[HN Gopher] Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinato...
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Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor
Author : CartyBoston
Score : 622 points
Date : 2023-11-22 12:17 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| CartyBoston wrote:
| The bit about PG and Altman parting ways is interesting I wonder
| if anyone wants to share more :).
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Hadn't seen the tweet from Geoffrey Irving before:
|
| https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/172675427022402397...
|
| > 1. He was always nice to me.
|
| > 2. He lied to me on various occasions
|
| > 3. He was deceptive, manipulative, and worse to others,
| including my close friends (again, only nice to me, for
| reasons)
| rwmj wrote:
| Like an AI then.
| xrd wrote:
| It's a very strongly worded statement. Given how connected
| Altman is, it's very interesting that Irving would publicly
| state this.
|
| It's either very courageous and in service to changing
| silicon valley, or also very manipulative and in service of
| benefiting his company. It feels like it could be both.
|
| I'm left feeling like there are no angels here. (That's
| actually funny given how investors love to call themselves
| angels.)
|
| In the end it appears Altman has looked out for himself above
| all else, which probably enrages his mentors and investors
| who don't like to lose control, including pg.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| It's difficult to conceptualize someone who is ruthless,
| self-interested, and skilled enough to overcome all
| problems... except your control over them.
|
| Eventually they look at you and decide you're the problem
| to be overcome.
|
| Might not happen for a while, but inevitably will.
| twic wrote:
| Are you talking about Sam or an AGI?
| PeterisP wrote:
| Nicely worded, but with regard to the OpenAI conflict I
| wonder if you intended this to be about Sam Altman or the
| topic of (G)AI safety or both?
| CSMastermind wrote:
| This is incredibly well put and not something I've seen
| articulated so clearly before.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| You've got a few billionaire teams in silicon valley not
| unlike say the NFL.
|
| Team DeepMind Team Google Team Meta Team YC Team OpenAI
| Team Microsoft Team nVIDIA Team VC Team Thiel
|
| There are probably more...
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I 'm left feeling like there are no angels here._
|
| That's my feeling after watching all this play out over the
| last few days. I don't trust any of these people to be good
| stewards of anything that is supposed to benefit humanity.
| bmitc wrote:
| He said it in the Tweet that it was because people were
| attacking people, such as Helen Toner, that he knows to be
| good people.
| coliveira wrote:
| This is the kind of person we have controlling the future of
| AI. He and Elon Musk. Between these two we are assured
| complete destruction.
| objektif wrote:
| What is wrong with Musk again?
| nullindividual wrote:
| That's a rhetorical question, correct?
| bmitc wrote:
| He personally does not like the color yellow, so he
| required it not used in safety contexts just because of
| that. So he put workers' safety at risk because he may
| have to see pictures or tour the area once every quarter.
| There are more stories like this ad nauseum. Or, you
| could just read his Twitter feed.
| machdiamonds wrote:
| You guys just believe whatever you read. Things that can
| easily be debunked with common sense. For example,
| there's a lot of yellow in this factory tour he did:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr9kK0_7x08
| bmitc wrote:
| I indeed see fairly minimal safety colors and patterns in
| that video. I don't know where you see "a lot".
|
| And you do realize that there have been investigative
| journalists, federal inspections, and lawsuits regarding
| this? So all those people are just making it all up so
| that I can just believe whatever I read?
| rsynnott wrote:
| I don't see how 1 and 2 are compatible unless you have a
| really weird definition of 'nice'.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I think it'd be more accurate to substitute 'polite' or
| 'courteous' than 'nice'.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| https://archive.ph/fLzoF
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20231122141935/https://www.washi...
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| People love a good cult of personality, don't they
| sparrowInHand wrote:
| Billionaire-jesus and his followers, reborn every 10 years.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Billionaire dalai lama.
| rsynnott wrote:
| When did this start, actually? the first I can really think
| of is Jobs (at least in the billionaire category); treatment
| of Hubbard had a lot of the same vibes, but not the money.
| keiferski wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
| 38321003thrw wrote:
| This is a very interesting read from the New Thought
| original sources: Prentice Mulford's _Your Forces and How
| to Use Them_.
|
| https://archive.org/details/yourforceshowtou02mulfiala/yo
| urf...
| kelipso wrote:
| It's the vibe in almost all of the big silicon valley
| companies and probably most of the smaller ones too.
| Founder worship etc. Just silicon valley culture I assume.
| I guess it takes a certain mindset to dedicate the prime of
| your years to making someone else incredibly rich.
| lynx23 wrote:
| It is hard to see through the unfolding drama. Since I am lacking
| data (and we all do), I can only fall back to my intuition. When
| I was listening to Sam being interviewed by Lex, I had to turn
| the podcast off because I felt I am listening to a deeply flawed
| and manipulative character. He left a creepy feeling of "Never
| ever trust this guy".
| pnut wrote:
| Depends on who you are, I guess? He's optimising for business
| growth and opportunity, I bet VCs and Moloch have him on on
| their Christmas card lists.
| refurb wrote:
| Billions of dollars can paper over some very serious
| personality traits.
| bloopernova wrote:
| It's something I have to remind myself frequently: leadership
| got where they are by surviving the cutthroat backstabbing
| executive gauntlet. I also have to trust my gut when it sends
| me warning signals about someone, and I get that a lot from
| "celebrity" CEOs.
|
| After some reflection, I've found that I sympathize with Ilya
| Sustkever a bit more now. I'm autistic and I suspect he is
| neurodiverse in some way. I've definitely been misled by
| manipulative leaders and peers, been enthusiastic for whatever
| scheme they had, but regretted it after seeing the aftermath or
| fallout. I can absolutely see ways Sustkever could have been
| manipulated by others on the board.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's likely that that will eventually be his downfall.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Yeah, Lex gives me those vibes too.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| How dare you question the savior of humanity.
| fvdessen wrote:
| I've had the 'chance' to work with some deeply manipulative
| persons in the past, the kind who goes to your desk and say 'Hey,
| I noticed you started to speak to X again, and your performance
| seems to suffer as a result", where X is a friendly colleague
| that opposed some plan of that person. It is incredibly difficult
| to keep those people in check as all that behaviour is off the
| record and impossible to prove. When people complain it's a 'you
| said, he said' situation where the manipulator inevitably wins.
| Wether those persons are positive or negative for the company is
| not all that clear, but they create an incredibly unpleasant work
| environment.
| cma wrote:
| This endorsement of Sam from 2011 is actually pretty damning,
| though it is so long ago if it were the only thing it wouldn't
| be a huge red flag:
|
| >I just saw Sam Altman speak at YCNYC and I was impressed. I
| have never actually met him or heard him speak before Monday,
| but one of his stories really stuck out and went something like
| this:
|
| > "We were trying to get a big client for weeks, and they said
| no and went with a competitor. The competitor already had a
| terms sheet from the company were we trying to sign up. It was
| real serious.
