Live data from Hacker News

The Contradictions of Sam Altman

wsj.com

101–110 of 564 posts

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#102
post #14
post #7

I believe you can't, at the same time, accuse OpenAI of benefitting of ideas mostly invented elsewhere, and also claim that they are in a predominant position. It does not make any sense, and they are not naturally positioned for a monopoly. Just other companies have to move their asses.

I'm a fan of OpenAI, but this is nonsense. All of human existence is mostly other people's ideas. Among a ridiculously huge list of other things, OpenAI benefits from the mountains of labor that made scalable neural networks possible. Have they had their own good ideas? Definitely. Are they benefitting of ideas mostly invented elsewhere? Also Definitely, just like everybody else.

> OpenAI benefits from the mountains of labor ...

Can't you say the same about Google? Google lives from the labor of others.

Not entering into the debate if this is ethically or not just saying that OpenAI is not much different. When photo services such as Google Photos recognize the Eiffer Tower in Paris they are using images from others.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#103
post #82
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a good comparison. And once again tech enthusiasts are confused and outraged that the product people are getting credit for tech they didn’t invent. Once again missing the forest that people buy products, not tech.

There’s an awful lot of judgement, engineering and technique that goes into a really well thought out product. It’s often deeply underestimated, and culture makes a huge difference in execution. Bing/Sydney came out after ChatGPT, based on exactly the same tech, but was hot garbage.

It’s interesting to see the ad implementation, I recall some predictions that Microsoft would be particularly apt at finding a way to integrate advertising organically. Instead it just seems to have made the bot more stupid because sponsored products are forced into its recommendations.

I’ve gone back to just using the GPT API, unless I absolutely need to search the internet or information after 2021 for some reason.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#104
post #82
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a good comparison. And once again tech enthusiasts are confused and outraged that the product people are getting credit for tech they didn’t invent. Once again missing the forest that people buy products, not tech.

There’s an awful lot of judgement, engineering and technique that goes into a really well thought out product. It’s often deeply underestimated, and culture makes a huge difference in execution. Bing/Sydney came out after ChatGPT, based on exactly the same tech, but was hot garbage.

I don’t know, my family talks almost daily about how amazing bing chat is. The Sydney eta was kind of crazy, but the core product seems to be doing well.

It is definitely solving a different problem than chatgpt though, and maybe a less inspiring problem. Chatgpt is like an open world game where you can do anything; Bing chat is just a point solution for the vicious spiral of SEO and Google’s profit motive that rendered search results and web pages so useless.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#105

Perhaps if more CEOs / controlling shareholders were criminally liable for damage caused by their products, like the Sackler family, they wouldn't be so gung-ho.

What a ridiculous take and a slippery slope. Should car manufacturers be liable for drunk drivers? Should kitchen knife manufacturers be responsible for stabbings? Your idea is great if you want your country to be left behind entirely in innovation.

Worth reminding that the slippery slope argument is not a valid argument at all.

As with standard slippery slope reasoning, you jump to the most extreme interpretation. Yet reality shows us that you cannot, in fact, boil a frog, because at some point it just gets too fucking hot.

Should car manufacturers be liable for drunk drivers? Maybe, if they include a space in their vehicle specifically to store and serve alcohol.

Should kitchen knife manufacturers be responsible for stabbings? No. But no reasonable person would ever suggest they should. I might remind you also that “reasonable standard” is a legal concept.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#106
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop spreading FUD and unsubstantiated rumours all over this thread

It would be irresponsible for intelligence agencies NOT to involve themselves in AI. LLMs have the capabilities to catalyze economic shockwaves on the same magnitude of the internet itself. Notice how OpenAI is open to many Western friendly countries but not certain competitive challengers? https://platform.openai.com/docs/supported-countries

Out of the BRICS, Brazil, India, and South Africa are there. Russia and China aren’t, but that’s not really an issue of “competitive challengers” so much as dictatorships who are invading or threatening to invade democracies

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#107
post #70
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe you can't, at the same time, accuse OpenAI of benefitting of ideas mostly invented elsewhere, and also claim that they are in a predominant position. There used to be a team at Google called Google Brain and they all left to go to OpenAI after the employee protests against taking military AI contracts in 2018. Now Microsoft has those contracts and funneled $10B to OpenAI from the CIA. OK that's a little b…

Many of those employees have changed their minds about military contracts in this new cold war era.

If I'm not mistaken their opposition was on principle not whether it was needed or not. So the fact that we are in a new cold war era does not change that Equation. The principle is still the same. The only way for this "change of mind" is if their opposition was due to "it's not needed because US has no rivals". Or what most probably happened, they realised that if they want to keep workign on this field there is no escape from those kind of implications and They don't have the big bad wolf Google to blame anymore.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#108
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undoubtedly OpenAI already has some very close ties and/or contracts with the DoD.

Any evidence for this, or are you just assuming that it's the case?

To me it overstates what is achieved. This isn't AGI. Unsure how much the government would care about this.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#109
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to believe that Sam doesn't have equity in OpenAI. It must be some 4D-chess-style ownership structure, which I'm guessing is for tax avoidance.

There’s plenty of evidence that he has no equity. I’d love to see contradictory evidence, but without that, just refusing to believe things based on intuition isn’t great.

Why is that not great? It makes absolutely zero sense for him to have no equity, or at least some agreement in place that equity is coming. Or some other terms that essentially amount to equity. You don’t need evidence to be skeptical of the situation.
Post reply on HN