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The Contradictions of Sam Altman

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Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#551

Post by x-complexity »

xiphias2 wrote: post #58
sampo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lessons from Black Mirror and 1984 Those are works of fiction.

Maybe because they are more digestible then reality. Reality is much much worse.

> Maybe because they are more digestible then reality. Reality is much much worse.

That makes it infinitely worse, because ANY work of fiction will inevitably not be able to cover every minutiae of detail that reality mandates be covered, even the extremely rare & bizarre. And it is those one-off rare events & coincidences that will lead to significant global change. (See the the assassin buying a sandwich & the consequent assassination of Archduke Ferdinand)

Fiction allows for ideas to exist in a vacuum without any challenges from the outside. It allows for the perfect execution of said ideas without diving into the technical details for said implementations. It allows for the assumption of zero external AND internal resistance, & zero internal schisms. It treats irrational events as impossible to manifest, and coincidences as oddities instead of common occurrences.

In short: Ideas from fiction should be treated like the simplified universal laws of physics that's commonly shown to the mainstream - Idealistic, only tangentially related to the actual observed/calculated models, & abstracts over the complicated implementations underneath them.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#552

Post by bagacrap »

simonh wrote: post #405
jamaliki wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, actually. Microsoft's Sydney is GPT 4 [1]. 1 - https://blogs.bing.com/search/march_2023/Confirmed-the-new-B...

Wow, yet it still managed to be worse than ChatGPT. That’s quite an achievement.

... of marketing

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#553

Post by bagacrap »

rafark wrote: post #397
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.

Completely agreed. Plus, people seem to hate every “celebrity” these days. Name one ceo or founder who is not hated.

Larry Page

Lisa Su

Satya Nadella (well, I consider him a conman but I seem to be in the minority)

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#554

Post by bagacrap »

brookst wrote: post #116
ryanSrich wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that not great? It makes absolutely zero sense for him to have no equity, or at least some agreement in place that equity is coming. Or some other terms that essentially amount to equity. You don’t need evidence to be skeptical of the situation.

He was wealthy before and has other means to parlay openai to further wealth. You’re doing the “only the true messiah would deny his divinity” argument — if he was going to profit, that’s bad. If he’s not going to profit, obviously he’s lying and is going to profit, so that’s bad. IMO arguments are only meaningful if they can be falsified. Your argument can’t be falsified because you’re using a lack of evidence as pr…

When did he say profit was bad?

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#555

Post by bagacrap »

leobg wrote: post #168

The contradiction I noticed during his Lex interview was him talking about being attacked by Elon Musk. He said it reminded him of how Elon once said he felt when the Apollo astronauts lobbied against SpaceX. Elon said it made him sad. Those guys were his heroes. And that the wish they would come visit and look at the work SpaceX was doing. I found that comparison by Altman disingenuous. First, he didn’t seem so much…

On top of that, the astronauts never actually attacked Elon. The interviewer played it up into something it wasn't. (Not sure why Elon went along with it.)

Sama reminds me strongly of Elon. Since the new economy seems to mostly revolve around hype I suppose they will be rivals.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#556

Post by leobg »

bagacrap wrote: post #555
leobg wrote: post #168

The contradiction I noticed during his Lex interview was him talking about being attacked by Elon Musk. He said it reminded him of how Elon once said he felt when the Apollo astronauts lobbied against SpaceX. Elon said it made him sad. Those guys were his heroes. And that the wish they would come visit and look at the work SpaceX was doing. I found that comparison by Altman disingenuous. First, he didn’t seem so much…

On top of that, the astronauts never actually attacked Elon. The interviewer played it up into something it wasn't. (Not sure why Elon went along with it.) Sama reminds me strongly of Elon. Since the new economy seems to mostly revolve around hype I suppose they will be rivals.

Oh they did. There was this congressional hearing where Gene Cernan argued against giving SpaceX any missions, saying essentially they, as private enterprise, were incompetent and a disaster waiting to happen. “They don’t know what they don’t know”, he said (to which Elon rightfully said that this applies to anyone anytime).

The difference, to me, is this: Elon really did look up to those astronauts. And what they said made him sad. Sam claims that he looks up to Elon. But what Elon says doesn’t make him sad. It makes him angry. Because, I believe, he also sees him as a rival and compares himself to him.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#557

Post by hitekker »

PostOnce wrote: post #541
jstummbillig wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can think of exactly zero other reasons to have engineered the privatization of a charity, other than greed. The question has recently been asked by Lex Fridman and answered by Sam Altman. This is the clip: https://youtu.be/qQdqFZFZQ6o To quote: "We learned early on that were gonna need far more capital than we were able to raise as a non-profit" (you can listen in on it being expanded over 3 Minutes) Now, since…

I watched the video. I'll preface this by saying I am neither judge nor prosecutor, and we are not at trial. Where we are is in a position of considering, before it is too late , the honesty and motives of a man who has taken a charity private because they "needed money". Needed money for what, exactly? Well, the mission of OpenAI, according to https://openai.com/about their mission is Our mission is to ensure that a…

You're in the clear. Like another commenter in the same thread mentioned, you've responded in good faith to a semi-paranoid question. In my uncharitable view, the GP seems to both have a bias for Sam and a weird anxiety over moral questions.

