771–780 of 798 posts
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Ycombinator still has a monetary interest in the for-profit corp of OpenAI right? When Sam says he doesn't have equity I believe he sometimes clarifies that he does a small interest through a ycombinator partnership or fund ownership of some shares.
Some parallel insider investment vehicle
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Also he does seem to have "crazy eyes" [1].... Yeah it's not entirely scientific but a lot of manipulative exec types have them. Elizabeth Holmes comes to mind... [1] https://www.insider.com/you-can-spot-psychopaths-by-looking-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanpaku > According to Chinese/Japanese medical [...] when the upper sclera is visible it is said to be an indication of mental imbalance in people such as psychotics, murderers, and anyone rageful. In either condition, it is believed that these people attract accidents and violence. It might not be scientific but people with this look certainly do freak me out. (FWIW, I haven't seen any…
From Paul Graham's Twitter, three days ago: "No one in the world is better than Sam at dealing with this kind of situation." Jessica Livingston retweet: "The reason I was a founding donor to OpenAI in 2015 was not because I was interested in AI, but because I believed in Sam. So I hope the board can get its act together and bring Sam and Greg back." Also from a sibling comment: https://twitter.com/search?q=from:paulg…
Yes, absolutely, AI will reach superhuman persuasion before it reaches AGI. Yes, that's an extraordinary threat. The reason it's a threat is that it's a weapon without self-guidance or direction: a paperclip maximizer, as it were. A gray-goo problem.
I still think Sam has access to exactly this, and panic about it is what caused his firing. Whether his use of his persuasion-weapon has played a role in what ensued is not as clear.
I get that huge swathes of OpenAI appear to have been persuaded, but I don't think this weapon applies as much to them, nor do I think it is unique and different in nature from what already exists. It's a way of short-cutting the process of persuasion and coming out with the answer right away. Everything superhuman persuasion can offer, has already been deployed by trial-and-error using tools like Google Analytics and whatever metrics Facebook offered, in recent (and not-so-recent) years.
Just because you can now push a button and get the killer argument to sway a demographic doesn't mean people haven't got to that argument more slowly in previous years, whether it's watching the results of persuasion campaigns in click-through feedback… or issuing radio broadcasts and observing the results.
Back in the day there was a man named George Wallace who spoke of the things he'd done in public service, and nobody cared, and then he began talking of something else 'and they stomped the floor'. AI persuasion is nothing more than a short-cut for getting to 'and they stomped the floor', and there's more than one way to elicit that.
From Paul Graham's Twitter, three days ago: "No one in the world is better than Sam at dealing with this kind of situation." Jessica Livingston retweet: "The reason I was a founding donor to OpenAI in 2015 was not because I was interested in AI, but because I believed in Sam. So I hope the board can get its act together and bring Sam and Greg back." Also from a sibling comment: https://twitter.com/search?q=from:paulg…
> "No one in the world is better than Sam at dealing with this kind of situation." Wow, not the kind of compliment I’d want to receive. This situation is rotten with conspiracy, backstabbing, money-grabs, rumor, innuendo, etc. This(?!) is what Sam is so great at?
Used to be a guy named David Ogilvy, who ran an ad agency called Ogilvy and Mather. I think he'd have beat Sam, in part because he made more of an effort to persuade himself that in fact he and his actions were wholly ethical. However, Ogilvy managed to persuade on a scale that I don't think Altman can possibly achieve. Maybe Sam's read his book, Ogilvy on Advertising. I would also recommend the book by Mark McCormack, which is exceptionally good on the subject.
Altman's far from unique. He just happens to be way more HN-adjacent than some of these people.
It came as a surprise for me to learn that PG fired Sam. It's the first time that I read this actually, and if that's true, I find it kind of mysterious that it remained a secret for so long. Or maybe I missed the news somehow but I could not find any other mention of that event on Google.
I feel the same way about Annie Altman's allegations. Those were out there, but somehow I wasn't aware of them, and I see almost no one discussing them. I mean, I understand why, but it's still disheartening.
Distraction: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...
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Take a look at the highly conspiratorial website https://www.opensecrets.org for an example of how i enquire by looking at sources and money flow helping me realise most politicians are bought by lobby groups working for the owning classes and vote thereafter, not "sincere belief in ideology". This "you're just a conspiracy nut" perspective for looking at actual networks of power and sources, became common after jour…
> Take a look at the highly conspiratorial website https://www.opensecrets.org for an example of how i enquire by looking at sources and money flow helping me realise most politicians are bought by lobby groups working for the owning classes and vote thereafter, not "sincere belief in ideology". Generally when I see people use this they're misreading it. For instance, they'll see donations from people working at Goog…
There's never been an alternative to vote for, and every attempt gets smeared in the media owned by the two-party system representing the oligarchs.
Candidates like Bernie who's still in line with most of above policies are showcased as alternatives but the distribution of power is never challenged outside of the arena of identity political circus boosted by conglomerate media.
Obama was also good example of this, PR outsider on the surface but in reality funded by the same bankers and continued global US adventurism.
Politics is downstream from elite interests when they own the media, the parties, the candidates and intermingle with the security state to take care of the rest.
This becomes especially apparent when looking back at the media landscape pre mergers, where a plurality of opinion and research existed from well respected classical journalists challenging local and state power, in what would today be smeared as conspiracy theorising or anti-patriotism while the overton window has become microscopic unless towing the line for the unfathomably rich.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanpaku > According to Chinese/Japanese medical [...] when the upper sclera is visible it is said to be an indication of mental imbalance in people such as psychotics, murderers, and anyone rageful. In either condition, it is believed that these people attract accidents and violence. It might not be scientific but people with this look certainly do freak me out. (FWIW, I haven't seen any…
I find the omission of the term "face reading" from the punch line "medical face reading" to be a curious editorial choice
Also I said after that quote that it's not scientific, but it nevertheless seems true. That's my editorial take.
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> sometimes making decisions that are nominally about a higher goal but (not really coincidentally) are self-aggrandizing "Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong."
Isn’t that reference like the exact opposite? It’s nominally self-aggrandizing (he’s the only one who could have gotten it right) but is actually about a higher goal (sacrificing himself for everyone else’s sake). That’s how I remember reacting to it anyways.
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I believe such behaviour is harmful and that we shouldn't be rewarding those that engage in it.
The bad behaviour is predicating the purchase on seeing the office. Having an office doesn't make a company real, nor any more or less likely to execute on the project
Having real employees vs sham ones does imply a lot about a business, even if it isn't a perfect signal.