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Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

theatlantic.com

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Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#111

Post by duxup »

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…

I think he's also slinging random business deals too.

The "A letter from Sam & Jony" page is one of the weirdest I've seen in a while: https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/

Step after step it seems like a CEO throwing everything at the wall in an insecure manner.

I don't pretend to know if Open AI is doomed or just absurdly over valued but still valuable. I pay for and use their product, it works for my use cases, but watching the business deals and weird quotes from a far makes me less confidant.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#112

Post by ajross »

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?

> the obvious question is: Which [of having babies vs. building datacenters] is more worthwhile to us as a species

Uh... no, it's not. You're making an argument in the opposite direction as Altman, but recapitulating the same moral flaw.

The point is that viewing human procreation as "worthwhile" or having "value" or being "expensive" is the logic of slavery. People are people, not assets. We don't have babies to make our lives better, we have babies to make THEIR lives better.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#113

Post by rockostrich »

bondarchuk wrote: post #97
rockostrich wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the entire span of human history, the concept of suffering required sentience and the only things with sentience eat and drink.

Do you really think that proves anything? It strikes me as a disingenuous argument.

It doesn't prove anything. It provides context for why someone would make that statement. Can you prove that things that do not need to eat and drink to survive can suffer?

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#114

Post by ethbr1 »

rustyhancock wrote: post #78
sjaiisba wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All your competitors benefit from your training costs. They’ll lose on inference pretty quickly if they stop training new models, no?

I don't think they will lose on inference because that assumes that compute becomes cheap for all evenly. Their spending today has secured their compute for the near future. If every GPU, stick for RAM and SSD is already paid for. Who can afford to sell cheap inference? Z.ai is trying to deal with this by using domestic (basically Huwawei silicon not Nvidia). And with their state subsidy they will do well. Anthropic…

> Once all the models become basically the same who you go with will be who you're already with (mostly OpenAI)

Imho, people are undervaluing the last mile connection to the customer.

The last Western megacorp to bootstrap its way there was Facebook, and control over cloud identity and data was much less centralized circa-late-00s.

The real clock OpenAI is running against is creating a durable consumer last-mile connection (killer app, device, etc).

"Easy to use chat app / coding tool" doesn't even begin to approach the durability of Microsoft, Apple, Google, or Meta. And without it, OpenAI risks any one of them pulling an Apple Maps at any time.

Unless it continually plows money into R&D to maintain the lead and doesn't pull an Intel and miss a beat.

Maybe they do, but that's a lot of coin flips that need to continually come up heads, in perpetuity.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#115

Post by ethbr1 »

fernandopj wrote: post #92
poisonborz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is the crux of the problem we're facing as a society: many, many leaders have this idea that they are better served by an AI that is 70% (?), 80% (?) correct when helping them make decisions about their business, than trusting humans - consultants, employees, pundits - that they don't even trust their judgments, bias, own goals, much less paying them. For those people, an AI better (much better?) than a coin tos…

The root issue is epistemological.

If one puts their faith in answers that come out of a black box, then one must justify the black box's omniscience, specifically by prioritizing it above human intellect and deprioritizing attempts to reason through its logic.

You saw it with older people blindly following sat navs because they'd forgotten how to navigate. And those were much less believable sounding devices!

It's not going to stop until/if the first execs are thrown in jail because the 'I just trusted AI' defense fails.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#117

Post by absynth »

rickydroll wrote: post #84
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) No energy from grid. Can't use coal or fossil fuel energy sources. Must have plan to provide excess TO grid. This is easy: the companies will simply build some nuclear power plants near to their data centers. Perhaps even nuclear power plants that are vibe-designed by their AIs. :-)

Faster and cheaper than nuclear power would be building a virtual power plant, adding big-ass banks of batteries charged during times of low demand or excess power capacity, and peak-shaving consumption when the rest of us need power.

This is an amendment I'd add to those rules to allow. There are other ways of storing energy but battery banks are the obvious one. Works well with shedding excess as well.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#118

Post by satisfice »

ajross wrote: post #112
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?

> the obvious question is: Which [of having babies vs. building datacenters] is more worthwhile to us as a species Uh... no, it's not. You're making an argument in the opposite direction as Altman, but recapitulating the same moral flaw. The point is that viewing human procreation as "worthwhile" or having "value" or being "expensive" is the logic of slavery. People are people, not assets. We don't have babies to mak…

Altman’s moral flaw stems partly from an identity failure: he does not see himself as human. He sees himself as The Chosen One. He is transhuman. He can sympathize with humans but never empathize.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#119

Post by cholantesh »

delaminator wrote: post #116
cholantesh wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that Elon Musk: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/30/elon-musk...

is the Elon in the room with you now?

Nah, just in the Epstein email drop begging to be included in a child trafficking ring.

Re: Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

#120

Post by econ »

xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #43
absynth wrote: post #26

I have a different perspective. You'll probably hate it. AI data centers should be operated according to two limiting factors. 1) No energy from grid. Can't use coal or fossil fuel energy sources. Must have plan to provide excess TO grid. 2) No use of fresh water from municipal or fresh groundwater for cooling. Can use waste water. Must transition to providing excess fresh water to common supply. No loopholes. Massiv…

There is no way that letting these clowns run nuclear power plants is a good idea. Also the percentage of land that is allowed to be used by datacenters should be limited. Let them set them up in deserts or something.

Antarctica is a great place for datacenters. They can power them with any of the 300 national security reactors and easily keep them secret from the taxpayers forever.
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