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

washingtonpost.com

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

#291

Post by lhnz »

tom_ wrote: post #251
lhnz wrote: post #42

If Paul Graham fired Sam Altman from YCombinator it's interesting that he appears to have such a favourable opinion of him [0]. However, personally, what I've taken away from this is that he is a much better strategic/tactical operator than many other high-flying executives and very capable of winning the respect and trust of a lot of smart people. I wouldn't expect OpenAI to be run by anybody that wasn't revered in…

I dunno, man. As an English person, to me these tweets sound a lot like he is publicly calling Altman a cunt.

Really? It seems like a glowing appraisal. He seems to think that Sam is devestatingly effective at what he does.

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

#292

Post by tim333 »

mandmandam wrote: post #83
Keats wrote: post #23

I can't believe someone that created Worldcoin could not be trustworthy.

Worldcoin alone is so, so damning of his character. Cartoon villain shit. It's hard to square that whole thing with the way people talk about him here. But every once in a while it hits; this is the guy who wanted to collect everyone's bloody retina pattern, all for a crypto so obviously bad in nearly every fundamental aspect.

I'm a happy Worldcoin user. If the providers are happy and the users are happy I'm not sure what's cartoon villainish about it?

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

#293

Post by FireBeyond »

rsynnott wrote: post #64
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hadn't seen the tweet from Geoffrey Irving before: https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/172675427022402397... > 1. He was always nice to me. > 2. He lied to me on various occasions > 3. He was deceptive, manipulative, and worse to others, including my close friends (again, only nice to me, for reasons)

I don’t see how 1 and 2 are compatible unless you have a really weird definition of ‘nice’.

I think it'd be more accurate to substitute 'polite' or 'courteous' than 'nice'.

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

#294

Post by dang »

loveparade wrote: post #112
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 subscribe to the HN RSS feed, which shows flagged items since they're published on the feed before they're flagged. The craziest thing that stands out to me is how so many negative stories on Sam Altman end up being flagged, even though they are just as legit as the positive ones. I'm almost 100% certain that HN is highly manipulated for this story. For no other topic have I seen so many flagged stories, and all of…

I don't know what you mean by "manipulated" but these flags were, and are, coming from users, not admins. The most likely explanation isn't sinister—it's that readers were fatigued by the tsunami of stories about this saga, and were flagging the ones that didn't seem to contain significant new information (a.k.a. SNI: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

I realize your perception was that all the negative ones got flagged, but this perception is most likely a function of your own preference (you're more likely to notice it when a story that you agree with gets flagged, because people are more likely to notice what they dislike: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Probably Sam feels like all the positive stories are getting flagged :)

I wrote a longer explanation about how we treat story floods like this from a moderation point of view, if anyone wants to read about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357788.

Edit: and this applies to the OP, which actually does contain SNI. I've turned user flags off on this submission and changed the title to be the article's HTML doc title, which is more specific.

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

#295

Post by sangnoir »

eric-hu wrote: post #269
fatherzine wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"95% of the staff" -- this is Kim Jong Un approval rate territory. caution advised.

Vladimir Putin had 77% of the vote in Russia’s 2017. If Putin can’t fake a 95% approval rating, surely the OpenAI numbers must be real.

This is reminding me of the Ewok defense.

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

#296

Post by kjkjadksj »

Abekkus wrote: post #78
keepamovin wrote: post #11

Now that he’s back with MSOAI I think we’ve got AGI disaster in 7 years. Thin possibility of good path for humanity. I wish he’d stuck to his guns and gone his own way, no MS, and no OAI. No disrespect to MS, they good, but this path is bad.

If you want to be a doomer, you don't need agi, just autonomous weapons, which ML can definitely help build.

You don’t even need ML for that plus it already exists, Soviets had Dead Hand decades ago, an autonomous weapon system capable of ending the world.

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

#297

Post by charred_patina »

fevangelou wrote: post #96

It's oh so weird the article does not mention any of these though... - https://twitter.com/phuckfilosophy/status/163570439893983232... (SA's sister - also have a look at her recent posts) - Also: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman... (utterly distressing) - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1727096607752282485 (check the comment with snapshots of the letter - "strangely" that Gist was dele…

He has always creeped me out. The way pg talks about him is meant to be an endorsement, but it makes Sam seem like a Svengali whose main quality is the ability to manipulate and get what he wants.

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

#298

Post by narag »

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?

"We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAI and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary..." so no, they knew.
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