|
| > We were devastated, but we decided to fly down and sit in
| their lobby until they would meet with us. So they finally let
| us talk to them after most of the day.
|
| > We then had a few more meetings, and the company wanted to
| come visit our offices so they could make sure we were a 'real'
| company. At that time, we were only 5 guys. So we hired a bunch
| of our college friends to 'work' for us for the day so we could
| look larger than we actually were. It worked, and we got the
| contract."
|
| > I think the reason why PG respects Sam so much is he is
| charismatic, resourceful, and just overall seems like a genuine
| person.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048944
|
| I think the article mentions what may be this same incident,
| without saying how it was done:
|
| > Rabois noted that Altman, as a Stanford dropout, persuaded a
| major telecommunications company to do business with his start-
| up Loopt -- the same quality, he said, that enabled Altman to
| persuade Microsoft to invest in OpenAI.
|
| From the earlier comment, it seems he persuaded the telecom
| essentially through fraud though maybe not legally so.
| strangescript wrote:
| Every good CEO is also a Confidence Man/Woman.
| hef19898 wrote:
| No, not really. Not even remotely. Business is ruthless,
| that's fine. It has to stay clear of fraud and deception.
| And funny enough, most old school companies do, mowt of the
| time.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I put that in approximately the same place as the founders of
| Reddit making alts and posting things on early Reddit or
| Porsche labeling its first-ever car design as Type 7.
|
| There's a deceptive "fake it 'til you make it" aspect to
| both, and both play towards inflating the current appearance
| of scale/traction/experience, but I don't find them
| particularly damning.
| bhouston wrote:
| This is sort of par for the course in the world of early
| stage startups. No one wants to be your first customer as it
| is risky, but you need that first customer. So you "fake it
| until you make it."
|
| It is similar to dressing the part you want - at least when
| that mattered. You buy more expensive clothes than you should
| be able to afford so that people think you are more
| successful than you are, and then they are more willing to
| bet on you, and then you become more successful.
|
| There is nothing that is a red flag for me in the above
| story.
|
| I also had a prospective first client want to visit our
| offices so I quickly rented an office and asked my part-time
| contractors to all come into the office that day to fill it
| out. It worked! And then I could afford an office and hiring
| those part-time contractors as full-time employees. So it was
| sort of a self-fulfilling.
| jen20 wrote:
| > There is nothing that is a red flag for me in the above
| story.
|
| Elizabeth? Is that you?
| refurb wrote:
| If Elizabeth Holmes had been able to pull off some
| successful product that made a lot of money, no doubt all
| the "fake it 'til you make it" she did at the beginning
| (showing demos that didn't work, sending tests to outside
| labs and saying they were run on their equipment) would
| have been forgiven no doubt.
|
| Just another nostalgic Silicon Valley "hustler" story.
| kelipso wrote:
| She really only got into trouble because her lies became
| obvious and she risked people's lives. If it was some
| CRUD app and she didn't get enough customers or whatever,
| more than likely she'd have gotten money for another
| company.
| shapefrog wrote:
| > she risked people's lives
|
| She was found not guilty of that bit. The conviction and
| jail time is only for defrauding the investors.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Only that Theranos product was techically impossible.
| Which makes the whole thing even crazier, nobody did even
| the slightest due dilligence there. Seems to be par of th
| cours so, other exhibits are FTX and WeWork.
| bhouston wrote:
| The core FTX crypto exchange business was very
| profitable. But Alameda wasn't. Also everyone at FTX was
| committing fraud.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Based on what financial statements do we know FTX was
| profitable? Also, the stole customer funds.
| bhouston wrote:
| > Based on what financial statements do we know FTX was
| profitable?
|
| The crypto-exchange part I have read many times it was
| profitable. Running an exchange is a profitable endeavour
| as you just take a cut of all transactions. As long as
| you control your costs it is a money printer.
|
| The rest of FTX was full of fraud and Alameda was a money
| sink via unprofitable speculation. Also likely helping
| laundry money as well via poor KYC.
|
| Running an exchange is a great business though if you
| have the volume, doesn't matter if it is crypto or
| futures or stocks.
| play_ac wrote:
| No, crypto exchanges are only profitable as a result of
| massive wash trading and scamming. If they had to
| actually compete the margins would be hilariously low.
| Probably even lower than a typical bank because the
| product is just worse.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If Elizabeth Holmes had been able to pull off some
| successful product_
|
| Like Loopt?
| shalmanese wrote:
| I think OPs point was that this was sama finding the line
| of what was the most egregious thing that is acceptable to
| admit in public which is almost certainly not the most
| egregious thing he's done and could be a large part of the
| explaination of why people's opinion of him knowing certain
| private actions diverges so much from everyone else.
| Jochim wrote:
| I believe such behaviour is harmful and that we shouldn't
| be rewarding those that engage in it.
| 8note wrote:
| The bad behaviour is predicating the purchase on seeing
| the office.
|
| Having an office doesn't make a company real, nor any
| more or less likely to execute on the project
| Jochim wrote:
| Both can be bad. Even more so when you don't know which
| party established the idea as bad in the first place.
|
| A purchaser who insists they only see white employees in
| the office is bad. Anyone that forces their non-white
| employees out of sight to secure that purchase is just as
| bad, if not worse.
|
| To play along is to accept the notion, to contribute to
| it's perceived validity, and to harm anyone who happens
| to be honest. The result is that people we'd be better
| off without are pushed upwards in society.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Interesting viewpoint, lie is a lie and amoral is amoral.
| We can wrap it in nice package or act like 'it had to be
| done because others are doing it', and it may be a correct
| statement. But its still a plain in-your-face lie.
|
| If that telco would know truth they would most probably cut
| them out, not due to their size but due to their lies. This
| is not how trust is built, this is how you lose it very
| quickly and for good.
|
| Maybe we need to accept that this is expected from all
| startup owners/ceos. Fine with me too, but its still
| amoral. We define our own legacy, if we ever care (and
| these mega egos do care a lot).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _This is sort of par for the course in the world of early
| stage startups_
|
| It's _so_ par of the course that I'm willing to bet it
| didn't happen.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| oh sht, this guy can persuade clients and close deals? Better
| keep him away from the company!
| baq wrote:
| VC capital optimises for revolutionaries thus they get
| revolutionaries.
|
| Please note any positive connotations for the word
| 'revolution' should be abandoned at this point. Revolutions
| are short-term 100% bad and long term coin-toss bad, or
| worse. VCs love those odds.
