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"King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

washingtonpost.com

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Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#31

Post by bigbillheck »

ethbr1 wrote: post #7
heeeheeehee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Sam Altman is a pretty polarizing figure, seemingly by virtue of both who he is and what he's touched. This article has a lot of pros and cons to the man, all of which seem to track with what other sources have reported about him. E.g. the "if he cares about you you, he really loves you; if he doesn't care about you, you don't exist" brutalist attention filter that a commenter here reported seeing (in one of the ad n…

> both who he is and what he's touched.

Not to mention "who he's touched".

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#32

Post by nerdponx »

dbspin wrote: post #26
pixelatedindex wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Altman's sister's 'memories' of abuse were developed in adulthood [1]. Recovered memories are deeply suspect, and a number of serious miscarriages of justice have happened because of them. Most infamously the 'satanic panic' trials of the eighties and early nineties. Elizabeth Loftus has done lots of good work on the dubious nature of eyewitness testimony, and recovered memories in particular [3]. Essentially, they'r…

> developed in adulthood

Where does it say that in the article you posted?

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#33

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

echelon wrote: post #15
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #4

This kind of gives away the reason for his firing. He was pursuing his vision of AI incluing a chipset specific to LLM processing that would break nvidias hold of the market. Apparently the BoD didnt like it. They should have just been more forthcoming about it. Some CEOs would get fired for moonlighting. Others (Elon Musk, etc) build massive companies and make their existing companies more resilient and lasting. The…

> Some CEOs would get fired for moonlighting. Others (Elon Musk, etc) build massive companies and make their existing companies more resilient and lasting. I don't get why more CEO/founders don't found second and third companies. You build a great leadership team, then explore adjacent spaces that can reinforce your vision of the future. In a way, it can clear the space of potential competitors. Or build potential cu…

Its almost always because of OpenAI like-situations.

The CEO reports to a board, and the board is too narrowminded or risk averse to allow for the CEOs ideas.

Its actually not very dissimilar from the public company vs private enterprise conflict paradigm: public rewards short term thinking while private rewards long term investment.

  Unless the board is composed of visionaries, entrepreneurs , or the CEO has a track record of cultivating enterprises, you are going to have a really hard time

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#35

Post by brd529 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #4

This kind of gives away the reason for his firing. He was pursuing his vision of AI incluing a chipset specific to LLM processing that would break nvidias hold of the market. Apparently the BoD didnt like it. They should have just been more forthcoming about it. Some CEOs would get fired for moonlighting. Others (Elon Musk, etc) build massive companies and make their existing companies more resilient and lasting. The…

the board was about to vaporize employee equity overnight - the secondary was days away and would have been life changing for many employees and significant for all of them. SA is probably a great a leader but the financial incentives for the employees to support him and ensure the secondary went through were huuuuuuge

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#37

Post by falcor84 »

127361 wrote: post #11
pixelatedindex wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's so important in these situations to gather as much hard evidence as possible (audio/video recordings), from the start. Voice recorders and storage are very cheap nowadays, keep them on you, running at all times if you ever find yourself in any similar circumstances. That way, it's no longer of "he said, she said", and it's clear who the problem is. Of course assuming this is legal to do so where you live.

This would have been good advice a decade ago, but with how good deepfakes are now, I would argue that any audio/video evidence recorded and submitted by either party should be considered as part of their testimony rather than valid evidence, unless its provenance can be cryptographically confirmed.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#38

Post by rdtsc »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #9
mdorazio wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems there's more to it than that [1]. Altman did a surprisingly good job of cultivating a "nice guy" image among the tech crowd, but I personally don't buy it. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/what-sam-altman-did-so-bad-h...

[flagged]

She made some serious allegations against him https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman... including sexual abuse.

I was wondering if I were hiring someone and there were these allegations against them if I would hire them. Would I go by the fact that these are unproven allegations and hire the person, or keep looking, afraid of being associated with them.

What about if that person was an investor. They are dangling cash in front of me? Is that a lot different than the hiring situation. I think I would rather be safe and avoid associated with them.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#40

Post by ajkjk »

dbspin wrote: post #26
pixelatedindex wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Altman's sister's 'memories' of abuse were developed in adulthood [1]. Recovered memories are deeply suspect, and a number of serious miscarriages of justice have happened because of them. Most infamously the 'satanic panic' trials of the eighties and early nineties. Elizabeth Loftus has done lots of good work on the dubious nature of eyewitness testimony, and recovered memories in particular [3]. Essentially, they'r…

Wow you really have no way of knowing if it's true at all yet you've got this giant framework that lets you assume she's fabricating it. Yikes.
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