Gift link of the NYT source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/business/openai-plan-elec...
TSMC execs allegedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as 'podcasting bro'
301–310 of 581 posts
Re: TSMC execs allegedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as 'podcasting bro'
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is reasonable from his point of view - you guys sink the capital, I will have more compute. And if it doesn't work out and orders stop coming in then well that's not my problem, is it?
> It is reasonable from his point of view If he wants to actually accomplish his objectives, he needs to get inside the minds of the executives that run these companies. Empathize with their concerns and then develop a strategy for walking them towards a path to build even one additional factory. Throwing out a cartoonish figure and then hoping to be taken seriously is not something I'd expect from the CEO of somethi…
I think OAI and especially sama as its CEO are crossing the point of being significant in their own right, and as old talent moves out of OAI we may start to hear increasingly crazy stuff coming from them. They're just becoming brands to put over the machinations of some VCs, hyperscalers and big techs.
Re: TSMC execs allegedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as 'podcasting bro'
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Waymo alone services tens of thousands of autonomous rides per month (edit: see sibling comment, I was out of date, it's currently hundreds of thousands of rides per month -- but see, increasingly) But they aren't particularly autonomous, there's a fleet of humans watching the Waymos carefully and frequently intervening for the case where every 10-20 miles or so the system makes a stupid decision that needs human i…
Centuries seems like quite a stretch, we haven't even been doing this computer stuff for one century yet.
The problem is not "computers," it's intelligence itself. We still don't know how even the simplest neurons actually work, nor the simplest brains. And we're barely any closer to scientific definitions of "intelligence," "consciousness," etc than we were in the 1800s. There are many decades of experiments left to do, regardless of how fancy computers might be. I suspect it will take centuries before we make dog-level AI because it will take centuries to understand how dogs are able to reason.
Re: TSMC execs allegedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as 'podcasting bro'
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can pay $0 for those models because a company paid $lots to train them and then released them for free. Those models aren't going away now of course, but lets not pretend that being able to download the product of millions of dollars worth of training completely free of charge is sustainable for future developments. Especially when most of the companies releasing these open models are wildly unprofitable and will…
Much could be said about open source libraries that companies release for free to use (kubernetes, react, firecracker, etc). It might be strategically make sense for them so in the meantime we’ll just reap the benefits.
All of these require maintenance, and mostly it's been a treadmill just applying updates to React codebases. Complex tools are brittle and often only makes sense at the original source.
Re: TSMC execs allegedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as 'podcasting bro'
#305The current AI hype wave has really hit a nerd soft spot - that we're steps away from AGI. Surely if a computer can make plausible-looking but incorrect sentences we're days away from those sentences being factually accurate! The winter after this is gonna be harsh.
"Plausible-looking but incorrect sentences" is cheap, reflexive cynicism. LLMs are an incredible breakthrough by any reasonable standard. The reason to be optimistic about further progress is that we've seen a massive improvement in capabilities over the past few years and that seems highly likely to continue for the next few (at least). It's not going to scale forever, but it seems pretty clear that when the dust se…
> and that seems highly likely to continue for the next few (at least)
Why? Text training data is already exhausted.
Re: TSMC execs allegedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as 'podcasting bro'
#306I'm absolutely flabbergasted how much money and political capital is spent on vaporware, while there are very concrete and very impactful challenges we could be addressing instead.
Imagine how much food you get for every person in U.S. with 7 trillion. You probably get some roofs too.
The US has -- if anything -- too much food. If someone is starving in America, it's 100% due to them having no interest in acquiring the free food that is widely available almost everywhere.
Re: TSMC execs allegedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as 'podcasting bro'
#307Three things that get me about current AI discourse: - The public focus on AGI is almost a distraction. By the time we get to AGI highly-specialised models will have taken jobs from huge swaths of the population, SWE and CS are already in play. - That AI will need to carry out every task a role does to replace it. I see this a lot on HN. What if SWEs get 50% more efficient and they fire half? That's still a gigantic…
When electricity got cheap - we use MORE electricity. Think how many places you see shitty software currently. My wife was just trying to use an app to book a test with the doctor - did not work at all. The staff said they know it doesn’t work. They still give out the app. We are surrounded by awful software. There’s a lot of work to do- if it could be done cheaper. Currently only rich companies can make great softwa…
Well, that probably happens to some extent, but I am quite confident that some smaller shops will just say "Hey make an app that works 50% of the time and that's good enough." then fire half of the staff.
Oh, not just smaller shops, I have many issues with Android and other Google products -- from bugs to things that just don't work that have existed for decades, and there is no action on those over the years. Surely Google has the resources? Right? riiight?
This is a human problem, not a technology problem.
Re: TSMC execs allegedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as 'podcasting bro'
#308Remember when the Russians mocked Elon Musk for his rocket purchase? Remember when Blockbuster mocked Netflix? Remember when Steve Ballmer mocked the iPhone? Remember when Zuck was mocked for the Metaverse? I'm pretty sure Sam would have heard similar mockings like "You can't take on Google behemoth, podcaster bro" before. But the sad part is, the newer tech generation is so brainwashed that it takes the side of the…
> Remember when Zuck was mocked for the Metaverse? One of these things is not like the others. You listed 3 things proven silly with hindsight, then you post one comment that is mere hopeful wishing.
If Meta makes those new AR glasses real it makes up for the Metaverse branding.
Re: TSMC execs allegedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as 'podcasting bro'
#309It is clear to me that Sam has never set foot inside of a semiconductor manufacturing facility. Or, if he did he definitely wasn't paying attention to what was going on around him. I don't know how you could witness these things and then make glib statements about building 36 of them. It will likely take well over a decade to recoup investment on any new chip fab at this point. Chasing ~4 customers on one narrow use…
In his recent "Intelligence Age" post, Altman says superintelligence may be only a few thousand days out. This might, of course, be wrong, but skyrocketing demand for chips is a straightforward consequence of taking it seriously.
Only if you think scaling is the solution to AGI, which it almost certainly is not
Re: TSMC execs allegedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as 'podcasting bro'
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree on the first two points. On the third point, I think we've always seen this happen even in massive shocks like the Industrial Revolution (and the Second Industrial Revolution with assembly lines etc. and the Computer Age) It might be hard for people to retrain to whatever the new opportunities are though. Although perhaps somewhat easier nowadays with the internet etc.
The Industrial Revolution was a period of massive economic growth that was coupled with decline in the quality of life of the average worker. This Economist article talks about how looking at the historical data, historians now see that the height of the average Englishman actually went down due to malnutrition. https://web.archive.org/web/20210905065401/https://www.econo... The myth that the Industrial Revolution wa…
Do people really think the Industrial Revolution was “a wonderful time”? Basically the first thought to comes to mind for me is massive migration to urban centers, along with huge amount of poverty and squalid living conditions and disassociation with your own labor. I feel like that was basically what was taught to me in High School too, not like some recently learned insight.
And I agree with you. Further, the argument about economic prosperity isn’t equal for everyone. And increased worker efficiency isn’t directly (or sometimes at all) linked to worker satisfaction or even increased wages.