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Why I Joined OpenAI

38 points

by SerCe

1 hour ago

| past

| 10 comments

| brendangregg.com

| HN

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brendangregg

35 minutes ago

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To answer a few people at once: I did mention compensation as a factor in the post, but I didn't elaborate details, so easy to miss. Comp is important of course, but so are the other factors. It feels like I can't go for a day without reading about the cost of AI datacenters in the news, and I can do something about it.

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bahmboo

7 minutes ago

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Thanks for taking the risk in this environment and posting about your experience from a personal standpoint. [environment: people will come at you from all angles with very passionate opinions]

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politelemon

12 minutes ago

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It would be good if the performance improvements made can be applicable across the industry so everyone benefits. But it doesn't sound unbelievable that OpenAi may want to keep some of it secret to keep an advantage over others?

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kgraves

3 minutes ago

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> I stood on the street after my haircut and let sink in how big this was, how this technology has become an essential aide for so many, how I could lead performance efforts and help save the planet.

Brendan.

First of all congratulations on your new job. However,

It is easier to just say to everyone it is about the money, compensation and the stock options.

You're not joining a charity, or to save the planet, this company is about to unload on the public markets at an unfathomable $1TN valuation.

Don't insult your readers.

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DeepYogurt

13 minutes ago

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You gonna open source it?

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indigodaddy

7 minutes ago

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This article is so full of itself I can hardly stand to read it. I had to just sort of skim it instead. Sorry! This style just doesn't do it for me.

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Banditoz

1 hour ago

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> ...it's not just about saving costs – it's about saving the planet

There's something that doesn't sit right with me about this statement, and I'm not sure what it is. Are you sure you didn't just join for the money? (edit: cool problems, too)

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Thaxll

20 minutes ago

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The AI train is going with or without you, if you can be part of it and improve the situaton, why not.

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its-kostya

32 minutes ago

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Right? Like what an incredibly naive thing to think, that BG is going to contain power consumption lmao. OpenAI is always going to run their hardware hot. If BG frees up compute, a new workload will just fill it.

Sure you might argue "well if they can do more with less they won't need as many data centers." But who is going to believe that a company that can squeeze more money from their investment won't grow?

Tangentially, I am looking forward to learn the new innovations that come from this problem space. [Self-rightous] BG certainly is exceptional at presenting hard topics in an approachable and digestible manner. And now it seems he has an unlimited fund to get creative.

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tayo42

13 minutes ago

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They're going to grow either way. Those new workloads are going to be run

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its-kostya

11 minutes ago

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Ya, we know. Just humbling the author ;)

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wheelerwj

1 hour ago

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I stopped reading just after that. “I joined PhilipsMorris to make smoking cigarette smoking safer…”

The problems are interesting and the pay is exceptional. Just fucking own it.

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selectodude

2 minutes ago

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He interviewed everywhere and took the biggest offer. Good! Don’t piss on my face and tell me it’s raining.

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mewpmewp2

1 hour ago

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[flagged]

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dang

21 minutes ago

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"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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matt_daemon

15 minutes ago

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> Mia the hairstylist got to work, and casually asked what I do for a living. "I'm an Intel fellow, I work on datacenter performance." Silence.

How could she not know?

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Insanity

8 minutes ago

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For people who’s main computing devices are phones, this isn’t hard to believe at all.

Interacting outside of the tech bubble is eye opening. Conversely, the hair stylist might have mentioned the brand of a super popular scissor supplier/other equipment you’d have never heard of.

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CreepGin

55 seconds ago

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You missed the sarcasm.

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light_triad

4 minutes ago

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Mia was right. Listen to Mia

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SanjayMehta

10 minutes ago

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> save the planet > I'd been missing that human connection

At OpenAI.

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amluto

1 hour ago

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> She was worried about a friend who was travelling in a far-away city, with little timezone overlap when they could chat, but she could talk to ChatGPT anytime about what the city was like and what tourist activities her friend might be doing, which helped her feel connected. She liked the memory feature too, saying it was like talking to a person who was living there.

This seems rather sad. Is this really what AI is for?

And we do not need gigawatts and gigawatts for this use case anyway. A small local model or batched inference of a small model should do just fine.

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UltraSane

18 minutes ago

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I use it as something to talk to about incredibly nerdy and/or obscure things no one else would be willing to talk about.

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peyton

18 minutes ago

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It’s super dope, and you can have it talk to people for you in the local language when you go there. I’ve busted it out to explain what I’m thinking for me. Watching travel shows on TV or reading travel magazines is sadder.

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thinkingkong

1 hour ago

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Brendan can do whatever he wants. Hes that good. If anybody seriously needed to interview him 20+ times to figure it out, then the burden is now on them to not fuck it up.

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ojbyrne

1 hour ago

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The article says "I ended up having 26 interviews and meetings (of course I kept a log) with various AI tech giants."

I don't think that indicates that any one company interviewed him 20+ times.

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sgarland

5 minutes ago

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Seriously. I would expect him to be more of an offer-only scenario.

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1 hour ago

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He's summing interviews across all AI giants. But the ones about to IPO can interview someone almost infinitely many times, because everyone wants on the bandwagon.

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I_am_tiberius

1 hour ago

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If it's in your power, make sure user prompts and llm responses are never read, never analyzed and never used for training - not anonymized, not derived, not at all.

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surajrmal

39 minutes ago

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No single person other than Sam Altman can stop them from using anonymized interactions for training and metrics. At least in the consumer tiers.

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satvikpendem

14 minutes ago

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It's a little too late for that, all the models train on prompts and responses.

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rvz

1 hour ago

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TLDR: Money, Fame and A Glorious IPO (AGI)

Just say you joined for the money and that Intel's stock didn't do a 10,000x run like Nvidia did and he completely missed it.

So the best chance at something like that again is OpenAI when they achieve a 1TN valuation with AGI.

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thefounder

23 seconds ago

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I think OpenAI will IPO at 1T. I don’t want to say bubble but it could be one of these stocks super hyped that never goes anywhere after the IPO(I.e airbnb during Covid)

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patrickaljord

1 hour ago

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Unless OpenAI goes with a very liberal definition of AGI, he's going to wait decades for AGI.

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Insanity

6 minutes ago

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They’re already trying to redefine the AGI playing field by doing so.