| notresidenter wrote:
| What about the industrial revolutions?
| hackitup7 wrote:
| I'm also neither a Sam Altman booster or detractor, but the
| types of activities described here (and honestly, sometimes
| much much worse) are very common at startups.
| BeetleB wrote:
| What am I missing? The worst sin is trying to look bigger
| than they are?
|
| You should listen to _How I Built This_. Tricks like this
| when starting out are pretty common, be it unicorn startups
| or personal businesses. So common that founders are openly
| willing to admit to it on public radio. In almost all cases,
| both parties came out better. It 's not as if the client is
| at all upset at this "fraudulent" behavior.
| neilv wrote:
| I think that level of honesty isn't unusual in Silicon
| Valley.
|
| Personally, if I were the prospective customer, I'd be angry
| at being lied to, and my message to my team would probably be
| that we'd be foolish to depend on this startup after they've
| shown from the start that they're dishonest.
|
| If I were an established company, I think I'd also have our
| lawyers look at situation, to make sure the institutional
| knowledge was captured, and to see whether there's anything
| else we needed to do.
|
| (For example of something else to do: though I'd treat things
| as confidential by default, in some future n-ary
| relationship/deal, is there a situation in which I'm
| obligated to mention to a third company that we previously
| had negative vetting info on the other company.)
|
| But in the context of current startup culture, I don't think
| "fake (fraud) it till make it" is that unusual. And it's been
| normalized.
|
| But I still don't want to do business with dishonest startup
| founders -- whether it's because they're naturally lying
| liars, or because they're surrounded by frequent dishonesty
| and they're not smart enough to cut through that.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Remember BillG sold an OS to IBM for the Intel 8086 that was
| not even owned or written by Microsoft at the time.
| cma wrote:
| And somewhat ringing of these current events, his mom was
| on a charity board with the head of IBM.
| al_borland wrote:
| I find it hard to believe this was the kind of environment he
| was cultivating at OpenAI if 95% of the staff were ready to
| follow him out the door.
|
| I've worked for the type of people you mention and no one
| followed them when they leave. 95% threatening to leave in this
| case is hard to ignore.
| oldtownroad wrote:
| OpenAI is more religion than company. Sam could be a deeply
| flawed leader and still have extreme loyalty due to what
| OpenAI has achieved under his leadership. The people at
| OpenAI are believers in a mission and that means they're far
| more likely to allow personal failings to slide. He's more a
| Musk figure than a whoever-the-ceo-of-McDonald's-is figure.
| seanthemon wrote:
| do you have evidence to back this up?
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I don't think its necessary to prove anything he says,
| the keyword is 'could'. We don't know, and people who
| actually do don't spill it on HN just because we would
| like them to.
|
| These are generic statements about cult-like leaders,
| Musk is a prime example. Its hard won affection, not just
| smooth BS, we here all know that.
|
| That being said, people generally don't change, just
| situations (barring some catastrophic accidents or
| similar). Whatever actions given person did in the past
| describe them well enough in present. Again, generic but
| IMHO always valid so far.
| seanthemon wrote:
| "OpenAI is more religion than company" sounds like a
| factual statement to me.
| fevangelou wrote:
| You don't need to manipulate all employees. Just key ones ;)
| elboru wrote:
| Well maybe they were not as good at manipulating as others
| can be.
| imjonse wrote:
| I can believe the staff likes or even loves him, but the
| following him part was mostly because of money/shares and
| because they know he's influential and well connected to
| people with money. And peer pressure may have had a part in
| that letter signing. You don't want to be on the side of the
| losers if Altman gets his way.
| Kiro wrote:
| > mostly because of money/shares
|
| How do you know?
| imjonse wrote:
| I don't obviously. But since those people were ready to
| jump ship to Microsoft, I am pretty sure they care more
| about their own careers than 'creating AGI that benefits
| humanity as a whole in the first place'
| 93po wrote:
| Presumably they're jumping ship with Sam, and I'd assume
| that they'd assume that Sam would uphold the same
| perceived integrity at MS
| imjonse wrote:
| Sam's integrity would be at home at Microsoft, for sure.
| dnissley wrote:
| Didn't most sign the letter before they knew they had any
| offer to join Microsoft in any capacity?
|
| Also maybe I'm just too risk averse but if I were
| concerned about money I wouldn't be putting my name on
| such a list. Although at some point past 50% it would
| feel pretty safe because what are they going to do, fire
| everyone?
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > Didn't most sign the letter before they knew they had
| any offer to join Microsoft in any capacity?
|
| I very much doubt it.
| narag wrote:
| "We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAI
| and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary..." so
| no, they knew.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Occam's razor.
|
| Maybe the simplest explanation isn't the right one for
| 100% of the people that followed Sam (or were ready to),
| but it's the right one for 90% of them, which is what
| matters for practical purposes.
|
| Follow the money.
| objektif wrote:
| Of course. I mean come on you may love the guy but your
| primary reason for following him will still be money. Why
| would you want your years of work to go down to 0$?
| dmix wrote:
| These people are at the top of the AI industry, they'd
| make bank in a ton of jobs if they left tomorrow. They
| weren't getting equity at Microsoft yet they still chose
| that opportunity as an alternative.
|
| Clearly they care about working on the most interesting
| AI around instead of continuing to work under a CEO and
| board whose whole plan is to cripple AI development. Both
| the interim CEO Shear and likely coup leader Toner made
| it clear they are anti-AI and want to slow progress.
| Toner specifically said she'd be okay with the company
| collapsing as that was in line with the charter.
|
| Occams Razor is people working on the most interesting
| stuff in the tech industry want to keep working on it
| rather than follow some radical EA doomer plan to kill it
| off well before we get near AGI.
| rrdharan wrote:
| > They weren't getting equity at Microsoft
|
| This is wrong.
| norir wrote:
| > These people are at the top of the AI industry, they'd
| make bank in a ton of jobs if they left tomorrow.
|
| I know a signatory of the letter and I can assure you
| that they were nowhere near the top of the AI industry
| six months ago.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| But being at OpenAI, they now probably have the
| reputation of belonging to the top.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Memetic thinking aside, Ilya signing that letter might have
| sealed it for them. Though, working for someone as
| formidable as sama in itself is a great pull, nevertheless.
| bmitc wrote:
| > working for someone as formidable as sama
|
| His name is Sam Altman. And why is he so formidable?
