The Contradictions of Sam Altman • Hacker News Board

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#131

Post by sebzim4500 » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:46 PM UTC

startupsfail wrote: post #111

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 de…

I'm sure they are both pretty smart, but if anything that makes their apparent monopoly more concerning.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#132

Post by sacnoradhq » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:46 PM UTC

Sama He stuck to the 99.9% gamble of setting money on fire that were startups and navigated to the big time(tm).

Also, he helped lift Clerky, Triplebyte, YC, and may others pre, during, and post Loopt.

Not many people (or no one) "deserves" success, but Sama brings a healthy dose of goodwill wherever he goes.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#133

Post by sebzim4500 » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:47 PM UTC

Jasper_ wrote: post #123

TechnicolorByte wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Returns are capped at 100x their initial investment, which, you know, is not that big of a cap. VCs would go crazy for a 100x return. Most companies, even unicorns, don't get there. They're justifying it by saying AGI is so stupidly big that OpenAI will see 100000x returns if uncapped. So, you know, standard FOMO tactics. [0] https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp

I mean, presumably they are at like 30x already?

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#134

Post by tsunamifury » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:47 PM UTC

G_z9 wrote: post #120

TechnicolorByte wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m sorry your AI keyboard didn’t like your sentiment. Words have been changed to reduce your vulgarity. Thankyou for your human node input.

On a serious note I think you are right. In private the ideology of him and his mentor Theil is a lot more… elite. Their think tank once said “of all the people in the world there are probably only 10,000 unique and valuable characters. The rest of us are copies.”

I’m not going to criticize that because it might be a valid perspective but filter it through that kind of power. I don’t love that kind of thinking driving such a powerful technology.

I am so sad that Silicon Valley started out as a place to elevate humanity and ended with a bunch of tech elites who see the rest of the world generally as a waste of space. They claim fervently otherwise but at this point it seems to be a very thin veneer.

The obvious example being GPT was not built to credit or give attribution to its contributors. It is a vision of the world where everything is stolen from all of us and put in Sam Altmans hands because he’s… better or Something.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#135

Post by FormerBandmate » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:47 PM UTC

startupsfail wrote: post #111

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 de…

You can use Anthropic’s chatbot in Quora’s Poe app. Right now it isn’t as good as Bing or ChatGPT. Misses some basic logic things, and the “As an AI language model” BS still stops it from doing fun things like making Jesus rap battle Gus Fring (that was like a month ago, someone in the replies got it to do that so I’ll have to check it out again). I’d have to see how it is at writing PowerPoints but idk

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#136

Post by iibarea » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:48 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.…

Again, this is unbelievably good marketing - and good sales when pitching VCs. Plus it's a nice reworking of the very for profit nonprofit model (see also FTX). But in terms of actual reality openAI is mostly succeeding by being more reckless and more aggressively commercial than the other players in this space, and is in no meaningful way a nonprofit any longer.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#137

Post by maxbond » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:48 PM UTC

latency-guy2 wrote: post #99

jjulius wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then following up with whatever your answer is: Why are you picking and choosing which fictions are reasonable? This is arguing in bad faith. You don't care what their answer will be, you have decided that they are absolutely picking and choosing, and will still accuse them of as much even if their answer to your first question is, "Yes".

This isn't an argument in the first place buddy. You're right that I don't care, because it has already been decided that Orwell is representing the future if things go "The Wrong Way (tm)", buy 1984 at Amazon for $24.99, world's best selling book. Or more succinctly to OP, "The Capitalist Way (tm)".

It's okay to decide that something isn't worth arguing against, and to spend your time in a way you find more productive.

Having articulated an argument (which you absolutely did), it's not okay to try to retcon that you were just trolling and everyone else is the fool for having taken you seriously.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#138

Post by bmitc » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:49 PM UTC

ftxbro wrote: post #41

mongol wrote: post #9

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

Paul Graham is his Les Wexner. "Sam Altman, the co-founder of Loopt, had just finished his sophomore year when we funded them, and Loopt is probably the most promising of all the startups we've funded so far. But Sam Altman is a very unusual guy. Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking 'Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19.'" "Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs…

I feel I'd take every word of that with a massive grain of salt. It reeks of cult of personality.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#139

Post by dragonelite » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:49 PM UTC

victor106 wrote: post #126

> OpenAI and Microsoft also created a joint safety board, which includes Mr. Altman and Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott, that has the power to roll back Microsoft and OpenAI product releases if they are deemed too dangerous. what a joke. find me one instance where the ceo of a company picked public interest/safety over profits when there was no regulatory oversight?

Do people really think AI will go haywire like in the Hollywood movies?

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#140

Post by btown » Sat, Apr 01, 2023, 7:49 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.…

I'm sure he believes that at such a time when OpenAI creates AGI, all the company's investors' profit caps will have been passed (or will immediately be passed), and thus he will have removed all incentives for anyone at the company - including himself - to keep it from the world.

But there are so, so many incentives other than equity that come into play. Pride, well-meaning fear of proliferation, national security concerns, non-profit-related but still-binding contractual obligations... all can contribute to OpenAI wanting to keep control of their creations even if they have no specific financial incentive to do so.

Whether that level of control is good or bad is a much longer conversation, of course.