Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?

Excellent article, truly well-researched. As someone close to a pathological liar [1], the idea that one could be at the forefront of the creation of an artificial superintelligence confirms all the existential risks of such a piece of technology and how naïve, if not ignorant, the average starry-eyed tech worker and investor is about this whole endeavour. It's easy to believe there is a lot of idealism and wish for a better world, but underneath the greedy drive for money and power is excellently summarized in Greg Brockman's own thoughts: “So what do I really want? [...] Financially what will take me to $1B.”

Literally, the only hope for humanity is that large language models prove to be a dead-end in ASI research.

---

1: “He’s unconstrained by truth,” the board member told us. “He has two traits that are almost never seen in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction. The second is almost a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone.” — I guess now I know of two people with these traits.

I have experience in dealing with Sam Altman-like behavior. I hope to explain how their tactics unfold.

> I can see people concluding that they have been lied to rather than accept that they had been intellectually beaten.

There are two angles to this: from an individual perspective and from a collective one.

One's interaction with such a manipulator isn't a single shot. There is not a single event that they are “beaten”. First, one gets persuaded --- you might argue that there's nothing wrong with a skillful persuasion. At some point they realize that the reality is not in line with their expectations. They bring the point up to the manipulator and ask for a change, this time in more concrete terms. The manipulator agrees with the change, negotiates compromises, and the relationship continues. After some time the manipulated party realizes that things are not going in the direction they desire. This time they ask for more concrete terms, without accepting any compromises. The manipulator accepts, yet continues to act against the terms. The manipulated party is now angry and directly confronts the manipulator. The manipulator apologizes and tells that none of it was intentional, and asks for another chance. However, at that point, the manipulator has run out of “politically correct” “persuasion tactics”, and tells blatant lies to make the other party behave.

From a collective perspective, even those “politically correct” “persuasion tactics” are discovered to be lies, because what the manipulator told different parties are in direct opposition to each other, i.e., they cannot all be truths.

> Helen Toner suggested that they effectively ambushed Altman because if he had time to respond to allegations he could have provided a reasonable explanation. It did not reflect well on her.

I understand how her behavior may raise a flag for the unsuspecting, but it was exactly the right one. Manipulators prey on the benefit of the doubt. If Toner were to bring Altman's behavior into attention of others, no doubt that Altman would manipulate them successfully.

It's unfortunate that many people are unaware of these tactics and assume the best of intentions, when such assumptions fuel the manipulation that they would better avoid.

at this point even googles ai search results are better than gpt - obv. this is not for full programs but if you know what youre doing and just want a snippet, thats all you need.

I don’t know, but any time I see an interview of Altman and I look at those eyes, I get creeped out.

If this site ever was anti-racist, that must have been a long time ago. I threw away my old account many years ago only to come back with this one (because it's difficult to completely ignore HN if you work in tech) and the reason I threw that one away was in part the overwhelming reactionary bias in this community.

The "progressives" were at best silent "don't rock the boat" types more inclined to insist on civility than to challange reactionary sentiments while the reactionaries ranged from dog-whistling to outspoken, across the entire range of white supremacism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, zionism and so on. The only comments that would ever get flagged or downvoted were those that were explicit enough to be seen as "impolite" because they happened to spell out calls for genocide or violence rather than merely gesturing at it with the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability.