- consumer451 3y agoIn my humble opinion, everyone moved way too fast in this whole thing. I can't help but imagine that emotions were involved due to the speed. Instead of a 5PM Sunday deadline, maybe it should have been "let's talk next week." Maybe it would have worked out the same in any case, but it seems like it would have been wiser.
- kareaa 3y agoMicrosoft must have pushed for the situation to be resolved before the market opens on Monday. They couldn't afford to drag it out.
- consumer451 3y agoYeah, that makes sense. If that's the case, I wonder how sweet the offer to Altman and company was to move things along.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sensanaty 3y agoI don't buy into the whole AGI hyper-hypewave, but on the off chance that we're somehow heading towards it with these fancy chatbots we have, what a depressing fucking outcome it's gonna be if Micro$oft of all things is the one in control of it. We really are entering the dystopia of the cartoonishly evil megacorp enslaving all of humanity to make the graph go up by 1.2%.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoMany far worse outcomes are possible. Putin. Kim Jong Un. AlQaeda. G$$gle.
- Havoc 3y agoCould have been worse. Could have been google. This way at least there are two big dogs
- ALittleLight 3y agoMicrosoft and OpenAI? Microsoft and Anthropic?
- Havoc 3y agoI don’t even care who just as long as it’s two. But yeah one google camp one Microsoft camp. With a bit of luck Amazon too. This space just really can’t become a monopoly
- wozer 3y agoIf they really build AGI (I doubt it), the AGI might be able to bring Microsoft under its control. This could be bad news for a lot of businesses.
- suslik 3y agoThat's a lot of code to be purged, even for a superintelligent AI.
- 3y ago
- coolkoala 3y agoI think OpenAI should just focus on doing basic AI research for the time being, at least until their Microsoft deal lapses. Hopefully, they find a more diverse group of partners in the future that respect their mission as a non-profit (which so happens to own a for-profit subsidiary).
- facu17y 3y agoSam didn't create the breakthroughs behind the current GPT. He did not create the breakthroughs behind the next GPT. None of the people that may follow have the same handle on the tech as Ilya. I mean they built up Ilya's image in our mind so much, that he's one of a kind genius (or maybe Musk did that) and now we are to believe that his genius doesn't matter and that Microsoft already knows how to create AGI and that OpenAI is no longer relevant? Or did I get it wrong?
- kareaa 3y agoJakub Pachocki (the head of research of OpenAI) has already quit on Friday. Lots of other high-ups might follow. Ilya might be a genius, but he's not the only genius that OpenAI had.
- ChildOfChaos 3y agoI live in a completely different world. When this all went down, I just felt really bad for all those involved, in any situation like this, I feel horrible for the person, imaging what it must of felt for Sam, as if his situation was really bad, yet of course he was always likely to land somewhere on his feet and always in a much better situation than me personally. Then by the late hours of Sunday, he has already negotiated with OpenAI and then joined Microsoft. Crazy to me that such decisions are made at breakneck speed and everything unfolds so quickly, when I take much longer to make much simpler choices.
- 1B05H1N 3y agoWelp, surely this will work out for OpenAI and their board.
- harryvederci 3y agoI'm hoping (?) for the next plot twist: OpenAI actually becomes open source.
- kgc 3y agoOpenAI is ironically executing the exact opposite of its mission. Microsoft is holding all the cards now with their full access to OpenAI tech, the infrastructure and now the leadership.
- power_fart 3y agoCongratulations, OpenAI, you've successfully played yourself.
- sumitkumar 3y agoI was hoping for the OpenAI organism cell to have a clean split and start the race to outcompete each other. But now it looks like the older cell(Microsoft) will eat the high energy cell(OpenAI) and make it its mitochondria.
- singularity2001 3y agoOr like a shark biting of the steering fin of it's beneficial Remora.
- courseofaction 3y agoMicro$oft acts as evil as possible as often as possible, be wary.
- bradley13 3y agoSam Altman and Greg Brockman have very similar backgrounds. They are both highly intelligent, both dropped out of college and lack any advanced education. They are classic Silicon Valley entrepreneurs: well-networked, great at fund raising, maybe even good managers. Potential contribution to advanced AI research: zero. What, exactly, does Microsoft want to do with them? Best guess: Use their connections and reputation to poach talent from OpenAI.
- thatsadude 3y agoGo read the gpt3 and gpt3 tech report and see for yourself.
