Reflections on OpenAI • Hacker News Board

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#411

Post by rightbyte » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

myaccountonhn wrote: post #88

throwawayohio wrote: post #82

> As often as OpenAI is maligned in the press, everyone I met there is actually trying to do the right thing. I appreciate where the author is coming from, but I would have just left this part out. If there is anything I've learned during my time in tech (ESPECIALLY in the Bay Area) it's that the people you didn't meet are absolutely angling to do the wrong thing(TM).

I've been in circles with very rich and somewhat influential tech people and it's a lot of talk about helping others, but somehow beneath the veneer of the talk of helping others you notice that many of them are just ripping people off, doing coke and engaging in self-centered spiritual practices (especially crypto people). I also don't trust that people within the system can assess if what they're doing is good or n…

> I've felt it first hand personally how my mind slowly warped itself into believing that ad-tech isn't so bad for the world when I worked for an ad-tech company, and only after leaving did I realize how wrong I was.

You should write a book about that. Did you start seeing adblockers as immoral? I've heard ad-dependent people literally claiming that.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#412

Post by idonotknowwhy » Wed, Jul 16, 2025, 11:32 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #334

norskeld wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should believe in all of them. Just spray and pray!

You have to filter out all the religions where you can't worship other gods or be in other religions.

Might as well skip the one that don't punish you for not believing as well.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#413

Post by ec109685 » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 1:06 AM UTC

No releases since June 13th: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11428266-codex-changelog

It seems like Claude code via screen / multiple terminal windows is strictly better than the Codex approach given it keeps the developer in the loop.

Only advantage of async Codex is ability to carry on when using a different device like your phone to code.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#414

Post by a_bonobo » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 1:09 AM UTC

samultio wrote: post #335

darkoob12 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in this structure people only think locally and they are not concerned with the overall mission of the company and do not actively think about morality of the mission or if they are following it.

Kind of sounds like a traditional public company is a constitutional monarchy, not always the best but at least there's a balance of interests. While a private company could either be an autocracy or oligarchy where sucking up and playing tribal politics is the only way to survive.

That's what David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs is all about! Modern companies as medieval-style fiefdoms where mid-level managers expand their domains to justify their salaries, not because the org demands it

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#415

Post by ec109685 » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 1:20 AM UTC

ml-anon wrote: post #200

bhl wrote: post #3

> The Codex sprint was probably the hardest I've worked in nearly a decade. Most nights were up until 11 or midnight. Waking up to a newborn at 5:30 every morning. Heading to the office again at 7a. Working most weekends. There's so much compression / time-dilation in the industry: large projects are pushed out and released in weeks; careers are made in months. Worried about how sustainable this is for its people, gi…

This guy who is already independently wealthy chose working 16-17h 7 days a week instead of raising his newborn child and thanks his partner for “childcare duties”. Pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

The independently wealthy part is strange, but you only live once so folks should find the path satisfies them.

As for caring for a newborn, that is the least impactful moment you have with your kids.

Seems like he made a reasonable trade-off and will be there for all their formative years.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#416

Post by stickfigure » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 3:38 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #389

cootsnuck wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think y'all are agreeing.

Nah this is lawful evil (I Am Following The Rules Therefore I'm Doing The Right Thing) vs. neutral evil (I Just Work Here).

More like Chaotic Neutral. I like a world full of novel things, and I don't moralize about it.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#417

Post by southernplaces7 » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 4:34 AM UTC

>Nabeel Quereshi has an amazing post called Reflections on Palantir, where he ruminates on what made Palantir special.

I clicked that other story just to see what that author said about his time at that company. The fundamental urge is to slap some bloody sense into him, because the only thing amazing about the article is just how obtuse it is.

Under all the glowy, wide-eyed applause for many aspects of how Palantir operates, he's not really internalizing just what kind of parasitic, corporate/government surveillance monster he was working for.

To put it simply, he speaks as if he were a useful idiot, praising selectively, glossing around a very serious moral swamp with mealy-mouthed categorizations about what's cool and not cool, ideological whitewash and generally failing to see the fucking forest for the trees. Palantir and its kind represent a disgusting possibility for the future of how society is managed by increasingly autocratic government tendencies and their hustling corporate allies. And I can think of no more chilling a notion than just what that management could entail for hundreds of millions of people under the guise of supposedly fighting all kinds of ambiguous or outright invented "bad actors"

With OpenAI, you get a lot of corporate mendacity and the usual stew of trying to game the rules for the company's own favor. However, underneath this is a product that's largely used by ordinary people for doing fairly ordinary things, even if many of them contribute to the burial of culture in the cheapest auto-generated sludge imaginable.

With Palantir, the fruits of the labor are... squarely something else entirely.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#418

Post by adastra22 » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 4:41 AM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #395

adastra22 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He cannot experience time with his kid again. In any case he's on a fast track to divorce rn.

What a fabulous payout she is in for.

All those wasted years.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#419

Post by viccis » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 5:03 AM UTC

cootsnuck wrote: post #285

windowshopping wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for real. same. the level of delusion. i think what'll happen is they'll get some really advanced agents that can effectively handle most general tasks and they'll call it AGI and say they've done it. it won't really be AGI, but a lot of people will have bought into the lie thanks to the incredibly convincing facsimile they'll have created.

> i think what'll happen is they'll get some really advanced agents that can effectively handle most general tasks and they'll call it AGI They likely won't wait even for that. Because that itself is still really far off.

Yeah wait and see how much executives and investors want AI when it gets smart enough to put executives and investors out of a job.

Re: Reflections on OpenAI

#420

Post by greatgib » Thu, Jul 17, 2025, 5:55 AM UTC

What is funny is that this guy looks like to be really thinking that they are working on AGI or that OpenAI is on the way to way despite that we all know that it is serious bullshit disconnected from reality.

So it let me wonder if employees are really believing that and drinking the kool-aid of their own marketing, or if this is just a communication move again.