OpenAI
Fundraising:
-No longer doing the ICO / “instrument to purchase compute in advance” type structure. Altman is thinking through an instrument where the 4-5 large corporates who are interested can invest with a return capped at 50x if OpenAI does get to some semblance of money-making AGI. They apparently seem willing just for access reasons. He wants to discuss with you in more detail.
Formal Board Resignation:
-You’re still technically on the board so need to send a quick one liner to Sam Altman saying something like “With this email I hereby resign as a director of OpenAI, effective Feb 20th 2018”.
Future Board:
-Altman said he is cool with me joining then having to step off if I become conflicted, but is concerned that others would consider it a burned bridge if I had to step off. I think best bet is not to join for now and be an ambiguous advisor but let me know if you feel differently. They have Adam D’Angelo as the potential fifth to take your place, which seems great?
TeslaAI
Andrej has three candidates in pipeline, may have 1-2 come in to meet you on Tuesday. He will send you a briefing note about them. Also, he’s working on starter language for a potential release that will be ready to discuss Tuesday. It will follow the “full-stack AI lab” angle we talked about but, if that doesn’t feel right, please course correct… is tricky messaging.
Cerebras
Chip should be available in August for them to test, and they plan to let others have remote access in September. The Cerebras guy also mentioned that a lot of their recent customer interest has been from companies upset about the Nvidia change in terms of service (the one that forces companies away from consumer grade GPUs to enterprise Pascals / Voltas). Scott Gray and Ilya continue to spend a bunch of time with them