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The Contradictions of Sam Altman

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Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#511

Post by version_five »

maxilevi wrote: post #372
version_five wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone has read "Wild Sheep Chase" by Haruki Murukami, there was the idea of being possessed by the sheep which turned one into a forceful business man. I have only met a couple people like this, but as in the quote it's immediately obvious, and you see why they are where they are.

> I have only met a couple people like this, but as in the quote it's immediately obvious, and you see why they are where they are. What do you mean by this?

I mean they are successful and it's clear from a short interaction with them why that's the case. And I'm referring to the PG quote above about his impression of Sam Altman.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#512

Post by vasco »

Raptor22 wrote: post #506
vasco wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not dependent on your employer. You're dependent on society having enough employers at any point that would match with the skills you can provide in exchange for salary, you can switch employers at any time you want. It's not 1-1, it's 1-many right now. By moving that to the government you're actually going from 1-many to 1-1 and getting a way worse deal. Worse deal because the many employers are in competiti…

On the surface, yes, there are many employers. How's that going for the folks that have been recently laid off from checks notes ... Amazon, Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, EA, Indeed, Yahoo, Github, Zoom, Dell, Paypal, IBM, Spotify, Goldman Sachs, Coinbase, HP, Cisco... I'm not really sure that going from many possible employers who cannot guarantee my job to a single entity who can is a way w…

> How's that going for the folks that have been recently laid off from checks notes... Amazon, Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, EA, Indeed, Yahoo, Github, Zoom, Dell, Paypal, IBM, Spotify, Goldman Sachs, Coinbase, HP, Cisco...

They are applying to different companies? Do you believe these employees made a decision to work for one of these companies for life and will now never again get another job? What is your point with this part?

> I'm not really sure that going from many possible employers who cannot guarantee my job to a single entity who can is a way worse deal, but ok.

I do not want to work for the kinds of jobs "a single entity who can guarantee" jobs can offer me. You know what happens in that world? You receive a note from your teacher when you are in school, telling you that based on what they saw, you are going to be studying X for the rest of your schooling. After studying X the government will send you a letter assigning you to the job where you are needed, wherever it is, and assign you a home near that job. You have no agency in this world. I'm not making this up, this is the only practical way such systems have worked.

"Guaranteed work for life from a single entity" also means the guy that runs the "assignment office" for the government will now place his friends in good jobs, and you in bad ones.

People who are against corporativism and capitalism have a way of forgetting that if there's "bad people owning companies and houses and stealing our labor", those same defects would be in the people who would work for the government. Bad people don't go away because you change the system, so does your system keep them in check?

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#513

Post by Raptor22 »

vasco wrote: post #512
Raptor22 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the surface, yes, there are many employers. How's that going for the folks that have been recently laid off from checks notes ... Amazon, Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, EA, Indeed, Yahoo, Github, Zoom, Dell, Paypal, IBM, Spotify, Goldman Sachs, Coinbase, HP, Cisco... I'm not really sure that going from many possible employers who cannot guarantee my job to a single entity who can is a way w…

> How's that going for the folks that have been recently laid off from checks notes... Amazon, Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, EA, Indeed, Yahoo, Github, Zoom, Dell, Paypal, IBM, Spotify, Goldman Sachs, Coinbase, HP, Cisco... They are applying to different companies? Do you believe these employees made a decision to work for one of these companies for life and will now never again get another j…

> They are applying to different companies? Do you believe these employees made a decision to work for one of these companies for life and will now never again get another job? What is your point with this part?

Who is hiring in tech right now? Honest question.

As for the rest of your post, the main issue is having a say. The ill effects you are describing can indeed happen in a single-employer system. But at least in a democratic state, every few years the population has a say in how the system is being run. Right now, nobody except the CEO and the board has a say in how a company is run. They fire thousands of people, many with mortgages and children and people who depend on them, with no regards for what that means. And then to top it off they pay themselves millions of dollars to make these savage decisions. AND, I have no voice and no vote in all of this. Yeah... no thanks.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#514

Post by vasco »

Raptor22 wrote: post #513
vasco wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How's that going for the folks that have been recently laid off from checks notes... Amazon, Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, EA, Indeed, Yahoo, Github, Zoom, Dell, Paypal, IBM, Spotify, Goldman Sachs, Coinbase, HP, Cisco... They are applying to different companies? Do you believe these employees made a decision to work for one of these companies for life and will now never again get another j…

> They are applying to different companies? Do you believe these employees made a decision to work for one of these companies for life and will now never again get another job? What is your point with this part? Who is hiring in tech right now? Honest question. As for the rest of your post, the main issue is having a say. The ill effects you are describing can indeed happen in a single-employer system. But at least i…

> Who is hiring in tech right now? Honest question

The company I work for, among tens of thousands of other companies. I'm starting to think you're not commenting in good faith.

