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

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

#591

Post by mvkel »

> Many technology companies issue vague proclamations about improving the world, then go about maximizing revenue. But the founding premise of OpenAI was that it would have to be different.

Isn't this really what everything is about? A pure research non-profit transitioned to a revenue generating enterprise because it had to, and a lot of people don't like that. Does that make it evil?

It's romantic to think that the magic of science and research can stand on its own, but even Ilya has admitted more recently that SSI needs to ship something consumer facing.

Anthropic, the lab that put all of its social capital in the safetyism basket, is having the exact same realization, with Claude Code being a mess of technically reckless vibe coded slop that nevertheless is the cash cow for the company.

Maybe it's time for everyone to realize that for an innovation this big to come to bear, it either needs to be state funded, or privately funded, the latter requiring revenue and a plausible vision of generating ROI.

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

#592

Post by thaoanh404 »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #81
cs702 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for coming on HN and offering to answer questions.[a] This is a fantastic piece, very timely, evidently well-researched, and also well-written. Judging by the little that I know, it's accurate. Thank you for doing the work and sharing it with the world. OpenAI may be in a more tenuous competitive position than many people realize. Recent anecdotal evidence suggests the company has lost its lead in the AI ra…

Many of us prefer OpenAI's Codex, because we think it's a better product. No comment on the CEO: I just find the product superior in everything but UI/UX and conversation. It's better at quality code.

i find myself being more productive with codex/copilot on coding tasks, but claude does seem to be better at planning

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

#593

Post by OhioMan2943 »

hnbad wrote: post #571
OhioMan2943 wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The cited snippet is in TFA. Did you read it? Did you read the Hindustan Times article either? Because that one doesn't actually include any relvant statement, it just contains the picture GP was pointing out - and the entire point of referencing that picture was to emphasize that they had had contact, which is already implied by them being in the same YC batch, which I don't think you are challenging. Please don't p…

I found a great piece from the halal times that backs up my claim

https://www.halaltimes.com/indian-media-has-become-a-factory...

It's fully up to you if you want to generalise before you read based on the publications name. I won't judge. If we read the times of india in full every time to give it the benefit of the doubt and counter our biases, the world would be a far less productive place. If a country's media has a reputation for low fact checking it's usually deserved.

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

#594

Post by druskacik »

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.

Altman is an advocate of Universal Basic Income, as far as I'm aware. That doesn't sound like he's not worried about massive job losses.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sam-altman-universal-basic-inco...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sam-altman-wants-universal-ex...

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

#595

Post by palata »

simonh wrote: post #267
palata wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, nobody is remotely worth $1B, period. The fact that some (usually toxic) individuals get there shows that the system is flawed. The fact that those individuals feel like they can do anything other than shut up, stay low and silently enjoy the fact that they got waaaay too much money shows that the system is very flawed. We shouldn't follow billionaires, we should redistribute their money.

If someone founds a company, grows it and owns $1bn of its stock, they don’t have $1bn in cash to distribute. They have a degree of control over the economic activity of that company. Should that control be taken away from them? Who should it be given to? I can see an argument when it comes to cashing out, but I’m not clear how that should work without creating really weird incentives. Some sort of special tax?

> Some sort of special tax?

Well yeah. After some amount, you get 100% taxes. So that instead of having billionaires who compete against each other on how rich they are or on the first one to go contaminate the surface of Mars or simply on power, maybe we would end up with people trying to compete on something actually constructive :-). Who knows, maybe even philanthropy!

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

#598

Post by keepamovin »

ronanfarrow wrote: post #56
cs702 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for coming on HN and offering to answer questions.[a] This is a fantastic piece, very timely, evidently well-researched, and also well-written. Judging by the little that I know, it's accurate. Thank you for doing the work and sharing it with the world. OpenAI may be in a more tenuous competitive position than many people realize. Recent anecdotal evidence suggests the company has lost its lead in the AI ra…

Thank you for this, very much appreciate the thoughtful response. The piece captures some of the anxieties within OpenAI right now about their competitive position. This obviously ebbs and flows but of late there has been much focus on Anthropic's relative position. We of course mention the allegations of "circular deals" and concerns about partners taking on debt.

If you were in charge of the deciding what should be done with Sam Altman, what would you choose?

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

#599

Post by palata »

r14c wrote: post #308
palata wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, nobody is remotely worth $1B, period. The fact that some (usually toxic) individuals get there shows that the system is flawed. The fact that those individuals feel like they can do anything other than shut up, stay low and silently enjoy the fact that they got waaaay too much money shows that the system is very flawed. We shouldn't follow billionaires, we should redistribute their money.

Big agree, at a certain point a company is big enough that their impact has to be managed democratically. I don't have an issue with effective leaders, the problem is that we reward a certain kind of success with transferable credits that don't necessarily align with people's actual talents or skills. I want skilled institutional investors who have a track records of making smart bets. I don't want a random person wh…

> Big agree, at a certain point a company is big enough that their impact has to be managed democratically.

100%. First, a company should not be that big. The whole point of antitrust was to avoid that. The US failed at that, for different reasons, and now end up with huge tech monopolies. And it's difficult to go back because they are so big now.

BTW I would recommend Cory Doctorow's book about those tech monopolies: "Enshittification: why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it". He explains extremely well the antitrust policies and the problems that arise when you let your companies get too big. It's full of actual examples of tech we all know. He even has an audiobook, narrated by himself!

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

#600

Post by palata »

rafterydj wrote: post #240
palata wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, nobody is remotely worth $1B, period. The fact that some (usually toxic) individuals get there shows that the system is flawed. The fact that those individuals feel like they can do anything other than shut up, stay low and silently enjoy the fact that they got waaaay too much money shows that the system is very flawed. We shouldn't follow billionaires, we should redistribute their money.

Well, redistributing their money is (in some cases disingenuously) exactly how they are able to pitch investors. "Sure, value my company at $10B and my shares make me $2B, but we're alllllll gonna make money when hit AGI!!!" That kind of thing.

Sure, I understand why the people around them who benefit from it also want to do that.

My point is that it all only benefits a few people. Those people used to call themselves "kings", appointed by god. Now they are tech oligarchs. If the people realised that it was bad to have kings, eventually maybe they will realise that it is bad to have oligarchs?

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