It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by swiftcoder » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 6:46 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #379

namaria wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said human intelligence is impossible. All I am saying is that Sam Altman's promises (remember the original topic) hinge on breaking thermodynamics. Humans evolved on a planet that was just so. The elements on Earth that make life possible couldn't have been created in a younger universe. So it take the full history of the universe to produce human intelligence. It also doesn't exist in a vacuum. Current huma…

> All I am saying is that Sam Altman's promises (remember the original topic) hinge on breaking thermodynamics If it hinged on that, then you would actually be saying it's impossible. > The elements on Earth that make life possible couldn't have been created in a younger universe Those statements also apply to the silicon and doping agents used in chip manufacture. They tell you nothing of relevance, we're not doing…

> If it hinged on that, then you would actually be saying it's impossible

"impossible with the approach OpenAI is using" != "impossible"

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

#442

Post by deepfriedchokes » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 6:46 PM UTC

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…

The internet has destroyed the value of user attention and brands; everyone has the attention span of a gnat and the loyalty of an addict. They will very quickly move on to the next shiny thing.

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

#443

Post by manquer » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 6:51 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #394

dash2 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a Scottish Mortgage report: "companies are staying private for longer and until higher valuations". Amazon founded in 1994 1997 listed at $400m Google founded in 1998 2004 listed at $23bn Spotify founded in 2006 2018 listed at $27bn Airbnb founded in 2008 2020 listed at $47bn Epic games founded in 1991 2022 unlisted value $32bn Space Exploration founded in 2002 2022 unlisted value $125bn ByteDance founded in 201…

The only unlisted business there that could be considered among “the largest” is ByteDance. But they have a whole China thing going on, so not very representative of US/European markets. I doubt any competitor to the largest businesses in US//Europe that is actually putting up good audited numbers is staying private. Even Stripe has been trying to go public, but it doesn’t have the numbers for the owners to want to y…

SpaceX hasn’t tried to go public , arguably being private has helped them ability to raise a lot of money from investors is key to their successes.

Their kind of product development [1] needs a long term thinking which public markets will not not support well

[1] ignore all the mars noise, just consider reusable i.e. cheap rockets and starlink

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

#444

Post by richardw » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 6:52 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #422

richardw wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It’s far harder to think of reasons that limits will endure, in a world where innovation by inches has always produced improvements. Everyone brings out the current state and technology. Those are transient.

WTF? Look at a word processor today, and then one from 1999, and tell me again how technology always keeps improving dramatically. The standard electrical wall sockets that you use have not really changed since WW2. For load bearing elements in buildings, we don't have anything substantially better today than 100 years ago. There is a huge list of technological items where we've polished out almost every last wrinkle…

So what? Many animals haven’t changed much for millions of years, and that was irrelevant to our emergence. Not everything has to change in equal measure.

There are many reasons for all those things not to change. Limits abound. We discovered that getting taller or faster isn’t “better”, all we needed is smarter. Intelligence is different. It applies to everything else. You can lose a limb or eyesight and still be incredibly capable. The intelligence is what makes us able to handle all the other limits and change the world even though MS Word hasn’t changed much.

We are now applying a lot of our intelligence to inventing another one. The architecture won’t stay the same, the limits won’t endure. People keep trying and it’s infinitely harder to imagine reasons why progress will stop. Just choose any limit and defend it.

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

#445

Post by ein0p » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 6:52 PM UTC

Anyone who takes startup CEOs at their word has never worked in a startup. The plasticity of their ethics is legendary when there’s a prospect of increasing the revenues.

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

#446

Post by wslh » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 6:54 PM UTC

thruway516 wrote: post #189

"Altman is no physicist. He is a serial entrepreneur, and quite clearly a talented one" Not sure the record supports that if you remove OpenAi which is a work-in-progress and supposedly not going too great at the moment. A talented 'tech whisperer' maybe?

Sam Altman is only 39 years old. Like it or not, it would be a fallacy to assume he's shown everything he's capable of. He likely has much more to contribute in his lifetime.

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

#447

Post by wslh » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 6:55 PM UTC

rubyfan wrote: post #109

I sort of wish there was a filter for my life that would ignore everything AI (stories about AI, people talking about AI and of course content generated by AI). The world has become a less trustworthy place for a lot of reasons and AI is only making it worse, not better.

Do you use LLMs?

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

#448

Post by EchoReflection » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 6:55 PM UTC

according to the book "The Sociopath Next Door", approximately 1 in 25 Americans is a "sociopath" who "does not feel shame, guilt, or remorse, and can do anything at all without what "normal" people think of as an internal voice labeling things as "right" or "wrong". It makes sense to me that sociopaths would be over-represented among C-level executives and "high performers" in every field.

https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-sociopat...

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

#449

Post by richardw » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 6:56 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #347

richardw wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why do we assume an AGI would not be forgetful or would never get bored?

Because we can change the hardware or software to be what we want. It can write to storage and read it, like we can but faster.

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

#450

Post by CurrentB » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 6:58 PM UTC

QuantumGood wrote: post #421

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…

His recent statement that AGI may "only be a few thousand days away" is clearly an attempt to find a less quotable way of extending estimates while barely reducing hype. History generally shows that estimates of "more than five years away" are meaningless.

"a few thousand days away" feels like such a duplicitous way to phrase something when "a few years" would be more natural to everyone on the planet. It just seems intentionally manipulative and not even trying to hide it. I've never been an anti-ceo type person but something about Altman sketches me out