> the main issue is having a say.

> nobody except the CEO and the board

So here you come in with what I described above. "The bad person". Let's assume they are bad, and they fire everyone. Their company will stop existing, so that'll make them less money and give them less power. So they won't fire everyone. They'll fire exactly the amount of people they believe will benefit them personally the most. Over time, some of these "bad CEOs" will make compounding bad decisions, and nobody will want to work for them or the company will run out of money. This is the built-in self regulation and "the say". If you work for a company where the you believe the CEO is a bad person, you leave. If they fire your colleagues, you can leave too. That is your say, and the market is the "aggregate say". It works in different ways and needs regulations (I don't believe in the purity off implementation of any system).

So you see, in fact the bad CEO and board actually have way more to lose from their decisions than a "job assignment official" in an all-job-controlling government office, moreover because most public jobs aren't elected.

Out of those two, I know which one's whims I'd rather be exposed to. A life of shoveling rocks at the mines because "john the placement officer dislikes me", or choosing which job I do but possibly losing it from one day to the next and have to get another one multiple times through my life.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#515

Post by killdozer »

ShamelessC wrote: post #501
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…

Chill out a little bit. The commenter made it clear that it's their opinion. In fact, they seem to have gone out of their way to suggest it's their opinion - despite the rules here requiring the assumption of good faith (a rule you're breaking, in my opinion). That it happens to also be a popular opinion doesn't indicate that people are burning witches - it indicates that people are increasingly finding it easier to…

Seriously, we're talking about a company that Microsoft invested 10 billion dollars into, this is very powerful technology that will affect our lives. They didn't invest all that money because it will make the world a better place, they did so because they see the opportunity to make a LOT of money and have the ability to steer where this technology goes while also reducing transparency. Why shouldn't we view that with suspicion, you don't have to roll over just because there's a lot of money involved or because some millionaire/billionaire might get treated "unfairly".

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#516

Post by IIAOPSW »

noduerme wrote: post #492

To all the detractors of work ethic and the supporters of UBI: What freedom will exist in a world where everyone is reliant on their government for survival, and all mass communication is mediated by or written by opaque AIs? In trading the yoke of labor for free time we would also trade our independence, and any hope of changing the structure of power that had been set in place. I'm so sick of our new style of wanna…

Hard work is only seen as a virtue and sloth a vice because of the context of the world we are currently stuck in. You assume a system of value which might not make sense in the future.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#517

Post by mnky9800n »

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…

Tbh the only thing I find irritating about the article is the dumb story about being 8 and realizing his future already of being the leader of an ai company.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#518

Post by bennysonething »

bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #216
bennysonething wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though we do vote with our wallets too.

Yes, but for your own immediate benefit. People, in general, are just not trained to think long term and "for the greater good".

Same as voting in elections?

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#519

Post by brutusborn »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #484
brutusborn wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not saying they weren’t popular, but that if you had actually implemented what the public wanted then you would have ended up with universal healthcare.

Same with the EPA. It’s an improvement, so people like it, but it’s not what people actually want.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#520

Post by zarzavat »

arrrg wrote: post #494
noduerme wrote: post #492

To all the detractors of work ethic and the supporters of UBI: What freedom will exist in a world where everyone is reliant on their government for survival, and all mass communication is mediated by or written by opaque AIs? In trading the yoke of labor for free time we would also trade our independence, and any hope of changing the structure of power that had been set in place. I'm so sick of our new style of wanna…

Everyone (to a close approximation) is already reliant on their government for survival. Taking yourself out of society and its interdependencies is already basically impossible. (This is not an argument against all points you are making, I just wanted to say something to that aspect of your comment.)

There’s a big difference between being indirectly dependent on the government to maintain society, and being hand-to-mouth dependent on the government for food/welfare. As most people who have been in the latter situation can attest (at least outside of super rich countries like Norway), it is a distinctly less dignified existence. You live in constant uncertainty that your source of food, source of existence could be withdrawn at any time by government fiat. This is the future our dear thought leaders want for us.
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