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

561–570 of 599 posts

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

#561

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

vbezhenar wrote: post #553
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

I'm long time programmer and I learned quite a lot of languages along the way. 20 years ago I programmed Perl and I spent some time learning its quirks. While some of that knowledge definitely helped me all these years, especially regular expressions, I wouldn't write a single Perl line without Googling today. So learning syntax nuances of yet another programming language which I'll forget soon is wasted time. There'…

I agree that learning syntactic nuances is not that useful, but it's something that comes naturally from contact with the language.

Rereading your comment I think I got the wrong impression from it. You said:

>> I don't really use it often, so I don't want to spend time to better learn it

And I focused more on "I don't want to spend time to better learn it" than on "I don't really use it often". I also don't use Python often and I have to look up its syntax, same with e.g. R. I guess in that case it makes sense to not spend too much time learning the ins and outs of a language. On the other hand, Python is a staple, like Java was back in the day, and Perl and so on. It's useful, like speaking English. I don't think I would ever feel comfortable saying "I don't want to learn" it; or anything else.

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

#562

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

sumedh wrote: post #524
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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?

Yes. I generally like to know how stuff works and why.

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

#563

Post by agentcoops »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #394
dash2 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a Scottish Mortgage report: "companies are staying private for longer and until higher valuations". Amazon founded in 1994 1997 listed at $400m Google founded in 1998 2004 listed at $23bn Spotify founded in 2006 2018 listed at $27bn Airbnb founded in 2008 2020 listed at $47bn Epic games founded in 1991 2022 unlisted value $32bn Space Exploration founded in 2002 2022 unlisted value $125bn ByteDance founded in 201…

The only unlisted business there that could be considered among “the largest” is ByteDance. But they have a whole China thing going on, so not very representative of US/European markets. I doubt any competitor to the largest businesses in US//Europe that is actually putting up good audited numbers is staying private. Even Stripe has been trying to go public, but it doesn’t have the numbers for the owners to want to y…

It’s never just about the company’s numbers, but the financial environment. When interest rates come down enough to tempt investors out of the money market, you’re likely to see a new wave of IPOs.

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

#564

Post by baking »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #557
baking wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it is a 5 gigawatt data center in the middle of nowhere or if the power source is a nuclear reactor or three? Presumably, data centers are paying a premium that other customers aren't willing to pay.

Hard to say with random "what ifs." If we're starting merchant nuclear reactors back up, because they have some life left in them and can be operated safely, I support such an operating model as it pushes high carbon energy out of the generation mix until there is more clean energy on the grid. Illinois provides subsidies to their nuclear reactors because they are low carbon [1], the federal government is subsidizing…

I think you are missing my point. Microsoft signed a 20-year agreement with Constellation to restart TMI Unit 1. Do you think Constellation would make the same agreement with Open AI? The risk is completely different.

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

#565

Post by hanspeter »

lolinder wrote: post #550
hanspeter wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you were right in his intentions, can you outline the scenario where Sam is able to make an exit? I don't see how it could happen at current valuation. Who would want to pay $150 bil. for an OpenAI, where Sam is no longer part of it?

> where Sam is no longer part of it? It can be an "exit" in that it makes Sam extremely wealthy while he still hangs on as CEO.

You're thinking of an IPO?

Sure, that's one option. But it's pretty rare for a founder of a $10+ billion startup to immediately liquidate their shares right after an IPO.

It's also a risky bet. If OpenAI goes public, they'll have a hard time justifying the same or a higher valuation than they got Microsoft and Nvidia to buy in at.

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

#566

Post by talldayo »

wildermuthn wrote: post #516
jcgrillo wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then human invention will give way What? Would you mind explaining this?

It’s analogous to the automobile. People do still walk, bike, and ride horses, but the vast majority of productive land transportation is done by automobile. Same thing with electronic communication vs. written correspondence. New tech largely supplants old tech. In this case, the old tech is human ingenuity and inventiveness. I don’t think this is a controversial take. Many people take issue with the premise that ar…

Cars never got us anywhere a human couldn't reach by foot. It just commoditized travel and changed our physical environment to better suit cars.

I really don't see any reason to believe "AGI" won't just be retreading the same thoughts humans have already had and documented. There is simply no evidence suggesting it will produce truly novel thought.

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

#567

Post by grahamj »

nicolas_t wrote: post #273
henry2023 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve got a local llama 3.2 3B running on my macOS. I can query it for recipes, autocomplete obvious code (this is the only thing GitHub Copilot was useful for). And answer simple questions when provided with a little bit of context. All with much lower latency than an HTTP request to a random place, knowing that my data can’t be used to trading anything, and it’s free. It’s absolutely insane this is the real world no…

What do you use to interface with llama for autocomplete? and what editor do you use? Not wanting my data to be sent to random places is what has limited my use of tools like copilot (so I'd only use it very sparingly after thinking if sending the data would be a breach of nda or not)

ollama + VSCode + Continue extension

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

#568

Post by grahamj »

butterfly42069 wrote: post #167
Zigurd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elizabeth Holmes would like a referral to lawyer who could make that case.

I think her end product was too clearly defined for anything she was doing to be passed as progress. I don't think you could make the case for her. You can make a case that partial self driving is a route to FSD, the ISS is en route to Mars and (you can make a potentially slightly less compelling case) LLMs are on the way to AGI. No one can make a case that lady was en route to the tech she promised

I think she thought it was going to work for a while. The problem was when she got to the point of realizing it wouldn't and had the chance to stop there, she doubled down. That's why she's in prison today.

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

#569

Post by toomuchtodo »

baking wrote: post #564
toomuchtodo wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to say with random "what ifs." If we're starting merchant nuclear reactors back up, because they have some life left in them and can be operated safely, I support such an operating model as it pushes high carbon energy out of the generation mix until there is more clean energy on the grid. Illinois provides subsidies to their nuclear reactors because they are low carbon [1], the federal government is subsidizing…

I think you are missing my point. Microsoft signed a 20-year agreement with Constellation to restart TMI Unit 1. Do you think Constellation would make the same agreement with Open AI? The risk is completely different.

No, the point is taken, I think you’re underestimating FOMO and the hype cycle.

If a counterparty is just a bit too rational, move on, lots of other potentials. Markets are sentiment driven. When there is potentially irrational exuberance, leverage it.

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

#570

Post by sumedh »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #562
sumedh wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Yes. I generally like to know how stuff works and why.

Do you think rest of the world cares?
Post reply on HN