zlacker

Eric Schmidt is also the person that said Google's old "do no evil" slogan was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard. Given that there's apparent tension at OpenAI over non profit vs for profit goals I'd not draw any particular conclusions from Schmidt's statement.

>>jasonw+(OP)
And of course he gives credit to the CEO and not the 400 people under him who actually built the thing, nor the other 10 people who actually founded the company. Nor those who gave initial funding. From wikipedia:

> OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, Jessica Livingston, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba, with Sam Altman and Elon Musk serving as the initial board members.

>>throwo+G
Lots of companies are funded every year. Those without solid leadership and clear mission are bound to fail.

Founding a company is also fairly easy (if you're in the US). In most US states, you just need to complete some paperwork, pay administrative fees, and you're good to go.

Founding something isn't tough. Leading through adversity and setbacks is.

Finally, if we're praising workers, what about those who came and went between 2015 and today? That probably pushes the number higher than 400 FTEs.

>>throwo+G
I'm of the firm opinion that the heavy lifting at open ai is doing by the scientists but of courses ceos like to applaud themselves on the back for doing the "tough" job.

>>ottero+36
*Founding a company is also fairly easy (if you're in the US). In most US states, you just need to complete some paperwork, pay administrative fees, and you're good to go.*

This is true in the sense that being a CEO is also easy, you just fill out some paperwork that says you are CEO.

Are you saying the founders of OpenAI just filled out some paperwork and did nothing more?

>>jasonw+(OP)
He was also against the creation of Chrome to the point where it had to be done in secret, according to him.

From a total outsider/uninformed pov, he really seems like a fail upward story.

>>ottero+36
What adversity and setbacks did Sam personally overcome?

>>ottero+36
> Lots of companies are funded every year. Those without solid leadership and clear mission are bound to fail.

IME companies with solid workers (in engineering and elsewhere) but weak leadership and mission have a much better chance than the converse. Even the best companies rarely end up following the mission or the leader.

>>lmm+oH
No they don't. Leadership can make or break a company, that is why they are paid so much.

>>consum+dE
lol! Um, do you remember who the main champion of Chrome was?

>>leoh+Co1
No

>>consum+dE
But that was fair. Page wanted to do a browser super early, like years before the IPO, and Schmidt was brought in specifically to try and bring some focus to the company and balance out the founder's ambition with more "adult" execution. Yes eventually Chrome became a successful project and Schmidt wisely didn't pick a fight over it, but he wasn't wrong to insist the company try to avoid getting distracted with that so early in its life.

>>Orange+Ms1
Big daddy sundar

>>nvm0n2+Vs2
Again, I am an outsider and uniformed. But the established money printer was already going brrrrr...

I would imagine that it's arguable that a pheasant could have ridden that rocket to the moon.

My bias and stupidity may be showing here, but I just don't think that he is very smart. Maybe that was the point of his position: to keep the company from going beyond the imagination of Wall Street normies.

>>consum+5E3
I was an insider at that time and I didn't disagree with that decision, especially as Google were funnelling money to Firefox and at that time Firefox was executing well and had a lot of support across the community. Part of why the money printer was going brrr was a relentless effort on optimizing it and growing it, which did benefit from the executives actually focussing on it. The idea it all just happened automatically just isn't so.

>>nvm0n2+NE3
Ok, thanks for the insight!

>>satvik+oo1
Leadership without talented employees can break a company. That's why they are paid so...