Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 599 posts

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#401

Post by plaidfuji »

addcn wrote: post #150
simpaticoder wrote: post #67

A bit of a "dog bites man" story to note that a CEO of a hot company is hyping the future beyond reason. The real story of LLMs is revealed when you posit a magical technology that can print any car part for free. How would the car industry change if someone made a 3D printer that could make any part, including custom parts, with just electricity and air? It is a sea change to manufacturers and distributors, but ther…

Printed this out and pasted it into my journal. Going to come back to it in a few years. This touches on something important I can’t quite put into words yet. Some fundamental piece of consciousness that is hard to replicate - desire maybe

Desire is a big part of it! Right now LLMs just respond. What if you prompted an LLM, “your goal is to gain access to this person’s bank account. Here is their phone number. Message with them until you can confirm successful access.”

Learning how to get what you want is a fundamental skill you start learning from infancy.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#402

Post by VirusNewbie »

gizmo wrote: post #359
getpost wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything, but isn't Sam already rich? And, if OpenAI is in a position to capture profits in an expanding AI industry, isn't this the best possible time to lock-in equity for long term gains and trillionaireship? For many people, sadly, one can never be rich enough. My point is, planning for both short term exit, and long term gains, is essentially the same in this particular situation. What a boon! Nice…

Sam was already a billionaire years ago. He is one of SV most prolific investors, with equity in hundreds of startups. He writes big checks as well from time to time, Helion for instance he gave 375 million.

How? He did not have a large exit to give him a bankroll to invest. Unless you mean from whatever YC shares he received as President, which seems unlikely. Even if he was paid ~25 million in equity per year, did YC shares increase 10x in that time?

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#404

Post by rktan »

richardw wrote: post #292
azinman2 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s say you got AGI, and it approximated a not so bright impulsive 12 year old boy. That would be an insane technological leap, but hardly one you’d want running the show. AGI doesn’t mean smarter than the best humans.

A 12 year old that doesn’t sleep, eat, or forget, learns anything within seconds, can replicate and work together with fast as light communication and no data loss when doing so. Arrives out of the womb knowing everything the internet knows. Can work on one problem until it gets it right. Doesn’t get stale or old. Only had emotion if it’s useful. Can do math and simulate. Doesn’t get bored. Can theoretically improve…

A 12 year old could determine that "AI" is boring and counterproductive for humanity and switch off a computer or data center. Greta Thunberg did similar for the climate, perhaps we need a new child saint who fights "AI".

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#405

Post by stainablesteel »

lolinder wrote: post #86

To recap OpenAI's decisions over the past year: * They burned up the hype for GPT-5 on 4o and o1, which are great step changes but nothing the competition can't quickly replicate. * They dissolved the safety team. * They switched to for profit and are poised to give Altman equity. * All while hyping AGI more than ever. All of this suggests to me that Altman is in short-term exit preparation mode, not planning for AGI…

i disagree that it looks like an exit, i think altman is here for the long haul. he's got a great platform and a lot of AI competitors are also preparing for the long term. no one cares about who has the best model for the next year or two, they care who has it for the next 20.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#406

Post by ben_w »

namaria wrote: post #282
ben_w wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using "entropy" in a way I do not recognise. Whatever you mean, our brains prove it's possible to have a system that uses 20 watts to demonstrate human-level intelligence.

Whatever you mean, it took 13 billion years and the whole universe as far as we can tell to create the 20 watt human intelligence brain. And it doesn't take 20 watt of energy to maintain humans, it takes a whole ecosystem capable of sustaining a human population. And for us to operate at our current level of information processing it takes a whole planetary civilization. So no you haven't proved anything by saying th…

Unless I'm mistaken, you've added these two paragraphs since my last comment:

> Whatever quantity Q of entropy in the training data, the total output will be more Q all accounted for. That's true for humans and machines. No shape of possible AGI will give us any output with less Q than the combination of inputs had. The dream that a machine will solve all problems that humanity can't hinges on negating that, which goes against thermodynamics.

Thermodynamics applies to closed systems, which the earth in isolation isn't.

