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The Sam Altman Playbook: Fear, the Denial of Uncertainties, and Hype

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: The Sam Altman Playbook: Fear, the Denial of Uncertainties, and Hype

#61

Post by [deleted] »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #54
jay_kyburz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll also flag, and I've never flagged anything before. Sam A's job is to sell Open AI. It's not not interesting that he talks about why is so great!

3rded. There's nothing substantive in this article. The author expresses a seething hatred for OpenAI's CEO by repeatedly lampooning ("where's the evidence!?") brief quotes, without context, of Altman's opinions/predictions. I hope that the author escapes whatever rut made him so overwhelmingly bitter and resentful. I've been there, and it truly stinks. :/

[deleted]

Re: The Sam Altman Playbook: Fear, the Denial of Uncertainties, and Hype

#62

Post by nvy »

FreakLegion wrote: post #60
nvy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the environment? Absolutely. We can't have discussion of that on HN, though, so the moderator has flagged it.

Users flagged it.

I stand corrected.

I still despise the HN policy of "no criticism of tech CEOs" whether official or otherwise.

Try to say something bad about Steve Jobs? Nah that's not "curious conversation".

Whatever.

Re: The Sam Altman Playbook: Fear, the Denial of Uncertainties, and Hype

#63

Post by godelski »

ronsor wrote: post #37
mindwok wrote: post #28

Jeez, I'm a Sam Altman skeptic but this is just another level. How about instead of attacking this guy and literally deconstructing a single-sentence tweet to make him out as an evil bogeyman, we make some constructive arguments for these so-called 'more reliable' ways of building AI and why the current approach is 'deeply flawed'?

As someone else who is not an Altman fan and generally skeptical of people pushing weird AGI scenarios: I do not think Gary Marcus has anything interesting to say about current AI, and by that, I mean anything that's not a cheap gotcha, restatement of an obvious fact, or something entirely disingenuous.

In a similar boat, and I find Marcus weird. Initially I thought he had some valid complaints but the more and more I heard the more he was pushing it into unreasonable territory (maybe he started more rational and went off the deep end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

This is a problem I have with a lot of people in the AI safety or criticism space. There's a lot to criticize LLMs and AI for. There are a lot of real and concerning things that can cause real world harm, with systems we have __now__. But attacking him or any of the AI doomer/X-risk stuff just muddies the waters and makes those real conversations near impossible to have. Just primes people the wrong way. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I'm not surprised by people that think these two groups are on the same side. Just seems like a lot of attention seeking and we can fight the hype without creating a different kind of hype...

Re: The Sam Altman Playbook: Fear, the Denial of Uncertainties, and Hype

#64

Post by FreakLegion »

nvy wrote: post #62
FreakLegion wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users flagged it.

I stand corrected. I still despise the HN policy of "no criticism of tech CEOs" whether official or otherwise. Try to say something bad about Steve Jobs? Nah that's not "curious conversation". Whatever.

It wasn't flagged for being critical of Altman, though. There are long, critical discussions of Altman here all the time. It was flagged because Gary Marcus is fast descending into provocateur-ish nutterdom and the article is, quite simply, poorly constructed rage bait.

About your own two downvoted posts: They probably aren't downvoted for the reasons you think! Your opinions are pretty widely shared here. A lot of people agree with you about the copyright issue, about the farcical non-openness of OpenAI, and about the environmental stakes. It's the other bits (insults, complaints about moderation) we can do without.

Re: The Sam Altman Playbook: Fear, the Denial of Uncertainties, and Hype

#65

Post by Jensson »

XorNot wrote: post #16
aredox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLM can _pretend_ to do all kinds of things, and fall flat on their face as soon as they can't fake it.

I mean that's just describing a solid half of Hacker News comments on any given subject.

If not for the other half HN would be a very different place.

Re: The Sam Altman Playbook: Fear, the Denial of Uncertainties, and Hype

#66

Post by nvy »

FreakLegion wrote: post #64
nvy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand corrected. I still despise the HN policy of "no criticism of tech CEOs" whether official or otherwise. Try to say something bad about Steve Jobs? Nah that's not "curious conversation". Whatever.

It wasn't flagged for being critical of Altman, though. There are long, critical discussions of Altman here all the time. It was flagged because Gary Marcus is fast descending into provocateur-ish nutterdom and the article is, quite simply, poorly constructed rage bait. About your own two downvoted posts: They probably aren't downvoted for the reasons you think! Your opinions are pretty widely shared here. A lot of p…

The faux-politeness is one of the reasons HN has a reputation for being arrogant and aloof.

