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The Contradictions of Sam Altman

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Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#411

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

If you're talking about the US (Fed) government then please don't hold your breath. They're not interested in the best interests of the many. They're too busy rubbing each other, counting their money and deflecting the blame elsewhere.

Will the act on AI? Yeah, probably. Will it smell of crony capitalism? Yes, absolutely.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#412

Post by chiefalchemist »

IAmNotACellist wrote: post #385
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…

The government can't even execute on a bipartisan motivation to ban Tik-Tok. They get greedy and draft the bill to strip away all rights of citizens to have any digital privacy or VPNs, and to give themselves the power to declare any app illegal at any time. The market can't save us, and the federal government definitely can't.

The government can't even move on the fact we unnecessarily change the clocks twice a year. It's the 21st Century and werewe're still "motivated" by an 19th Century concept.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#413

Post by krainboltgreene »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #310
InCityDreams wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trump tried to convince officials to use tanks to combat the Portland protests while he was president.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#414

Post by ackbar03 »

okareaman wrote: post #206

This is a very fluid and chaotic situation so I'd be more concerned if he said one thing and stuck to it When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir? - John Maynard Keynes A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall - R…

"Did I stutter?" - Stanley Hudson

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#415

Post by austhrow743 »

rhcom2 wrote: post #244
clarkmoody wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third way is to build AI technology that empowers the individual against state and corporate power alike. Democracy got us here. It cannot get us out.

> AI technology that empowers the individual against state and corporate power alike What does this even mean though? Seems like hand waving that "AI" is just going to fix everything.

Sam Altman using AI to Iron Man himself.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#416

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

qudat wrote: post #358
mellosouls wrote: post #188

There seems a lot of negative perception of the guy here, and OpenAI definitely deserve criticism for some stuff (so as the CEO, so does he), but - even if it was built on the work of others, and with the obvious caution about what may come next - he and they deserve immense respect and credit for bringing in this new AI age. They did it. Nobody else.

It seems like the real breakthrough happened at google with “All you need is attention”

Perhaps, although it was never intended/expected to be a path to AI/AGI. It was just designed as a more efficient seq-2-seq model. An accidental breakthrough wrt AGI you might say!

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#417

Post by throwawaylinux »

ajross wrote: post #402
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the job of the government, it's the job of citizens. Citizens MAY outsource parts of this to governments, but we primarily need labor and the working class to have the majority of economic power. https://libcom.org/library/workers-control-wage-system-ideas... I'm dedicating my life to building for-profit commercial cooperatives based on this simple principle of voluntary association.

> It's not the job of the government, it's the job of citizens If only there was a system of government designed from first principles to reflect the will of the people... This is just librarian tautology. It's not wrong, but any "citizen" organization you can imagine to implement whatever policy it is you want[1] is going to be isomorphic to a democratic government. [1] You skipped this part!

The government looks after its own interests. That is what an institution does. A government isn't different than a corporation or any other organization this way.

Delegating powers to a government for the common good does not change any of this. The people still have the job of ensuring the government carries that out properly because its priority is and always will be foremost itself, so the people have to ensure the government's interests coincide with their own. A government is not just some will-of-the-people-reflecting automaton that you can put in place then wash your hands of.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#418

Post by phillryu »

sixQuarks wrote: post #270
phillryu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I compare the two Elon was (lucky?) to at least have a string of vision-fueled ventures that became a thing. What is Sam's history of visions? Loopt? Is Y Combinator considered in a new golden era after he took over? Did Worldcoin make any sense at all? I'm honestly hoping I'm entirely ignorant of his substance and would feel better if someone here can explain there's more to him than that… I would feel better k…

Are you really insinuating that Elon was simply “lucky” when it came to disrupting and transforming two gargantuan and highly complex industries at the same time?

I think my main point was more that despite what you (not you personally, anyone reading) think of Elon, at least he has this track record of visionary companies and Sam does not.

Personally my take on Elon is something like this – he found a vacuum in the industry of smart engineers who want to work on something truly ambitious, the kind of people who feel most SV startups are bullshit. And as a sci-fi nerd he came in with money and pitched several sci-fi ambitious project ideas/visions that attracted these engineers etc. to make them happen. And I think he was rewarded for this. You could tally that as another vision that he had that was onto something.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#419

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #318
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.

>A shrewd plan considering he's not offering something beyond what another company with a large nvidia cluster could offer. It's been 4 months, no one has released anything nearly as good as the initial release of ChatGPT. Meanwhile OpenAI has released GPT-4 and is trialing plugins and 32k context. Either their competition is incompetent or OpenAI is doing something right.

> Either their competition is incompetent or OpenAI is doing something right.

Yeah - I'd say a bit of both. Google certainly seem to have dropped the ball, and now seem to be desperately trying to play catch up.

OpenAI certainly seem to be doing a lot right though, in addition to being all-in and laser focused on this tech. It seems there's a lot more to improving these models than just scaling them up. Altman said "there's a lot of understanding went into building GPT-4", and they've invested a lot of effort into the "alignment" aspect - how to control these models to modify behavior - which is what makes the difference between a neat tech demo and something actually useful.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#420

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

stoniejohnson wrote: post #408
sebzim4500 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A shrewd plan considering he's not offering something beyond what another company with a large nvidia cluster could offer. It's been 4 months, no one has released anything nearly as good as the initial release of ChatGPT. Meanwhile OpenAI has released GPT-4 and is trialing plugins and 32k context. Either their competition is incompetent or OpenAI is doing something right.

What about Claude from Anthropic?

They're doing very well too, but the company was founded by people from OpenAI, so it'd seem they took a lot of know-how with them.
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