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While I agree with your logic I also focused on:

> People who put their ideals above pragmatic self-interest self-select out of positions of power and influence. That is likely to be the case here as well.

It’s also possible that this co-founder realizes he has more than enough eggs saved up in the “OpenAI” basket, and that it’s rational to de-risk by getting a lot of eggs in another basket to better guarantee his ability to provide a huge amount of wealth to his family.

Even if OpenAI is clearly in the lead to him, he’s still looking at a lot of risk with most of his wealth being tied up in non-public shares of a single company.




While true, him leaving OpenAI to (one of) their biggest competitors does seriously risk his eggs in the OpenAI basket.


There's usually enough room for 2-3 winners. iOS and Android. Intel and AMD. Firefox and Chrome.

Also, OpenAI has some of the most expensive people in the world, which is why they're burning so much money. Presumably they're so expensive because they're some of the smartest people in the world. Some are likely smarter than Schulman.


> Presumably they're so expensive because they're some of the smartest people in the world.

I don't want to dissuade you from this belief, but maybe you should pay less attention to the boastful marketing of these AI companies. :-)

Seriously: from what I know about the life of insanely smart people, I'd guess that OpenAI (and most other companies that in their marketing claim to hire insanely smart people) doesn't have any idea how to actually make use of such people. Such companies rather hire for other specific personality traits.


it only risks his eggs if the anthropic basket does well, if anthropic doesn't go well then he still has his OpenAI eggs




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