- rg111 3y agoYeah but Greg is not community college dropout, but (both) MIT and Harvard dropout. Someone who could qualify to go to both Harvard and MIT will be better at anything they set their mind to than the regular grad with four year of education after the said four years.
- emehex 3y agoThis is such a weird take. Sam and Greg were at OpenAI for 8 years! Why is it assumed that their “potential contribution to advanced AI research” is contingent on their having spent (no/more/less) time at academic institutions decades ago?
- Workaccount2 3y agoI too would be salty to see people who didn't fork over $120k to have professors dispense freely available information be successful.
- tibbydudeza 3y agoI called it - Dave Cutler like agreement - recruit anybody you want - no limit on spending - Azure compute resources AND no interference reporting directly to the CEO.
- elzbardico 3y agoWe're all fucked.
- d--b 3y agoOk so what have we learnt: - 5 days ago, Microsoft announced it was making its own AI chips. - 3 days ago, OpenAI board fires Altman and Brockman - 2 days ago, we heard that Altman was in talks to raise funds to build an AI chip startup - yesterday, it was clear Altman was not coming back to OpenAI - today, Altman joins Microsoft Anyone can connect the dots? Nothing makes sense to me. The only thing that seems to be clear is that Ilya Sutskever is only guy around who has an ounce of integrity.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- larodi 3y agoI don’t think Sam will stay at Microsoft for too long, but this is a logical move forward as damage to OpenAI is already done even if Sam goes back. Besides it is MS who enabled this scale and it perhaps is Sam who negotiated it to begin with. These other execs simply can’t stand the ground against him being excellent technologist and leader who talks the language of devs. I doubt the rest of these C level people in the board know said language that well… Besides the whole ‘not for profit’ BS is at this point completely irrelevant, because delivering such costly service at that scale can only be made with, for, and by profit. Whoever thinks otherwise had not followed the history of computing last 100 or so years. And history of humanity perhaps.
- nicce 3y agoCosts are reduced from profits. You can cost as much as you need. You can also grow as you reinvest everything back to company. For-profit means that money leaves the company, usually for investors.
- mirekrusin 3y agoNice move to effectively turn it into positive "one more thing" news from ignite PoV.
- corethree 3y agoLooks like Sam Altman never gave a shit about the Non profit aspect of Open AI. It wasn't about building a safer future. He just wants what every other SV bro wants, which is clout and success and money. I'm not saying business is the wrong move, I'm not saying a non-profit is the right move either. I'm also not saying Sam Altman and Co are not skilled at building AI. I'm not even saying Sam Altman won't do good for the world. What I'm saying is that this move here shows he's just dishonest. Which isn't bad. He's not some do-gooder out to build safer AI, (which is what he portrayed himself as) he's a normal person out to make a name for himself.
- timeon 3y agoGPT 6 Vista edition.
- al_be_back 3y ago>> We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap They've invested over $10bn in this affair, even for MS it's massive - a clearer, more reassuring message would've helped, than "we remain committed..."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- robbywashere_ 3y agoFrom the stygian depths of the global tech industry emerges a turn of events that portends a churning miasma of unknown consequences. Oft seen as the impenetrable leviathan of the boundless digital domain, Microsoft, it seems, is ensnaring exalted figures within its titanic coils. The conjoining of the cerebral entities Altman and Brockman- who have hitherto roamed in the lofty realm of artificial intelligence experiments at OpenAI- indicates a move as unsettling as it is awe-inspiring. The nefarious undercurrents beneath this corporate chess manoeuvre cannot be underestimated, for it is none other than the puppet master himself, Satya Nadella, who seemingly manipulates the strings with a resolve as foreboding as the stormy winter's night. His nearly insatiable appetite for expansion glimpsed at Microsoft Ignite is but a harbinger of the harrowing transformations we can anticipate in the murky fathoms of our all too near future. The technology multidude - customers, partners, even unknowing spectators - tremble at the precipice of an altered dynamic which promises to reshape the AI field irrevocably. Indeed, one is left grappling with a dark fascination as this vortex of unpredictable novelty takes precedence. How might this consolidation of otherworldly intelligence disturb the fragile balance of an industry catapulting unbidden into the abysmal void of the AI ether? Yet, as all explorers and heedless innovators must remember, even as we tilt our ships towards the lighthouse of progress, the monstrous kraken of unintended repercussions always lurks in the unknowable deep. To approach this brave new world without a hint of trepidation would be folly. Be still, my trembling heart, as we witness this awe-inspiring dance across the cyclopean chessboard of tech. We wait, as one waits for the tide, to see what dread portents this unhallowed union may bring.