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _And why is he so formidable?_
|
| Commenting on an article that portrayed him as such?
|
| > _His name is Sam Altman._
|
| Unsure what your point is; sama is his hn username.
| bmitc wrote:
| I don't know the usernames of people discussed in
| articles and prefer not referring to people colloquially.
|
| And I had assumed that you meant formidable in a positive
| sense. To me, he seems like a manipulative grifter. We
| even see that in his response to being fired. Instead of
| discussing facts, he was trying personal power plays,
| manipulating the media and employees, and trying to
| simultaneously start a new company, get a new job at
| Microsoft, and weasel back in as CEO of OpenAI. That
| seems to track as someone only concerned with himself.
|
| Through all of this, it has remained confusing and
| disturbing just why he is considered so important to any
| of this. He seems completely replaceable. I haven't ever
| read or heard anything from him that didn't seem to come
| from some startup 101 playbook, almost like a cosplayer.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _almost like a cosplayer_
|
| If only growing startups were as easy as cosplay.
|
| > _And I had assumed that you meant formidable in a
| positive sense_
|
| Yes, I did. See also: https://twitter.com/karaswisher/sta
| tus/1727386273936199893
|
| > _prefer not referring to people colloquially_
|
| If not everyone, at least for hackernews participants
| with 12k+ karma, you'd think they'd know very well who
| runs hackernews, or used to.
| jakderrida wrote:
| > but the following him part was mostly because of
| money/shares and because they know he's influential and
| well connected to people with money.
|
| In other words, they believed in his leadership, direction,
| and ability to serve their interests more than they
| believed in the board's.
|
| I don't understand why so many people are performing mental
| gymnastics attempting to turn the unanimous support behind
| him into somehow being evidence that he's the antichrist.
| Why wouldn't the employees act in their own self-interest?
| What's wrong with them acting in their own self-interest? I
| would assume all employees everywhere, more or less, act in
| their own self-interest and I don't think that makes them
| or their preferred leadership evil incarnate.
| neilv wrote:
| The money vs. mission question was what I was trying to
| answer with this hypothetical polling:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357485
|
| (It seems obvious that hitching your wagon to Mr. Altman
| probably has a much better chance of making you rich, than
| does playing harps on a cloud at an altruistic non-profit.
| The question is what you actually want.)
| synthos wrote:
| If there _was_ a good reason to fire Sam, and the board had
| appropriately and clearly communicated their decision, I
| think less of the staff would have signed a the petition to
| walk. From the public's perspective, and probably most rank
| and file employees, this decision came from left field and
| had no logic behind it. The waffling and back peddling that
| followed certainly didn't help perception
| preommr wrote:
| I want to know other people's opinion on this.
|
| Because if it was me working at OpenAI, I would've signed it
| just out of peer pressure even if I disliked him. As the CEO,
| Altman undoubtedly shaped senior management that would've one
| way or another put pressure on everyone else under them.
|
| When I was salaried, my main concern would've been to just
| get my pacheck and keep things going as smoothly as possible
| in my day-to-day with the least amount of drama. And I feel
| like a lot of people are like this.
| gexla wrote:
| Isn't this how you gain power? You influence as many people
| as you can through suggestion that you can give them what
| they desire? Then grow that group to be large enough so that
| you're cemented within the org?
|
| Manipulation doesn't even necessarily feel bad. Just
| promising something, or offering a place inside the "in-
| group" could do the trick for most. It's when you're up
| against someone whose job it is to safeguard something (like
| someone on the board dedicated to a mission) where you start
| needing to get a bit more gangster with your tactics.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Dunno, you have to be able to deliver on some of those
| promises of desires fulfilled. And as you get older, your
| ability to see through it should only increase. At that
| point, the only real question becomes: is it to my benefit?
|
| FWIW, while I follow this saga, I am kinda waiting to see
| the full retrospective. I think we don't know everything
| relevant yet.
| loveparade wrote:
| If you give me the choice between making a lot of $$$ by
| working for a for-profit company or staying at a nonprofit
| with limited upside I'd also choose the former, even if I
| don't like the CEO much. Don't know where this myth of
| "people followed him" comes from. There is no evidence for
| it.
| tcgv wrote:
| > 95% of the staff were ready to follow him out the door.
|
| I'd rephrase that to:
|
| - "95% of the staff were ready to follow him and join
| Microsoft"
|
| Amid so much confusion and uncertainty, the prospect of
| joining Microsoft through an acquihire would appear quite
| appealing and like the safest choice. This sentiment is
| strengthened considering the team's approval of Sam's
| leadership.
| johnbellone wrote:
| I don't work there, but can guarantee that 100% of the
| staff wanted to be paid. They're going to follow the person
| that is going to make them generational wealth.
| dmix wrote:
| Working at Microsoft doesn't give you generational wealth
| like it doesn working on an AI startup, with a few
| exceptions. These AI researchers are in huge demand at
| plenty of companies and investors. It's equally as
| plausible they just want to keep working with this
| collection of very smart people on the cutting edge of AI
| rather than have to start over from scratch somewhere
| else, as OpenAI was basically DOA under new coup
| leadership.
| ctvo wrote:
| > I find it hard to believe this was the kind of environment
| he was cultivating at OpenAI if 95% of the staff were ready
| to follow him out the door.
|
| I work for a startup that's on the cusp of having an exit
| event valued at 70 billion dollars. Drama within the board,
| who I have no connection with, has reduced the probability of
| that happening to 0. There's a chance another company will
| hire me and my co-workers and match our total compensation in
| liquid stocks we can actually sell.
|
| It's _really hard_ to imagine why I or anyone else would sign
| a letter that turns back the decision impacting the exit
| event or join the company that 'll actually let me cash out
| the equity portion of my compensation. It definitely reflects
| my feelings for the CEO and not my own self interest.
| svara wrote:
| I don't know anything about the specific situation, but in
| general this is totally possible with a tyrannical leader.
|
| If he does come back and you didn't sign, he'll make your
| life hell; if he comes back and you did sign, you will be
| rewarded for your loyalty.
| synergy20 wrote:
| I feel the same way, however.
|
| The 95% will lose a huge chunk of money if Sam leaves, at
| least their fortune are all in serious jeopardy. So, money
| might have played a bigger role here.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _95% threatening to leave_
|
| Have you never had that employee or colleague who threatens
| to leave once a year? Curiously around pay negotiations?
|
| Nobody joined Microsoft. Nobody left. Two people were fired.
| Lots of threats were made, every one magically leaked within
| minutes to Twitter.
|
| Nobody followed anyone anywhere. Instead we saw $81bn
| vaporise, and the people who stood to gain from it panic and
| throw their weight around.
| donsupreme wrote:
| When Ilya signed the letter, most of the researchers would
| follow suit.
|
| As for the rest of the non-researching roles, most of them
| were hired after Altman's expansion for commercial operation.
