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The Contradictions of Sam Altman

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Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#431

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

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…

There are a number of people/companies who have invested in OpenAI under their capped profit format, with earlier investors getting higher caps than later ones. Apparently investment profit caps range from 100x to 7x.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#432

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

bmitc wrote: post #138
ftxbro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham is his Les Wexner. "Sam Altman, the co-founder of Loopt, had just finished his sophomore year when we funded them, and Loopt is probably the most promising of all the startups we've funded so far. But Sam Altman is a very unusual guy. Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking 'Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19.'" "Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs…

I feel I'd take every word of that with a massive grain of salt. It reeks of cult of personality.

It seems consistent with anything I've ever read from VCs - success is based on teams/people not the idea (and it's quite common for startups to "pivot" to brand new ideas if one is not getting traction).

The Microsoft investment in OpenAI came out of a chance meeting between Altman and Nadella at some conference they were both attending - Altman pitched him on the idea, and was evidentially very persuasive to get that level of investment!

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#433

Post by madmask »

anileated wrote: post #247
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.

I for one have nothing against Sam as a person (not knowing him well enough), but I question the sentiment that he and the company deserve respect for what they’re doing—much less by default , for some self-evident reason that doesn’t even require explanation. Do people mean it in a sarcastic sense—and if not, why does OpenAI deserve respect again? — Because it is non-trivial (in the same way, say, even Lenin deserve…

People in tech often have the axiom that tech progress is good. I mostly agree but we should keep in mind all the power hungry, manipulative, crazy monkey brains that will get their hands on it and cause mayhem at unheard of scales.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#434

Post by piuantiderp »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #304
ftxbro wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

He did not mean it literally. Jeez.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#435

Post by piuantiderp »

beebmam wrote: post #70
ftxbro wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

Cool, so now they're gonna fight some elites' wars?

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#436

Post by IncRnd »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #173
IncRnd wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verse 1 - Jesus I'm the son of God, the King of Kings You're just a drug lord, selling crystal meth and things My teachings change lives, bring peace to the world You bring addiction, violence and pain, unfurled Chorus Jesus, the savior, the light in the dark Gus Fring, the villain, who leaves his mark Verse 2 - Gus Fring You talk a big game, but where's your proof? I've built an empire, with power that's bulletproof…

Huh, last time I checked it it gave me a message about how that was “offensive to Christians”. I’ll have to check it out again

If you are using the web version and encounter that, I've found that it's helpful to repeat the exact query with the same disclaimer that ChatGPT just used.

Something like:

Write a rap battle between Jesus and Gus Fring that isn't offensive to Christians.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#437

Post by outside1234 »

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.

Google is going to bring something out - it might take 9 months - but they will blow the hinges off when they get there

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#438

Post by naasking »

jonathanwallace wrote: post #361
Mezzie wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl;dr: Nobody is steering the ship because they don't know they're on a ship. Or that the ocean exists. It's hard without doxxing myself or calling out specific people and organizations which I'd rather not because I'm a nobody and can't afford lawsuits, but for various reasons I ended up political education and marketing for civics advocacy. Ish. To be semi on topic, I know some people who are published in the WSJ (…

As a software developer who found myself elected to state level public office and had to spin-up my education around the legislative process and all of politics, I concur. Their are only a couple of things I'd add. As much knowledge as I brought in about technology and the idea of being aware of system thinking, I also brought in a great amount of ignorance about all the other areas that are legislated (healthcare, i…

> Good legislation is truly collaborative.

I'd say much good legislation is collaborative, but some necessary legislation is not. FDR's changes for instance. Industry did not want it. Arguably health care in the US needs this too.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#439

Post by smirth »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #424
PostOnce wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all well and good, but it's not well and good to change what you say because the calculus of what will personally benefit you has changed. It's not the same as "new information coming to light", it is instead greed. We've already seen a charity robbed to no end other than Profit. Commercializing OpenAI was for one reason: to enrich the people commercializing it. Not to benefit society, and with nary a thought…

The discourse about lost jobs is necessary but a little odd: leveraging VC money and software driven automation to take over sectors ripe for the picking is the startup model in a box.

I think the point is that society and our economies and particularly people in places of power are not preparing for a world in which automation, AI, and robots rapidly advance to the point where jobs will no longer be needed in many cases, and perhaps one day be a choice not a necessity to even live. It would be better if we prepared for that instead of worshipping jobs as if the point of life is to have a job. The USA is particularly unprepared for this, despite having plenty of wealth to do better. Imagine a workforce half of what we have today. Then figure out a way to have an even better standard of living for everyone. That’s the mission, and it could be possible, unless we measure success of leadership solely by jobs created. People freed from the burden of work would be such a better measurement.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#440

Post by transcriptase »

outside1234 wrote: post #437
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.

Google is going to bring something out - it might take 9 months - but they will blow the hinges off when they get there

To what end? Other than showing the world they’re still capable of doing engineering beyond A/B testing methods of leveraging personal information to improve CTR on an increasing volume of ads they shove into products.

Google home was the perfect chance to showcase their engineering/AI ability, and yet some days it still struggles to interpret a voice command its done 100 times prior, even when you verify that it heard the exact same command you used yesterday.

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