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The Fairchildren of AI - by Karina Nguyen

semaphore.substack.com · 795 words · saved by 1 readers

OpenAI is the Fairchild of AI, and the people who left are its Fairchildren.

Silicon Valley wasn’t built by companies. It was built by people who left them, and it all began with the Traitorous Eight. In September 1957, eight young scientists signed their names to dollar bills and walked twelve blocks away from William Shockley’s laboratory. Shockley had co-invented the transistor and won the Nobel Prize, but he was also the kind of boss who made brilliant people want to leave. Leaving turned out to be the most important thing they ever did. The 'Traitorous Eight' founders of Fairchild Semiconductor in 1960. Fairchild Semiconductor spun out Intel when Moore and…

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