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The Contradictions of Sam Altman

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Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#301

Post by TaylorAlexander »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #295
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but in my country (USA) the government is hopelessly inept at regulating technology. We still don’t have privacy regulations and now to work around this they’re trying to ban specific foreign apps instead of protecting us from all apps! I’d honestly be horrified if they tried to regulate AI. They would be in bed with Facebook and Microsoft and they’d somehow write legislation that only serves to insulate those c…

Agreed. The US has backslidden since the 20th century back towards an elitest Republic and away from democracy. But even in the US, collective action has a better track record than "altruism".

Sometimes I wonder if the back slide narrative is really accurate, or if we’re looking back at the myth of history rather than the facts. When the country was founded, only white men could vote and people of color were legally property with no rights. That’s obviously not democracy, so I question at what point after that but before today we really had democracy to have slid back from.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#302

Post by DubiousPusher »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #284
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…

This is a really cynical take. CEOs and companies can, and should, act ethically. Not just because it's the "right thing to do", but because it's the best way to guarantee the integrity of the brand in the long term.

I feel I made it clear in my post that indivual integrity matters and has real consequences. But you as a citizen have 1 no way of validating a CEOs real intentions and 2 no recourse when that CEO fails to live up to those intentions. If you only fight for the protections you want once you need them, you will be at a serious disadvantage to win them.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#303

Post by m3kw9 »

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…

It’s all about risk and rewards, nobody who owns openai is going say let’s pause. It also never stopped the country that first invented nuclear bomb, sure they could paus and then Russia would have done it and would have it first, and then said “thanks for pausing”

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#304

Post by sebzim4500 »

ftxbro wrote: post #27
antirez wrote: post #7

I believe you can't, at the same time, accuse OpenAI of benefitting of ideas mostly invented elsewhere, and also claim that they are in a predominant position. It does not make any sense, and they are not naturally positioned for a monopoly. Just other companies have to move their asses.

> I believe you can't, at the same time, accuse OpenAI of benefitting of ideas mostly invented elsewhere, and also claim that they are in a predominant position. There used to be a team at Google called Google Brain and they all left to go to OpenAI after the employee protests against taking military AI contracts in 2018. Now Microsoft has those contracts and funneled $10B to OpenAI from the CIA. OK that's a little b…

>funneled $10B to OpenAI from the CIA

Without some evidence to support it, this really sounds like a conspiracy theory.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#305

Post by paganel »

nirushiv wrote: post #60
ftxbro wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've already swooped in. I mean the conspiracy argument would be that the $10B isn't a normal investment. It's a special government project investment facilitated by OpenAI board member and former clandestine CIA operative and cybersecurity executive Will Hurd through his role on the board of trustees of In-Q-Tel the investment arm of the CIA. It's funneled through Microsoft instead of through Google in part becau…

Please stop spreading FUD and unsubstantiated rumours all over this thread

Why wouldn't the US Government invest billions of dollars in a technology that it sees as essential? What's FUD-y about that? Most of our industry itself is the result of the US Government's past investments for military-related purposes.

Later edit: Also, article from 2016 [1]

> There’s more to the Allen & Co annual Sun Valley mogul gathering than talk about potential media deals: The industry’s corporate elite spent this morning listening to a panel about advances in artificial intelligence, following sessions yesterday dealing with education, biotech and gene splicing, and the status of Middle East.

> Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen led the AI session with LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Y Combinator’s Sam Altman. The main themes: AI will affect lots of businesses, and it’s coming quickly.

> Yesterday’s sessions included one with former CIA director George Tenant who spoke about the Middle East and terrorism with New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counter-terrorism John Miller and a former chief of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.

So, yes, all the intelligence agencies are pretty involved in this AI thing, they'd be stupid not to be.

[1] https://deadline.com/2016/07/sun-valley-moguls-artificial-in...

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#306

Post by sebzim4500 »

mistermann wrote: post #174
jeremyjh wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a such thing as being principled and then finding out you were naive.

There is also the substantial effectiveness of propaganda, and the fact that it is essentially impossible to know if one's beliefs/"facts" have been conditioned by it. That most discussions on such matters typically devolve rapidly into the regurgitation of unsound memes doesn't help matters much either.

Sure, but it is equally likely that your old perspective was the result of propaganda and your new one is a rational adjustment in the face of new information. Or that both are propaganda, I suppose.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#307

Post by peripitea »

ren_engineer wrote: post #59
gamesbrainiac wrote: post #4

I think there are some interesting questions: - Sam does not have equity in OpenAI. Does this mean he can potentially be removed at any point in time? - OpenAI's profit arm will funnel excess profit to its non-profit wing. If this is the case, who determines excess profit? - OpenAI's founding charter commits the company to abandoning research efforts if another project nears AGI development. If this happens, what hap…

he admits in the article to having equity via his investment fund, they are using semantics because he doesn't "personally" have equity. He also tries to downplay by saying it's an "immaterial" amount, but in reality that could be billions of dollars. There's also nothing preventing Microsoft from gifting him billions in Microsoft stock so they can claim he's not motivated by profit with OpenAI despite indirectly mak…

Do you honestly think that AWS or Google Cloud would have given them billions in credits just because they're a nonprofit? I'm all for being skeptical of powerful people's motives but that suggests a major disconnect from reality somewhere in your thinking.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#308

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#309

Post by alex_sf »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #257
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…

Sure but in my country (USA) the government is hopelessly inept at regulating technology. We still don’t have privacy regulations and now to work around this they’re trying to ban specific foreign apps instead of protecting us from all apps! I’d honestly be horrified if they tried to regulate AI. They would be in bed with Facebook and Microsoft and they’d somehow write legislation that only serves to insulate those c…

There is no government that isn't hopeless inept at regulating technology.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#310

Post by sebzim4500 »

InCityDreams wrote: post #98
beebmam wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of those employees have changed their minds about military contracts in this new cold war era.

America! What is in your military now, eventually ends up in the hands of the civilian police. *and other countries are following. Fucking, sadly.

What the hell are they going to do with an M1 Abrams?

Having said that, I dread to see what the NYPD manage to achieve with an F-35B.

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