The Contradictions of Sam Altman • Hacker News Board

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#111

Post by startupsfail » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:31 PM UTC

iibarea wrote: post #87

There's tons of extremely effective marketing around who this guy is, what he stands for - and so I'd instead look at what he's done. He took a non-profit intended to offset the commercial motives driving AI development, and turned it into a for profit closely tied to Microsoft. I think he's an extremely shrewd executive and salesman, but nothing he's done suggests any altruistic motivations - that part always seems…

What I’m afraid of is that he and Ilya are not as good and smart as they paint themselves.

And that a lot of key people had left (i.e. to Anthropic). And that by pure inertia they have GPT-5 on their hands and not much control over where this technology is going.

I can’t tell for certain, but it does look like one of their corner pieces, the ChatGPT system prompt which sits at the funnel of the data collection had degraded significantly from the previous version. Had the person that was the key to the previous design left? Or it no longer matters?

One could argue that OpenAI is very hot and everyone would want to work there. But a lot of newcomers only create more pressure for the key people. And then there is the inevitable leakage problem.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#112

Post by jeremyjh » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:31 PM UTC

cowl wrote: post #107

beebmam wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And then Russia invades Ukraine and people change their minds about what is important, and what is possible.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#113

Post by mustacheemperor » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:31 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #71

poopypoopington wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard Altman (on the Lex Friedman podcast) and Sundar Pichai (on the Hard Fork podcast) say things to this degree. The thing that OpenAI really managed to crack was building a great product in ChatGPT and finding a good product market fit for LLMs.

Well sure, but there still aren’t any other LLMs at the level of GPT3/3.5 let alone GPT-4. GPT3.5 just using the API returns fantastic results even without the ChatGPT interface (which isn’t terribly hard to replicate, and others have using the API). There are dozens if not hundreds of companies that could’ve done something profound like ChatGPT if they had full access to GPT3/3.5. And honestly, OpenAI stumbled a lot…

Hm, I wonder how much of the API’s performance is related to training/finetuning done by OpenAI planned towards the ChatGPT product. I think the RLHF is partly product design and partly engineering.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#114

Post by 29athrowaway » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:33 PM UTC

Should we also talk about the contradictions of WSJ?

The only way to never contradict yourself is to never say anything.

Now, is AI the right work area to "move fast and break things"? no.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#115

Post by TechnicolorByte » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:33 PM UTC

iibarea wrote: post #87

There's tons of extremely effective marketing around who this guy is, what he stands for - and so I'd instead look at what he's done. He took a non-profit intended to offset the commercial motives driving AI development, and turned it into a for profit closely tied to Microsoft. I think he's an extremely shrewd executive and salesman, but nothing he's done suggests any altruistic motivations - that part always seems…

It’s a capped-profit structure where excess profit will supposedly go back to the no-profit side. From a recent NYTimes article [1]:

> But these profits are capped, and any additional revenue will be pumped back into the OpenAI nonprofit that was founded back in 2015.

> His grand idea is that OpenAI will capture much of the world’s wealth through the creation of A.G.I. and then redistribute this wealth to the people. In Napa, as we sat chatting beside the lake at the heart of his ranch, he tossed out several figures — $100 billion, $1 trillion, $100 trillion.

How believable that is, who knows.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/sam-altman-ope...

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#116

Post by brookst » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:34 PM UTC

ryanSrich wrote: post #109

brookst wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He was wealthy before and has other means to parlay openai to further wealth.

You’re doing the “only the true messiah would deny his divinity” argument — if he was going to profit, that’s bad. If he’s not going to profit, obviously he’s lying and is going to profit, so that’s bad.

IMO arguments are only meaningful if they can be falsified. Your argument can’t be falsified because you’re using a lack of evidence as proof.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#117

Post by jeremyjh » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

pbw wrote: post #42

mongol wrote: post #9

How did he become so rich? His Wikipedia page does not have much details on this.

I don't have the source, it was a video interview, but Sam said he has personally invested in around 400 startups. And it says here he employs "a couple of dozen people" to manage his investment and homes. At that scale I think you yourself basically are a venture capital firm.

You are just describing a rich person, not how he became rich.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#118

Post by cowl » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #112

cowl wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And then Russia invades Ukraine and people change their minds about what is important, and what is possible.

But that's my point. If their opposition was not on principle but based on the naive Idea that "we will live in peace and harmony", I really am afraid what other naive principles are in the bases of their work and what safeguards are being set in place for the AIs.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#119

Post by NickBusey » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

dclowd9901 wrote: post #91

Are there any employees of OpenAI around? I had a question: Does anyone in the office stop to contemplate the ramifications of developing technology that will likely put most people out of a job, which will have a whole host of knock-on effects?

Self checkout machines put people out of a job.

Cars put stable boys out of jobs.

Light bulbs put candlemakers out of jobs.

Are the people who made them also morally culpable?

Let’s just make no progress ever in the name of employment I guess. /s

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#120

Post by G_z9 » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:41 PM UTC

TechnicolorByte wrote: post #115

iibarea wrote: post #87

There's tons of extremely effective marketing around who this guy is, what he stands for - and so I'd instead look at what he's done. He took a non-profit intended to offset the commercial motives driving AI development, and turned it into a for profit closely tied to Microsoft. I think he's an extremely shrewd executive and salesman, but nothing he's done suggests any altruistic motivations - that part always seems…

It’s a capped-profit structure where excess profit will supposedly go back to the no-profit side. From a recent NYTimes article [1]: > But these profits are capped, and any additional revenue will be pumped back into the OpenAI nonprofit that was founded back in 2015. > His grand idea is that OpenAI will capture much of the world’s wealth through the creation of A.G.I. and then redistribute this wealth to the people.…

This is ducking insane. How are people not up in arms about this? Imagine if the guy who invented recombinant insulin stated publicly that he intended to capture the entire medical sector and then use the money and power to reshape society by distributing wealth as he saw fit. That’s ducking insane and dangerous. This guy has lost his fucking mind and needs to be stopped.