Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 599 posts

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

#521

Post by immibis »

Schiendelman wrote: post #506
immibis wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have one, which is why they're struggling to maintain market share. They run solely on brand loyalty, and slightly on competing with AWS and GCP to sell server hosting to people with more money than sense.

So you believe they became the most valuable company in the world (a few times recently though Apple is currently 13% ahead) with no moat? That's an interesting take. Is it possible you just don't know much about them?

The stock market is objectively quite stupid. I'm not sure what you're trying to imply with this.

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

#522

Post by toomuchtodo »

baking wrote: post #481
pj_mukh wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the article makes none of these points. The article is saying: a) "the technology is overhyped", based on some meaningless subjective criteria, if you think a technology is overhyped, don't invest your money or time in it. No one's forcing you. b) "child abuse problems are more important", with a link to an article that clearly specifies that the child abuse problems have nothing to do with OpenAI. c) "it uses…

>So if everything about this AI boom fails what we'll be left with is a massive amount of abundant renewable energy Except that someone has to pay for it. AI companies are only willing to pay for power purchase agreements, not capital expenses. Same with the $7T of chip fab. Invest your money in huge capital expenditures and our investors will pay you for it on an annual basis until they get tired of losing money.

Power purchase agreements are what renewables developers use to obtain financing for construction. The contract is collateral. Worst case, the developer might need to be prepared to find a substitute offtaker for the power if a PPA with a gen AI offtaker goes bust (if brought up by whomever is underwriting the financing, if there are debt covenants, etc).

I absolutely support AI companies signing as many PPAs for low carbon energy even if they implode in the future. The PV panels, wind turbines, and potentially stationary storage will already be deployed at that point.

https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/financing-n...

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

#523

Post by Aeolun »

hn72774 wrote: post #99
Aeolun wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need someone to tell you the truth you don’t need a CEO. What you need a CEO for is to sell you (and your investors) a vision.

Without the truth, a vision is a hallucination. It saddens me how easily someone with money and influence can elevate themselves to a quasi religious figure. In reality, this vision you speak of is more like the blind leading the blind.

> In reality, this vision you speak of is more like the blind leading the blind.

If you want to call it suckering suckers into parting with their money that works too.

It’s not all that different from crypto.

Progress depends on irrational people though. Even if 50 companies fail for every one that succeeds, that’s progress.

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

#524

Post by sumedh »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #274
vbezhenar wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Search engine replacement. I'm using it for many queries I asked Google before. I still use Google, but less often. 2. To break procrastination loops. For example I often can't name a particular variable, because I can see few alternatives and I don't like all of them. Nowadays I just ask ChatGPT and often proceed with his opinion. 3. Navigating less known technologies. For example my Python knowledge is limited a…

>> 3. Navigating less known technologies. For example my Python knowledge is limited and I don't really use it often, so I don't want to spend time to better learn it. Respectfully but that's a bit like saying you don't need to learn how to ride a bicycle because you can use a pair of safety wheels. It's an excuse to not learn something, to keep yourself less knowledgeable and skillful than you could really be. Why s…

> Respectfully but that's a bit like saying you don't need to learn how to ride a bicycle because you can use a pair of safety wheels.

Do you care how a car engine works to drive a car?

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

#525

Post by brenschluss »

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…

> For load bearing elements in buildings, we don't have anything substantially better today than 100 years ago

What about post-tensioned concrete slabs? Cross-laminated timber? Structural glazing? Intumescent paint?

Technology does keep improving, actually.

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

#526

Post by throwoutway »

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…

Don't forget the board coup, the coup-reversal, complete takeover, then co-founders leaving, and Mira leaving

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

#527

Post by martin82 »

wslh wrote: post #515
Barrin92 wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel I read that sentence a lot when Sam Bankman Fried was still the darling of the tech intelligentsia, but the closer you are to the huckster and moneyman corner of the spectrum rather than the actual research side the less true that statement is.

SBF was convicted for fraud, crossing legal and ethical lines that Sam Altman has not. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Sam Altman is an even bigger fraud and he will cause significantly greater harm to the world.

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

#528

Post by CPLX »

chirau wrote: post #509
CPLX wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a hypothetical we aren’t assuming spherical cows today. Those specific people have a long and public track record that answers this question. It’s not a secret, like I said. There are plenty of editors out there who have never decided to concoct ludicrous stories of Al Queda bases in the Amazon to name one example. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/10/28/in-the-party-o...

you still have not answered my question... who should own that you will believe it is impartial? Should I assume bias and impartiality for your Day One conference simply by who you are and who is behind you? The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, your opinion on that?

My own involvement in media is not impartial and is not intended to be.

My opinion on your question is that Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post to advance his interests, and that the Washington Post indeed has an agenda which is broadly aligned with what’s commonly referred to as “the establishment.”

And absolutely nothing I’m saying is particularly insightful or controversial, it’s obvious at a glance.

As for your original question about who should own media to make it objective, I don’t have the answer to that one.

But I do know that there’s no person with a billion dollars who doesn’t have the agenda of preserving a social order consistent with them being able to continue to enjoy that billion dollars.

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

#529

Post by lolinder »

throwoutway wrote: post #526
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…

Don't forget the board coup, the coup-reversal, complete takeover, then co-founders leaving, and Mira leaving

Yes, all of that definitely plays into the sense that not all is well at OpenAI.

Slight nit: a board can't start a coup because a coup is an illegitimate attempt to take power and the board's main job is to oversee the CEO and replace them if necessary. That's an expected exercise of power.

The coup was when the CEO reversed the board's decision to oust him and then ousted them.

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

#530

Post by googledocsftw »

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…

Except I can do things today that were not possible in 1999 like easily collaborate on a google doc realtime with someone on the other side of the planet, get an automated grammar expert to suggest edits and then have a video call with 15 people to discuss more about it. All in the same app, the browser, all on a whim, all high speed and to boot: all for free as in beer. And this is run of the mill YaaaaawN productivity tools.

I can also create a web scale app in a weekend using AWS. It is just insane what we can do now vs. 1999. I remember in early 2000s Microsoft boasting how it could host a site for the olympics using active server pages. This was PR worthy. That would be a side project for most of us now using our pocket money.

Post reply on HN