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> One of those people whose career Altman helped propel was Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist and board member at OpenAI — the person who ultimately fired him. Ilya was plenty successful before OpenAI and would've been just fine without Altman helping to "propel" his career.
> Another person familiar with Altman’s thinking said he was willing to meet with the board’s shortlist of proposed candidates, except for one person whom he declined on ethical grounds. Now you have me interested, who could that one person be? Charles Koch? Henry Kissinger? Because many of those I would normally have guessed are either in the article as possible collaborator (middle-easter connection) or is already…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? It seems like a glowing appraisal. He seems to think that Sam is devestatingly effective at what he does.
If I didn't know Graham was English, perhaps I would take them at face value - and, indeed, perhaps I should anyway. (And my characterisation was an extreme one!) But: they do just all sound rather coldly backhanded, if you ask me.
Also, I doubt pg would hold a grudge for years on end. You learn many lessons in life and some you are bound to repeat because of stubbornness or whatever.
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…
[1] https://www.insider.com/you-can-spot-psychopaths-by-looking-...
I predict his character arch will be similar to Adam Neumann and Travis Kalanick - first the media gushes over him and praises him as a genius. Then the media starts to question him. Then they start to fully dig in and dig up a ton of dirt. With no mainstream outlet pushing forth the allegations his sister is claiming on social, I imagine right now they are looking under every rock on that end. I respect his hustle b…
You can say the same thing about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is a jerk for sure but a bad personality does not predict success or failure as much as you (or we) hope to. And what people say about your character is also overly dependent on results. Only time will tell whether Sam Altman will be considered a villain or a flawed hero in media.
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…
> One of those people whose career Altman helped propel was Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist and board member at OpenAI — the person who ultimately fired him. Ilya was plenty successful before OpenAI and would've been just fine without Altman helping to "propel" his career.
Ilya, a nobody who wrote the most seminal paper of the last 10 years. The guy that Eric Schmidt and Elon broke their friendship over was just a random nobody.
Come on. It is no secret that when OpenAI formed, every single researcher joined so they could work with Ilya (and Zaremba who worked with him, but was less famous). Greg is brilliant but ML people didn't care for him and Sam 'one of those VC guys'. A lot of their best hires had already worked in Ilya/Zaremba before they joined OpenAI.
OpenAI might have moved past needing Ilya's brilliance to innovate, but if anyone gets to claim that they 'made' OpenAI, it is Ilya.
Why are people so obsessed with this guy? Keep falling into the same trap of Cult of the Tech CEO
He was CEO of Y combinator, of which this forum is sponsored and maintained by. He’s the CEO of OpenAI, which is responsible for the most-discussed advancement in technology for the past year. So it’s not that unusual for this to be discussed on a technology-focused forum. He’s also the centre of a massive firestorm, where extremely atypical corporate behaviour was very recently taking place. Again, highly relevant t…
It came as a surprise for me to learn that PG fired Sam. It's the first time that I read this actually, and if that's true, I find it kind of mysterious that it remained a secret for so long. Or maybe I missed the news somehow but I could not find any other mention of that event on Google.
Reading some recent pg tweets through this lens, though, I think it makes sense. E.g. there is this tweet: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1726198939517378988. Both of the following can be true (and more to the point, I think the following two items are flip sides of the same coin):
1. Sam is an absolute masterful negotiator and is incredibly well-respected in the valley because his skills at assembling people and resources are unmatched.
2. Sam can be manipulative and self-serving, sometimes making decisions that are nominally about a higher goal but (not really coincidentally) are self-aggrandizing.
I see this trait in lots of effective, famous people. There have been tons of comparisons in the news recently to Steve Jobs, but for me for some reason Anna Wintour comes to mind. I don't think many people would describe Wintour as "nice" as she is known for being kind of ruthless and manipulative (she was "The Devil" after all...), but tons of people in the fashion industry are incredibly loyal to her based on her abilities to identify talent and get shit done.
Step 1: Dazzle an influential person
Step 2: Persuade them to hitch their reputation to you
Step 3: Do whatever you want with minimal repercussions