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The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#31

Post by zelphirkalt »

mlinsey wrote: post #8
codyklimdev wrote: post #3

I've been wondering for a while if Sam is going to become an Elizabeth Holmes style figure with all of his talk about "a magic intelligence in the sky" and that in 5 years AI will replace 95% of marketing work. It seems like he's set up impossible promises, it'll be interesting to see what comes from their non-delivery.

Very different to lie about what your current product actually does (especially if it's a medical testing product!) vs to give predictions about your future products that turn out to be too overhyped. A good example of the latter is Elon, which also goes to show that you only have to have the pie-in-the-sky vision succeed a couple times for a lot of people to forgive a lot of other overpromises.

Right, though both are about lying blatantly, despite better knowledge, with the motivation of personal gain behind it.

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#32

Post by hatefulheart »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #27
submeta wrote: post #7

The man brought us LLMs and ever more capable models. I don’t know about the critics, but my work life completely changed from Dec 2022 on. Ever since chatgpt was released. I cannot imagine working without LLMs and agents anymore. They make me literally 10-100x more productive, transforming text, generating text, doing research, writing code, documenting systems, doing web search and so much more. And for that I am f…

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. Sam Altman despite his flaws played a key role in kickstarting the capital war that’s led to the insane investment in infrastructure that’ll carry us to a new age once the hype dies down. He created and continues to create an atmosphere for innovation inside OpenAI that showed the way for the fast-followers. He lit a fire under the ass of Google for gods sake. Whatever he did or…

“Whatever he did or didn’t invent, he made a ton of invention possible.“

I think it’s time to pony up.

Where are your vibe coded databases that take on SQLite and Postgres?

Where are your vibe coded Operating Systems?

Where are your vibe coded browsers?

Where are your vibe coded literally anything?

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#33

Post by tucnak »

gizajob wrote: post #30
twoodfin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing it’s hard to go short OpenAI without also going short a bunch of other companies riding the AI wave that aren’t led by Sam Altman? Would love to hear how that could work.

Just short Nvidia. If the thing goes bang then that’ll be one of the big losers.

"Just short Nvidia"

Is this financial advice? :-)

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#34

Post by miltonlost »

mlinsey wrote: post #8
codyklimdev wrote: post #3

I've been wondering for a while if Sam is going to become an Elizabeth Holmes style figure with all of his talk about "a magic intelligence in the sky" and that in 5 years AI will replace 95% of marketing work. It seems like he's set up impossible promises, it'll be interesting to see what comes from their non-delivery.

Very different to lie about what your current product actually does (especially if it's a medical testing product!) vs to give predictions about your future products that turn out to be too overhyped. A good example of the latter is Elon, which also goes to show that you only have to have the pie-in-the-sky vision succeed a couple times for a lot of people to forgive a lot of other overpromises.

Well, Musk does both now. He's lying about the present and his future.

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#35

Post by miltonlost »

fairity wrote: post #14

Words are cheap. I really wish there was a way to incentivize authors like this to put their money where their mouth is, before seeking attention for their ideas.

What's your complaint about this article? I wish there were a way to incentivize comments to put effort into specific criticism, before seeking attention for their ideas.

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#36

Post by arjie »

concinds wrote: post #16
arjie wrote: post #6

Do people actually find this kind of dunk content interesting? It's super popular but I wonder if people find it insightful or entertaining. I watched a little of Stephen Colbert and John Oliver and it's mostly boring stuff that is pretty much characterized as "This guy IS AN IDIOT!" and "They're LOSING" and whatnot. It seems like the equivalent of those "Charlie Kirk owns feminists with FACTS and LOGIC". If you go t…

Gary Marcus is a terrific self-promoter and grifter, and there are very large audiences for that sort of stuff. It's simple. He does more than dunks though, I don't think that's really fair to him. He's trying to position himself as a public intellectual and expert.

I did a quick Algolia search https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

If I'm being honest, the combination of the HN audience and him is that he's just a dunk machine. It's all right. I get it. People here like this kind of content. I have to killfile the domain and users who post positively about it if I want to improve my personal feed. That's on me to curate rather than to post Yet Another Complaint Comment (the lesser known yacc).

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Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#37

Post by submeta »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #27
submeta wrote: post #7

The man brought us LLMs and ever more capable models. I don’t know about the critics, but my work life completely changed from Dec 2022 on. Ever since chatgpt was released. I cannot imagine working without LLMs and agents anymore. They make me literally 10-100x more productive, transforming text, generating text, doing research, writing code, documenting systems, doing web search and so much more. And for that I am f…

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. Sam Altman despite his flaws played a key role in kickstarting the capital war that’s led to the insane investment in infrastructure that’ll carry us to a new age once the hype dies down. He created and continues to create an atmosphere for innovation inside OpenAI that showed the way for the fast-followers. He lit a fire under the ass of Google for gods sake. Whatever he did or…

The downvotes probably come from the idea that I’m crediting one person. Obviously LLMs were built by many people, but Altman raised the money, pulled the org together, and shipped something that millions were using within days.

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#38

Post by danielmarkbruce »

EA-3167 wrote: post #23
fairity wrote: post #14

Words are cheap. I really wish there was a way to incentivize authors like this to put their money where their mouth is, before seeking attention for their ideas.

It's possible to notice a trend while still having the wit to realize you can't precisely time that trend well enough to profit from it. Another example might be, "Trump is increasingly old, feeble, and incapable of doing his job... but I'm not sure how that will translate into how long he's able to keep the job. It's possible that he could be a vegetable at some point and still POTUS." Demanding that people gamble w…

It's not orthogonal. And you will find people will change their mind when forced to put a little money on the line.

"Team X is definitely winning, I'm certain". "So you'll offer me 1000-1 on the opponent?". "No". "6-1?", "No". They often realize they are about 65% certain at some point. And they often aren't being hyperbolic, they are just not thinking clearly.

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#39

Post by dyauspitr »

codyklimdev wrote: post #3

I've been wondering for a while if Sam is going to become an Elizabeth Holmes style figure with all of his talk about "a magic intelligence in the sky" and that in 5 years AI will replace 95% of marketing work. It seems like he's set up impossible promises, it'll be interesting to see what comes from their non-delivery.

Pie in the sky is not the same as fraudulent claims about your product.

Re: The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman

#40

Post by lkbm »

tucnak wrote: post #33
gizajob wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just short Nvidia. If the thing goes bang then that’ll be one of the big losers.

"Just short Nvidia" Is this financial advice? :-)

If so, keep in mind that it's contingent advice. The question was how to profit from predicting an AI bubble popping [or something along those lines]. The answer is shorting Nvideo (assuming your prediction also includes a timeline).

It's always a way to lose a massive amount of money if you're wrong, so the advice is also contingent on confidence level.

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