Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Contradictions of Sam Altman

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 564 posts

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#191

Post by syzarian »

dantheman wrote: post #178
DubiousPusher wrote: post #169

Stop asking the market to look after collective interest. This is the job of the government. The ultimate effect of virtue wanking CEOs and corporate governance is to deceive people into thinking democracy is something that can be achieved by for profit organizations and that they can forsake the formal binding of collective interest through law. It's nice if people are nice but it is not a bulwark of the collective…

In general governments have done far more harm to individuals than anyone in the market. The job of the government is to protect your individual rights not the collective interest.

The absence of government just leads to a situation in which some group takes control of a given area. In effect government will then exist again. During the absence of government there will be chaos and rampant crime.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#192

Post by namaria »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #67
whitepoplar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to believe that Sam doesn't have equity in OpenAI. It must be some 4D-chess-style ownership structure, which I'm guessing is for tax avoidance.

> It must be some 4D-chess-style ownership structure, which I'm guessing is for tax avoidance. How would this even work? If only I got a dollar for someone suggesting that there are Magic ways to avoid tax…”they just write it off!”

Magic is just a word for things we don't understand. As a poor wage slave sap, I'm 100% sure the world is run by magic guilds, i.e. a bunch of powerful people conspiring stuff I could never fathom. Whatever gets to my eyes and ears has been approved for public disclosure. I don't know shit, everything is magic to me. I kinda know how to survive. So far.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#193

Post by clarkmoody »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #169

Stop asking the market to look after collective interest. This is the job of the government. The ultimate effect of virtue wanking CEOs and corporate governance is to deceive people into thinking democracy is something that can be achieved by for profit organizations and that they can forsake the formal binding of collective interest through law. It's nice if people are nice but it is not a bulwark of the collective…

The third way is to build AI technology that empowers the individual against state and corporate power alike. Democracy got us here. It cannot get us out.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#194

Post by slickdork »

the_doctah wrote: post #143
seattle_spring wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of it seems to come from /r/conspiracy, which unsurprisingly has a lot of overlap with another subreddit that starts with /r/cons*

I'd love to go through all the things Liberals labeled a conspiracy in the last 5 years that actually became true, but I don't have that kind of time today

I'd settle for three examples with sources.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#195

Post by quickthrower2 »

sampo wrote: post #39
efficientsticks wrote: post #28

> The goal, the company said, was to avoid a race toward building dangerous AI systems fueled by competition and instead prioritize the safety of humanity. > “You want to be there first and you want to be setting the norms,” he said. “That’s part of the reason why speed is a moral and ethical thing here.” Clearly having either not learned or ignored the lessons from Black Mirror and 1984, which is that others will co…

> lessons from Black Mirror and 1984 Those are works of fiction.

And works of prediction.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#196

Post by dilap »

bmitc wrote: post #138
ftxbro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did take it with a huge grain of salt (and an eye-roll) reading it years ago. However, given where sama and OpenAI are today, perhaps pg was right all along!

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#197

Post by boeingUH60 »

jackblemming wrote: post #177
sacnoradhq wrote: post #132

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.

Are you kidding? He had one startup that was more or less a flop, then for some reason was appointed to a high position at y combinator, got lucky allocating capital (plenty of idiots can and have gotten lucky or were at the right place at the right time) and now is the CEO of OpenAI. This man is the definition of it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and that’s not a good thing.

Altman befriended Paul Graham, and his life blossomed…

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#198

Post by dmix »

mimd wrote: post #186

He's begging for regulatory capture. "I can destroy the world but I won't. My competitor's will, so regulate them." A shrewd plan considering he's not offering something beyond what another company with a large nvidia cluster could offer.

The odds that is the end game of the AI ethics movement is pretty likely: A mega-monopoly AI firm with a wall of gov policy that will cripple any upstart who can't jump through "safety" hoops written for and by the parent company. So any talented dev who wants to do great AI work either has to work for parent company or build a startup designed to get acquired by them (aka don't rattle the cage).

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#199

Post by Kkoala »

schiffern wrote: post #13
greyman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would make him "socially-awkward"?

Sam or Elon? I'll assume you meant Sam. IMO Sam is mostly just shy and cerebral, but to many people that will come off as awkward and robotic. Watch his recent Lex Fridman interview. Personally I thought it was great, but I'm aware enough to realize that (sadly) many low-knowledge people will judge such demeanor harshly. Mark my words: the media will, 10 times out of 10, exploit that misconception , not correct it. "…

It's interesting that in the article he was described being "hyper-social", "very funny" and "big personality" as a child. I guess those don't necessarily contradict with awkward and robotic, but also wouldn't come to my mind at the same time

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#200

Post by CatWChainsaw »

galoisscobi wrote: post #96
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?

Maybe Sam thinks about this at some level. From his New Yorker profile[0]: > "The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in…

The fact that his backup plan if things go really wrong is to bug out, damn the rest of the world, is, to put it mildly, not great.
Post reply on HN