It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word • Hacker News Board

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#21

Post by cogman10 » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:42 PM UTC

Apreche wrote: post #10

bediger4000 wrote: post #3

This seems like a more general problem with journalistic practices. Journalists don't want to inject their own judgements into articles, which is admirable, and makes sense. So they quote people exactly. Quoting exactly means that bad actors can inject falsehoods into articles. I don't have any suggestions on how to solve this. Everything I can think of has immediate large flaws.

It’s possible to insert a few sentences factually accounting for a person’s character without inserting a subjective judgement of character. For example you could say: Joey JoeJoe, billionaire CEO, who notably said horrible things, was convicted of some crimes, and ate three babies, was quoted as saying “machine learning is just so awesome”. There, you didn’t inject a judgement. You accurately quoted the subject. You…

This does often happen (depending on the leaning of the newspaper, it's omitted if the figure is someone supported and emphasized otherwise).

A major problem, though, is headlines don't and can't carry this context. And those are the things most people read.

The best you'll get is "Joey JoeJoe says machine learning is just so awesome" or at best "Joey JoeJoe comments on ML. The 3rd word will blow you away!".

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#22

Post by zmgsabst » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:43 PM UTC

soared wrote: post #14

Dalewyn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A journalist's job is to journal something, exactly like how NTFS keeps a journal of what happens. A journalist doing anything other than journaling is not a journalist. So people getting quoted verbatim is perfectly fine. If the quoted turns out to be a liar, that's just part of the journal.

Thats.. not what journalism means. I don’t know where you got that definition, but I can’t find anything similar. Processing and displaying information is a huge part of journalism - ie assessing what is truth or fiction and communicating each as such. Wikipedia: > A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the pu…

You’re injecting that “ie” — Wikipedia doesn’t say it as such.

They’re describing collating and you’re describing evaluating.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#23

Post by Aeolun » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:43 PM UTC

deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #15

> At a high enough level of abstraction, Altman’s entire job is to keep us all fixated on an imagined AI future I think the job of a CEO is not to tell you the truth, and the truth is probably more often than not, the opposite. What if gpt5 is vaporware, and there’s no equivalent 3 to 4 leap to be realized with current deep learning architectures? What is OpenAI worth then?

If you need someone to tell you the truth you don’t need a CEO.

What you need a CEO for is to sell you (and your investors) a vision.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#24

Post by naveen99 » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:44 PM UTC

deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #15

> At a high enough level of abstraction, Altman’s entire job is to keep us all fixated on an imagined AI future I think the job of a CEO is not to tell you the truth, and the truth is probably more often than not, the opposite. What if gpt5 is vaporware, and there’s no equivalent 3 to 4 leap to be realized with current deep learning architectures? What is OpenAI worth then?

The future is not binary, it’s a probability.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#25

Post by surgical_fire » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:45 PM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #6

Better headline : It's too late to stop taking Sam Altman at his word See same with Elon Musk. Money turns genius to smooth brained egomaniacal idiots. See same with Steve Jobs

They were never geniuses. They were just rich assholes propped up by other rich assholes.

"It's too late to stop conflating wealth with intelligence"

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#26

Post by imjonse » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:45 PM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #6

Better headline : It's too late to stop taking Sam Altman at his word See same with Elon Musk. Money turns genius to smooth brained egomaniacal idiots. See same with Steve Jobs

Are you seriously suggesting Altman is a genius? Or Musk for that matter?

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#27

Post by Aeolun » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:45 PM UTC

smogcutter wrote: post #20

MailleQuiMaille wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Journalists don't want to inject their own judgements into articles, which is admirable, and makes sense. Is it even possible ? Like, don't you know the political inclination of any website/journal you read ? I feel like this search of "The Objective Truth" is just a chimera. I'd rather articles combine pros and cons of everything they discuss tbh

Yes, you’ve rediscovered the curriculum of a journalism 101 class.

So are you saying there are a lot of journalists that never studied, or did they just never pay attention in class?

Because articles that actually do that are few and far between.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#28

Post by ThinkBeat » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:45 PM UTC

deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #15

> At a high enough level of abstraction, Altman’s entire job is to keep us all fixated on an imagined AI future I think the job of a CEO is not to tell you the truth, and the truth is probably more often than not, the opposite. What if gpt5 is vaporware, and there’s no equivalent 3 to 4 leap to be realized with current deep learning architectures? What is OpenAI worth then?

If a CEO lies all the time, and investors make investments because of it, will that not turn out to become a problem for the CEO?

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#29

Post by dimgl » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:46 PM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #6

Better headline : It's too late to stop taking Sam Altman at his word See same with Elon Musk. Money turns genius to smooth brained egomaniacal idiots. See same with Steve Jobs

I'm not sure this is the same situation... SpaceX just began a mission to save stranded scientists in space. And Starlink has legitimate uses.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#30

Post by tiznow » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:46 PM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #16

bee_rider wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s right. First off, we don’t generally define jobs based on the closest computer analogy (we would be unhappy if the loggers returned with a list of things that happened in the woods, rather than a bunch of wood). The journalist’s job is to describe what actually is happening, and to provide enough context for readers to understand it. Some bias will inevitably creep in, because they can’t possibly…

>The journalist’s job is to describe what actually is happening, and to provide enough context for readers to understand it. The former is a journalist's job, the latter is the reader's concern and not the journalist. One of the reasons I consider journalism a cancer upon humanity is because journalists can't just write down "it is 35 degrees celsius today at 2pm", but rather "you won't believe how hot it is". Just j…

I think you might need a chill pill, I've never met a single journalist or editor who would let "you won't believe how hot it is" pass in more than a tweet.