| The existence and future prospersity of their jobs rely on
| having someone like Altman to push for profitabilty/go-to-
| market vision.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| I suspect the signers were a combination of wanting to follow
| _their comp_ out the door and a bit of Tom Wambsgans from
| Succession: "Because I've seen you get fucked a lot, and
| I've never seen Logan [in this case Sam] get fucked once."
|
| There's very little risk in signing if everything falls
| apart, but there's a lot of risk to _not_ signing if Sam
| comes back on as lead.
|
| > I find it hard to believe
|
| I also find it hard to believe that anyone on HN interested
| in this space doesn't at least have a "friend of a friend"
| who works at OpenAI. Based on what I've heard (which is
| nothing particularly quotable), it certainly gives off the
| vibe of being exactly that "kind of environment"
| startupsfail wrote:
| It's not exactly a secret. The company structure was a
| setup that allowed a high degree of internal alignment (at
| a level of a cult, it seems). And at some point there was a
| need to realign with making a lot of cash. This resulted in
| an alignment on this goal, and of course everyone who is in
| on it is supporting Sam Altman's moves.
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-
| openai...
| fatherzine wrote:
| "95% of the staff" -- this is Kim Jong Un approval rate
| territory. caution advised.
| eric-hu wrote:
| Vladimir Putin had 77% of the vote in Russia's 2017. If
| Putin can't fake a 95% approval rating, surely the OpenAI
| numbers must be real.
| sangnoir wrote:
| This is reminding me of the Ewok defense.
| eric-hu wrote:
| Looks like I need to work on my sarcasm phrasing.
| stillwithit wrote:
| Cult of personality and connection to the 1% of 1% given our
| tech fueled economy skews worker motives.
|
| If you had such a chance to sit around while everyone else
| grew your potatoes, you would.
| gizajob wrote:
| This whole saga whiffs of Machiavellianism
| antupis wrote:
| I would not be surprised if this is the beginning of the end
| for the company.
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| Nah. Microsoft still exist and is thriving. Altman is the
| new Bill Gates except he is better at retaining ~~cul~~
| employees. Many at HN love him for those qualities.
| PlugTunin wrote:
| Can you clarify the meaning of 4 tildes surrounded by the
| letters 'cul', for those of us who are new around here?
| Thank you
| binarytox1n wrote:
| I believe they meant to use the tildes to indicate a
| strikethrough text format, as with markdown. The "cul", I
| would guess is an unfinished "cultists", even though
| you'd typically strikethrough a completed word. When
| trying to indicate a "change of mind" it would be better
| to use a dash: "Better at retaining cul- uh, employees."
| henry_viii wrote:
| > as Machiavelli said:
|
| >> Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth.
| Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to
| suffer.
|
| https://blog.samaltman.com/value-is-created-by-doing
| gizajob wrote:
| I meant the dark triad personality traits, more than
| borrowing from The Prince.
| api wrote:
| On just Sam's part or all around? Seems like there might be
| quite a lot of it.
|
| Sam gives me a manipulative vibe but the way he was booted
| with knives out was also pretty gross. No clue what else was
| going on behind the scenes.
|
| Edit: if the people who booted him were really doing it in
| the name of safety paranoia, that doesn't mean it wasn't
| Machiavellian. The motive can be whatever but conspiring to
| boot someone like that is still a knife in the back.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I have interacted with him a few times and when he decides
| to help, he will help you all the way with an almost
| maniacal focus and drive. For what it's worth I have never
| heard bad things about him from individual interactions.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| This is basic bullying. I would ask for specific examples of
| the performance decline. That will also be a "he said you said"
| situation.
|
| However, sunlight is the best disinfectant. A bully cannot
| stand in isolation unless he is enabled. But if left too long
| they can amass too much power as the bully can manipulate
| enough people to vote for him (see Trump) or manufacture the
| vote.
|
| In those cases it takes a far larger force to bring about
| change.
| nerbert wrote:
| Absolutely. Also reporting these out of the ordinary
| behaviors before they become problematic is also a way to
| keep these guys in line. Once they see that you have a
| systematic way to report (replace report with "ask if this is
| normal practice within the company"), they'll avoid you.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _But if left too long they can amass too much power as the
| bully can manipulate enough people to vote for him_
|
| That feels exactly like why the board did what they did.
| Reading between the lines of everything that has been
| published, the actual sin that led to Altman's firing seems
| obvious:
|
| (1) Altman went to a board member and proposed something that
| would decrease the board's power over him (probably kicking
| someone off the board)
|
| (2) That board member tells other board members about the
| conversation
|
| (3) Board asks Altman if he had that conversation. Altman
| denies it
|
| (4) Board fires him for lack of candid communication with
| board
|
| (5) Board doesn't explicitly say what happened publicly,
| because it's inside baseball. But they absolutely know it did
| happen, because it they were first parties to it
|
| This feels less about safety vs commercialization (in the
| immediate future) and more about not having faith in a CEO
| caught in a lie while trying to remove oversight.
| larme wrote:
| 909 people followed Jim Jones to jonestown and died, so?
|
| [edited]: sorry means to replied one comment replied to this
| comment
| louwrentius wrote:
| Worldcoin
|
| You must be a sociopath to think that's a good idea.
|
| > "Sam lives on the edge of what other people will accept,"
| said one of the people who had worked with him closely.
| "Sometimes he goes too far."
|
| Silicon Valley has a profound problem with (a lack of) morals
| and ethics.
| mikrl wrote:
| >When people complain it's a 'you said, he said' situation
| where the manipulator inevitably wins
|
| There's no such thing as a free lunch. These types must have
| weaknesses of their own. I'm growing the cynicism necessary to
| tolerate them, but I'd like to know more robust strategies to
| manage them and keep them in check.
|
| I find it hard to truly hate people, but with this type I can
| muster some pretty flowery invective on the spot.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Unfortunately, it's a time disparity issue.
|
| Someone who politics for more time (with some aptitude) will
| generally beat out someone who doesn't.
|
| One of the marks in favor of being cutthroat about pre-
| registering KPIs and expected outcomes, and then evaluating
| solely based on them.
|
| In the end, I think it comes down to organizational culture.
|
| The companies I've seen with healthier executive ranks all
| had a very strong culture/tradition of "brook no bullshit"
| and shunned/discouraged up and coming colleagues from doing
| the same. As well as a focus on a central, objective mission
| (e.g. "Does this help us X?").
|
| You still got bad apples, but their behavior wasn't nearly as
| pervasive as I've seen other places.
| mikrl wrote:
| Yea I'm fortunate to have worked in more good companies
| than pathological ones, so maybe whatever my strategy is
| has worked so far.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > One of the marks in favor of being cutthroat about pre-
| registering KPIs and expected outcomes, and then evaluating
| solely based on them.
