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

theatlantic.com

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

#71

Post by Dalewyn »

bee_rider wrote: post #63
Dalewyn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The journalist’s job is to describe what actually is happening, and to provide enough context for readers to understand it. The former is a journalist's job, the latter is the reader's concern and not the journalist. One of the reasons I consider journalism a cancer upon humanity is because journalists can't just write down "it is 35 degrees celsius today at 2pm", but rather "you won't believe how hot it is". Just j…

The journalist is making a product for the reader in the best case, their job is to help the reader. The second example you mention is a typical example of clickbait journalism, where the journalist has betrayed the reader and is trying to steal their attention, because they actually serve advertisers. But the first example is not very useful either. That journalist could be replaced by a fully automated thermometer.…

>your definition, which you seem to have just… made up?

See: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/journal

Specifically noun, senses 2B through 2F.

I expect journalists to record journals and nothing more nor nothing less, not editorials or opinion pieces which are written by authors or columnists or whatever.

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

#72

Post by dagw »

twelve40 wrote: post #33

well the good news is all that stuff comes with an expiration date, after which we will know if this is our new destiny or yet another cloud of smoke. This is a good reminder: > Prominent AI figures were among the thousands of people who signed an open letter in March 2023 to urge a six-month pause in the development of large language models (LLMs) so that humanity would have time to address the social consequences o…

barber demands paper cash only...I have to stand in line at USPS and DMV

Surely this is just a case of the future not being evenly distributed. All of these 'problems' are already solved and the solution is implemented somewhere, just not where you happen to be.

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

#73

Post by mrbungie »

deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #15

> At a high enough level of abstraction, Altman’s entire job is to keep us all fixated on an imagined AI future I think the job of a CEO is not to tell you the truth, and the truth is probably more often than not, the opposite. What if gpt5 is vaporware, and there’s no equivalent 3 to 4 leap to be realized with current deep learning architectures? What is OpenAI worth then?

A typical CEO's job is to guard and enforce a narrative. Great ones also work at adding to the narrative.

But it is always about the narrative.

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

#74

Post by est »

sama is best match with today's LLM because of the "scaling law" like Zuckerberg described. Everyone is burning cash to race to the end, but the billion dollar question is, what is the end for transformer based LLM? Is there an end at all?

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

#75

Post by meroes »

thelastgallon wrote: post #32

"Although it will happen incrementally, astounding triumphs – fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics – will eventually become commonplace. With nearly-limitless intelligence and abundant energy – the ability to generate great ideas, and the ability to make them happen – we can do quite a lot." - Sam Altman, https://ia.samaltman.com/ Reality: AI needs unheard amounts of en…

Wow that quote is absolutely crazy. “Discovery of all of physics”. I think that’s the worst puffery/lie I’ve ever heard by a CEO. Science requires experiments so the next LLM will have to be able to design CERN+++ level experiments down to the smallest detail. But that’s not even the hard part, the hard part is the actual energy requirements, which are literally astronomical. So it’s going to either have to discover a new method of energy generation along the way or something else crazy. The true barrier for physics is energy right now. But that’s just the next level of physics, that’s not ALL of it.

Edit: Also why are you getting downvoted...

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

#76

Post by simonw »

twelve40 wrote: post #33

well the good news is all that stuff comes with an expiration date, after which we will know if this is our new destiny or yet another cloud of smoke. This is a good reminder: > Prominent AI figures were among the thousands of people who signed an open letter in March 2023 to urge a six-month pause in the development of large language models (LLMs) so that humanity would have time to address the social consequences o…

“robotaxis are still almost here, just around the corner, as always”

We have them in San Francisco now (and Los Angeles and Phoenix, and Austin soon.)

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

#77

Post by Agentus »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #28
deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #15

> At a high enough level of abstraction, Altman’s entire job is to keep us all fixated on an imagined AI future I think the job of a CEO is not to tell you the truth, and the truth is probably more often than not, the opposite. What if gpt5 is vaporware, and there’s no equivalent 3 to 4 leap to be realized with current deep learning architectures? What is OpenAI worth then?

If a CEO lies all the time, and investors make investments because of it, will that not turn out to become a problem for the CEO?

Well i think this conversation chain has played out multiple times all the way spanning back to at least Ben Edison. Often times nothing is certain in a business where you need to take a chance trying to bring an imagined idea into fruition with millions of investor money.

Ceos are more often come from marketing backgrounds than other disciplines for the very reason they have to sell stakeholders, employees, investors on the possibilities. If a ceos myth making turns out to be a lie 50 to 80 percent of the time then hes still a success as with Edison, Musk, Jobs, and now Altman.

But i think AI ceos seem to be imagining and peddling wilder fancier myths than the average. If AI technology pans out then i dont feel theyre unwarranted. I think theres enough justification but im biased and have been doing AI for 10 years.

To ur question, If a ceos lies dont accidently turn true eventually as with the case of Holmes then yes its a big problem.

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

#78

Post by latexr »

deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #15

> At a high enough level of abstraction, Altman’s entire job is to keep us all fixated on an imagined AI future I think the job of a CEO is not to tell you the truth, and the truth is probably more often than not, the opposite. What if gpt5 is vaporware, and there’s no equivalent 3 to 4 leap to be realized with current deep learning architectures? What is OpenAI worth then?

What a shitty world we constructed for ourselves, where the highest positions of power with the highest monetary rewards depend on being the biggest liar. And it’s casually mentioned and even defended as if that’s in any way acceptable.

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

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

#79

Post by diggan »

antirez wrote: post #54
deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #15

> At a high enough level of abstraction, Altman’s entire job is to keep us all fixated on an imagined AI future I think the job of a CEO is not to tell you the truth, and the truth is probably more often than not, the opposite. What if gpt5 is vaporware, and there’s no equivalent 3 to 4 leap to be realized with current deep learning architectures? What is OpenAI worth then?

Not possible since Claude is effectively GPT5 level in most tasks (EDIT: coding is not one of them). OpenAI lost the lead months ago. Altman talking about AGI (may take decades or years, nobody knows) is just the usual crazy Musk-style CEO thing that is totally safe to ignore. What is interesting is the incredible steady progresses of LLMs so far.

> Claude is effectively GPT5 level

Which model? Sonnet 3.5? I subscribed to Claude for while to test Sonnet/Opus, but never got them to work as well as GPT-4o or o1-preview. Mostly tried it out for coding help (Rust and Python mainly).

Definitely didn't see any "leap" compared to what OpenAI/ChatGPT offers today.

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

#80

Post by vbezhenar »

simpaticoder wrote: post #67

A bit of a "dog bites man" story to note that a CEO of a hot company is hyping the future beyond reason. The real story of LLMs is revealed when you posit a magical technology that can print any car part for free. How would the car industry change if someone made a 3D printer that could make any part, including custom parts, with just electricity and air? It is a sea change to manufacturers and distributors, but ther…

There are plenty of plastic parts in cars and you can print them with 3D printer. I don't think that anything really changed because of that.
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