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by statictype 949 days ago
How much of OpenAI’s success can you attribute to sama’s leadership and how much to the technical achievements of those who work under him.

My understanding is that OpenAI’s biggest advantage is that they recruited and attracted the best in the field, presumably under the charter of providing AI for everyone.

Not sure that sama and gdb starting their own company in the same space will produce similar results.
5 comments
startupsfail 949 days ago
Big part of it is a typical YC execution of a product/pump/hype/VC/scale cycle and ignoring every ethical rule.

If you ever stood in the hall of YC and listened to Zuck pumping the founders, you’ll understand.

I’d argue this is a useful thing to lift up a nonprofit on a path to AGI, but hardly a good way to govern a company that builds AGI/ASI technology in the long term.

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brandall10 949 days ago
But sama and gdb were largely instrumental in that recruitment.

The whole open vs closed ai thing... the fact is Pandora's box is open now, it's shown to have an outsized impact on society and 2 of the 3 founders responsible for that may be starting a new company that won't be shackled by the same type of corporate governance.

SV will happily throw as much $$ as possible in their direction. The exodus from OpenAi has already begun, and other researchers who are of the mindset that this needs to be commercialized as fast as possible while having an eye on safety will happily come on board, esp. given how much they stand to gain financially.

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fallingknife 949 days ago
Who hired those people? The answer to that is either the founders or some chain of people hired by the founders. And hiring is hard. If you're good at hiring the right people and absolutely nothing else on earth, you will be better than 90% of CEOs.
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mv4 949 days ago
No, they recruited top talent by provided top pay.

From 2016: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-int...

To 2023: https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-recruiters-luring-goo...

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deeviant 949 days ago
Because Meta or Google or Apple or Facebook don't recruit the best in the field?

All who are a year plus behind OpenAI.

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