|
| That's the only thing off in your comment. Those KPIs are
| always set by politics, always have surprisingly subjective
| measurements, and always have unpredictable consequences
| that are cleared out by politics.
|
| An environment with all formal strictly set objective
| metrics is one of the easiest ones to manipulate.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The worst option, except for all the other ones.
|
| What's the better alternative?
| moralestapia wrote:
| (I'll hijack your comment a bit, just want to share my
| experience working in something related to it)
|
| I've had a chance to work with some HR people who genuinely
| wanted to improve the work environment on their respective
| companies (I know! Please believe me, lol).
|
| One of the bigger issues was corruption in general, of which
| this sort of behavior could fall under. The line of reasoning
| for that is that people usually resort to these behaviors in
| order to immorally/unlawfully attain some material benefit to
| them (it is very strange to find a pure blooded sociopath that
| just does it for the sake of it). When people artificially
| distort any system that is set up (for acquisitions,
| promotions, terminations, you name it) so that it no longer
| serves the company's interest but that of a group of rogue
| employees, well ... that's corruption. This framing is nice as
| it makes company exec's take a look at it from a business'
| gain/loss perspective instead of "meh, it's just employee's
| gossip".
|
| Anyway, the proposed solution was a sort of ombudsman for
| companies (it's actually a tech thing, not an actual person), a
| private channel where people could raise these issues without
| fear of retaliation. There cannot be a clear cut criteria by
| which one could define whether a particular employee is being
| corrupt or not, but we've observed something like a bi-modal
| distribution where problematic individuals truly stand out!
| Quoting Warren Buffet, _" there's never just one cockroach in
| the kitchen"_; you usually observe a lot of employees with no
| comments on them, a few getting like one or two remarks per
| month (and you can just ignore those, shit happens everyday)
| and then you have this guy who is getting 10+ comments _per
| week_ and that 's who you really need to sit down with and ask
| what's going on.
|
| Obviously this relies on the HR person being fair and honest,
| not part of the plot, and that comes with its own set of
| caveats; but at least, it's much easier to control that for one
| person than for 100s. Overall, the whole thing felt like an
| improvement.
|
| But, conclusion, the app didn't go much farther than being used
| at a couple companies, and then we realized it would be very
| hard to monetize, the team disbanded and we all moved on to
| other things :P.
| asoneth wrote:
| I have had similar experiences.
|
| The best career decision I ever made was to prioritize working
| with Good People and one of my few regrets was putting up with
| smart jerks for so long.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Now that he's back with MSOAI I think we've got AGI disaster in 7
| years. Thin possibility of good path for humanity. I wish he'd
| stuck to his guns and gone his own way, no MS, and no OAI. No
| disrespect to MS, they good, but this path is bad.
| Abekkus wrote:
| If you want to be a doomer, you don't need agi, just autonomous
| weapons, which ML can definitely help build.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You don't even need ML for that plus it already exists,
| Soviets had Dead Hand decades ago, an autonomous weapon
| system capable of ending the world.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| We don't need AGI for an AI disaster. Enough humans using AI-
| based tools to drive important decisions (read: outsourcing
| thinking) will stand in place of the "G" just fine.
|
| Corporations have been acting in this capacity (making massive
| changes to the ecosystem, human lives, etc) just fine. The
| corporate "organisms" have caused humans to erect massive
| projects to shave a few milliseconds from HFT, for example. AI-
| based decision support tools will just make that process more
| efficient.
| rsanek wrote:
| It sounds like he did stick to his guns though right? He still
| gets to do whatever he wants with the people he picked.
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| Yeah, the craziest thing for me to come out of this was how
| everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent". Poor poor sam
| altman, he's a victim. He comes across as a sleazebag to me.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I know people are innocent until proven guilty but it does seem
| rather bizarre also that he's had literally 0 media scrutiny /
| never been asked about (to my knowledge) the fact his own
| sister claims he abused her for years when they were young.
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| People are innocent until proven guilty in the legal system,
| where we have is a strict process for assigning a binary
| guilt outcome.
|
| In real life I use all available evidence for scoring outcome
| likelihoods. I score this guy high on sleazebag, and this
| article just increased this score.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| If you use the "innocent til proven guilty" principle in
| your day to day interactions you're bound to get fucked by
| every 2nd person. Well, maybe not that bad but you will
| still get fucked because you don't have the same resources
| as a court does to figure out if someone's fucking with you
| or not.
|
| You just don't have access to tax funded investigators
| working for months to figure out if the other person tells
| the truth or not.
|
| So it's down to: Something's off? I'm not trusting you.
| Especially when you want something from me.
| youcantcook wrote:
| I also use stupid sayings sometimes too
| coliveira wrote:
| I have no doubts about it. The good thing is that now I know a
| place I don't want to work for.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "how everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent"."
|
| My impression was rather a overwhelmingly "wtf is going on?"
|
| edit: I still don't know enough, to judge anyone involved
| sigmar wrote:
| People love to see things in black and white without nuance,
| "oh you think the board should reverse the decision, that
| must mean you think Altman was innocent and should never be
| fired!". My read was that most people here (at least on
| sunday and monday) viewed the board as making major missteps,
| that doesn't mean all of HN is "team sam"
| dmix wrote:
| It's just another hot take instant reaction of a new
| headline. Social media threads on controversial topics are
| always a whiplash, people love the swings in narratives,
| the opportunity to be contrarian or superior to the other
| people commenting on the topic, because they knew better.
|
| A new headline by a journo seeking their own clickbait
| angle comes out and the flood of "See it was really just
| [black/white] position and you were all wrong" is the most
| classic stereotypical social media take to a now past it's
| prime story, when IRL it's as nuanced and shades of grey as
| ever.
| infecto wrote:
| While I am certain there were people on both sides of that
| camp, I never saw a overwhelming outpour of people framing him
| as a victim. Most of what I read was people confused as heck,
| including myself.
|
| What I did see is lots of people wondering how he lied to the
| board. Almost a week later and we still don't know how he lied
| to the board. We can all speculate away but there has been zero
| evidence of wrong doing, what else are we supposed to do? I
| guess we can just call him a sleaze-bag like you do.
| ruszki wrote:
| There were way more people who framed the board, than Altman
| as someone who did bad. At least until Monday. There were a
| ton of hearsay why ousting Altman is bad, without any context
| and internal info. And many of them was written by PR people.
| For example, "the last time when this happened was with Steve
| Jobs 1985". This is clearly a statement which wants you to
| direct towards that Altman is the victim. When it's not even
| true, because it happens all the time, like with Emmanuel
| Faber at Danone.
