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Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

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Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#121

Post by smt88 »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #97
smt88 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> things have a way of working out The definition of survivorship bias because you literally are alive to say this. Tens of millions have been killed by CEOs of tobacco companies, and that's just one industry. Energy companies will likely cause the death of billions. We got rid of many dangerous American oligarchs in the Gilded Age by using govt to break them up. Things don't "just work out," people sacrifice huge am…

didn‘t the “tens of millions” of humans who died have any agency? And by definition, aren’t “energy companies” helping fix the problem of “energy poverty” which increases human welfare? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_poverty

In both cases, the agency of individuals was undermined by regulatory capture and the publishing of false studies (despite having real studies that the companies buried).

For decades, people didn't even know it was dangerous to smoke or have lead in gasoline or burn fossil fuels because the information was systematically suppressed by the producers of those products.

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#123

Post by zild3d »

rob74 wrote: post #120
blindriver wrote: post #72

This is really dumb, and I'm not even a fan of sama, I think he's a snake. Sam Altman was CEO and President. The fact he was not Chairman is not material. There's a thousand different explanations how that misstatement could have occurred. Maybe someone wrote that up, and sama didn't review every single line, and other people just assumed it was right. But it's not material. Being being the CEO and President of YC is…

If I claim in a job application that I have worked several years for, let's say, Google, and it later turns out that that was a "mistake" (I was only promised a job, but never got it), I could definitely get fired. Why should Altman expect to face no consequences whatsoever from such a "misstatement"?

Not really a fair comparison... how about if you _did_ work for Google, your role was Principal Engineer on Google Buzz and you were the tech lead for the team working on it. On the Google Buzz landing page it says rob74, Director of Google Buzz, led the project

And btw, there was noone with a Director title working on the project, you were in fact the main project lead

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#124

Post by randomdata »

S_A_P wrote: post #28
jpm_sd wrote: post #2

Sam Altman is a pathological liar https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/ex_openai_board_membe... https://www.wheresyoured.at/sam-altman-is-full-of-shit/

Just the sort of personality type that we need leading the most potentially dangerous new technology in the past 50 years.

The only potential danger of said technology is that it may be confused as something trusted, but as shown above, trust is a fundamentally flawed concept. Which means that if danger actually arises, it was self-inflicted.

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#125

Post by [deleted] »

lenerdenator wrote: post #60
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when the CEO lies on a resume, nothing happens I think it’s abundantly clear that if OpenAI fails, powerful people will face prosecution. It’s an uncomfortable but unavoidable part of our justice system that we don’t like to prosecute people until they’re no longer winners.

It's far from clear. Dozens of finance executives wiped a decade worth of economic growth off the United States the year before I graduated high school. My generation will never recover. They left their jobs with more money that I'll make in an entire lifetime. None went to prison.

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#126

Post by Y_Y »

cynusx wrote: post #111

The media obsession with Sam Altman reminds me of the old dutch saying 'high trees capture a lot of wind' (hoge bomen vangen veel wind) I suppose that's why many HNWI individuals consciously stay below the radar.

Unless you're a high net worth HNWI individual, right?

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#127

Post by Two4 »

christogreeff wrote: post #119
cynusx wrote: post #111

The media obsession with Sam Altman reminds me of the old dutch saying 'high trees capture a lot of wind' (hoge bomen vangen veel wind) I suppose that's why many HNWI individuals consciously stay below the radar.

Hoë bome vang die meeste wind (Afrikaans)

It would either be "Die hoogste bome vang die meeste wind" or "Hoë bome vang veel wind", if my idioms serve me correctly

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#128

Post by marcus0x62 »

irjustin wrote: post #75
eduction wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim was repeated on the website of the SPAC itself until the story ran. And the SPAC is run by… Sam Altman.

> And the SPAC is run by… Sam Altman. Yes, but this comes with the assumption that Sam writes and reviews the website copy, PR statements and S1 form submissions, which any organization of significant size, the CEO does not. I could believe Elon does though.

It would be hilarious if some intern used ChatGPT to write the copy for the SPAC website and it hallucinated based off of being trained on the SEC filings.

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#129

Post by n4r9 »

cynusx wrote: post #111

The media obsession with Sam Altman reminds me of the old dutch saying 'high trees capture a lot of wind' (hoge bomen vangen veel wind) I suppose that's why many HNWI individuals consciously stay below the radar.

In Aus and NZ this is known as "cutting down the tall poppy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

Re: Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?

#130

Post by gexla »

dylan604 wrote: post #92
gexla wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple just gave the company under his leadership a huge vote of confidence.

And? That's the company and not him as far as what iDevice users will care about. Again, even if they bother to learn the name of the company that makes chatgpt. Hell, they might even think that is the name of the company and not the product. I don't really understand your point

The upstream comment I was replying to mentioned that SAMA destroyed public trust. If this were the case, then what he had done might be enough for a massive company like Apple to hesitate on making such a deal. And there are alternative routes Apple could have taken (maybe not as good as GPT4, but close in a fast moving space.) It's true that users may not know who the company is (let alone know about SAMA) - but he does have outsized control over a company which "isn't him." He had the power to reverse his sacking, make changes to the board, and is now considering changing the structure such that OpenAI is no longer a non-profit entity.

Where there's smoke there's fire. You don't get to a point where you "destroy public trust" without also destroying investor confidence. The upstream comment mentioned "public trust" - but there were also trust issues with the board. These issues then put further investment in limbo until he was able to change the board.

My point is, that any trust issues aren't likely what they seem given that Apple made such a large bet with the company. Sure, it's "only" a distribution deal. But Apple needs to know that OpenAI will continue to have access to the resources they need to continue servicing massive markets. The trust may be wobbly, but not destroyed.

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