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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

#121

Post by unityByFreedom »

samstave wrote: post #115
unityByFreedom wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope that all the youngin's in tech (like the actual teenagers, like my children) are really paying attention to where we are in tech history with AI in general - and with OpenAI in particular - as SA can attempt to look like a Carnegie but actually be a Rockefeller. You should hope that they go back to school and study history. All of this has happened before, many times over.

> All of this has happened before, many times over. Sounds good on paper, but the nature of modern day life is far different than it was when other revolutions occurred. Yes, revolutions in tech are just that - they up-end the old way of life, the dust settles and a new way of living emerges. This is so basically obvious that its not worth mentioning. What is worth more than mentioning, but truly paying attention to,…

> the level of "entanglement" into our daily life with massive core-AI systems, such as the capabilities of GPT-'N' has, cannot be understated.

Entanglement of big business and government is not new. Yes, we should be very concerned, but the solution is not to worship idols like business leaders or politicians. They will not solve that problem for us. You have to think carefully before handing more authority to individuals who've already been ascribed far more than is due.

> from a security guy just saying he doesnt care who runs the black box, is weird

One cannot select the "right" person to run that black box. We're all biased, flawed, etc. So yes, you should be concerned. But use that concern to drive your actions towards distributing authority– not centralizing it through more idol worship.

In response to your edit:

> I do not "worship" or "idolize" SA, and especially Thiel - I am terrified of them.

This is idol worship. You're ascribing a power to Altman and Thiel that they do not have. Bad behavior has consequences that are beyond what even the government can impose. If Altman or Thiel were to make a habit of targeting people, he or his adherents/descendants would eventually find themselves friendless in a house built on sand. Altman almost lost his job that way. The fact that consequences may play out slowly in some cases doesn't make it less true. Nobody can infinitely violate the golden rule without eventually facing consequences.

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

#122

Post by peterfirefly »

tilne wrote: post #24
rjzzleep wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate that everyone else was so comically bad at literally any kind of communication. I'm starting to feel like the general advice lawyers give of say nothing is a terrible advice, when you have such a public facing company. It's like what you need in that situation is a communication coach first and a lawyer second. But as an engineer that also never learned this kind of narrative control, I too am strugg…

This sounds like snark but it’s not intended to be: do you really need sources to learn narrative control? Perceiving how narratives work seems to be a skill that almost all humans are very good at naturally. I acknowledge that shaping narratives is a different skill set (especially the parts that require putting yourself in a position to shape narratives effectively), but in my opinion if you’re already asking the q…

Some people can roll their tongue like a tube and some can't. Some people can wiggle their ears and some people can't.

And some people can't really understand or perceive other people's intentions and motivations... and some people can do it but not in real time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test

Some people are good at following other people's eye gaze, some are not.

And then there is Machiavellian intelligence, which roughly scales with (real) intelligence -- but some people aren't good at it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavellian_intelligence

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

#123

Post by phillryu »

n2d4 wrote: post #114
phillryu wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised I don't recognize a single one of these companies. Isn't YC most famous for companies like AirBNB, Reddit, Twitch, Instacart, Dropbox, Doordash, etc. all things I use and that broke into pop culture? Or is that entirely from pre-Altman era and now it's just all tools for developers?

YC has been doing a lot more B2B for the last decade or so than in its early days. Many of the early unicorns (including all of those you listed) were B2C companies, so they're more well-known.

Oh ok. It looks like as a small business we use Gusto, so that's been useful for us. But it's kind of strange to me they had such a string of big B2C successes early on and then that side evaporated entirely.

The B2B stuff seems like things YC companies can just sell each other and make startup pain points easier, like pick axe stuff that doesn't require as much original vision or as much risk.

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

#124

Post by ethbr1 »

mooktakim wrote: post #48
ethbr1 wrote: post #3

It's nice to occasionally read a piece that reminds you what good journalism is. On and off record sources, people as complex individuals with multiple truths, anchoring to key chronological events, and only moderate clickbaiting and defensible hyperbole. Nothing particularly new, but a solid brief. Kudos to the Post and Dwoskin, Fisher, and Tiku.

Is it good journalism to watch YouTube interviews and report on that? I would expect they'd go first-hand to various people who know him and dig up stories from the past.

They did.

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

#125

Post by nox100 »

api wrote: post #111
plastic_enjoyer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI is only one of many companies building AI. While ChatGPT and DALL-E are impressive, there are domains where those models are pretty much useless and other AI solutions are needed.

For hosted models I’ve noticed that Bard has been quietly improving. Was awful at first but now seems to be closing in. Actually-open AI with open weights and open source is innovating rapidly too, especially when it comes to making models more efficient on smaller hardware. We have fast local mixtures of experts now. Rumor is that Llama3 is training as well, and that it may be some kind of MoE. I feel like focusing…

I've definitely seen Bard beat ChatGPT once in a while. I don't use bard much but when ChatGPT gives me an answer I know is wrong I go see if Bard did any better and yes, sometimes Bard is better, not often enough for me to switch ... yet?

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

#126

Post by ethbr1 »

dartharva wrote: post #62
ethbr1 wrote: post #3

It's nice to occasionally read a piece that reminds you what good journalism is. On and off record sources, people as complex individuals with multiple truths, anchoring to key chronological events, and only moderate clickbaiting and defensible hyperbole. Nothing particularly new, but a solid brief. Kudos to the Post and Dwoskin, Fisher, and Tiku.

Amusing, the comment just above yours claims how the article is a lovely puff piece

My overall impression from this is: highly manipulative but effective leader.

Which, seems fair?

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

#127

Post by jwoq9118 »

tptacek wrote: post #70

There's nothing in here you haven't already heard: * He's close with Peter Thiel * He's an ace networker (but, completing the stereotype, is also an introvert) * He left YC, not entirely voluntarily, because he was too committed to OpenAI to do the YC job * Echoing YC, the OpenAI board tried to oust him over concerns that he was being manipulative and pursuing outside interests (a chip firm) that conflicted with the…

I had not heard any of this so it was enlightening for me

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

#128

Post by jwoq9118 »

tptacek wrote: post #101
CPLX wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam Altman controls billions of dollars in assets, and attends Bilderberg and Bohemian Grove events. He's sort of the walking definition of social and economic power.

So he goes to extremely boring cringe meetups. Who cares?

This is entirely subjective. Hope you can see how this isn’t exactly a strong argument.

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

#129

Post by tptacek »

chillingeffect wrote: post #97
tptacek wrote: post #70

There's nothing in here you haven't already heard: * He's close with Peter Thiel * He's an ace networker (but, completing the stereotype, is also an introvert) * He left YC, not entirely voluntarily, because he was too committed to OpenAI to do the YC job * Echoing YC, the OpenAI board tried to oust him over concerns that he was being manipulative and pursuing outside interests (a chip firm) that conflicted with the…

It's what's not in the article that's exceptional. Soft-balling Thiel in Bezos' paper is the first of the lacunae.

Your claim here would be that the Washington Post has laid off Peter Thiel? That's something you can only say if you don't subscribe to the Post.

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

#130

Post by tptacek »

jwoq9118 wrote: post #128
tptacek wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So he goes to extremely boring cringe meetups. Who cares?

This is entirely subjective. Hope you can see how this isn’t exactly a strong argument.

I'm still trying to figure out what the argument is.
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