Live data from Hacker News

Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?

newyorker.com

171–180 of 1001 posts

Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?

#172
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for coming on HN and offering to answer questions.[a] This is a fantastic piece, very timely, evidently well-researched, and also well-written. Judging by the little that I know, it's accurate. Thank you for doing the work and sharing it with the world. OpenAI may be in a more tenuous competitive position than many people realize. Recent anecdotal evidence suggests the company has lost its lead in the AI ra…

Many of us prefer OpenAI's Codex, because we think it's a better product. No comment on the CEO: I just find the product superior in everything but UI/UX and conversation. It's better at quality code.

[flagged]

Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?

#173

> Amodei, in one of his early notes, recalled pressing Brockman on his priorities and Brockman replying that he wanted “money and power.” Brockman disputes this. His diary entries from this time suggest conflicting instincts. One reads, “Happy to not become rich on this, so long as no one else is.” In another, he asks, “So what do I really want?” Among his answers is “Financially what will take me to $1B.” I can't im…

Sociopaths don't have much going for them in life other than winning status games.

Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give more details? It wouldn't particularly surprise me if Sam Altman were racist, but I'm curious what the specific incident you observed was.

Yes, but first I want to be very clear on some things. 1. I could have hidden my identify behind a throwaway. I did not feel that would be appropriate when making this calim. 2. I am not looking for anything, literally at all. Any follow ups for blogs; anything that would benefit I will not answer. 3. This is NOT a new account, I am very easy to find; I am 6'1 140lbs I was working for a company called NationBuilder a…

Note: To all the downvotes; I did this publicly and not anon for a reason, if you will do the same I am more than willing to provide evidence for all of these claims as long as its done publicly and in the open.

Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?

#176
A bit of a feeling of "so what" here. Maybe he's less trustworthy than some. We have people of X trustworthiness running the government, crypto exchanges, a certain space exploration and satellite company, social media companies, and so on. We know their trustworthiness. Isn't the real issue how to cope?

Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?

#177

A bit of a feeling of "so what" here. Maybe he's less trustworthy than some. We have people of X trustworthiness running the government, crypto exchanges, a certain space exploration and satellite company, social media companies, and so on. We know their trustworthiness. Isn't the real issue how to cope?

Your point is that it's ok he's untrustworthy because lots of people in power are?

Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?

#178
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout my life, what colleagues/friends are unwilling to remark plainly on has been the most telling factor of someone’s character to me.

This can be true I suppose, but equally I have a few friends who practically play characters as if they've resigned themselves to a role in a sitcom. For instance: one of my friends is late to just about everything and treats everyone as if we are on-call. We plainly note this repeatedly, the friend is, I hope, equally frustrated and embarrassed by it, and in spite of this nothing changes. This is obviously a critica…

I have been in or next to a number of social circles with such missing stairs, where for various reasons people in the groups have decided to not directly acknowledge certain Facts that are known about some members, because it would involve them confronting their hypocrisy.

Someone cheating regularly on their partner, flagrant substance use problems, controlling people who ostracize anyone who doesn't agree with their sometimes insane perspectives...

People will go along with quite a lot to avoid friction, especially as they get older and picking up new social circles becomes higher cost.

It's possibly the most telling thing, when you see what people say is a hard line versus how they actually respond to it.

Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?

#179
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us prefer OpenAI's Codex, because we think it's a better product. No comment on the CEO: I just find the product superior in everything but UI/UX and conversation. It's better at quality code.

Who is “us”? It does seem that some scientists prefer Codex for its math capabilities but when it comes to general frontend and backend construction, Claude Code is just as good and possibly made better with its extensive Skills library. Both codex and Claude code fail when it comes to extremely sophisticated programming for distributed systems

I've found claude startlingly good at debugging race conditions and other multithreading issues though.
Post reply on HN