This is why the source material for Shakespeare didn't already exist on Earth in the Cretaceous.

It's also why we've solved loads of problems we used to have, like bubonic plague and long distance communication.

> As it stands, the planet cannot cope with all the entropy we're spreading around.

We're many orders of magnitude away from entropic limits. Global warming is due to the impact on how much more sunlight keeps bouncing around inside the atmosphere, not the direct thermal effect of our power plants.

> It will eventually collapse civilization/the ecosystem, whatever buckles first, from the excess entropy. Because global warming, poverty, or ignorance is just entropy. Disorder. Things not being just so as we need them to be.

Entropy isn't everyday disorder, it's a specific relationship of microstates and macrostates, and you can't usefully infer things when you switch uses.

Poverty is much reduced compared to the historical condition. So is ignorance: we have to specialise these days because there's too much knowledge for any one human to learn.

Entropic collapse is indeed inevitable, but that inevitably is on the scale of 10^18 years or more with only engineering challenges rather than novel scientific breakthroughs (the latter would plausibly increase that to 10^106 if someone can figure out how to use Hawking radiation, but I don't want to divert into why I think that's more than merely an engineering challenge).

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#407

Post by stonethrowaway »

latexr wrote: post #290
stonethrowaway wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to read a solid exposé of Worldcoin, but I don’t think I will get that from Buzzfeed or from The Atlantic. Both seemed to be agenda driven and hot headed. I’d like a more impartial breakdown ala AP-style news reporting.

> I don’t think I will get that from Buzzfeed BuzzFeed News is not BuzzFeed. They were a serious news website¹ staffed by multiple investigative journalists, including a Pulitzer winner heading that division. They received plenty of awards and recognition.² It is indeed a shame they shared a name with BuzzFeed and that no doubt didn’t help, but it does not detract from their work. > or from The Atlantic. There was no…

Thank you. I’ll take a look. The Atlantic link I’m referring to is the actual HN article link of the OP, not of the GP.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#408

Post by semi-extrinsic »

wslh wrote: post #335
lolinder wrote: post #86

To recap OpenAI's decisions over the past year: * They burned up the hype for GPT-5 on 4o and o1, which are great step changes but nothing the competition can't quickly replicate. * They dissolved the safety team. * They switched to for profit and are poised to give Altman equity. * All while hyping AGI more than ever. All of this suggests to me that Altman is in short-term exit preparation mode, not planning for AGI…

I see it differently. ChatGPT holds a unique position because it has the most important asset in tech: user attention. Building a brand and capturing a significant share of eyeballs is one of the hardest challenges for any company, startup or not. From a business standpoint, the discussion around GPT-5 or AGI seems secondary. What truly matters is the growing number of users paying for ChatGPT, with potential for mon…

> What truly matters is the growing number of users paying for ChatGPT, with potential for monetization through ads or other services in the future.

If the end goal is monetization of ChatGPT with ads, it will be enshittified to the same degree as Google searches. If you get to that, what is the benefit of using ChatGPT if it just gives you the same ads and bullshit as Google?

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#409

Post by xbar »

jt2190 wrote: post #175
thelastgallon wrote: post #32

"Although it will happen incrementally, astounding triumphs – fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics – will eventually become commonplace. With nearly-limitless intelligence and abundant energy – the ability to generate great ideas, and the ability to make them happen – we can do quite a lot." - Sam Altman, https://ia.samaltman.com/ Reality: AI needs unheard amounts of en…

> AI needs unheard amounts of energy… … and it always will? It seems terribly limiting to stop exploring the potential of this technology because it’s not perfect right now . Energy consumption of AI models does not feel like an unsolvable problem, just a difficult one.

I think you should study the tragedy of the commons to understand why it always will.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#410

Post by stonethrowaway »

ctoth wrote: post #310
throwintothesea wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The Atlantic doesn't have an ideological center, Morning, boys. How’s the water?

Your comment immediately gave me a chuckle so thank you for that.

I find it interesting among its readership that Atlantic’s prose can hide so well what an absolute shitrag of propaganda it really is.

Post reply on HN