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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?

#791

Hi @ronanfarrow — I have only had one interaction with Sam Altman in person, and I was advised to keep it to myself. I know this crowd may not care, but Altman is absolutely terrified of Black people — not in any contextual sense, but in a visceral, instinctive way. For someone who, as you put it, "controls our future," this should matter. FYI: I am by far not the only one to have experienced this and it 100% impacts…

> Altman is absolutely terrified of Black

Can you share more about how this manifested?

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

#792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but first I want to be very clear on some things. 1. I could have hidden my identify behind a throwaway. I did not feel that would be appropriate when making this calim. 2. I am not looking for anything, literally at all. Any follow ups for blogs; anything that would benefit I will not answer. 3. This is NOT a new account, I am very easy to find; I am 6'1 140lbs I was working for a company called NationBuilder a…

Just to clarify, because I am not sure I am reading this correctly: Your statement that he is terrified of black people is based on you (presumably a black person) running into him outside an event, and him reacting with fear/extreme caution when you approached him? Not defending Sam, but if that is the case, then it's the kind of thing that Sam can hold up and say "Do you really think my critics are intellectually h…

Not defending Sam, but if that is the case, then it's the kind of thing that Sam can hold up and say "Do you really think my critics are intellectually honest?"

Why? It sounds like they were in an environment with many people and Sam reacted negatively to the black guy. It's not like the story was, "so I followed him down a deserted alley and he got scared, so he must be racist."

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

#793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We talk about Sam Altman a lot. At this point he has a Hollywood movie in post-production, a book ("The Optimist"), and a seemingly endless stream of profiles. It feels intellectually lazy to keep researching the same guy when the industry is moving beyond him. All evidence today suggests Anthropic is passing OpenAI in relative and absolute growth. So where's the critical reporting? The DOD coverage was framed around…

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#795
post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definition 2: "to make certain especially by taking necessary measures and precautions" From the article: > He sent the final memos to the other board members as disappearing messages, to insure that no one else would ever see them. > Others were uncomfortable sharing concerns about Altman because they felt there was not a sufficient effort to insure anonymity. > [...] to insure that the technology was deployed safel…

I'm unconvinced but I'll ensure I do my homework before grammar-policing again :)

To be fair, I use “ensure” myself, but it’s just one of several quirky elements of the New Yorker’s style, along with the diaeresis on repeated vowels with different sounds (like in reëmerge or coöperate), several uncommon spellings, and unusual conjoinings like “teen-ager” and “per cent.” It’s part of the charm, I suppose

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

#796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We talk about Sam Altman a lot. At this point he has a Hollywood movie in post-production, a book ("The Optimist"), and a seemingly endless stream of profiles. It feels intellectually lazy to keep researching the same guy when the industry is moving beyond him. All evidence today suggests Anthropic is passing OpenAI in relative and absolute growth. So where's the critical reporting? The DOD coverage was framed around…

> 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…

>the company actually is ethical and safety conscious everywhere

Anthropic is emphatically not safe. None of the AI labs with customers (i.e., excluding a few small nonprofits whose revenue comes from donations) are anything like safe -- because of extinction risk. The famous positive regard that Anthropic employees have for their organization's mission means almost nothing because there have been hundreds of quite destructive cults and political parties whose members believed that theirs is the most ethical and benign organization ever.

The best thing you can say about Anthropic is that if you have to support some AI lab by becoming a customer, investor or employee, it is slightly less dangerous for the world to support Anthropic than OpenAI although IMHO (and I admit I am in a minority on this among extinction-risk activists) it is slightly less dangerous to support Google Deep Mind or Mistral than Anthropic.

All four organizations I mentioned should be shut down tomorrow with their assets returned to shareholders.

The current crop of services provided by the leading AI labs are IMHO positive on net in their effect of people and society, but the leading AI labs are spending a large fraction of the 100s of billions of dollars they've received from investors on creating more powerful models, and they might succeed in their goal of creating models that are much more powerful than the ones they have now, which is when most of the danger would manifest.

The leaders of all of the leading AI labs have the ambition of completely transforming society and the world through AI.

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

#797
post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> OpenAI was on the verge of closing a large investment from Thrive, a venture-capital firm founded by Josh Kushner, Jared Kushner’s brother, whom Altman had known for years. The deal would value OpenAI at eighty-six billion dollars and allow many employees to cash out millions in equity.

Probably a factor in the pro Sam camp. Hard to stand up against a big payday.

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

#798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which of the two are you referring to as possibly angling for a pardon?

Bankman-Fried has already done it.

Wow. His parents incredibly are not in jail but were, I read, extraordinarily complicit. What a mess.

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

#799

Ronan Farrow here. Andrew Marantz and I spent 18 months on this investigation. Happy to answer questions about the reporting.

How do you feel about the title of your article? I assume an editor chose it.

Clearly he's straight up evil; between tanking the global economy, constantly lying, and raping his 3 year old sister, it feels really disingenuous to me to frame this as an open question.

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

#800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify, because I am not sure I am reading this correctly: Your statement that he is terrified of black people is based on you (presumably a black person) running into him outside an event, and him reacting with fear/extreme caution when you approached him? Not defending Sam, but if that is the case, then it's the kind of thing that Sam can hold up and say "Do you really think my critics are intellectually h…

Not defending Sam, but if that is the case, then it's the kind of thing that Sam can hold up and say "Do you really think my critics are intellectually honest?" Why? It sounds like they were in an environment with many people and Sam reacted negatively to the black guy. It's not like the story was, "so I followed him down a deserted alley and he got scared, so he must be racist."

It sounds like Sam was approached on the street by a stranger, and he had a negative reaction. Which is fairly common for high profile people, especially people with a following of haters (let's not deny AI/data center general unrest).

I cannot see any legitimacy to the claim besides the commentor's own interpretation of the situation. They posit this like the authors would want to know, but here I am doing the first thing the authors of the article would do, and I'm getting downvotes for it. The author(s) won't touch it anyway.

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