|
| Btw, this is the most probable reason right now:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-
| altman-...
| sam0x17 wrote:
| It's also par for the course in these scenarios for the
| public story to be completely fabricated and have nothing to
| do with whatever thing actually pissed off the board, so we
| may never know what really happened
| temp112123 wrote:
| I don't know about sleazebag, I've mostly been confused as to
| what exactly he brings to the table. Dude gave himself scurvy
| after all.
| darkerside wrote:
| Victims can be sleazebags, and sleazebags can be poor victims.
| Both things can be true. Not everyone that is identifying a
| victimization is feeling or advocating sympathy. It's not black
| and white.
| sigmar wrote:
| >how everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent".
|
| Did they? You should try scrolling through the original thread
| and ctrl-Fing [edit: removed the single word that was getting
| me downvoted to oblivion, my point is that people were quick to
| jump to very serious/troubling conclusions to explain his
| firing and explicitly weren't jumping to innocent]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309611
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| This was so buried that completely escaped me. But it's full
| of nuggets
|
| https://twitter.com/phuckfilosophy/status/163570439893983232.
| ..
|
| > I'm not four years old with a 13 year old "brother"
| climbing into my bed non-consensually anymore.
|
| > (You're welcome for helping you figure out your sexuality.)
|
| > I've finally accepted that you've always been and always
| will be more scared of me than I've been of you.
|
| I don't know how to use twitter - is she responding to
| someone, or talking to herself?
| aoeusnth1 wrote:
| She is just posting into midair, but at a time when Sam was
| in the news and it was implied she was talking to him.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| Isn't he also the one wanting to scan everyone's eyeballs?
| 93po wrote:
| you mean how google scans everyone's fingerprints and apple
| scans everyone's faces?
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| Yes, that's how he means it. What's your point? Make a
| point.
| mandmandam wrote:
| ... Are you implying all biometric data is equal? Strange
| take.
|
| If fingerprints and faces are the same as retinas, where do
| you draw the line - or is there just no privacy line for
| you anywhere, as long as a billionaire somewhere is making
| lots of money?
| TheBlight wrote:
| So that puts him in good company?
| alamod3 wrote:
| I think it is quite different though, in that biometric-as-
| a-device-authenticator features keep your biometric data on
| your device. The plan with worldcoin is to create a central
| database of this data.
| JackFr wrote:
| Biometric data as authentication vs. differentiate my
| shitcoin so I can get in on the crypto grift.
| Aunche wrote:
| Supposedly Worldcoin deletes your biometric data after
| it's done generating a hash of it. If you don't believe
| that, then why would you believe that Google and Apple
| don't secretly send your fingerprints and facial scans
| off device?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| For one, those entities operate in the US, and are
| subject to US law - it may not be great at times, but
| that's a start.
|
| Worldcoin on the other hand went to the third world and
| went through Africa offering people almost a month's
| wages to give up their biometrics. That, to me, should
| merit a deeper dive into what they are doing and why.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| I'm old enough to realize that I have no idea who someone is
| until I sit with them for a time, and even then I only have a
| slightly informed way of determining whether they are ethical
| and can be trusted.
|
| I've always said that in another country, like Germany, it
| might take time to get to know someone and, if you don't know
| them, you certainly shouldn't ask how they are doing. In the
| United States, we say hello and ask how people are, even if
| they are complete strangers.
|
| This is a generalization, not something to be used for every
| single person, or culture, but it's a good indication of how
| cultures deal with trust up front. Here in the US, we'll give
| you "trust credit" and then roll over you like a semi truck if
| you screw up later.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm not completely sure if it works the same in the States as
| it does in Canada, but asking strangers/distant acquaintances
| how they're doing is never a _real_ question. People aren 't
| actually asking. You basically have 4 or 5 canned responses
| to supply from "great, you?" to "living the dream...", all of
| which don't say much. Any more and you're being a nuissance.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I always give a short candid response to those questions.
| Sometimes it brings follow up questions.
|
| My wife says I should just always say good or great.
| vik0 wrote:
| I think your wife is right lol
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| She usually is, but it's hard to teach an old dog new
| tricks.
| Kiro wrote:
| But it's OK to assume he's a sleazebag?
| 93po wrote:
| yeah exactly. everyone is speculating on an event we know
| virtually nothing about, involving people virtually no one
| here knows or knows well, in a realm of business virtually no
| one here has experience with (serving on board of $90b
| company)
| mandmandam wrote:
| If he pushes WorldCoin? Yes. No doubt.
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| This. This tells me everything I need to know about this
| guy. It tells me that he would happily enslave everybody if
| that boosted his shares.
| whalesalad wrote:
| https://www.themarysue.com/annie-altmans-abuse-
| allegations-a...
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-
| altman...
|
| He came to visit our office (YC '12 company) a few times and
| spoke with our team in very small fireside like gatherings.
| Dude always gave me a very creepy vibe. Something aint right
| there.
| shalmanese wrote:
| This feels like a wild misreading of the situation based on a
| simplistic good/bad dichotomy. People were mostly stunned at
| how poorly the board handled things and that sama probably
| wasn't as bad as the board was trying to make him out to be
| which is wildly different from him being good.
|
| Even the worst criminal in the world should be declared "not
| guilty" if they were caught for a crime they did not commit for
| which the prosecution did not make a convincing case. In law,
| there no "innocent", only "not guilty" and most people surmised
| that sama is not guilty in this context irrelevant of a larger
| backstory.
| tux1968 wrote:
| Your comment and sentiment is wildly inappropriate. You don't
| even bother to raise an accusation, just smear a person's
| character. We should all expect better from this forum.
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| Ok, my accusation is that this guy wants to scan people
| eyeballs, and monetize that.
| peruvian wrote:
| He's a YC guy who made a lot of money in tech and this is a YC
| website full of people wishing they made a lot of money in
| tech.
| subtra3t wrote:
| I think you will get downvoted soon (and I for mentioning
| this) but this is the simplest and most logical explanation
| on this thread by far.
| objektif wrote:
| It is a bit of a cultish environment no doubt. But there
| are a lot of very very nice people here too.
| subtra3t wrote:
| I would not say nice. Smart, and sometimes cordial, is
| how I would describe people here.
| loveparade wrote:
| I subscribe to the HN RSS feed, which shows flagged items since
| they're published on the feed before they're flagged. The
| craziest thing that stands out to me is how so many negative
| stories on Sam Altman end up being flagged, even though they
| are just as legit as the positive ones. I'm almost 100% certain
| that HN is highly manipulated for this story.
|
| For no other topic have I seen so many flagged stories, and all
| of them are the ones that paint Sam in a negative light.
| hn1986 wrote:
| Similar to Elon Musk stories..
