Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 122 posts

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#101

Post by piva00 »

rustyhancock wrote: post #95
piva00 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will open up to be undercut by players like Gemini that can provide a less-shitty free tier, and capture their market share. I seriously doubt, at this moment, that OpenAI can come up with a offering good enough to entice people to pay for them when there will be other free to use services around. Google seems to be well positioned to eat their lunch.

Google does indeed. But that ignores that Microsoft is playing the same game. For example in the UK's NHS, the worlds sixth largest employer is now fully committed to Microsoft 365. That's a lot of Copilot money if Microsoft sees it that way. And OpenAI is funded via Microsoft, I also have a Microsoft 2TB subscription. And so do many people have both work based and personal home subscriptions. It's a complete mess of…

Microsoft has already publicly stated they plan to move away from OpenAI [0].

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/f1ec830c-2f08-4b1a-b70f-7330f2607...

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#103

Post by tempodox »

noduerme wrote: post #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?

When you’re a psychopath, the choice is clear.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#105

Post by bubblewand »

noduerme wrote: post #22
bilekas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's calling him out on his BS. That might work for mindless investors who want number go up. But he's actively making the world worse for people. Nevermind hoarding 40% of the worlds silicone 'just because'. It's like Musk's lofty and outright BS claims. "Well I'm rich so I can do and say what I like, give me your money". When did bald face lies become the norm in business ? Edit.. Im keeping silicone in there.

>> When did bald face lies become the norm in business ? When capital has nowhere to go, and the middle class become gamblers and speculators, and people who work become 'superfluous', lots of bad things start to happen. At least, that was my takeaway from "Origins of Totalitarianism". [edit] To be more specific: Lying (and foreign wars, too) become viable business models when the moneyed class has so much to invest…

Yeah, my semi-informed WAG for the core cause of many of the ills of our current situation is that we're wildly over-capitalized. The "trickle down" focus to put more of the "pie" on the investment side (setting aside whether the "trickle down" effect itself was meaningfully real, not relevant to this "take") was probably barely justified at the time, if at all, and we've just kept shoveling more fuel into that fire in the decades since.

You can't have demand without spreading buying power around. If you just keep shifting toward investment, that capital gets up to some really stupid shit because there's not enough demand to provide anything useful for it to do. Build a factory? Why would I do that, the returns are terrible. No, I'll "invest" in bitcoin... or do an NFT startup... or reserve way more memory capacity than I'll plausibly need just to fuck with my competition, in ways and in an environment that's so bubbly that this activity likely won't provoke capacity build-out to compensate...

We really, really needed some capital (by which I just mean investor-money, not real productive assets) destruction in the '08 crisis, and we didn't get it.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#106

Post by f30e3dfed1c9 »

mrweasel wrote: post #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…

> Altman is a man who is quickly running out of lies

Oh I doubt that! The quality of the lies may deteriorate but he ain't ever gonna run out.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#107

Post by palmotea »

poisonborz wrote: post #83
password54321 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People might not want to hear this but AI is already smarter and more useful than most people ever will be. We are not even talking about by the end of the year or decade anymore.

Read and think about what you wrote. How can an ai, completing specific scoped tasks, be in any way comparable to the scale of a human life? Maybe the same thing these execs forgot.

> Read and think about what you wrote.

A lot of software engineers are bad at value judgements, and often feel smart by confidently taking propaganda at face value.

It's kind of mind boggling that, if someone genuinely believes what the GP wrote, that they don't immediately follow the statement with "smash it!."

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#109

Post by pibaker »

noduerme wrote: post #69
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is who is making the decision on where energy resources are spent - on people or machines. And it turns out efficiency or even humanity play a very small role in that decision matrix. Control, on the other hand, is important. Rich and powerful people tend to want to control things, and machines are better at that than people.

This is the conspiratorial mindset. It's not much better than the mindset of people who seek power. It's wrong, because it assumes that everything is about control. For example, if I told you that a certain rich and powerful person was spending resources on sending vaccines to poor countries, you might think that was because they wanted to control things. If I said that someone sent books and teachers to a poor count…

I find it amusing that you are denigrating people as "conspiratorial" in year 2026 when the we are all finding out about how there really was a global elite child rape cabal operating in plain sight :)

Leave that self comforting lie in yesteryear. The world is only getting weirder.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#110

Post by bilekas »

bubblewand wrote: post #105
noduerme wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> When did bald face lies become the norm in business ? When capital has nowhere to go, and the middle class become gamblers and speculators, and people who work become 'superfluous', lots of bad things start to happen. At least, that was my takeaway from "Origins of Totalitarianism". [edit] To be more specific: Lying (and foreign wars, too) become viable business models when the moneyed class has so much to invest…

Yeah, my semi-informed WAG for the core cause of many of the ills of our current situation is that we're wildly over-capitalized. The "trickle down" focus to put more of the "pie" on the investment side (setting aside whether the "trickle down" effect itself was meaningfully real, not relevant to this "take") was probably barely justified at the time, if at all, and we've just kept shoveling more fuel into that fire…

Ehhhh, you have some elementary points, but the market, is in theory, self adjusting right? So the 'idea' of trickle down is a real thing.

It's not as dramatic or loud as something like OpenAI. But consider it as access to loans to fund a new business, the idea is you'll fund a company and gain some sales and employment, money moves around so happy. Basic stuff.

You've shot too far and considered everything black and white. You build a factory if demand is high and it can increase supply while making profit..

> We really, really needed some capital (by which I just mean investor-money, not real productive assets) destruction in the '08 crisis, and we didn't get it.

No, but that wasn't where the majority of money was locked up in poop, so maybe you might get at best a 90's dotcom bust. I'm old and I remember it was apocolyptic. But Maybe it's due.

Post reply on HN