I think Sam is a bad person who deserves to be insulted. I prefer to call a spade a spade.

Re: The Sam Altman Playbook: Fear, the Denial of Uncertainties, and Hype

#67

Post by motbus3 »

mindwok wrote: post #28

Jeez, I'm a Sam Altman skeptic but this is just another level. How about instead of attacking this guy and literally deconstructing a single-sentence tweet to make him out as an evil bogeyman, we make some constructive arguments for these so-called 'more reliable' ways of building AI and why the current approach is 'deeply flawed'?

I don't like the method but I do also think that this guy is a borderline-scammer. There are tons of things he should not say about the technology OpenAI develops that he intentionally does to create hype, even if it is irresponsible.

But the worst to me, by far, is to make OpenAI a for-profit organisation that does not release the models. More than that, he ordered to kill official support for other projects like OpenGym and others. The impact of this change does not matter. It is dishonest and possibly has some level of illegality in it. He is literally surfing the hype as did the crypto guys.

Re: The Sam Altman Playbook: Fear, the Denial of Uncertainties, and Hype

#68

Post by __loam »

fastball wrote: post #53
__loam wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree strongly with this. GPT has: - Precipitated a new class of computationally intense and expensive systems at a time when we desperately need to be focused on sustainability and reducing power demands/increasing efficiency. - Devalued human labor without being high enough quality to truly replace it. - Grossly violated an unspoken social contract of the internet by abusing the commons, leading to many people…

- No, we just need better ways to generate electricity, which Sam Altman is also working on. - If something is not replacing labor, it will not devalue it. In this case, GPT4 is replacing human labor, which is indeed devaluing those specific labors. But it is also unlocking new potential, which in the history of all technology has always been a net positive in the end. - I wasn't aware of this unspoken social contrac…

Oh good, I'm glad Sam Altman, who doesn't even have a bachelor's degree, is on the case. I'm sure his efforts towards cold fusion will be appreciated.

> I wasn't aware of this unspoken social contract before OpenAI existed, but maybe I'm just ignorant.

It's shocking to me the number of programmers out there who simply did not realize everyone would be mad at them for leveraging everyone's work into a massive for profit system. Then they play stupid when people rightly called them out and spout some bullshit about outmoded forms of production as if productivity was an issue for the generation of culture.

Re: The Sam Altman Playbook: Fear, the Denial of Uncertainties, and Hype

#69

Post by __loam »

hackerlight wrote: post #59
__loam wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree strongly with this. GPT has: - Precipitated a new class of computationally intense and expensive systems at a time when we desperately need to be focused on sustainability and reducing power demands/increasing efficiency. - Devalued human labor without being high enough quality to truly replace it. - Grossly violated an unspoken social contract of the internet by abusing the commons, leading to many people…

It's easy to forget tangible win-win examples like this[1] or this[2]. Speaking from my personal experience, it's improved my life by reducing tedium associated with writing code. Small wins, but there's lots of them spread over many people. They are not abstract and it's harder to write grand narratives about them. > Precipitated a new class of computationally intense and expensive systems at a time when we desperat…

I don't buy the idea that there's nothing we can do about this with respect to whether we do it at all. I'm happy for Microsoft that they're building out green power infrastructure, but it would be better if that was put towards displacing fossil fuels rather than enabling extremely inefficient bullshit generators.

Re: The Sam Altman Playbook: Fear, the Denial of Uncertainties, and Hype

#70

Post by benterix »

mindwok wrote: post #28

Jeez, I'm a Sam Altman skeptic but this is just another level. How about instead of attacking this guy and literally deconstructing a single-sentence tweet to make him out as an evil bogeyman, we make some constructive arguments for these so-called 'more reliable' ways of building AI and why the current approach is 'deeply flawed'?

I read the article and oddly enough I have to admit I share some of its vibe. You see, when Sama was on his previous tour, I expected to learn something interesting regarding the future of LLMs. Instead, the gu talks for hours on how they are making a new cryptocurrency, and have a plan to scan the retinas of all humans on Earth and so on. Seriously, it was a very weird and unsettling experience.

In any case, it was clear that he doesn't care at all about the "Open" part of OpenAI and that he sees a future where everybody use OpenAI services rather than having their own, powerful private models. I'd say our interests are very much in opposition.

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