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An Open Letter to Sam Altman

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: An Open Letter to Sam Altman

#21

Post by zx8080 »

rutierut wrote: post #15
amval wrote: post #10

I fully agree with the sentiment, but I am bit... confused? with the section that raises possible concerns about the negatives of LLMs. In particular the "women" mention, without any ellaboration. Am I missing something? It feels pretty lazy. Like an enumeration of things we are supposed to care about, rather than an effort to build a solid argumentation against Sam Altman's fundraising effort. And I have other issue…

Yes that whole section is extremely off: > How do we know that $7 trillion invested into LLMs and their infrastructure would not simply exacerbate those costs, grinding down content creators, women, and the environment, undermining democracy, destroying jobs, etc? “Destroying jobs” is pretty much a _good_ thing. I think we’re all pretty happy we don’t need dedicated people anymore for a lot of tedious tasks that we t…

> “Destroying jobs” is pretty much a _good_ thing.

It's not destroying only jobs, it's destroying those people's probably the sole profit source, with their families, health, lives.

Calling it a "good thing" is basically calling for a human genocide.

Re: An Open Letter to Sam Altman

#22

Post by spinningslate »

tinrab wrote: post #17
zer00eyz wrote: post #11

Sam Altman: A man who can't seem to help out his own sister, is now going to save the world with a 7 trillion dollar LLM fund. Thats 10 years of the us military budget. Thats the GDP of Japan and India Combined. Sam Altman is to tech what late 80's telivanglishts were to religion.

I'm seeing this kind of sentiment a lot on hnews, which is weird because it's owned by YC. This is not how investors or businesses work. Government's job is not Sam's job, his job is OpenAI.

> his job is OpenAI

And it's society's job to hold him to account. That $7T isn't coming from nowhere: it's ultimately sourced from the graft and economic contribution of millions of people. However small their individual contributions might be perceived as, they're real. Society has every right to scrutinise and challenge plans: the bigger the plan, the bigger the societal impact, the more it should be scrutinised.

Re: An Open Letter to Sam Altman

#23

Post by brap »

amval wrote: post #10

I fully agree with the sentiment, but I am bit... confused? with the section that raises possible concerns about the negatives of LLMs. In particular the "women" mention, without any ellaboration. Am I missing something? It feels pretty lazy. Like an enumeration of things we are supposed to care about, rather than an effort to build a solid argumentation against Sam Altman's fundraising effort. And I have other issue…

I think he means AI-generated porn, e.g. the Taylor Swift case. I still think it's a silly argument against AI.

Re: An Open Letter to Sam Altman

#24

Post by teamonkey »

thih9 wrote: post #3

I'm out of the loop - what 7 trillion fundraising ask? Could someone summarize the context?

In answer to why you're out of the loop, there have already been multiple threads about this on HN but none of them have remained on the front page for more than a few minutes.

Re: An Open Letter to Sam Altman

#25

Post by magicalhippo »

teamonkey wrote: post #16
makingstuffs wrote: post #9

I’m going out on a whim here but surely putting $7t towards solving something like food poverty in the undeveloped world, or subsidising renewable energy for the average person, would be of a much greater benefit to humanity than further lining the already bursting pockets of entitled individuals. Call me old fashioned but having living, healthy humans is more valuable to humanity than an, albeit impressive, text gen…

Remember when Elon tweeted out that he would spend his potential $6bn tax write-off to save world hunger if only someone would give him a plan, then the UN sent him a plan that would save 42 million people from food poverty, then instead of doing that he donated it to his own foundation instead? https://truthout.org/articles/musk-pledged-6b-to-solve-world...

He asked for a plan to solve world hunger. The plan he got[1] was a band-aid at best. WFP even highlight it in bold themselves:

> US$6.6 billion is needed to avert catastrophe.

So yeah, not a plan to solve world hunger... Which goes to say, the problem is much greater than what some pocket money[2] can solve.

[1]: https://www.wfp.org/stories/wfps-plan-support-42-million-peo...

[2]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012715/5-ric...

Re: An Open Letter to Sam Altman

#26

Post by thih9 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #11

Sam Altman: A man who can't seem to help out his own sister, is now going to save the world with a 7 trillion dollar LLM fund. Thats 10 years of the us military budget. Thats the GDP of Japan and India Combined. Sam Altman is to tech what late 80's telivanglishts were to religion.

~~What does helping his sister have to do with it? There are many good reason why not to help your immediate family, many of them personal and difficult to judge objectively. Or is there some known drama that is public and where it's clear that Sam was in the wrong?~~

Edit: looks like there are abuse allegations, so it's not only about helping; what I wrote above is not that relevant.

Re: An Open Letter to Sam Altman

#27

Post by amval »

brap wrote: post #23
amval wrote: post #10

I fully agree with the sentiment, but I am bit... confused? with the section that raises possible concerns about the negatives of LLMs. In particular the "women" mention, without any ellaboration. Am I missing something? It feels pretty lazy. Like an enumeration of things we are supposed to care about, rather than an effort to build a solid argumentation against Sam Altman's fundraising effort. And I have other issue…

I think he means AI-generated porn, e.g. the Taylor Swift case. I still think it's a silly argument against AI.

I thought he maybe meant that, but since LLMs were explicitly mentioned I wasn't sure if image generation was part of this rant.

I don't know, I don't really object to the arguments themselves, just how poorly written this piece was.

Re: An Open Letter to Sam Altman

#29

Post by yowzadave »

amval wrote: post #27
brap wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he means AI-generated porn, e.g. the Taylor Swift case. I still think it's a silly argument against AI.

I thought he maybe meant that, but since LLMs were explicitly mentioned I wasn't sure if image generation was part of this rant. I don't know, I don't really object to the arguments themselves, just how poorly written this piece was.

It’s not really even an article—just a few-hundred-words snippet on the guy’s substack. I suspect it was posted to HN because of the context of the back-and-forth with Altman, rather than for its merits as an essay.

Re: An Open Letter to Sam Altman

#30

Post by appplication »

brodouevencode wrote: post #28

Why is there such offense taken to this ask? Is it because it's coming from Sam? Is it the amount? Or what it will be used for?

Yes to all 3. I would suggest considering what an alternative $7T investment in, for example, decarbonization. Even assuming absolutely 0 economies of scale or efficiency improvements, that is enough to completely replace the entirety of the US’s coal and natural gas consumption with existing nuclear fission reactors.

It’s completely boring, but if we’re talking about investing in infrastructure at that scale, almost anything else is more consequential than Sam’s vision here. There really is some special tech god myopia to thinking you can add $7T of GPU compute to an already struggling planet and think that will end well. Sam’s take on climate change is that it’s not happening fast enough to get in his way, therefore it’s not something that even needs to be part of his calculus. It’s unhinged and unrealistic. What he is talking about simply cannot be decoupled from the climate impact it will impose.

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