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#558

Post by jstummbillig »

PostOnce wrote: post #541
jstummbillig wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can think of exactly zero other reasons to have engineered the privatization of a charity, other than greed. The question has recently been asked by Lex Fridman and answered by Sam Altman. This is the clip: https://youtu.be/qQdqFZFZQ6o To quote: "We learned early on that were gonna need far more capital than we were able to raise as a non-profit" (you can listen in on it being expanded over 3 Minutes) Now, since…

I watched the video. I'll preface this by saying I am neither judge nor prosecutor, and we are not at trial. Where we are is in a position of considering, before it is too late , the honesty and motives of a man who has taken a charity private because they "needed money". Needed money for what, exactly? Well, the mission of OpenAI, according to https://openai.com/about their mission is Our mission is to ensure that a…

> So how does this newfound capital help that mission?

Again, as soon as we jump to the "so...", we are already past the point that I was taking offense with. I myself listed a few options from where to take this and you added a few more. Fair enough and entirely fine with me.

This is the point:

> Commercializing OpenAI was for one reason: to enrich the people commercializing it. Not to benefit society, and with nary a thought given to the consequences.

Making bad faith statements about someone without even rebutting the stated intent of the accuse, or even putting in the effort to learn about the intent, is just so incredibly lame and bad style.

Imagine saying this to someones face: "You made this business for one reason alone: To enrich yourself personally, you absolutely do not care about benefitting society, and you don't give a fuck about the damage it might do." Would you think it really be okay to advance this to the accusse, before even bothering to find or hear an explanation regarding the issue you are taking such strong offense with? Just an inkling of what their explanation is without you assuming it for them, as a matter of human decency?

If we cut out the option for people to explain themselves or reason on basis of their explanation, what are we doing other than advancing populism? I really want to believe this place can not be that.

(I want to add, that I have 0 allegiance or interesting opinions about Sama. In the past I found some of their takes interesting, but for me that's just normal, when I listen to a decently smart person for the first time, even if I end up disagreeing with most of their values.)

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#559

Post by PostOnce »

jstummbillig wrote: post #558
PostOnce wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched the video. I'll preface this by saying I am neither judge nor prosecutor, and we are not at trial. Where we are is in a position of considering, before it is too late , the honesty and motives of a man who has taken a charity private because they "needed money". Needed money for what, exactly? Well, the mission of OpenAI, according to https://openai.com/about their mission is Our mission is to ensure that a…

> So how does this newfound capital help that mission? Again, as soon as we jump to the "so...", we are already past the point that I was taking offense with. I myself listed a few options from where to take this and you added a few more. Fair enough and entirely fine with me. This is the point: > Commercializing OpenAI was for one reason: to enrich the people commercializing it. Not to benefit society, and with nary…

My skepticism is not bad faith, it's honest inquiry based on the facts available to me, which I have enumerated for you.

The hiding of scientific data from a charity has VERY few kind explanations and a lot of terrible ones. The balance of probabilities points towards Sam Altman acting maliciously and not in the public interest, which might be "okay" if he hadn't robbed a charity to do so.

I am still open to contrary viewpoints, but you're not presenting any, you are only saying I am acting in bad faith for what I (and others here) consider to be merited and valid skepticism based on recent events and statements from Altman himself.

Can you provide any charitable interpretation of the hiding of scientific data from a charity whose mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity?

Re: The Contradictions of Sam Altman

#560

Post by golergka »

ajross wrote: post #402
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the job of the government, it's the job of citizens. Citizens MAY outsource parts of this to governments, but we primarily need labor and the working class to have the majority of economic power. https://libcom.org/library/workers-control-wage-system-ideas... I'm dedicating my life to building for-profit commercial cooperatives based on this simple principle of voluntary association.

> It's not the job of the government, it's the job of citizens If only there was a system of government designed from first principles to reflect the will of the people... This is just librarian tautology. It's not wrong, but any "citizen" organization you can imagine to implement whatever policy it is you want[1] is going to be isomorphic to a democratic government. [1] You skipped this part!

> It's not wrong, but any "citizen" organization you can imagine to implement whatever policy it is you want[1] is going to be isomorphic to a democratic government.

No. Government is a monopoly usurped by violence.

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