Comment by atlasunshrugged
3 years ago
Do the PPU's create an alignment issue? I mean, theoretically these folks are supposed to be working towards AGI, but doing it safely... but I can imagine that an extra 500K+ is a pretty big incentive to hurry up and create something that can help you make a profit so that they can get their payout. Of course, with the outside investment from Microsoft, maybe this is somewhat moot anyways as MSFT definitely has a very strong incentive to get OpenAI to build fast.
Engineers don't control the strategy. If Altman decides to reinvest all free cash flow into growth and safety instead of profits (which is not unusual in tech) the employees can't/won't stop him.
Maybe not, but if as others have mentioned in the thread that there is very high talent density and these are top folks, then surely engineers have some say in the strategy -- if only through mass defection and quitting, right?
The other part that everyone is getting wrong is that OpenAI's future profits are already priced in to the PPUs so employees can sell them today to unlock that value. They don't have to wait.