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Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

theatlantic.com

1–10 of 122 posts

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#3
I'd like to point out that this article seems to focus on minutiae like how much energy a human brain takes to solve a problem, when the obvious question is: Which is more worthwhile to us as a species - even assuming the same inputs and energy and planetary damage? Spending that energy on fostering humans who can solve problems? Or on machines which render humans superfluous?

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#5

Altman strikes me as a dude who came from a special tier of toxic upbringing.

I wouldn't say he's much different or worse than certain BBS sysadmins I knew in the early 90s... just that I'd never want those guys to be endowed with enough money and hardware to wreak their vision on the world

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#6

Altman strikes me as a dude who came from a special tier of toxic upbringing.

He is literally a manifestation of the phenomenon described in this book:

https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.469826

"The Authoritarian Personality"

tl;dr - the roots of the authoritarian personality grow fertile in the desire to be free of 'the filth of others'. Altman seems like he'd go crazy if he didn't keep his machine spectacularly clean ..

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#8
post #5

Altman strikes me as a dude who came from a special tier of toxic upbringing.

I wouldn't say he's much different or worse than certain BBS sysadmins I knew in the early 90s... just that I'd never want those guys to be endowed with enough money and hardware to wreak their vision on the world

That's the problem though. One of those types did get that type of power.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#9
To some extend I think people are putting way to much weight on his exact words, and not why he says them.

Altman is a man who is quickly running out of lies, so now he starts slinging random arguments that can't stand up to even the briefest of scrutiny.

OpenAI is burning cash and fuel. There are results, and they are, to some extend, impressive, but not impressive enough to justify the cost and Altman are no longer able to cover that up.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say he's much different or worse than certain BBS sysadmins I knew in the early 90s... just that I'd never want those guys to be endowed with enough money and hardware to wreak their vision on the world

That's the problem though. One of those types did get that type of power.

Not only one of those types, I can think of at least another one that's (IMHO) far worse than Altman. You know, the one with the social network everyone used to use before he turned it into a cesspool of disinformation, the one with the alternate Wikipedia, the obsession with the letter X?
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