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

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

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 1001 posts

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

#561

Post by LAC-Tech »

pesus wrote: post #461
arionhardison wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but first I want to be very clear on some things. 1. I could have hidden my identify behind a throwaway. I did not feel that would be appropriate when making this calim. 2. I am not looking for anything, literally at all. Any follow ups for blogs; anything that would benefit I will not answer. 3. This is NOT a new account, I am very easy to find; I am 6'1 140lbs I was working for a company called NationBuilder a…

Thank you for sharing this. I 100% believe it, and it lines up with my experience with other people who came from similar backgrounds as Sam Altman - i.e. white, rich, privileged, and attending elite universities. I will disagree with one part - I do believe it is racism. Most will never admit it publicly, but if they think you're one of them, it often comes out rather quickly, especially when alcohol is involved.

[flagged]

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

#562

Post by fontain »

taurath wrote: post #540
fontain wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very sympathetic to the situation you describe. I certainly think it is possible that Annie is describing something that happened. I think the author did a fair job of representing the allegations, finding the right balance between disclosing that they were unable to corroborate the allegations without dismissing them. That said, "recovering" memories as a therapy does not pass any sort of sniff test and it does…

> recovering" memories as a therapy Recovered memory therapy was a discredited hypnotherapy that leaned heavily on suggestion or was associated often with fairly coercive interrogations during the 80s CSA panic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria > Memories that return organically due to a trigger are a world apart from "recovered" memories, we shouldn't conflate them. Agree, though I think th…

Thank you very much for the details.

I’m reading more now and I think the missing piece for me is the distinction between “repressed” memories and “recovered” memories.

I understood repressed memories to be an accepted idea, distinct from “recovered” memories. I am reading that the people mentioned in your original comment rejected the idea of repressed memory altogether, and believed that everything traumatic must be remembered.

So, to me, reading that someone “recovered” memory reads like they went through a specific type of therapy intended to “find” these repressed memories. Whereas to you, “recovered” memories could be repressed memories that came back to the surface organically — whether at random, triggered or through a therapy intended to deal with disassociating. Is that right?

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

#563

Post by bakugo »

pesus wrote: post #461
arionhardison wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but first I want to be very clear on some things. 1. I could have hidden my identify behind a throwaway. I did not feel that would be appropriate when making this calim. 2. I am not looking for anything, literally at all. Any follow ups for blogs; anything that would benefit I will not answer. 3. This is NOT a new account, I am very easy to find; I am 6'1 140lbs I was working for a company called NationBuilder a…

Thank you for sharing this. I 100% believe it, and it lines up with my experience with other people who came from similar backgrounds as Sam Altman - i.e. white, rich, privileged, and attending elite universities. I will disagree with one part - I do believe it is racism. Most will never admit it publicly, but if they think you're one of them, it often comes out rather quickly, especially when alcohol is involved.

[flagged]

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

#564

Post by wolvesechoes »

eutropia wrote: post #247
ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're mass media cynically produced to extract maximum profit from lowest common denominator audiences, so the idea that people working in such influential positions find them appealing enough to reference suggests they are members of that lowest common denominator audience. The people shaping the future have no taste.

There's a time and a place for everything, and rejecting popular media as "lowest common denominator" is the most uninspired form of cultural elitism. Is it cynical to want your to make a profit? Or for it to make enough profit to subsidize other projects? Is it cynical to make something accessible so more people who watch it are able to enjoy it? I agree that it's embarrassing and feels crass when movies both try to…

There is also elitism of lack of expectations. Common people should be helped to rise up over the mud produced by culture industry. Meeting them and staying with them in this mud is an actual elitism.

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

#565

Post by eloisius »

red369 wrote: post #356
stavros wrote: post #239

I found it very interesting that Altman et al were worried that AI will become supremely intelligent and China will make a supervirus or some AI drones or whatnot, but not a single person was worried about destroying all jobs because we wouldn't need humans any more. Or maybe they were not so much "worried" but "hopeful" that they'd amass literally all the wealth in the world.

I also find that interesting. And not intending to defend the motives of anyone involved, but I'm hoping we can not worry about literally all jobs being destroyed, and AI companies amassing all the wealth in the world. Don't we need at least some humans working and earning to buy these AI services? Am I not being imaginative enough? Is it possible for the whole economy to consist just of AI selling services to each o…

Why keep human consumers to buy your services when you could just amass all the wealth you desire, and have autonomous systems that can ensure your unassailable physical security? You would sit atop the most stratified dominance hierarchy ever achieved, and it would reduce other humans to mere pets or breeding stock. I don’t think normal humans would desire that kind of power, and I don’t believe LLMs will take us there, but I wouldn’t put it past the perverted billionaire maniac.

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

#566

Post by hirako2000 »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #204
sampullman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting, I actively use both and usually find it to be a toss up which one performs better at a given task. I generally find Claude to be better with complex tool calls and Codex to be better at reviewing code, but otherwise don't see a significant difference.

If you want to find an advocate for Codex that can give a pretty good answer as to why they think it's better, go ask Eric Provencher. He develops https://repoprompt.com/ . He spends a lot of time thinking in this space and prefers Codex over Claude, though I haven't checked recently to see if he still has that opinion. He's pretty reachable on Discord if you poke around a bit.

Quite irrelevant what factions think. This or that model may be superior for these and those use cases today, and things will flip next week.

Also. RLHF mean that models spit out according to certain human preference, so it depends what set of humans and in what mood they've been when providing the feedback.

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

#567

Post by wolvesechoes »

chii wrote: post #483
pharos92 wrote: post #153

We focus these critiques far too much on the face rather than the underlying mechanics. Just like in politics, we critique the personality/politician yet the underlying system architecture evades it. Sam Altman clearly has a long history of nefarious activity. But the underlying threat posted by AI to society, the economy and human freedom persists with or without his presence.

> underlying threat posted by AI to society, the economy and human freedom persists I would deny that AI poses any such threat. There are actors who would use the tool in ways that threaten as you described, but that is a threat from said actor, not AI - unless you're claiming that an AGI would be capable of such independent actions. AI is similar in transformative power to how the internet was a transformative power…

> I would deny that AI poses any such threat. There are actors who would use the tool in ways that threaten as you described, but that is a threat from said actor, not AI

Of course, it is popular to deny it. People constantly tell themselves "it is people, not tech". They make valid, yet banal and inconsequential statement. This distinction has no bearing on reality.

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

#568

Post by hirako2000 »

jablongo wrote: post #457

For me, the attempted productization of Sora was conclusive proof that 1) OAI was overcapitalized and desperate for revenue 2) safety didn't matter to them much 3) improving the world didn't matter much either. At one point you mentioned an interaction with OpenAI staff where you were looking to interview AI Safety researchers. You were rebuffed b/c "existential safety isn't a thing". Does this mean that you could fi…

Interestingly we are still experiencing the technological momentum inspired and created by what OpenAI used to be. AI for humanity.

Given the initiative started circa 2017, much of the goods remain. It's a hijack of creative geniuses who got together, which is now turning into cow milking tech.

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

#569

Post by [deleted] »

geokon wrote: post #442
throw4847285 wrote: post #66

A new Ronan Farrow piece is a rare gift (and Marantz is no slouch). Can't wait to read this in the physical magazine when it arrives!

I hadn't heard of him before. The wiki article is worth a look https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronan_Farrow It's got to be one of the most unusual biographies of a living person that I've ever come across. Nearly every sentence is a head-turner. If you made it up no one would believe you

[deleted]
Post reply on HN