* Emmett Shear should have put in a strong golden parachute in his contract, easy money if so
* Yesterday we had Satya the genius forcing the board to quit. This morning it was Satya the genius who acquired OpenAI for $0. Im sure there will be more if sama goes back. So if sama goes back - lets hear it, why is Satya a genius?
You described it yourself. If they'd signed a bad deal with openai without IP access or hadn't acted fast and lost all the talent to Google or something they'd have been screwed. Instead they managed the chaos and made sure that they win no matter what. The genius isn't the person who perfectly predicts all the contrived plot points ahead of time, it's the person who doesn't care since they set things up to win no matter what
Even if Sam @ MSFT was a massive bluff, Satya is in a win-win-win scenario. OpenAI can't exactly continue doing anything without Azure Compute.
OpenAI implodes? Bought the talent for virtually nothing.
OpenAI 2.0 succeeds? Cool, still invested.
I think in reality, Sam @ MSFT is not an instant success. Even with the knowledge and know-how, this isn't just spinning up a new GPT-4-like model. At best, they're ~12 months behind Anthropic (but probably still 2 years ahead of Google).
I do think the imperative to maintain their lead over the competition in product quality will be stronger than ever after this–the whole thing has been messy and dramatic in a way that no business really wants their major vendors to be.
So if sama goes back - lets hear it, why is Satya a genius?
This isn't that hard to understand. Everyone was blindsided by the sacking of Altman, Satya reacted quickly and is juggling a very confusing, dynamic situation and seems to have got himself into a good enough position that all possible endings now look positive for Microsoft.
I believe a precondition for Sam and Greg returning to OpenAI is that the board gets restructured (decelerationists culled). That is probably good for MSFT.
sama would be going back to a sama aligned board, which would make openai even more aligned with satya, esp since satya was willing to go big to have sama's back.
and i'd bet closer openai & microsoft ties/investments would come with that.
because NOT letting sama go back would undo the all the good will (and resulting access) that they've built. As satya said, he's there to support, in whatever way yields the best path forward. what's best for business is to actually mean that.
> So if sama goes back - lets hear it, why is Satya a genius?
OAI is a non profit. There’s always been a tension there with Microsoft’s goals. If he goes back, they’re definitely going to be much more ok with profit.
* Emmett Shear should have put in a strong golden parachute in his contract, easy money if so
* Yesterday we had Satya the genius forcing the board to quit. This morning it was Satya the genius who acquired OpenAI for $0. Im sure there will be more if sama goes back. So if sama goes back - lets hear it, why is Satya a genius?