Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does everyone else suffer? We’re getting subsidized compute.
Look around at the country right now
These are the kind of hot takes Bluesky needs to hear. And lets be honest you already have an account there.
Sam Altman's Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny Ahead of OpenAI's IPO
101–110 of 171 posts
Re: Sam Altman's Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny Ahead of OpenAI's IPO
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personal vendettas between the world's most powerful psychopaths playing out in the stock market while everyone else suffers does seem like the current meta. So it makes sense.
I'm all for it, let them attack each other and hopefully the backlash will elect a labor President to turn the final screws on knee capping big tech for the next 50 years.
Democrats being only slightly less beholden to corporate interests and functioning as controlled opposition is exactly how we've gotten to the point we're at. I'd like to be optimistic and say that the backlash from the second Trump catastrophe will be a full 8 years of simmering authoritarianism rather than the current rolling boil, but that wasn't even true after 2020. I think media saturation has gotten so strong that people are just so much easier to lead around by the nose. For example look at how many continuing hardcore Trump supporters there still are, even in the face of appalling abject failures like his choosing to simply give away the Strait of Hormuz of Iran. They've got ever-shifting rationalizations streaming into their brains 24/7.
Re: Sam Altman's Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny Ahead of OpenAI's IPO
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Elizabeth Lopatto at The Verge makes a strong case we _do_ have proof that Musk is actively gathering and throwing fuel on the fire: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/929129/s... > But the thing is, Molo doesn’t actually have to be good at this job, because the point of this trial isn’t to win — though I’m sure Musk wouldn’t mind a win. The point is to punish Altman, Brockman, and OpenAI. Musk has d…
Oh sure, the trial is maybe 5% a Hail Mary and 95% about distracting and disrupting OpenAI. I read "behind this" to mean more-clandestine moves, e.g. planting stories, conducting and leaking oppo, amplifying negative media on X, et cetera .
It does seem like there is a ton of negative PR and sentiment on social media (including HN) about anything Altman and even Dario do. Like, way more than warranted. It looks more and more like a coordinated campaign, a la https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Elon even explicitly threatened the OpenAI guys that they would be "the most hated" people on earth, and given what we've seen him do with Twitter, I strongly suspect there indeed is a submarine with Elon at the periscope.
Altman may be getting the brunt of the AI backlash, but the impact of AI is still extremely preliminary, and it will happen regardless of anything he does. As you mentioned, it doesn't help that these guys are telling the world AI will disrupt all the jobs but... at this point, I think they're just being honest.
As shifty as Altman is, I wonder how he gets more hate than Elon, who has objectively done way more concrete damage to the world.
Re: Sam Altman's Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny Ahead of OpenAI's IPO
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm all for it, let them attack each other and hopefully the backlash will elect a labor President to turn the final screws on knee capping big tech for the next 50 years.
How do you knee cap big tech when other countries continue to push forward with it?
Why did we knee cap CIA/NSA/DOD from nominally operating on Americans when the Soviet Union continued to push forward with it?
For what it's worth, our once-and-(hopefully)-future allies the European Union are already on board with reigning in the surveillance industry (leading by example, even). So your question is more like how can we constrain our domestic technological authoritarians when China continues to embrace theirs. And the answer is that it's not a "how". The "how" is straightforwardly enforcing longstanding concepts like personal information, antitrust bundling, unauthorized access (backdoors in sold products), etc. So your question comes down to more of a why, and the why is because it is in line with our values based around individual liberty.
Re: Sam Altman's Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny Ahead of OpenAI's IPO
#105The thesis is as follows: OpenAI receives funds as a non-profit. Some of those funds are redirected to for profit ventures. Critically, the GM (Altman) of the nonprofit owns shares of the for-profit ventures, that OpenAI funds were redirected into. A regular company could and does invest in any company even when there's a conflict, as long as the conflict is disclosed and the Board votes in favor of it. There's no cr…
Doesn't Sam Altman famously not own OpenAI? His whole arrangement is so shady.
So a non-profit can absolute invest in or own a for-profit subsidary. This is extremely common. The idea is that the for-profit returns will flow back to the non-profit and remain dedicated to the non-profit mission.
Where things get really shady and run the risk of IRS violations is when the leadership of the non-profit has a seperate for profit stake in the subsidary.
Re: Sam Altman's Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny Ahead of OpenAI's IPO
#106I am sure that nothing illegal was done here. But the fact that OpenAI was a nonprofit and then suddenly became a for-profit is definitely something that does not feel right. I am 100% sure that it is all legal and such, but we have this mental model that “nonprofits are the good guys, run by people who just want to help humanity and nothing else.” But that is not true, and probably never was.
could not agree with this take more. it feels like a bait and switch, but not the kind that makes me want to take sharpie to cardboard. it’s just… weird. and i don’t even necessarily think it’s “bad”… it’s just a weird unforced error because openai never “had” to be nonprofit, but they chose that path only to abandon it. just strange. and it makes all their internal docs (especially brockman’s diary, which, as an aside: how the fuck did this shit come up in discovery, and what kind of idiot would say the shit he said in a diary that can come up in discovery like this? i know he is a very smart man, which is what makes it extra hilarious.). but yeah even with how “bad” the various quotes look i’m still mostly on the side of this all being a “nothing-burger”…
Re: Sam Altman's Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny Ahead of OpenAI's IPO
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing to do with Altman v Musk. That would be an AI boom that would be going full steam ahead without either of them.
Almost no one in the country is feeling a boom. Everyone is feeling the consequences of their greed and recklessness.
AI is the only thing keeping the S&P afloat. You don't want to see what it would look like when all pensions numbers start going down. So far it's fake numbers from inflation and the value is decreasing dramatically, but at least they still go up.
Re: Sam Altman's Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny Ahead of OpenAI's IPO
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... I still kind of want to try to believe he's not. Asking genuinely - why?
What if it's actually super-intelligence and a human aligned visionary is at the helm. The good case is very good.
I mean what if he's actually the second coming of Christ. We can make up "what if"s all day but it's meaningless to even discuss them if you don't have a shred of evidence to support the claim.
Re: Sam Altman's Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny Ahead of OpenAI's IPO
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't Sam Altman famously not own OpenAI? His whole arrangement is so shady.
Is there a more benign explanation for these things? Altman is undeniably famously cagey and political but despite most of the tech and non-tech worlds at this point seeing him as some kind of con artist, I still kind of want to try to believe he's not. No doubt some of OpenAI's founding principles like "stop + assist if a competitor gets to AGI first" are likely flying out the window, perhaps in part due to him and…
His own sister accused him of sexual assault.
He was fired from his first startup.
He was abruptly fired from ycombinator in shady circumstances.
He was accused by the OpenAI board of lying to them, ousted, and somehow managed to regain control.
He took OpenAI from being a non-profit to a for-profit, with obvious benefits to whoever controls it.
He was massively misleading about the capabilities of his product and predicted AGI within years.
At some point the pattern of all these events should have some weight in your judgement of him, no?
Re: Sam Altman's Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny Ahead of OpenAI's IPO
#110Unfortunately whatever scrutiny Sam Altman comes under can be waved away with Trump's magic wand.