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Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

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Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#971

Post by leobg »

bmitc wrote: post #968
leobg wrote: post #889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read what pg has to say about him. He named Altman as one of the top 5 most interesting founders of the last 30 years. > startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want. http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html

Paul Graham has a lot of things to say about a lot of things. It doesn't make what he writes right.

Wasn’t saying that. In fact, I was quite puzzled. Altman hasn’t started any SpaceX, NVIDIA or even Stripe.

However, pg has been working with many founders. And he has been working with Altman. I haven’t.

So while it may puzzle me, I do have to wonder what there is that I may be missing.

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#972

Post by rramadass »

bmitc wrote: post #785
jstummbillig wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am so confused by how this question is asked, and the reactions. It's "such a big deal" because he has been leading the company, and apparently some people really like how and they really don't like how it ended. Why would it require any other explanation? Are you asking what leaders do and why an employee would care about what they do...?

Do you understand why he was fired? The company had a charter, one the board is to help uphold. Altman and his crew were leading the company, and seemingly its employees, away from that charter. He was not open about how he was doing that. The board fired him. This is like a bunch of people joining a basketball team where the coach starts turning it into a soccer team, and then the GM fires the coach for doing this a…

> If you want to make a ton of money in a startup moving fast, how about don't setup a non-profit company spouting a bunch of humanitarian shit? It's even worse, because Altman very clearly did all this intentionally by playing the "I care about humanity card" just long enough while riding on the coattails of researchers where he could start up side processes to use his new AI profile to make the big bucks.

This is exactly it! Thanks for calling it out.

Sam Altman was just using the Researchers and their IP to enrich himself(and his select group of friends) while shafting everybody else including the researchers themselves.

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#973

Post by rramadass »

leobg wrote: post #889
Solvency wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What am I missing here: Sam Altman has zero charisma or cool factor. Every talk I've seen him in, he comes off as lethargic and sluggish. I get zero sense of passion or rallying drive around the hype of AI from him. He's not an AI visionary. He's not a hype man. He simply "is", and just because he happens to have been the CEO he's been thrust into the spotlight, but there's literally nothing interesting about him.

Read what pg has to say about him. He named Altman as one of the top 5 most interesting founders of the last 30 years. > startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want. http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html

This was one of the stupidest things PG had said/written. Sam Altman's first company "Loopt" was a YCombinator startup and hence i suspect PG was building him up for business reasons.

The rest is "Halo Effect" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#974

Post by NoobSaibot135 »

joenot443 wrote: post #922
bmitc wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have watched him speak, and he doesn't seem charismatic at all. I remember hearing the same things about Sam Bankman-Fried and then going and watching his interviews and feeling the same. There is just a giant gap here where I simply do not get it, and I see no evidence that explains me not getting it is missing some key aspect of all this. This just seems like classic cargo cult, cult of personality, and following…

Surely you can understand that the persona one presents while giving a speech is often entirely different from the one they assume in private? I figured you knew him personally, this is a pretty funny justification. If your analysis is based solely off YouTube interviews, I think your perspective on Sam’s capabilities and personality is going to be pretty surface level and uninteresting.

+1

tech execs are trained to be toned down when in public and the camera is on them(so they don't say something that will make -ve headlines later).

Example:

Elon's recent biography shows that he swears a lot casually while working (as do many of us). You wouldn't glean that from any of his public interviews.

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#975

Post by Auracle »

idontwantthis wrote: post #774
Auracle wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nukes, power grids, planes, blackmail, etc. Surely you’ve seen plenty of media over the years that’s explored this.

What is “nukes” though? Like the missiles in silos that could have been networked decades ago but still require mechanical keys in order to fire? Like is it just making phone calls pretending to be the president and everyone down the line says “ok let’s destroy the world”?

Perhaps emailing members of whatever terrorist group the exact location, codes, personnel they would need to seize a nuke themselves?

I'm not actively worried about it, but let's not pretend something with all of the information in the world and great intelligence couldn't pull it off.

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#976

Post by jacky2wong »

steakscience wrote: post #845
jmerz wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's not as known in the outside world but it's really difficult to understate the amount of social capital sama has in the inner circles of Silicon Valley. It sounds like he did a good job instilling loyalty as a CEO as well, but the SV thing means that the more connected someone at the company is to the SV ecosystem, the more likely they like him/want to be on his good side. This is kind of like the leaders…

Every SV CEO has a "Sam Altman saved my butt during crucial incident X" story

can you share some stories? would love to learn how sam networked his way into sv

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#977

Post by xigency »

bongodongobob wrote: post #969
xigency wrote: post #966

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The organizations that run the most servers, at the largest scale, run Linux. It makes better operational and financial sense. But sure. The Mom and Pops of America still use Windows. (Who ever got fired for buying Windows?) Yet the backbone of the modern Internet, cloud and web, is built on open-sourced software.

Mom and pop is most of the workforce which is what this site seems to forget. Most people don't work for a fortune 500 company.

Yeah, that is a fair reality check for us terminal junkies.

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#978

Post by Closi »

_factor wrote: post #718
Closi wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your post sounds like something that would be true, there are loads of examples of where companies have thrived under a clear vision from a specific person. The example of Steve Jobs used in the above post is probably a prime example - Apple just wouldn’t be the company it is today without that period of his singular vision and drive. Of course they struggled after losing him, but the current version of Apple t…

Newsflash. Altman is no Steve Jobs.

Newsflash. I didn't claim he was.

Re: Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

#979

Post by zxexz »

ignoramous wrote: post #539
zxexz wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, the MIT Technology Review these days is considered to be closer to a "tech tabloid" than an actual news source. I personally would find it hard to believe (on gut instinct, nothing empirical) that AGI has been achieved before we have a general playbook for domain-specific SotA models. And I'm of the 'faction' that AGI can't come soon enough.

> hard to believe (on gut instinct, nothing empirical) that AGI has been achieved before we have a general playbook for domain-specific SotA models Ilya is pretty serious about alignment (precisely?) due to his gut instinct: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft0gTO2K85A (2 Nov 2023)

I don't doubt he's serious in what he believes. I respect Ilya greatly as a researcher. Do you have notes or a time-point for me to listen to in that podcast? I bemoan the trend toward podcasts-as-references - even a time-point reference (or even multiple!) to the transcript would be greatly desirable!
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