Ronan Farrow here. Andrew Marantz and I spent 18 months on this investigation. Happy to answer questions about the reporting.
Ronan Farrow on Hacker News. Now I’ve seen everything.
Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
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Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#212Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#213I wonder if Sam might abandon the ship soon. Other co-founders already did. The main reason is that he gets all the downsides without the upsides. I know $5B is a lot but, for a 700B company, it isn't. If OpenAI was a regular for-profit, he would have been worth >$100B already. This is probably one of the significant factors why other co-founders left too. It's just a lot of headaches with relatively low reward.
IMHO, nobody is remotely worth $1B, period.
The fact that some (usually toxic) individuals get there shows that the system is flawed.
The fact that those individuals feel like they can do anything other than shut up, stay low and silently enjoy the fact that they got waaaay too much money shows that the system is very flawed.
We shouldn't follow billionaires, we should redistribute their money.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#214Ronan Farrow here. Andrew Marantz and I spent 18 months on this investigation. Happy to answer questions about the reporting.
Do you think the recent conflict between Anthropic and the Department of War, and the apparent bootlicking by OpenAI has fundamentally altered the public perception of OAI? Are they the baddies now in the general public opinion?
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#215> 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.
While true and we can see them literally everywhere where there is some money and/or power (even miniscule places like classic banks have easily 1/3 of the staff with clear sociopathic traits, I have to deal with them daily... or whole politics) - thats just human nature, or part of it.
Its up to rest of society to keep them in check since classic morals are highly optional and considered nuissance blocking those games. And here we the rest fail pretty miserably, while having on paper perfect tool - majority vote.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#216A 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?
No, it's that the entire ecosystem is rotten to the core, and it actively selects, rewards, and protects flawed personality types.
And when you're dealing with a potential existential threat, this is an existential problem.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#217Great piece. And a good excuse to read up on the use of diaeresis in English (eg. coördination, reëlection) to distinguish repeated vowels - I hadn't seen the New Yorker's usage before.
It isn’t for all repeated vowels; only for when the 2 vowels don’t make a single sound. So “chicken coop” wouldn’t have a dieresis
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#218We focus these critiques far too much on the face rather than the underlying mechanics. Just like in politics, we critique the personality/politician yet the underlying system architecture evades it. Sam Altman clearly has a long history of nefarious activity. But the underlying threat posted by AI to society, the economy and human freedom persists with or without his presence.
Or perhaps, the underlying threat is personified by Altman, in that our country has repeated and widespread institutional failures to hold the wealthy accountable for wrongdoing.
The threat of AI is, after all, driven by the people who use it.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#219The New Yorker is owned by Conde Nast just as Reddit. Conde Nast has a deal with OpenAI: https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-signs-deal-with-co... This is a damage control piece, and you see that the most stinging comments here get downvoted.
What might feel like "damage control" is more likely to be the outcome of the even-handedness you get with serious, rigorous reporting. Something the New Yorker is known for.
Re: Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
And OpenAI's influence is hugely exaggerated compared to, say, Google.
Yes, and it seems people hate him more than Google co-founders, for example. All the downsides without much upside...
> Yes, and it seems people hate him more than Google co-founders, for example.
Sergey Brin is trying to change that lately, but Altman still has a sizable head start.