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Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

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Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#181

Post by elAhmo »

belligeront wrote: post #128

I don’t have a strong opinion on the events of the past several days. But a lot of the behavior I’ve seen on twitter from Open AI employees, some led by Sam, feels very cult like: posting in all lower case, the heart emojis, rumors of employees calling each other in the middle of the night to pressure people to sign letters supporting Sam. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong of this behavior. It is good to like yo…

I found those posts extremely weird, the emojis and lowercase tweets and screenshots of Notes. I would imagine people who were/are in charge of a company on the fast track to being worth hundreds of billions / trillion USD would be a bit more serious, but here they are, quoting each other tweets with heart emojis.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#182

Post by ignoramous »

imjonse wrote: post #73
al_borland wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe this was the kind of environment he was cultivating at OpenAI if 95% of the staff were ready to follow him out the door. I've worked for the type of people you mention and no one followed them when they leave. 95% threatening to leave in this case is hard to ignore.

I can believe the staff likes or even loves him, but the following him part was mostly because of money/shares and because they know he's influential and well connected to people with money. And peer pressure may have had a part in that letter signing. You don't want to be on the side of the losers if Altman gets his way.

Memetic thinking aside, Ilya signing that letter might have sealed it for them. Though, working for someone as formidable as sama in itself is a great pull, nevertheless.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#183

Post by synergy20 »

al_borland wrote: post #44
fvdessen wrote: post #9

I've had the 'chance' to work with some deeply manipulative persons in the past, the kind who goes to your desk and say 'Hey, I noticed you started to speak to X again, and your performance seems to suffer as a result", where X is a friendly colleague that opposed some plan of that person. It is incredibly difficult to keep those people in check as all that behaviour is off the record and impossible to prove. When pe…

I find it hard to believe this was the kind of environment he was cultivating at OpenAI if 95% of the staff were ready to follow him out the door. I've worked for the type of people you mention and no one followed them when they leave. 95% threatening to leave in this case is hard to ignore.

I feel the same way, however.

The 95% will lose a huge chunk of money if Sam leaves, at least their fortune are all in serious jeopardy. So, money might have played a bigger role here.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#184

Post by [deleted] »

Solvency wrote: post #31
bananapub wrote: post #21

it is absolutely fascinating how in all the threads about him, there's all these huge fans, and some people who are apparently highly connected, but no one ever seems to discuss why he has these fancy jobs, why he left others, and why is apparently so well regarded?

It's strangely paradoxical. Sam has zero charisma. Zero looks. No technical ability. He's not a storyteller. He's not a hype man. He comes off as a mildly surly sloth when he talks. His actual pre-OpenAI achievements from a product perspective are a joke. But he was nevertheless "there" for YC and "there" in OpenAI, and a bunch of money was raised, and he's successfully managed to get all spotlights on him at all tim…

[deleted]

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#185

Post by bhouston »

hef19898 wrote: post #171
bhouston wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core FTX crypto exchange business was very profitable. But Alameda wasn't. Also everyone at FTX was committing fraud.

Based on what financial statements do we know FTX was profitable? Also, the stole customer funds.

> Based on what financial statements do we know FTX was profitable?

The crypto-exchange part I have read many times it was profitable. Running an exchange is a profitable endeavour as you just take a cut of all transactions. As long as you control your costs it is a money printer.

The rest of FTX was full of fraud and Alameda was a money sink via unprofitable speculation. Also likely helping laundry money as well via poor KYC.

Running an exchange is a great business though if you have the volume, doesn't matter if it is crypto or futures or stocks.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#186

Post by Clubber »

mandmandam wrote: post #131
93po wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

their long term project doesn't save or store retina patterns in any way. they store of a hash of it that is mathematically impossible to reverse. it's clear you wildly misunderstand how this works, i would encourage you to go learn more. i'd also welcome you to explain how the crypto side of it is bad in comparison to other uses of blockchains

I don't know what the gaps in your knowledge are to not see Worldcoin as a scam. And I'm not being paid to find out. But it's a fuckin scam. It's exploitative, and sleazy as fuck. It uses crappy blockchain tech, the orbs are proprietary, and you really ought to think twice before condescending at people who try to help you out on this.

I hear NFT's are gonna really hit soon....

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#187

Post by sam0x17 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #163
93po wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's exactly one of the biggest use cases for WC. the internet needs this and will need it 100x more in a few years

Why does the internet "need" this? Anonymity and pseudonymity are features, not bugs of the internet. Eliminating them will supercharge surveillance and government/corporate control.

The short answer is a lot of potentially useful decentralized protocols completely buckle under the weight of Sybil attacks, so if Sybil attacks were impossible, there is a whole lot more that could be built

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#188

Post by BryantD »

sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: post #12

Yeah, the craziest thing for me to come out of this was how everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent". Poor poor sam altman, he's a victim. He comes across as a sleazebag to me.

I don’t think it was everyone, I think there were just some loud voices. I also attribute that to human nature rather than anything organized. I’ve made a few Altman-skeptical comments and they generally got upvotes rather than getting flagged into oblivion; this tends to indicate there wasn’t premeditated astroturfing.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#189

Post by JumpCrisscross »

al_borland wrote: post #44
fvdessen wrote: post #9

I've had the 'chance' to work with some deeply manipulative persons in the past, the kind who goes to your desk and say 'Hey, I noticed you started to speak to X again, and your performance seems to suffer as a result", where X is a friendly colleague that opposed some plan of that person. It is incredibly difficult to keep those people in check as all that behaviour is off the record and impossible to prove. When pe…

I find it hard to believe this was the kind of environment he was cultivating at OpenAI if 95% of the staff were ready to follow him out the door. I've worked for the type of people you mention and no one followed them when they leave. 95% threatening to leave in this case is hard to ignore.

> 95% threatening to leave

Have you never had that employee or colleague who threatens to leave once a year? Curiously around pay negotiations?

Nobody joined Microsoft. Nobody left. Two people were fired. Lots of threats were made, every one magically leaked within minutes to Twitter.

Nobody followed anyone anywhere. Instead we saw $81bn vaporise, and the people who stood to gain from it panic and throw their weight around.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#190

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

dnissley wrote: post #102
imjonse wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't obviously. But since those people were ready to jump ship to Microsoft, I am pretty sure they care more about their own careers than 'creating AGI that benefits humanity as a whole in the first place'

Didn't most sign the letter before they knew they had any offer to join Microsoft in any capacity? Also maybe I'm just too risk averse but if I were concerned about money I wouldn't be putting my name on such a list. Although at some point past 50% it would feel pretty safe because what are they going to do, fire everyone?

> Didn't most sign the letter before they knew they had any offer to join Microsoft in any capacity?

I very much doubt it.

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