zlacker

"Also, how come a 90 billion dollars company hailed as the future of computing and a major transformative force for society would now be valued 0 dollars only because its non-technical founder is now out?"

Please think about this. Sam Altman is the face of OpenAi and was doing a very good job leading it. If the relationships are what kept OpenAI from always being on top and they removed that from the company, corporations may be more hesitant to do business with them in the future.

>>bob_th+(OP)
The company still has assets and a balance sheet. They could fire everyone and simply rent out their process to big orgs and still make a pretty penny.

>>bob_th+(OP)
> Sam Altman is the face of OpenAi and was doing a very good job leading it.

Its not like every successful org needs a face. Back then Google was a wildly successful as an org, but unlike Steve Jobs then, people barely knew Eric Schmitt. Even with Microsoft as it stands today, Satya is mostly a backseat driver.

Every org has its own style and character. If the board doesn't like what they are building, they can try change it. Risky move nevertheless, but its their call to make.

>>financ+l
Loss of know-how is a risk. A vendor needs to be able to prove that it has sufficient headcount and skills to run and improve a system.

While OpenAI would have the IP, they would also need to retain the right people who understand the system.

>>bob_th+(OP)
Well, once again, then it's Satya's mistake to have allowed the representative of an independant third party entity become the public face of a company he invested in.

OpenAI might have wasted the 10B of Microsoft. But whose fault is it in the first place? It's Microsoft's fault to have invested it in the first place.

>>soufro+z5
It depends on what assurances they were given and by whom. Perhaps it was Sam Altman himself that made verbal promises that weren’t his to give, and he may end up in trouble over them.

We don’t know what was said, and what was signed. To put the blame with microsoft is premature.

>>soufro+z5
Regardless of whether or not it was a "mistake" (I don't think it was... OpenAI is so far ahead of the competition that it's not even funny), the fact remains that a) Microsoft has dumped in tons of money that they want to get back and b) Microsoft has a tremendous amount of clout, in that they're providing the compute power that runs the whole shebang.

While I'm not privy to the contracts that were signed, what happens if Nadella sends a note to the OpenAI board that reads, roughly, "Bring back Altman or I'm gonna turn the lights off"?

Nadella is probably fairly pissed off to begin with. I can't imagine he appreciates being blindsided like this.

>>Turing+xa
That would effectively exit Microsoft from the LLM race and be an absolutely massive hit to Microsoft shareholders. Unlike the OpenAI non-profit board, the CEO of MS actually is beholden to his shareholders to make a profit.

In other words, MS has the losing hand here and CEO of MS is bluffing.

>>bob_th+(OP)
And I thought AI is about the brain and not the face.

>>manyos+Ic
> That would effectively exit Microsoft from the LLM race

I don't see why. As I understand it, a significant percentage of Microsoft's investment went into the hardware they're providing. It's not like that hardware and associated infrastructure are going to disappear if they kick OpenAI off it. They can rent it to someone else. Heck, given the tight GPU supply situation, they might even be able to sell it at a profit.

>>Turing+2e
But I think the 'someone else' would be in competition with MS, as opposed to OpenAI who was pretty much domesticated in terms of where the profit would go.

>>Turing+xa
They would have done that already if that is possible in the terms. Which clearly means they don’t have such leverage.