4 ms·

As the article said, Reid Hoffman is on Microsoft’s board and is an investor both in OpenAI and Anthropic.

AJRF 4mo ago
I read the article - and many articles touting what Reid said - but my question remains - why in the name of god is he relevant. He is connected and gives money to people - why should that mean anyone should listen to him about any of this. He's not actually a do-er is he? Is there something I am missing? The amount of coverage he gets seems massively disproportionate to his skill, talent and insight.
- otterley 4mo ago
  I truthfully don’t know the answer, but if I had to guess, his connections and positions provide him with an unusual amount of knowledge and perspective. Another might be that his opinions often are correct in hindsight.
- mschild 4mo ago
  > He is connected and gives money to people Thats why. Not that we should listen to him (no clue who exactly he is) but thats why he gets attention.
- N_Lens 4mo ago
  Sir this is Capitalism.
- dwa3592 4mo ago
  >>He is connected and gives money to people this is also known as influence so..
- DanielHB 4mo ago
  Sam Altman is not an AI researcher, I don't think he ever worked directly with tech as an engineer either. Pure MBA-with-engineering-degree type.
- maxcb 4mo ago
  [dead]
- mrhottakes 4mo ago
  All that Zuck, Altman, Musk, etc do is give money to people
endemic 4mo ago
So he has money.
jerf 4mo ago
So, a guy with probably one of the largest incentives in the world to trash xAI is trashing xAI? The information content of this is rather minimal. Even if everything he says is literally true it's hard to tell through the massive, massive vested interest he has. And it doesn't help that... 'Hoffman, who is an investor in both Anthropic and OpenAI, pushed back firmly on the narrative that the two companies are in a zero-sum race. “We tend to want to tell these stories as cage matches,” he said, as in two companies enter and only one leaves, but “in fact,” he claimed, “there’s a lot of room for both of them to win incredibly.' that's clearly a very self-interested gloss on the flip side of the situation. Yes, that's in the possibility space. No, I would not consider "both companies do fantastically for many many years" as a terribly large part of the possibility space. Look to all of the many past instances of industries starting up. It is a very common case that if you take the two early leaders you aren't looking at who is going to be the two biggest companies in 10 or 20 years. It is in fact a common case that neither of those companies are the leaders in 10 or 20 years. The sheer staggering size of the AI training moat at the current time may lock in the possibility that no other business could possibly overtake them... but what if somebody solves that massive training gap? It probably isn't mathematically fundamental; I can't help but observe that humans do not get to their level of capability by pouring the entire Internet through their head several times. He probably does know a lot of things most of us don't know, but I doubt he's sharing very many of them in this article. This is just trash talk.
- grumple 4mo ago
  Is xAI being used by any professionals? I see them acting as a data center rental service for the others, but that doesn’t justify their valuation imo. They seem to be behind on everything and don’t seem to have any relevance. The cursor purchase may change that but for how long?
  - jerf 4mo ago
    I see no reason any portion of SpaceX justifies its current valuations. I also think taking what is probably ultimately a successful and profitable company in SpaceX, even if it is maybe not as successful and profitable as Elon might say, and tying it at the hip to the AI bubble, while being clearly on the losing end of that AI bubble so far, could well kill SpaceX in the process. I hope not, because no matter how HN may feel about Elon, SpaceX has some great tech and is definitely moving space tech forward. Rather harder to say that about xAI. But then I'd say I don't understand the valuations of a lot of companies right now. It seems to me the stock market has written into its structure the idea that United States companies will be claiming something like 500-1000% of all TAMs in the entire world in the next 10-20 years, which seems unlikely to be the case. SpaceX's claimed TAM of "pretty much the entire United States GDP, you know, why not" is merely the most blatant instance of this. I'm not defending SpaceX or xAI. Billionaires don't need my help. But this article is still pretty pointless. Hoffman isn't a dispassionate observer, he's one of the players. Of course he's telling everyone he's going to win and the other guy is going to lose. Even when a coach is completely objectively correct when he says in his pre-game press conference that he has every confidence that his team will win in the end, it's still an information-free statement.
raincole 4mo ago
It means his opinions about xAI are worth less than a random HNer's, since he has a very strong incentive to talk bad about it.
nottorp 4mo ago
That Microsoft who added LARGE BLUE copilot buttons on the dialogs you get in Visual Studio when it stops on a breakpoint or exception?

