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The Contradictions of Sam Altman

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Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#481

Post by [deleted] »

hutzlibu wrote: post #480
jstummbillig wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am astonished how anyone could just make a statement like this, here. It's so sticky, it's so damning and brash. It offers absolutely no proof, while contradicting what sama says themselves. And we are entirely fine with that. Top of the comments after 7 hours. Note, I am not claiming it could not be true. That is entirely beside my point. The issue is, that it could be entirely untrue. And I really mean, every sin…

"We are burning witches again." Excuse me, but what witch is being burned for the wrong reason here? This debate evolves around Sam Altman, how what he and OpenAI was doing was open - and now it is not anymore, despite contrary initial statements. That is a legit reason for anger, no?

[deleted]

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#482

Post by [deleted] »

jstummbillig wrote: post #478
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…

I am astonished how anyone could just make a statement like this, here. It's so sticky, it's so damning and brash. It offers absolutely no proof, while contradicting what sama says themselves. And we are entirely fine with that. Top of the comments after 7 hours. Note, I am not claiming it could not be true. That is entirely beside my point. The issue is, that it could be entirely untrue. And I really mean, every sin…

[deleted]

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#483

Post by 0xDEF »

ftxbro wrote: post #27
antirez wrote: post #7

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. It does not make any sense, and they are not naturally positioned for a monopoly. Just other companies have to move their asses.

> 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…

>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.

This is blatant revisionism. Military contracts is not the reason Google has been losing AI researchers to OpenAI.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#484

Post by DubiousPusher »

brutusborn wrote: post #384
DubiousPusher wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The National Health, turn of the century sanitation, widespread vaccination and the EPA are just all about "the feels".

I think the parent point is that democracy is an illusion in that only few people have any real power, and the masses choosing government representatives is very different from the masses choosing policy. Did the population at large want National Health, sanitation, vaccination and the EPA? Or did a small group of people in government decide that was best for everyone. I suspect the latter, especially when looking at…

> Did the population at large want National Health, sanitation, vaccination and the EPA?

Yes. Literally every one of those was very popular when it was passed. The National Health in particular continues to be popular.

The EPA was passed under Nixon and he did not veto it because the feeling that the need for it was so widespread that he didn't dare.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#485

Post by stonogo »

chii wrote: post #459
sergiomattei wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does the private sector. At least the public has some say in governance. Who wins?

The private sector's interest aligns with the market, at least on the average, as long as they are not allowed to illegally obtain a monopoly. The market, then, is assumed to be rational on average, and thus all participants in the market would make decisions in their own best interest, and thus, obtain the best outcome for themselves that is possible. Those who do not choose optimally is then selected out by economi…

This assumption of a rational market has been fucking up people's lives for a long time now. What's it gonna take to put that conceit to bed?

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#487

Post by PostOnce »

jstummbillig wrote: post #478
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…

I am astonished how anyone could just make a statement like this, here. It's so sticky, it's so damning and brash. It offers absolutely no proof, while contradicting what sama says themselves. And we are entirely fine with that. Top of the comments after 7 hours. Note, I am not claiming it could not be true. That is entirely beside my point. The issue is, that it could be entirely untrue. And I really mean, every sin…

I can think of exactly zero other reasons to have engineered the privatization of a charity, other than greed.

The balance of probabilities indicates to me that the attempt at regulatory capture is also based in greed, but if you have a different view, I'd love to hear your logic.

After all, if AI proliferation were as dangerous as Altman seems to claim, then why is the answer "OpenAI should continue to provide unfettered global public access to quasi-strong AI, but the government should slow other people down "?

If billions of dollars are involved, your first suspicion shouldn't be altruism.

Edit: OK perhaps a valid reason for a private subsidiary is to provide the charity with the income it needs to operate if it has no endowment (OpenAI does), but given all the other points I raised, I don't think that's what's going on here.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#488

Post by FartyMcFarter »

somsak2 wrote: post #161
graeme wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With no equity comes no control. I would find it very surprising he has no control over the project. And if he does have control that has value whether you label it equity or not. It is possible he literally has no control and no financial upside but who would turn down control over what they believed to be a world shaping technology?

I mean, most non-founder company CEOs don't have a significant % of total equity and they still have control over the company.

They have temporary control that can be taken away. Real control comes from owning more than half of the voting shares.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#489

Post by Mistletoe »

whitemary wrote: post #425
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…

> When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir? - John Maynard Keynes I sure would love to hear Mr. Keynes acknowledge defeat. If he were alive today, I seriously doubt we (Marxists like myself) would have the pleasure.

Can you name a country with a successful implementation of communism? Successful for me means the people are happy and implementation means they actually stuck to the ideals of communism and haven’t slid capitalism in.

Here’s a happy map for the world.

https://www.mappr.co/thematic-maps/world-happiness/

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#490

Post by bcherny »

zarzavat wrote: post #61
unshavedyak wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if GPT5 is nearly as advertised, watch the govt swoop in under national security guise Re: GPT5, are there any .. reasonable/credible sources of information on the subject? I've become deaf from all the speculation and while i am very curious, i'm unsure if anything substantiated has actually come out. Especially when considering speculation from Sam himself.

It’s unlikely to be any time soon. Despite productization by OpenAI, LLMs are still an active area of research. Research is unpredictable. It may take years to gather enough fundamental results to make a GPT-5 core model that is substantially better than GPT-4. Or a key idea could be discovered tomorrow. Moreover, previous advances in GPTs have come from data scaling: throwing more data at the training process. But d…

I know ChatGPT is trained on Wikipedia and other open datasets. I wonder what would happen if you gave it the entire Bing index?
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