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The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#11

Post by roadside_picnic »

hiddencost wrote: post #2

Why. Do. We. Keep. Posting. Gary. Marcus. He's been writing variants of this kind of thing for decades and he's always been wrong.

I'm not a particularly big Gary Marcus fan, but I'm even less of a fan of the term "always".

I browsed back looking for posts of his that most obviously made predictions, and "GPT-5… now arriving Gate 8, Gate 9, Gate 10" make a few very clear predictions and was absolutely correct [0] about them.

This was in June 2024, and Marcus claims two major predictions:

- "As of today, I am more confident than ever that GPT-5 won’t land this year."

- "Gary Marcus is still betting that GPT-5 will continue to hallucinate and make a bunch of wacky errors, whenever it finally drops."

It would be over a year from his posting that article that GPT-5 would finally land, and his overall prediction that the result would be lack-luster was also spot on.

Again, I don't particularly care one way or another about Gary Marcus, but flat out dismissing his writing doesn't really hold up.

0. https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/gpt-5-now-arriving-gate-8-...

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#12

Post by fuzzy2 »

arjie wrote: post #6

Do people actually find this kind of dunk content interesting? It's super popular but I wonder if people find it insightful or entertaining. I watched a little of Stephen Colbert and John Oliver and it's mostly boring stuff that is pretty much characterized as "This guy IS AN IDIOT!" and "They're LOSING" and whatnot. It seems like the equivalent of those "Charlie Kirk owns feminists with FACTS and LOGIC". If you go t…

People must find it click-worthy, otherwise why would we get the amount of "we got him"-type of content we do?

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#13

Post by droopyEyelids »

submeta wrote: post #7

The man brought us LLMs and ever more capable models. I don’t know about the critics, but my work life completely changed from Dec 2022 on. Ever since chatgpt was released. I cannot imagine working without LLMs and agents anymore. They make me literally 10-100x more productive, transforming text, generating text, doing research, writing code, documenting systems, doing web search and so much more. And for that I am f…

It can be a bit tricky to attribute the product of an entire company to the CEO... even if the CEO is a founder!

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#16

Post by concinds »

arjie wrote: post #6

Do people actually find this kind of dunk content interesting? It's super popular but I wonder if people find it insightful or entertaining. I watched a little of Stephen Colbert and John Oliver and it's mostly boring stuff that is pretty much characterized as "This guy IS AN IDIOT!" and "They're LOSING" and whatnot. It seems like the equivalent of those "Charlie Kirk owns feminists with FACTS and LOGIC". If you go t…

Gary Marcus is a terrific self-promoter and grifter, and there are very large audiences for that sort of stuff. It's simple.

He does more than dunks though, I don't think that's really fair to him. He's trying to position himself as a public intellectual and expert.

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#17

Post by twoodfin »

fairity wrote: post #14

Words are cheap. I really wish there was a way to incentivize authors like this to put their money where their mouth is, before seeking attention for their ideas.

I’m guessing it’s hard to go short OpenAI without also going short a bunch of other companies riding the AI wave that aren’t led by Sam Altman?

Would love to hear how that could work.

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#18

Post by throwitaway222 »

zelag wrote: post #9
hiddencost wrote: post #2

Why. Do. We. Keep. Posting. Gary. Marcus. He's been writing variants of this kind of thing for decades and he's always been wrong.

Gary Marcus is not the only one that has been critical of Sam Altman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0K4XPu3Qhg There's many other people but most of them are independent. It is glaringly obvious now most of the media outlets are afraid to ask the tough questions.

Here is a more fun one to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrgEZ8FeZEc

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#19

Post by ccapitalK »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #11
hiddencost wrote: post #2

Why. Do. We. Keep. Posting. Gary. Marcus. He's been writing variants of this kind of thing for decades and he's always been wrong.

I'm not a particularly big Gary Marcus fan, but I'm even less of a fan of the term "always". I browsed back looking for posts of his that most obviously made predictions, and "GPT-5… now arriving Gate 8, Gate 9, Gate 10" make a few very clear predictions and was absolutely correct [0] about them. This was in June 2024, and Marcus claims two major predictions: - "As of today, I am more confident than ever that GPT-5 w…

He also posted https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/lets-be-honest-generative-..., which got flagged as low effort spam about 30 minutes ago. https://news.ycombinator.com./item?id=46605587

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#20

Post by TSiege »

arjie wrote: post #6

Do people actually find this kind of dunk content interesting? It's super popular but I wonder if people find it insightful or entertaining. I watched a little of Stephen Colbert and John Oliver and it's mostly boring stuff that is pretty much characterized as "This guy IS AN IDIOT!" and "They're LOSING" and whatnot. It seems like the equivalent of those "Charlie Kirk owns feminists with FACTS and LOGIC". If you go t…

You're conflating Charlie Kirk trying to foment anger and humiliate random non-public figures to one of the most public and powerful person in the tech industry.

Sam has made bombastic claims that were key to his success along with his shrewdness in the business and tech world. Reporting on this and looking at how his public and private profile have changed are an important part of an open and free society as it helps the general public understand the people and forces shaping their world.

Is this particular article important in the grand scheme of things ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But I wouldn't throw the entire genre out

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