- netsec_burn 3y agoThe unexpected return of Microsoft Sam.
- robbywashere_ 3y agoSatya's strategic insight deserves recognition. Certainly, there's a slight risk that Microsoft might fail to yield its substantial investment speculated to be around $10B in OpenAI. However, that's not Satya's principal concern. Rather, his focus is on the next move. Possibly, assemble the most elite AI collective globally, unhindered by the constrictions of a non-profit operating a profit-oriented entity? Offer them a sufficient amount of monetary rewards, and it's likely that a large proportion of OpenAI's workforce would be willing to join the bandwagon led by Sam and Greg. While this process may take some time, the potential payoff could encompass a much larger segment of the future for Microsoft than was previously conceivable through the OpenAI investment.
- cma 3y ago$10B largely in cloud credits that have a 70% margin back to MS, so more towards $3B.
- sumitkumar 3y agoIn retaliation Ilya/team should just open source everything OpenAI has. The only way to make genAI(GPT the can opener) safe is to make it democratic and available for everyone. Then others can pick it up and make it more efficient. At least MS servers will get a break.
- nicce 3y agoThey can’t anymore if Microsoft has exclusive licence?
- robbywashere_ 3y agoThis is somewhat ingenious. Microsoft holds the keys to almost all endeavors of OpenAI. Soon, such privileges will also be enjoyed by Altman and Brockman. Concurrently, it seems reasonable to speculate that their stint at Microsoft might not be drawn-out, as startup prodigies are often not inclined to work in such established firms. They have the chance to achieve stability, leverage OpenAI’s invaluable data and models devoid of any expenditure, access Microsoft's GPUs at minimal cost, and eventually set up another venture. As a result, Microsoft stands to gain a substantial equity stake in the new enterprise. While Altman requires no financial backing from Microsoft, the corporation now has an invaluable direct link to OpenAI.
- t_mann 3y agoA bit surprised, and maybe even disappointed, that he didn't start his own company. Rarely in history did someone have a better shot at becoming a billionaire of their own making. But you have to give it to Nadella, that's quite the coup.
- imjonse 3y agoI would expect most people to be concerned about how AGI can be really useful to most of humanity without creating power concentration and more inequality, but these goals seem to be implicitly conflated for some reason with the value of MS stock and Sam Altman's and others' career paths. At least those seem to be the emphasis of most of the drama; admittedly they are much simpler and familiar topics to tackle than what path forward would better suit humanity as a whole.
- sorenjan 3y agoWhat do you think Microsoft's medium to long term plan is? Will they clone GPT-x and use their own copy? Will they make their own model and train it from scratch? Will these former OpenAI people start with commercial LLMs like they were doing at OAI, or do you think they want to concentrate on AGI that are a more long-term project?
- lysecret 3y agoOk so the product people will leave Oai. As a developer I am now highly scared of building a product off their API. They angered investors etc. Now it’s a full bet for them on AGI.
- not_your_vase 3y agoOh, they are joining Poettering, bringing AI into systemd? Looking forward to excellent and (artificially) intelligent discussions on some mailing lists:)
- Phelinofist 3y agoTruth buried deep in the comments
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- refurb 3y agoI look forward to Windows AI(tm)!!
- elzbardico 3y agoPeople overvalue Sam Altman role. He is not a technological mastermind, he is primarily a superb execution and business guy. It's not like he and Greg are brilliant mathematicians and coders that will sit down in a cubicle at Redmond and churn out code for AGI in six months.
- JanSt 3y agoDeveloping: OpenAI is nothing without its people https://twitter.com/search?q=OpenAI%20is%20nothing%20without%20its%20people https://twitter.com/search?q=OpenAI%20is%20nothing%20without...
- karmasimida 3y agoUpdate, OpenAI employees are mass tweeting `OpenAI is nothing without its people` https://twitter.com/blader/status/1726552230319559106 https://twitter.com/blader/status/1726552230319559106
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- quonn 3y agoIt seems to me like there is one clear winner, Google, and everyone else lost a bit. Nevertheless Microsoft seems to have contained the damage as well as possible, again producing an outcome that is better for everyone from the position where they started after Friday.
- cal85 3y agoHow does Google benefit?
