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Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

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Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legally they don’t need to have literally used her voice to have broken the law, never mind violating many people’s basic sense of what’s right and wrong.

They don't? Because if it's true that they used a sound-alike voice actress for the actual model, I don't see how any reasonable complaint about that could stand. You can't ban people from voice-acting who have similar voices to other celebrities. There needs to be something more to it.

> You can't ban people from voice-acting who have similar voices to other celebrities

Actually, you probably can.[0]

[0] https://casetext.com/case/waits-v-frito-lay-inc

Edit: Added the context for the reply

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already kind of replied to this rebuttal in advance in my first comment that you replied to. But I’ll refute it again a second way. Textile machinery impacted a very specific sector of work. We’re talking here about an advancement in technology threatening to substitute the creativity of humans one day. With textile machinery, other technological advancements eventually created new jobs which helped to displace the…

The US cannot suppress AI. There's a lot of other countries which would love to pick up the AI flag if we drop it, and then they'll bury us. I've used AI in my programming work. After you get used to it, you see its limitations. It's not that clever, it's mostly mush. It's better than stackoverflow, though :-/ I've seen AI written articles, and they're pretty much drivel. Of course, most articles are drivel anyway, b…

In order by paragraph:

Sure. This doesn’t seem like a direct response to anything I said, but it’s a valid point to why our government will be too slow to react in the situation I’m describing.

I’ve used it too. I think you’re still thinking on a much shorter timespan than I’m talking about. This is going to continue to advance. And I purposefully used the word “substitute” to describe its exact level of capability to replace human creativity.

Sure, same response as above.

Sure, same response as above.

Sure, that’s a much more reasonable short term fear for AI usage.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#383
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In back to the future II, Crispin Glover didn’t sign up to be George McFly so they used facial prosthetics and impersonation to continue the George McFly character. He sued Universal, and reportedly settled for $760,000. Example article on the topic - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/bac...

While not defending OpenAI or Altman, the caveat here is that this was a voice actor using their natural voice, not an actor impersonating scarlett johansson. Setting a precedent that if your natural voice sounds similar to a more famous actor precludes you from work would be a terrible precedent to set.

There is precedent.

Frito Lay wanted to use a Tom Waits song for an ad.

Since Waits is violently opposed to the use of his music in ads he declined.

So they hired an impersinator for the soundtrack.

Waits sued Frito Lay for voice misappropriation and false endorsement and they had to cough up to the tune of 2.6 million for violating his rights.

This was upheld on appeal[0].

So, you absolutely have precedent and in my opinion it's galling that the tech bro'ship just doesn't give a shit about the rights of others.

[0]

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's only one major ethical mistake documented in his entire life (being an absentee father while his first daughter was young) Jobs lied to Steve Wozniak. Atari gave Jobs $5000 to make Breakout for Atari. He told Wozniak he got $700 so Wozniak took home $350.

Steve Jobs gave Woz half of the base amount, which is what Woz agreed to. Jobs withheld the fact that he was going to receive a bonus on top of the base amount, and did not share any of that money. Was it an ethical mistake? Sure. He should have at least disclosed that he was receiving the bonus money, even if he didn't want to share it. But claiming it was a "major ethical mistake" seems fairly out of touch with rea…

When you decide to hide money from your partner it's not called a "mistake".

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#385
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or he could have tweeted 'her' to compare his product with the movie AI's conversational abilities and human-like interactions. It just depends on how one subjectively interprets a single syllable.

He could’ve, but did he? A judge will look at all this subjective stuff and make a decision, and they might not find that argument convincing given the other evidence on hand.

One obstacle I see here would be the vocal comparisons posted so far.[1][2][3] A majority of the commentators seem to think that the voices do not sound especially similar. If OpenAI can further prove their claim that Sky's voice belongs to a "professional actress using her own natural speaking voice" and that they "cast the voice actor behind Sky's voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson," I'm not sure a potential implied association of Altman's tweet would provide a strong case.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cx24sy/vocal_...

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/vocal_comp...

[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cx9t8b/vocal_comp...

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#386
post #349
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for telling us that! The story has been repeatedly flagged on HN, even this extremely detailed and reasonable post on lesswrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...

You can't know the truth about a painful family situation by consuming internet drama. Internet users have their own reasons for engaging in such drama—no doubt rooted in their own painful family situations, and from that point of view their reasons make sense—but none of this discussion is reliable. It is frequently harmful though. Internet users don't pause to consider the harm they may be contributing to, but some…

1. YC is not a neutral party, it has clear, deep ties with Sam Altman.

2. The behavior of Annie Altman at childhood is very abnormal and very consistent with trauma.

3. The bahavior of Sam & co locking Annie out of her heritage and witholding support that would be chup change for them is appaling in itself.

4. We don't know if it is truly the HN community that deemed it off topic.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#387
This has always been the plan of AI companies: harvest the entire planets creative output for their models, hope it creates AGI, after that you are immune to all laws as the modern day clergy, a class of tech priests who are able to divine the will of the Omnissiah.

It won't work, but that won't stop them trying to destroy everything anyway.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no "insiders" going on here. HN very intentionally doesn't favor VC stories, and it's really easy to see that because you can easily find stories and comments that are critical of VCs and YC alumni...they just have to be intellectually rewarding. This story is not. This story is boring drama. HN is not an advocacy platform. > Agreed, I mean "incredible" and not in the good way. Someone needs to take this to T…

> We don't want these kinds of stories (or comments) here Who are you to decide what "we" want? You don't speak for me. The evidence of whether this community wants to see a story and to talk about it consists of upvotes minus downvotes, comments, and flags.

> Who are you to decide what "we" want?

If you read the parent comments, you'd see that them, and many others, are complaining about the thread getting flagged off the front page. Those flaggers are the "we". I am talking about "The evidence of whether this community wants to see a story".

Also, the guidelines literally say that these kinds of stories and comments are off-topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#389
post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is still salient. People who don’t have Wikipedia links will be forgotten. Though I guess maybe that’s always been true.

Your legacy can continue as part of the AI trained on your output. What would you prefer? Would you want people to remember your name? Your face? Your voice? Which people? How often should they have to remember you? For how many thousands of years?

> Your legacy can continue as part of the AI trained on your output.

That is one incredibly dense dystopian sentence right there. Damn.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#390
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are hundreds of people with similar voices. If any voice actor can pull the same accent than Ms. Johansson, it should be fair game, as long it was the original training material? Voices cannot be copyrighted or be exclusive, although I am sure Hollywood will try to copyright them in some point.

Here’s a side by side. I’m not hearing the similarity that everyone else is: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cx9t8b/vocal_comp... Oops, that sounds like a match with Rashida Jones. Here’s one one of Scarlett J.: https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cx24sy/vocal_... I have a suspicion that most people with strong opinions on this haven’t actually compared Sky and Scarlett Johansson directly.

^^^this

Rashida Jones is indeed a closer match, and might well be the person they went to once Scarlett declined and showed no interest.

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