Thanks for posting this - it will definitely generate discussion. For the sake of posterity, the full tweet is this: That is pretty far from "AI companies try to pay staff in AI tokens, not...
Thanks for posting this - it will definitely generate discussion.
For the sake of posterity, the full tweet is this:
I am increasingly asked during candidate interviews how much dedicated inference compute they will have to build with Codex.
Pairing this with usage per user growing significantly faster than the number of users, it's pretty clear that compute will be something that is scarce.
That is pretty far from "AI companies try to pay staff in AI tokens, not money." In fairness to the author here, they are reacting to a stupid headline by business insider.
The author also criticizes some comments Sam Altman made:
"I mean a crazy idea, but in the spirit of crazy ideas is, if the world, there’s like eight roughly eight billion people in the world. If the world can generate eight quintillion tokens per year, if that’s the world, actually let’s say the world can generate 20 quintillion tokens per year. Tokens are like each word generated by an AI. Okay, just making up a huge number here. We’ll say 12 of those go to the normal capitalistic system, but eight of those eight quintillion tokens are going to get divided up equally among eight billion people. So everybody gets one trillion tokens and that’s your universal basic wealth globally."
Altman really likes the idea of made-up credit at OpenAI being the money now. Because he’s a crypto bro.
I don't think it's wholly reasonable to take a hypothetical scenario posed by Altman, particularly when Altman is saying, literally, "this is a crazy idea but you've asked me for crazy ideas," and go "aha!" in this way.
I post this because people are going to read this headline and think it's true, when as far as I can tell it's not.
First twitter quote, sure. But I think when Altman has brought something up twice in public, it's not accidental, and the "crazy idea" framing is just softening it up so he can float the idea out...
First twitter quote, sure. But I think when Altman has brought something up twice in public, it's not accidental, and the "crazy idea" framing is just softening it up so he can float the idea out there and see how people react to it. It's no indication at all about how serious or unserious he is.
EDIT: I do want to concede that the headline is absolutely terrible. No has actually tried to pay anyone in compute tokens yet.
Yes, AI executives sometimes prefer talking about science fiction to talking about what their company is actually doing. I see this sort of freeform speculation as a distraction and articles like...
It's no indication at all about how serious or unserious he is.
Yes, AI executives sometimes prefer talking about science fiction to talking about what their company is actually doing. I see this sort of freeform speculation as a distraction and articles like this one take it way too seriously, as if it had some straightforward connection with the AI company’s actual plans.
I’m not sure it even works as a “trial balloon.” Like, how do they gauge the public reaction and what do they then do about it? There’s no concrete answer there.
Sometimes powerful people will just bullshit in public.
That may be true, but even if so, I think it’s a maximally negative (and therefore un-usefully negative) view of what Altman is saying. I do not like Altman, but criticism of him should stand on...
That may be true, but even if so, I think it’s a maximally negative (and therefore un-usefully negative) view of what Altman is saying. I do not like Altman, but criticism of him should stand on its own merit.
The background of Altman’s argument is in a hypothetical post-work society in which all work is done by AI agents. In that context, he is saying, one could simply give people partial ownership over tokens (which would be the means of production, since AI would be doing everything) rather than give them money. In a sense it’s more socialist proposal even than UBI is, because you’re directly transferring control of production rather than cash, which is basically the means of buying/renting production.
Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe the hypothetical is so far removed from reality as to not be a useful framing in the first place. But for goodness’ sake,
Altman really likes the idea of made-up credit at OpenAI being the money now. Because he’s a crypto bro.
is such a mean-spirited, intellectually vacuous response.
The context from the Business Insider article is that people are using the amount of Claude or codex tokens they get to use on the job as part of the incentives advertised to join a job. Eg you...
The context from the Business Insider article is that people are using the amount of Claude or codex tokens they get to use on the job as part of the incentives advertised to join a job. Eg you can use Claude as much as you want and don’t have to ration them.
That’s far from being “paid” - it’s just about the quality of tools you get to use on the job.
It's no different from managers negotiating budget for their departments. Software is turning engineers into quasi-managers who manage a fleet of intern-level coding agents. It makes sense that...
It's no different from managers negotiating budget for their departments. Software is turning engineers into quasi-managers who manage a fleet of intern-level coding agents. It makes sense that now people want to be guaranteed resources to do their job.
Thanks for posting this - it will definitely generate discussion.
For the sake of posterity, the full tweet is this:
That is pretty far from "AI companies try to pay staff in AI tokens, not money." In fairness to the author here, they are reacting to a stupid headline by business insider.
The author also criticizes some comments Sam Altman made:
I don't think it's wholly reasonable to take a hypothetical scenario posed by Altman, particularly when Altman is saying, literally, "this is a crazy idea but you've asked me for crazy ideas," and go "aha!" in this way.
I post this because people are going to read this headline and think it's true, when as far as I can tell it's not.
My opinion is that if Deimos took action on every piece of ragebait, there would be almost nothing left on this website : )
I really disagree. I don't think that that is actually how the site runs at all.
First twitter quote, sure. But I think when Altman has brought something up twice in public, it's not accidental, and the "crazy idea" framing is just softening it up so he can float the idea out there and see how people react to it. It's no indication at all about how serious or unserious he is.
EDIT: I do want to concede that the headline is absolutely terrible. No has actually tried to pay anyone in compute tokens yet.
Yes, AI executives sometimes prefer talking about science fiction to talking about what their company is actually doing. I see this sort of freeform speculation as a distraction and articles like this one take it way too seriously, as if it had some straightforward connection with the AI company’s actual plans.
I’m not sure it even works as a “trial balloon.” Like, how do they gauge the public reaction and what do they then do about it? There’s no concrete answer there.
Sometimes powerful people will just bullshit in public.
That may be true, but even if so, I think it’s a maximally negative (and therefore un-usefully negative) view of what Altman is saying. I do not like Altman, but criticism of him should stand on its own merit.
The background of Altman’s argument is in a hypothetical post-work society in which all work is done by AI agents. In that context, he is saying, one could simply give people partial ownership over tokens (which would be the means of production, since AI would be doing everything) rather than give them money. In a sense it’s more socialist proposal even than UBI is, because you’re directly transferring control of production rather than cash, which is basically the means of buying/renting production.
Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe the hypothetical is so far removed from reality as to not be a useful framing in the first place. But for goodness’ sake,
is such a mean-spirited, intellectually vacuous response.
The context from the Business Insider article is that people are using the amount of Claude or codex tokens they get to use on the job as part of the incentives advertised to join a job. Eg you can use Claude as much as you want and don’t have to ration them.
That’s far from being “paid” - it’s just about the quality of tools you get to use on the job.
It's no different from managers negotiating budget for their departments. Software is turning engineers into quasi-managers who manage a fleet of intern-level coding agents. It makes sense that now people want to be guaranteed resources to do their job.
Credit to the company store. We have seen this movie before.
Can you even resell or trade them?