- quonn 3y agoOpenAI was growing like crazy and while I typically only use it the generate new content, many people I observe just ask it anything. Instead of going to Google they just go to ChatGPT. The current situation created a mess at OpenAI which should slow it down and permanently damage it‘s reputation somewhat. If I were Google and could choose either outcome, that‘s the outcome I would have chosen.
- astrn 3y agoI would have preferred Sam launched a new venture with fresh capital.
- breadwinner 3y agoSam and Greg will presumably start with a fork of OpenAI source code, given that Microsoft has full rights to the IP.
- nbzso 3y agoThanks, Ilya. Humanity first move. Never trust a greedy clown again. Hey, Microsoft. Have your Clippy:)
- gnu8 3y agoHow could this possibly happen over a weekend when it takes Microsoft weeks and weeks to go from recruitment to hiring someone?
- redwood 3y agoEmbrace. Extend. Extinguish.
- roschdal 3y agoSam Altman is a prepper. He said in 2016: "I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to. [Wikipedia]
- wanderingmind 3y agoThis is really bad for OpenAI. They will fade to irrelevance soon. OpenAI is going to get a gut punch to wake up to real world. In real world you need capital at scale to make meaningful impact. people who provide capital, not just VCs but any regular folks who buy shares or bonds want to maximize their returns. You do that with a for-profit corporation. If they think they can continue their breakneck speed of breakthroughs with a meager philanthropy, they are in for a rude awakening.
- joshstrange 3y agoI find the glee in this thread quite disturbing. That and the “MS is the winner, OpenAI is so stupid” general tenor. You all know who you are cheering for right? It seems that profits or potential profits is all that matter here in the end for this community and the high-minded “OpenAI should be ‘Open’” was all bullshit. I know this comment is going against the grain but I find the HN response to this (and previous responses to Altman’s firing, treating him like a god) to be quite disgusting. Apple fanboys don’t have anything on the top comments here.
- muditsrivastava 3y agoIs it possible for Microsoft to eventually get a board seat in Open AI Inc and put Sam Altman as a representative there? :P
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoAll this Microsoft affair seemed weird from the beginning. After all, Elon and co. created OpenAI to compete with emerging AI monopoly of tech behemoths - Google/FB/MS.
- zeptonix 3y agoSatya is a BOSS!
- Eumenes 3y agoYay! More consolidation. Honestly makes you wonder if they whole thing was manufactured from the inside. 10-15 years ago, I didn't have Microsoft on my 2023 bingo card for world domination.
- hyperthesis 3y agosama's fundraising talent is moot at MS.
- ctvo 3y agoThe only shocking thing about this whole episode was how many people in the media failed to understand just how much power this board had. They were, at no time, under any obligation to do anything except what they wanted and no one could force them otherwise. They held all the cards. The tech media instead ran with gossip supplied by VCs and printed that as news. They were all going to resign 8 hours after their decision. Really? Mass resignations were coming. Really? OpenAI is a 700 people company, 3 people have resigned in solidarity with Altman and Brockman at the time. Sam had no leverage. Microsoft and other investors had little leverage. Reading the news you’d think otherwise.
- itg 3y agoIf talent starts leaving OpenAI and join Sam at Microsoft, what does OpenAI have left? If investors decide not to give money to OpenAI because their leadership comes across as over their heads, how will they continue running? That may have been the leverage Microsoft and other investors tried to use, but OpenAI leadership thinks won't happen. We'll see what unfolds.
- ctvo 3y ago> If talent starts leaving OpenAI and join Sam at Microsoft, what does OpenAI have left? This is a real possibility and something I'm sure Ilya and the board thought through. Here's my guess: - There's been a culture rift within OpenAI as it scaled up its hiring. The people who have joined may not have all been mission driven and shared the same values. They may have been there because of the valuation and attention the company was receiving. These people will leave and join Altman or another company. This is seen as a net good by the board. - There's always been a sect of researchers who were suspicious of OpenAI because of its odd governance structure and commercialization. These people now have clear evidence that the company stands for what it states and are MORE likely to join. This is what the board wants. > If investors decide not to give money to OpenAI because their leadership comes across as over their heads, how will they continue running? I don't think this is an actual problem. Anthropic can secure funding just fine. Emmet is an ex-Amazon / AWS executive. There's possibility that AWS will be the partner providing computing in exchange for OpenAI's models being exclusively offered as part of Amazon Bedrock, for example, if this issue with Microsoft festers. I know Microsoft sees this as a clear warning: We can go to AWS if you push us too hard here. I don't see how the partnership with MSFT isn't dissolved in some way in the coming week as Altman and co. openly try to poach OpenAI talent. And again, maybe dissolving the MSFT ties was something the board wanted. It's hard to imagine they didn't think it was a possibility given the way they handled announcing this on Friday, and it's hard to imagine it wasn't intentional.
