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Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

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Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#791

Post by GuB-42 »

bambax wrote: post #516

> “Ninety plus percent of the employees of OpenAI are saying they would be willing to move to Microsoft because they feel Sam’s been mistreated by a rogue board of directors,” said Ron Conway (...) “I’ve never seen this kind of loyalty anywhere.” 95% is the kind of score one sees when there's an "election" in a dictatorship. Unanimity is often suspect.

You can turn the number around and it becomes not as suspect: 5% of the employees support the "rogue board of directors".

Say the next US election, you have Biden against Hitler. I would expect no less than 95% for Biden. Not everyone likes Biden, but most everyone hates Hitler.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#792

Post by Abekkus »

keepamovin wrote: post #769
Abekkus wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“DisRespect and insult” is a strange take on strategic advice. And While I’m already probably on a few lists, I don’t feel safe spelling it all out

I didn't say "insult", but "doomer" is not strategic advice, right? That's what I meant. "Doomer" is a bad thing, yeah? You didn't have to say that. Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but it just seems like you were being disrespectful and reductive of other people's views, as I said.

"Doomer" is a description of someone who is predicting doom, it doesn't have to be dismissive. Barring some miracles, I'm a "doomer".

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#793

Post by cbsmith »

jmye wrote: post #785
cbsmith wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't trying to suggest they were similar. It might be hard to imagine this, but it is possible that leading a company deploying billions of dollars might actually have a significantly larger potential impact on people's lives than a rogue cop.

I find that answer hand-wavey. Which YC company has impacted any specific person’s life more directly than, say, Philip Brailsford? I also think pretending you weren’t making a comparison is absurd - why post about the evils of big companies in this context if that were the case? Saying “rich people are all bad and have hurt way more people” is specious. Implying that I can’t imagine it, when you are apparently incap…

> Saying “rich people are all bad and have hurt way more people” is specious.

> Implying that I can’t imagine it, when you are apparently incapable of being specific, is juvenile.

I agree. I wasn't saying that, anymore than someone was saying "all cops are bad and have hurt way more people". I'm certainly not saying YCombinator or any of its companies have done something spectacularly bad. Besides that, the whole point in "bad cop who is let go without any harm to their future" metaphor would be about the subsequent work of any "bad employee" at YCombinator. I would point out though that this lack of transparency is why, is why neither you might not know of any misdeeds --and that's the problem.

OpenAI has access to massive amounts of capital & data, and has a pretty significant reach already, and it's just the beginning. Would it really be so absurd that Sam Altman couldn't have a far larger influence on the world, positive or negative, than a cop? If it is absurd, then we're either investing way too much in OpenAI or way too little in cops.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#794

Post by cbsmith »

jmye wrote: post #786
serf wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or is this where we pretend that leading YC is even vaguely similar to being a rogue cop, in terms of potential impact on people’s lives? If a cop shoots someone and kills them, it destroys that life and possibly the family of those around him, the legal system kicks in -- that cop gets ousted or thrown into prison. how many lives have been destroyed by the mere existence of reddit and twitch, and by extension the h…

> how many lives have been destroyed by the mere existence of reddit and twitch, and by extension the human trafficking they help to support? Do externalities not exist, or is the platform (and somehow, whomever leads YC) solely and completely to blame for the users? Why is Reddit to blame, rather than BBSes or Mosaic, without which a platform like Reddit wouldn’t have existed? Do you blame, say, Tim Berners-Lee for…

> Do externalities not exist, or is the platform (and somehow, whomever leads YC) solely and completely to blame for the users? Why is Reddit to blame, rather than BBSes or Mosaic, without which a platform like Reddit wouldn’t have existed? Do you blame, say, Tim Berners-Lee for the fact that sex trafficking is enabled by the Internet, or only ephemeral “CEOs” and/or “billionaires”?

It isn't about blame. It's about impact.

> Do you think getting laid off, typically with severance, is the same as getting shot or imprisoned? Do you think you are perpetually and permanently entitled to the specific job you currently have?

In fact, layoffs and poor labor options do, in fact, lead to increased mortality rates: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02779....

So, while I'd rather be laid off than shot or imprisoned, the scale of impact of captains of industry on the economic circumstance of millions could have a body count far higher than any rogue cop.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#795

Post by cbsmith »

cbsmith wrote: post #793
jmye wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that answer hand-wavey. Which YC company has impacted any specific person’s life more directly than, say, Philip Brailsford? I also think pretending you weren’t making a comparison is absurd - why post about the evils of big companies in this context if that were the case? Saying “rich people are all bad and have hurt way more people” is specious. Implying that I can’t imagine it, when you are apparently incap…

> Saying “rich people are all bad and have hurt way more people” is specious. > Implying that I can’t imagine it, when you are apparently incapable of being specific, is juvenile. I agree. I wasn't saying that, anymore than someone was saying "all cops are bad and have hurt way more people". I'm certainly not saying YCombinator or any of its companies have done something spectacularly bad. Besides that, the whole poi…

Rewritten to actually be readable (and apologies for that):

I agree. I wasn't saying that, anymore than someone was saying "all cops are bad and have hurt way more people". I'm certainly not saying YCombinator or any of its companies have done something specifically bad. Besides that, the whole point in "bad cop who is let go without any harm to their future" metaphor, as applied to YCombinator, would be about the subsequent work of any "bad employee" at YCombinator. I would point out though that this lack of transparency is why neither you nor I might not know of any misdeeds --and that's the problem.

OpenAI has access to massive amounts of capital & data, and has a pretty significant reach already, and it's just the beginning. Would it really be so absurd that Sam Altman couldn't have a far larger influence on the world, positive or negative, than a cop? If it is absurd, then we're either investing way too much in OpenAI or way too little in cops.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#796

Post by kjkjadksj »

keepamovin wrote: post #664
Abekkus wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autononous weapons capable of ending the world are old, yes. Autonomous weapons capable of securing territory and resources, and personnel, that's on the way.

Interesting. Do you have any specific program heads-up about this? I'm curious to read more. :)

What might be interesting to think about is the prevalence of human controlled drones in warfare today, in various environments and climates as we currently speak. Right now they require a human to operate and identify targets or perform defensive maneuvering. All of this videography is undoubtedly being logged and used for training more autonomously controlled drones. Eventually an operator would just deploy a swarm at a sector akin to flagging it for an air strike, and drones would eliminate anyone or anything of interest there.

Re: Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor

#798

Post by sam0x17 »

93po wrote: post #741
sam0x17 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that they do, in fact, it is probably trivial to make a fake WorldCoin identity, but people who support WorldCoin largely support it on the assumption that this is not possible.

It does

claiming to do != do
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