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"King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

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Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#81

Post by rjzzleep »

tptacek wrote: post #76
andai wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It feels like people are a bit obsessive about this guy. AI is about to take over the world (for better or worse), and this is the guy in charge of building it.

Seems to me there are a lot of people in charge of building it.

Seems to me like Sam Altman is really good at making the actual builders believe that they need him to make things happen, and really successful at making the world believe that he was the actual builder. On that note he just posted a thread on how much of a visionary he is.

I follow a lot of people on this topic and even at the top of the foodchain there are hundreds of people from all corners of the world competing with each and improving each others work. It's actually really fun and amazing to watch(especially the pace at which it happens) and very different from how Sam portrays it.

https://twitter.com/sama/status/1214274038933020672

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#82

Post by tptacek »

rjzzleep wrote: post #81
tptacek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me there are a lot of people in charge of building it.

Seems to me like Sam Altman is really good at making the actual builders believe that they need him to make things happen, and really successful at making the world believe that he was the actual builder. On that note he just posted a thread on how much of a visionary he is. I follow a lot of people on this topic and even at the top of the foodchain there are hundreds of people from all corners of the world competing…

Then why do you care? I don't care, even enough to click on that. Why do you? I'm asking seriously.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#83

Post by shkkmo »

dbspin wrote: post #26
pixelatedindex wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Altman's sister's 'memories' of abuse were developed in adulthood [1]. Recovered memories are deeply suspect, and a number of serious miscarriages of justice have happened because of them. Most infamously the 'satanic panic' trials of the eighties and early nineties. Elizabeth Loftus has done lots of good work on the dubious nature of eyewitness testimony, and recovered memories in particular [3]. Essentially, they'r…

Things are far less clear cut than you make them out.

Yes, there is good science that shows that eyewitness testimony can be unreliable. There is also some okay science that shows that people can be prompted to create false memories.

However, there is no good science that shows people can be prompted to create false memories of deeply traumatic or personal events such as you are saying. There is definitely no good science showing that recovered memories of traumatic events are more likely to be false than true.

Much of the rhetoric around the potential for falsely recovered memories comes from a foundation that was founded by an alleged abuser and has a loose relationship with scientific truth and a fairly sketchy history of protecting child abusers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Memory_Syndrome_Founda...

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#84

Post by plastic_enjoyer »

andai wrote: post #75
tptacek wrote: post #70

There's nothing in here you haven't already heard: * He's close with Peter Thiel * He's an ace networker (but, completing the stereotype, is also an introvert) * He left YC, not entirely voluntarily, because he was too committed to OpenAI to do the YC job * Echoing YC, the OpenAI board tried to oust him over concerns that he was being manipulative and pursuing outside interests (a chip firm) that conflicted with the…

> It feels like people are a bit obsessive about this guy. AI is about to take over the world (for better or worse), and this is the guy in charge of building it.

OpenAI is only one of many companies building AI. While ChatGPT and DALL-E are impressive, there are domains where those models are pretty much useless and other AI solutions are needed.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#85

Post by CPLX »

tptacek wrote: post #82
rjzzleep wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me like Sam Altman is really good at making the actual builders believe that they need him to make things happen, and really successful at making the world believe that he was the actual builder. On that note he just posted a thread on how much of a visionary he is. I follow a lot of people on this topic and even at the top of the foodchain there are hundreds of people from all corners of the world competing…

Then why do you care? I don't care, even enough to click on that. Why do you? I'm asking seriously.

Because understanding where actual power comes from in society and how it is wielded in practice is both interesting and substantive.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#86

Post by ukuina »

Pasorrijer wrote: post #78
andai wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It feels like people are a bit obsessive about this guy. AI is about to take over the world (for better or worse), and this is the guy in charge of building it.

And last year, crypto was going to take over the world. I'm skeptical of yet another, extremely computationally expensive aspirational technique.

Unlike crypto, you can try AI for yourself to see the benefits.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#88

Post by ganzuul »

Pasorrijer wrote: post #78
andai wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It feels like people are a bit obsessive about this guy. AI is about to take over the world (for better or worse), and this is the guy in charge of building it.

And last year, crypto was going to take over the world. I'm skeptical of yet another, extremely computationally expensive aspirational technique.

This can sell another generation of smartphones once edge device AI chips hit the market and then people can use their mirror neurons for machine interface.

Crypto seems destined for a backend technology.

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#89

Post by [deleted] »

plastic_enjoyer wrote: post #84
andai wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It feels like people are a bit obsessive about this guy. AI is about to take over the world (for better or worse), and this is the guy in charge of building it.

OpenAI is only one of many companies building AI. While ChatGPT and DALL-E are impressive, there are domains where those models are pretty much useless and other AI solutions are needed.

[deleted]

Re: "King of the Cannibals": How Sam Altman Took over Silicon Valley

#90

Post by ganzuul »

jampekka wrote: post #74

Weird CEO cult going on again. Per the article Altman created this and that. In reality thousands of people created the stuff. Altman mostly did some management and marketing.

I'm not sure what I saw but it looked like India has a pipeline for cult leaders.
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