- hnthrowaway0315 3y agoWhoever has the power of the computing, controls the world.
- marviel 3y agoI look forward to the day when AGI seems distributed + safe enough that each employee transition doesn't force participation in Kremlinology
- da39a3ee 3y agoOk... but Altman & Brockman are just managers. Brockman did an ML course in 2018. If they can now get the actual technical people who built GPT4 over then that is something, but at the moment there's a lot of premature celebration here - managers don't actually do anything.
- wlecometo 3y agocortana plays me star wars imperial march. pretty please
- readyplayernull 3y agoMicrosoft is were studios come to die, they will be crushed by MS hierarchy struggles.
- relex 3y agoThe dark side is seductive, leading individuals down a path where ambition and desire overshadow empathy and moral judgment.
- warrenwilliams 3y ago[dead]
- insanitybit 3y agoThere's a high likelihood that MS is going to start poaching top AI talent aggressively, with Altman's help. This will be to the significant detriment of OpenAI. If this is how it plays out, OpenAI's board will be famous for decades to come for their boneheaded handling of this situation.
- anonyfox 3y agoSeems like in the minority here, but for me this is looking like a win-win-win situation for now. 1. OpenAI just got bumped up to my top address to apply to (if I would have the skills of a scientist, I am only an engineer level), I want AGI to happen and can totally understand that the actual scientists don't really care for money or becoming a big company at all, this is more a burden than anything else for research speed. It doesn't matter that the "company OpenAI" implodes here as long as they can pay their scientists and have access to compute, which they have do. 2. Microsoft can quite seamlessly pick up the ball and commercialize GPTs like no tomorrow and without restraint. And while there are lots of bad things to say about microsoft, reliable operations and support is something I trust them more than most others, so if the OAI API simply is moved as-is to some MSFT infrastructure thats a _good_ thing in my book. 3. Sam and his buddies are taken care of because they are in for the money ultimately, whereas the true researchers can stay at OpenAI. Working for Sam now is straightforward commercialization without the "open" shenaningans, and working for OpenAI can now become the idealistic thing again that also attracts people. 4. Satya Nadella is becoming celebrated and MSFT shareholder value will eventually rise even further. They actually don't have any interest in "smashing OAI" but the new setup actually streamlines everything once the initial operational hurdles (including staffing) are solved. 5. We outsiders end up with a OpenAI research focussed purely on AGI (<3), some product team selling all steps along the way to us but with more professionality in operations (<3). 6. I am really waiting for when Tim Cook announces anything about this topic in general. Never ever underestimate Apple, especially when there is radio silence, and when the first movers in a field have fired their shots already.
- idopmstuff 3y ago> 3. Sam and his buddies are taken care of because they are in for the money ultimately, whereas the true researchers can stay at OpenAI. This one's not right - Altman famously had no equity in OpenAI. When asked by Congress he said he makes enough to pay for health insurance. It's pretty clear Sam wants to advance the state of AI quickly and is using commercialization as a tool to do that. Otherwise I generally agree with you (except for maybe #2 - they had the right to commercialize GPTs anyway as part of the prior funding).
- gizajob 3y agoMicrosoft releasing dramatically improved Clippy next week.
- wraptile 3y agoI'm surprised no ones talking what a betrayal this is for people who followed Sam and Greg. Microsoft is the opposite of everything they've talked about for years and here they are. Seems like the board had the right idea about them huh.
- bilsbie 3y agoThis seems bad for users, no? MS just wants to integrate AI into their junk enterprise tools. Hobbyists and small businesses could be left out?
- Sai_ 3y agoMy suspicion is that given Sam and Greg’s engineering and deal making chops, they will only ideate in how to use AI models invented elsewhere like right now. Don’t think Sam or Greg have it in them to build a competing AI model suite, that too inside a bureaucracy like Microsoft. I think this is exactly what OpenAI wanted - get the business types out and focus on building brilliant models which asymptotically approach AGI whose safety and ethicality they can guarantee.
- bilsbie 3y agoThis really makes you appreciate open source locally hosted models. Chatgpt is a big part of my workflow. (And maybe my best friend?). What happens now?
