Comment by JumpCrisscross
8 hours ago
That he’s a liability to OpenAI, which is slowly coming around to the realization that it would be worth more without him.
To be clear, I don’t think OpenAI could have raised what it raised as quickly as it did without him. But with the benefit of hindsight, Microsoft should have let the safety board fire him.
> That he’s a liability to OpenAI, which is slowly coming around to the realization that it would be worth more without him.
I'm curious what you're basing this on. Are you aware of any grumblings on the inside? From the outside it appears no different than before largely because it seems everybody knew he was a slippery dude anyways, but they tolerated it because he was slippery in ways that were profitable.
I also think he was prescient in his unquenching thirst for compute. Despite Anthropic possibly having a better product I think OpenAI will prevail simply because he's gone to extreme (sometimes diabolical, cf that DRAM deal) extents in ensuring they have enough compute.
Like, it's pretty likely that Claude's recent problems are due to insufficient compute. With 9's (and resultant loss in goodwill) comparable to GitHub, I actually have doubts they will be able to hit their projected ARR. OpenAI could win simply by dint of having capacity, which can be attributed to Altman's shenanigans.
> Despite Anthropic possibly having a better product I think OpenAI will prevail simply because he's gone to extreme (sometimes diabolical, cf that DRAM deal) extents in ensuring they have enough compute
Anthropic is currently raising tens of billions of dollars at a favourable valuation to fund infrastructure needs. From a shareholder perspective, that beats raising the capital ahead of demand.
> OpenAI could win simply by dint of having capacity, which can be attributed to Altman's shenanigans
If OpenAI is able to deny compute to Anthropic, yes. I'm not seeing any sign that OpenAI will be able to lock Anthropic out of the tech giants' clouds.
True, but all the hyperscalers and neoclouds have been severely capacity crunched for multiple quarters and have a backlog of a trillion+ dollars. So even if Anthropic wants capacity it's going to be a) hard to come by (like Dario said on Dwarkesh, 2 - 3 year lead times) and b) even more expensive because of the scarcity and intense competition. OpenAI won't need to lock Anthropic out if they've already locked in the future capacity (presumably at much more favorable rates) in advance.
(That said, I'm not sure what the Stargate deal falling through means.)
Slowly? They realised that and ousted him in 2023. I'm not sure if you didn't know or just forgot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_of_Sam_Altman_from_Ope...
> Slowly? They realised that and ousted him
Not because he threatened OpenAI’s valuation. The idea that OpenAI might be worth more without Altman is still heretical talk.
> not sure if you didn't know
My three-sentence comment directly references it in the third.
They is doing a lot of work in your sentence. Almost the entire employee population signed a public letter of support with names attached in the middle of the drama.
More accurate to say the board I think.
The creepy one where they all simultaneously posted the same mantra to Twitter like a cult gathering? Yeah that definitely reassured me of Altman's leadership and good intentions.
Dont forget the US media incessant coverage of a private company’s business matter of firing someone as if it was an unheard of calamity.
Pretty incredible that employees will go to bat for a lying scum bag when they would never do that for each other.
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