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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?

#701

Post by lkey »

bakugo wrote: post #563
pesus wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Interpersonal racism that produces systemic racism can be measured.

Defined as: Disparate outcomes where, holding all other things equal, the only determinative factor is race.

So, with altman, we maybe couldn't point out a single case where it was definitely interpersonal racism. He'd probably have several plausible explanations at hand, given who he is.

But, if we were to look at his hiring and firing history, we could probably measure an 'unexplainable' dearth of black people in his orgs and circles. At that point, we can say his interpersonal racism has produced a measurable systemic effect that has disenfranchised many talented black people unfairly from this digital gold rush.

I can't do this work, but I am certain someone at YC or OpenAI could, were they so inclined (they won't be).

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

#702

Post by scruple »

druskacik wrote: post #594
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...

It would be absolutely astounding to read TFA and then continue to take this weasel and his word at face value.

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

#703

Post by Scene_Cast2 »

keldaris wrote: post #281
mliker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is “us”? It does seem that some scientists prefer Codex for its math capabilities but when it comes to general frontend and backend construction, Claude Code is just as good and possibly made better with its extensive Skills library. Both codex and Claude code fail when it comes to extremely sophisticated programming for distributed systems

As a scientist (computational physicist, so plenty of math, but also plenty of code, from Python PoCs to explicit SIMD and GPU code, mostly various subsets of C/C++), I can confirm - Codex is qualitatively better for my usecases than Claude. I keep retesting them (not on benchmarks, I simply use both in parallel for my work and see what happens) after every version update and ever since 5.2 Codex seems further and fu…

Have you tried the latest (3.1 pro) Gemini? In my experience, it's notably better for a similar type of problems than Opus 4.6. However, I don't really use OpenAI products to compare.

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

#704

Post by staticman2 »

sph wrote: post #532
stonyrubbish wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human cognition is nothing like AI "cognition." It really bothers me that people think AI is doing the same thing the human mind does. AI is more like a parrot which is trained to give a correct-looking response to any question. The parrot doesn't think, doesn't know what its doing etc, it just does it because it gets a treat every time a "good" answer is prompted. This is why it can't do things like know how many pa…

> Human cognition is nothing like AI "cognition." It really bothers me that people think AI is doing the same thing the human mind does. This might sound callous, but I wonder if people saying this themselves have very limited brains more akin to stochastic parrots rather the average homo sapiens. We are very different, and there are some high-profile people that don't even have an internal monologue or self-introspe…

> This might sound callous, but I wonder if people saying this themselves have very limited brains more akin to stochastic parrots rather the average homo sapiens.

I have a different theory.

Aside from a few exceptions like Blake Lemoine few people seem to really act as if they believe A.I. is doing the same thing the human mind is doing.

My theory is people are for some reason role-playing as people who believe human thought is equivalent to A.I. for undisclosed reasons they themselves may or may not understand. They do not actually believe their own arguments.

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

#705

Post by goolz »

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #695

Yet when he was fired, 99% of OpenAi employees backed him and were ready to resign. That actual event/evidence is more telling than any hit piece article.

I imagine most of them were motivated by money. OpenAI was supposed to be Open. As I understand it, it was not created for shareholder profits and instead was made to benefit everyone? Hence the Open name. Then someone like Sam comes along who can make you incredibly rich by casually ignoring the initial mission. Would you go against this incredibly powerful billionaire who by many accounts is not encumbered by ethical quandaries? In doing so you risk your financial freedom, and for what? OAI is already a husk of its intended purpose. Mine as well get paid to be a sellout.

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

#706

Post by [deleted] »

rglullis wrote: post #639
Lerc wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From time to time I have been accused of being an apologist for Sam Altman, but I have always tried to assess information based upon what it says instead of whether it matches an existing narrative. You list a number of distortions in your article which show the problem. If you are a good person, bad stories about you may be fake. If you are a bad person, bad stories about you may still be fake. My prima facie view o…

> what information would significantly change your views Quite simple: show me any single action took by Sam Altman which can not be construed as an attempt to get him more power/money/influence. You can't find it. The difference between what he claims to believe and what he actually does is a textbook example of sociopathy.

[deleted]

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

#707

Post by EcommerceFlow »

goolz wrote: post #705
EcommerceFlow wrote: post #695

Yet when he was fired, 99% of OpenAi employees backed him and were ready to resign. That actual event/evidence is more telling than any hit piece article.

I imagine most of them were motivated by money. OpenAI was supposed to be Open. As I understand it, it was not created for shareholder profits and instead was made to benefit everyone? Hence the Open name. Then someone like Sam comes along who can make you incredibly rich by casually ignoring the initial mission. Would you go against this incredibly powerful billionaire who by many accounts is not encumbered by ethic…

Like I said, as it currently stands the evidence is 5,000 with Sam and like 5-15 against him (from the article).

We can theorize on motivations all day, but since the hitpiece didn't bother contacting any 'pro Sam' employees, it's a moot point.

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

#709

Post by jplusequalt »

druskacik wrote: post #594
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...

It's easy to advocate for something when you know it's essentially impossible to implement.

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

#710

Post by surajrmal »

Bolwin wrote: post #462
solenoid0937 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether the company that branded itself as the ethical AI lab actually is one FWIW I have two(!!) close friends working for Anthropic, one for nearly two years and one for about 4 months. Both of them tell me that this is not just marketing, that the company actually is ethical and safety conscious everywhere, and that this was the most surprising part about joining Anthropic for them. They insist the culture is ac…

I find it bizarre even the public image of Anthropic is seen as ethical after the Department of War debacle, in which they themselves admitted they had basically no qualms with their tech being used for war and slaughter at all except two very very thin lines, namely mass surveillance of American citizens and fully automated weaponry with their current models. It only showed they were marginally more ethical than Ope…

The idea that it's not okay to arm the military is a position of privilege. The ethical issues are around how the military chooses to use its abilities, not around giving them the tools to do their jobs. We're talking about folks who are willing to give their lives up for others. If you're not going to serve yourself you should at least be willing to help them live. This has nothing to do with whether or not you support the political uses of the military. If world war 3 breaks out and you are forced to serve, you may find yourself feeling differently.
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