- sharas- 3y agoTurns out not everybody was sold-out at OpenAI. Good riddance, that Altman weasel was just that, a sellout.
- simonebrunozzi 3y agoI'm surprised that non-compete for Sam and Greg are never mentioned. True, Microsoft's huge position in OpenAI means that there wouldn't be any retaliation, but I am wondering if this is still a friction point or not.
- paxys 3y agoCalled it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38310339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38310339
- gdestus 3y agoI'm worried....I really don't like the idea of some council artificially "slowing down" progress while we on the outside wait for them to bestow fire on us like Prometheus. If AGI can fulfill even a fraction of the economic promise it has, then they will inevitably just use behind the scenes. It was better when it was being developed out front
- iteratethis 3y agoSo 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 kill us, I'm saying it makes us cognitively obsolete and all meaning is lost. AI Safety isn't a micro bias in the training set. It's existential at planetary scale. Yet we let a bunch of cowboys just go "let's see what happens" with zero meaningful regulation in sight. And we applaud them. I know AGI isn't here yet. I know Microsoft would not allow for zero safety. I'm just saying that on the road to AGI, about two dozen people are deciding on our collective faith. With as ultimate chief the guy behind shit coin "world coin".
- bbu 3y agoif AGI is as close as autonomous cars, I think we are going to be ok.
- peteradio 3y agoLawsuit incoming? What is the expectation that these guys aren't attempting IP transfer. My bet is that OpenAI heard of this MSFT poach, Sam et al were not forthright and meanwhile were becoming very interested in the engineering details.
- alemanek 3y agoIts far more likely that Microsoft is just trying to salvage their investment in the most direct way possible. It doesn’t make sense for them to take this risk absent recent events. They tried pressuring the board according to the rumors over the weekend. That didn’t work; now they are providing a home for the people that were going to leave OpenAI over this. If they are smart they will honor the 10B deal as well and continue funding OpenAI. This way they will get the benefit of both teams and maybe even a bit more now that they will be competing.
- peteradio 3y agoMSFT triggered the situation at hand. Sure it may be to salvage their 10B investment but that doesn't preclude funny business.
- notnmeyer 3y agowhat a huge win for microsoft.
- robomartin 3y agoI hope MS forks OpenAI and grabs the entire team. We have well over ten paid OpenAI accounts, I would gladly cancel those and send our money to MS.
- muzani 3y agoFeels like Meta hiring Carmack. He could build a really good thing there, but probably not the level of legendary that he got to with OpenAI.
- romanhn 3y agoI'm calling it now, Sam Altman just engineered a path towards becoming Microsoft's CEO after Nadella.
- daedlanth 3y ago[dead]
- lfmunoz4 3y agoI guess Microsoft has that much money where they sink 10 billion into OpenAI and then hire all the staff so that it will so that they will need another 10 billion to destroy OpenAI
- specificcndtion 3y agoNone of these companies appease China; they refuse to provide service under those conditions and/or they are IP range blocked. Microsoft does service China with Bing, for example. You should not sell OpenAI's to China or to Microsoft. Especially after a DDOS by Sue Don and a change in billing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_mainland_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
- dang 3y agoAll: 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=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344196&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344196&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344196&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344196&p=4 etc...
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]
- superduty 3y agoThis is Microsoft desperately trying to preserve the value of their misguided investment in OAI.
- siliconc0w 3y agoWhile 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)
- jhatax 3y agoThis could be Satya engaging in succession planning: Sam Altman in line to become the next CEO of Microsoft.
- lamroger 3y agoi love how they used the word advanced. not another regular AI team.
- taf2 3y ago84% of the OpenAI team resigning? Is this true? https://x.com/lilianweng/status/1726634736943280270?s=46 https://x.com/lilianweng/status/1726634736943280270?s=46
- msie 3y agoWhat???? I thought sama was going to be installed as CEO of OAI?
- pm2222 3y agoGPT please summarize this thread.
- arendtio 3y agoEven though I find the step somewhat logical, it is unexpected as I dismissed it a few days ago. Logical, because as far as I understand the conflict @openai, it is/was about conquering the market with cool products vs. advancing research for the greater good. So one option would have been to split the company into a product organization and a research organization. The only problem is that Microsoft is the product organization in this construct already (they bring the services to the masses via Bing). Unexpected, because I didn't expect someone like Sam Altman to join the corporate world. Looking forward I am very excited to see where this leads...