Live data from Hacker News

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

newyorker.com

931–940 of 1001 posts

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

#931
post #528

“By 2018, several Y.C. partners were so frustrated with Altman’s behavior that they approached Graham to complain. Graham and Jessica Livingston, his wife and a Y.C. founder, apparently had a frank conversation with Altman. Afterward, Graham started telling people that although Altman had agreed to leave the company, he was resisting in practice” You can subtly see residue of this frustration in Dalton and Michael’s…

video link?

57:42 here: https://youtu.be/m7LvNTbaqSI That one is borderline ^.

Then another dalton and Michael one can’t find.

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

#932
post #892
post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My prima facie view on Altman has been that he presents as sincere. That is how pathological liars present.

What kind of situation would I choose to use the word presents in that context without being aware of that fact? I am also aware that sincere people present that way. I don't believe there is any rational way to consider the appearance of innocence as evidence of guilt.

There is a ton of evidence out there that points to guilt. No one implied the appearance of innocence was evidence of guilt (as much as I admire the creativity in your interpretation, Mr. Self-Described Altman Apologist).

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

#933
post #885
post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and... that's a position of privilege that anyone in the position should ethically take. It's unfair to sweep provision of methods to the military under a "respect the service" catch-all justification. Two things can simultaneously be true: (1) individuals serving in the military are making sacrifices (in terms of pay, family life, personal safety) that deserve respect and (2) the military as a political institut…

With respect to the weapons programs, I'm not a historian, but I was not under the impression that the US stopped development of these weapons unilaterally or out of good will. My understanding is that it was due to a mixture of not perceiving a need or use for the capabilities, along with formal or informal international cooperation eliminating the need for deterrence. Just a couple of thoughts since it seems like t…

As far as I've read the literature from the 60s and 70s, tactical nukes were eventually eliminated in order to assuage western Europe's concerns that large portions of their countries would be turned into irradiated wastelands for decades / centuries if war erupted between the US and USSR.

It was also the product of perceived overmatch on both sides -- the Soviets believed they had superior mass of armored formations (and they did), while the US and allies believed they had technological supremacy (and they did). Ergo, neither needed tactical nukes.

It didn't hurt that it helped both in the eyes of the then vehemently anti-nuclear European movements.

Offensive bio and chemical weapon limitation is a more nuanced decision.

In both cases, their primary use was either local mass lethality or terrain denial, neither of which were important in the then-gelling American doctrines of maneuver.

The sole use case they seemed viable for was industry denial (e.g. contaminate a high capital cost industrial center), a task at which strategic sized nuclear weapons were equally adept (and more easily stored). So, if you had to have strategic nuclear weapons for deterrence, and they were capable of the same task, why have fiddly bio and chemical weapons?

But in both cases there was also a constant radiant pressure of scientists and the public campaigning against them, and being unwilling to work on or tolerate them.

Absent that, who knows how history would have turned out? Normalization is a powerful opinion shifter.

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

#934
post #145

No one person control our future. Stop there.

Some people have far, far more power over our lives than others. More than they deserve, frankly.

Ugh. It’s a typo. “No one person SHOULD control our future”.

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

#935

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting, I actively use both and usually find it to be a toss up which one performs better at a given task. I generally find Claude to be better with complex tool calls and Codex to be better at reviewing code, but otherwise don't see a significant difference.

Haven't done it in a while, but I've done some tasks with both Codex and Claude to compare. In all cases I asked both to put their analysis and plans for implementation into a .md file. Then I asked the other agent to analyze said file for comparison. In general, Claude was impressed by what Codex produced and noted the parts where it (i.e. Claude) had missed something vs. Codex "thinking of it". From a "daily driver…

Codex has plan mode too - /plan

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

#936

For those curious about how sama got to where he got and stayed on top for so long, I recommend you read the book: The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout. I am fairly confident when I say this -- sama is a sociopath. I don't know how anyone with solid intuition could even come to any other conclusion than the guy is deeply weird and off-putting. Some concepts from the book: > Core trait: The defining characteristic…

I suspect there's some other category, which isn't really a sociopath and isn't really a not-sociopath, which we don't have a good definition for. We only say a lot of CEOs are sociopaths because they're in that third category we haven't named, where they're very good at manipulating people, but also can feel conscience, guilt, remorse, etc, perhaps just muted or easier to justify against. E.g. if you think you're do…

I think it’s learned sociopathy. People who start out knowing that a particular behavior is wrong, but over time are conditioned to feel like it’s fine, at least in certain situations (the corporate world being a prime example).

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

#938

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: To all the downvotes; I did this publicly and not anon for a reason, if you will do the same I am more than willing to provide evidence for all of these claims as long as its done publicly and in the open.

PG said something along the lines of: "There should be no truth that is increasingly unpopular to speak." If you don't believe what I shared is true, address that directly. But seeing my post sitting at 1 point and [flagged] after 2 hours is not OK. Just as DJT can't flag away his issues, you shouldn't be able to do so on HN. One of the things I've loved most about HN is that it was real — grounded in observability,…

> One of the things I've loved most about HN is that it was real — grounded in observability, empirical evidence, not bias or feelings.

Alas, this is not my experience of HN. About neutral topics, sure. Not a lot of flaming and irrationality about e.g. C# Union Types or audio reactive LED strips or whatever.

But assert something that a large fraction of people do not want to be true and you'll get, not just downvoted, but flagged and condescension.

I for one appreciated your perspective.

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

#940

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I am sure of the second part based on the government’s own publicly available tweets and lawsuits that have been filed.

Literally PR.

What part is incorrect? Amodei never said that AI models should not be used for military purposes, did he? He said that they shouldn't be used for autonomous weapons, and then he backed up the talk with action.

I have other beefs with Amodei, including his pathetic, mewling appeals for regulatory capture and his forehead-slapping hypocrisy on copyright and ToS enforcement, but this seemed like a case where he was legitimately on the right side of the question and had the moral courage to stand by his position.

Post reply on HN