AJRF 4mo ago

I read the article - and many articles touting what Reid said - but my question remains - why in the name of god is he relevant. He is connected and gives money to people - why should that mean anyone should listen to him about any of this. He's not actually a do-er is he? Is there something I am missing? The amount of coverage he gets seems massively disproportionate to his skill, talent and insight.

otterley 4mo ago
I truthfully don’t know the answer, but if I had to guess, his connections and positions provide him with an unusual amount of knowledge and perspective. Another might be that his opinions often are correct in hindsight.
mschild 4mo ago
> He is connected and gives money to people Thats why. Not that we should listen to him (no clue who exactly he is) but thats why he gets attention.
N_Lens 4mo ago
Sir this is Capitalism.
dwa3592 4mo ago
>>He is connected and gives money to people this is also known as influence so..
DanielHB 4mo ago
Sam Altman is not an AI researcher, I don't think he ever worked directly with tech as an engineer either. Pure MBA-with-engineering-degree type.
maxcb 4mo ago
[dead]
mrhottakes 4mo ago
All that Zuck, Altman, Musk, etc do is give money to people

endemic 4mo ago

So he has money.

jerf 4mo ago

So, a guy with probably one of the largest incentives in the world to trash xAI is trashing xAI? The information content of this is rather minimal. Even if everything he says is literally true it's hard to tell through the massive, massive vested interest he has. And it doesn't help that... 'Hoffman, who is an investor in both Anthropic and OpenAI, pushed back firmly on the narrative that the two companies are in a zero-sum race. “We tend to want to tell these stories as cage matches,” he said, as in two companies enter and only one leaves, but “in fact,” he claimed, “there’s a lot of room for both of them to win incredibly.' that's clearly a very self-interested gloss on the flip side of the situation. Yes, that's in the possibility space. No, I would not consider "both companies do fantastically for many many years" as a terribly large part of the possibility space. Look to all of the many past instances of industries starting up. It is a very common case that if you take the two early leaders you aren't looking at who is going to be the two biggest companies in 10 or 20 years. It is in fact a common case that neither of those companies are the leaders in 10 or 20 years. The sheer staggering size of the AI training moat at the current time may lock in the possibility that no other business could possibly overtake them... but what if somebody solves that massive training gap? It probably isn't mathematically fundamental; I can't help but observe that humans do not get to their level of capability by pouring the entire Internet through their head several times. He probably does know a lot of things most of us don't know, but I doubt he's sharing very many of them in this article. This is just trash talk.

grumple 4mo ago
Is xAI being used by any professionals? I see them acting as a data center rental service for the others, but that doesn’t justify their valuation imo. They seem to be behind on everything and don’t seem to have any relevance. The cursor purchase may change that but for how long?
- jerf 4mo ago
  I see no reason any portion of SpaceX justifies its current valuations. I also think taking what is probably ultimately a successful and profitable company in SpaceX, even if it is maybe not as successful and profitable as Elon might say, and tying it at the hip to the AI bubble, while being clearly on the losing end of that AI bubble so far, could well kill SpaceX in the process. I hope not, because no matter how HN may feel about Elon, SpaceX has some great tech and is definitely moving space tech forward. Rather harder to say that about xAI. But then I'd say I don't understand the valuations of a lot of companies right now. It seems to me the stock market has written into its structure the idea that United States companies will be claiming something like 500-1000% of all TAMs in the entire world in the next 10-20 years, which seems unlikely to be the case. SpaceX's claimed TAM of "pretty much the entire United States GDP, you know, why not" is merely the most blatant instance of this. I'm not defending SpaceX or xAI. Billionaires don't need my help. But this article is still pretty pointless. Hoffman isn't a dispassionate observer, he's one of the players. Of course he's telling everyone he's going to win and the other guy is going to lose. Even when a coach is completely objectively correct when he says in his pre-game press conference that he has every confidence that his team will win in the end, it's still an information-free statement.

raincole 4mo ago

It means his opinions about xAI are worth less than a random HNer's, since he has a very strong incentive to talk bad about it.

nottorp 4mo ago

That Microsoft who added LARGE BLUE copilot buttons on the dialogs you get in Visual Studio when it stops on a breakpoint or exception?