Going off and starting his own thing would be great, but it would be at least a year to get product out, even if he had all the same players making it. And that's just to catch up to current tech
It's also not clear that this is a realistic scenario - Ilya is the real deal, and there's likely plenty of people that believe in him over Altman.
Of course, the company has also expanded massively under Altman in a more commercial environment, so there are probably quite a few people that believe in Altman over him.
I doubt either side ends up with the entire research organization. I think a very real possibility is both sides end up with less than half of what OpenAI had Friday morning.
Especially considering OpenAI has boosted the value of the masses of data floating around the internet. Getting access to all that juicy data is going to come at a high cost for data hungry LLM manufacturers from here on out.
If I worked there, I would keep my job and see how things shake out. If I don’t like it, then I start looking. What I don’t do is risk my well being to take sides in a war between people way richer than me.
You’re probably right because people usually don’t have an appetite for risk, but OpenAI is still a startup, and one does not join a startup without an appetite for risk. At least before ChatGPT made the company famous, which was recent.
I’d follow Sam and Greg. But N=1 outsider isn’t too persuasive.
Once the avalanche has stopped moving that's a free decision, right now it could be costly.
For specific things like new words and facts this does matter, but I think they're not in real trouble as long as Wikipedia stays up.
I’m just not sure it would be totally starting from scratch since there is more of a playbook and know how.