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| HN is strongly anti-controversy. So when you have a large
| enough minority of users who rally around flagging certain
| topics, they easily get taken down even if there's otherwise
| interest in the discussion. I don't think it requires owner
| manipulation. You can see it in how things like any coverage
| of Palestinian perspective getting flagged immediately while
| coverage of far-right ancap politics lingers despite both
| being contentious political topics (where ancap discussion is
| controversial but detractors lack the habitual urge to flag
| brigade and are more open to discuss).
| verall wrote:
| There are topics where I'm interested in discussion but I
| don't think HN is mature enough to discuss them so the
| early comments are very thin ideology or discrimination so
| I just flag the article, even if it was good. I'm probably
| not alone in this.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| That's my point: yours is a weaker urge than the calls to
| take down Palestinian perspective as being terrorist
| sympathizing and antisemitic that come from that
| particular flag-brigade set (as one example), compared
| with diffuse concern over immaturity
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "to take down Palestinian perspective"
|
| I sometimes also do other things than reading HN, but
| what stood out to me, was that I read nothing about the
| conflict here at all and anything related to it was
| flagged. Likely because it would evolve into a flamewar
| after 3 comments.
| phlakaton wrote:
| Strongly anti-controversy?! This whole thing has been like
| Christmas come early for me. There's a strong contingent of
| people here who have no illusions about Altman's ambitions.
|
| That being said, Hacker News is primarily for news, and
| it's tech-oriented. I would not expect Palestinian
| broadsides (whether for or against) to fare well.
| dagmx wrote:
| A large contingent of people here (and anywhere) are prone to
| hero worship, especially if it tends towards trendy topics
| like generative AI. The natural reaction to criticism of an
| idol is to shut it down so you can maintain a singular
| narrative lest you have to deal with cognitive dissonance.
|
| Which I find ironic, because I'll see the same people looking
| down on non technical people idolizing celebrities, but not
| recognize that it's the same thing in a different field. The
| height of Elon worship was identical to Swifties imho.
| xracy wrote:
| The difference between Elon and Swift, is the scale to
| which they are able to use capitalism for their means. I
| think Elon is scarier for that reason. (Not absolving Swift
| of that, though).
| dagmx wrote:
| I would say the bigger scary thing is how they capitalize
| their fame to progress agenda, in addition to what you
| said.
|
| One of Swift's big appeal outside her media, is that she
| presents herself as a blank canvas for her fans to
| project themselves on. While I wish she used her platform
| for more positive advocation , it's a lot better for her
| to be neutral than Musks's aggressively negative use of
| his platform (especially in recent times).
| bogomipz wrote:
| Isn't the scale proportional though as Elon has 6
| companies and Taylor has only 1?
|
| Fascinatingly Taylor Swift has convinced her fans to
| rebuy re-recorded versions of all of her earlier albums.
| Not just one album either. So far it has been 4 of them
| with 6 in total. Her justification of this is purely
| capitalistic. This is kind of unprecedented, and the
| success of this for her has been quite spectacular.
|
| See:
|
| https://time.com/5949979/why-taylor-swift-is-rerecording-
| old...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/arts/music/taylor-
| swift-1...
|
| https://www.billboard.com/lists/taylor-swift-taylors-
| version...
| lessbergstein wrote:
| This website is YCombinator. Sam was with YCombinator
| nouveaux wrote:
| Did you read the article? Sam was fired by YCombinator.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| But is this really a solid fact? PG did not comment on it
| and all the other sources are anonymous.
| dang wrote:
| We don't moderate HN according to that. I wrote extensively
| about this yesterday if anyone wants a verbose explanation:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372059
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372393
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372125
| moralestapia wrote:
| I've noticed this as well, although empirically.
|
| I don't sympathize with @sama, more so, my personal opinion
| of him is that he definitely shows off a lot of psychopathic
| traits, but that said ...
|
| ... I'm also ok with keeping those topics outside the scope
| of this community, which is mainly tech-related and that's
| what I enjoy about it. Personal affairs belong elsewhere,
| IMO.
| dang wrote:
| I don't know what you mean by "manipulated" but these flags
| were, and are, coming from users, not admins. The likeliest
| explanation isn't sinister--it's that readers were fatigued
| by the tsunami of stories about this saga, and were flagging
| the ones that didn't seem to contain significant new
| information (a.k.a. SNI: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=al
| l&page=0&prefix=false&so...).
|
| I realize your perception was that all the negative ones got
| flagged, but this perception is most likely a function of
| your own preference (you're more likely to notice it when a
| story that you agree with gets flagged, because people are
| more likely to notice what they dislike: https://hn.algolia.c
| om/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Probably Sam
| feels like all the positive stories are getting flagged :)
|
| I wrote a longer explanation about how we treat story floods
| like this from a moderation point of view, if anyone wants to
| read about that:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357788.
|
| Edit: and this applies to the OP, which actually does contain
| SNI. I've turned user flags off on this submission and
| changed the title to be the article's HTML doc title, which
| is more specific.
| w10-1 wrote:
| > For no other topic have I seen so many flagged stories, and
| all of them are the ones that paint Sam in a negative light
|
| This isn't evaluating products for use with pluses and
| minuses.
|
| Attacks on reputation need to be very, very well
| substantiated or they are libel (business libel in this
| case). It's also morally wrong, it leads to the worst kinds
| of resentful discussions, and frankly, this is not really the
| place for that if indeed you want justice.
|
| In this case, the board made a decision that broke the
| reliance of all OpenAI stakeholders on Altman's leadership,
| with no evidence and little explanation. If OpenAI was
| transitioned properly and with due care to another CEO, it
| would have been business as usual.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| Some of the rss feed items are being straight up removed
| rather than just the typical flagged/dead that you normally
| see - none of them have looked extremely legit to me though.
| abadpoli wrote:
| I think part of this was also your classic case of tech
| industry misogyny, too. There has been a lot of thinly veiled
| sexism in the discussions about Helen and Tasha vs Sam.
| tristor wrote:
| If you're referring to discussing their qualifications to be
| on the board, I don't think that is in any way driven by
| sexism. There were numerous comment threads discussing the
| qualifications of all the board members and these two stood
| out as being specifically unqualified, and D'Angelo stood out
| for having clear conflicts of interest.
|
| Given how the board handled this whole situation like an
| amateur hour shit show, you will be hard pressed to argue
| their competence and qualifications in their favor.
|
| Rather, you are doing exactly what you are claiming from
| others, you're seeing two unqualified board members, who
| happen to be women, and defending them because they're women
| even though this whole situation displayed the incompetence
| of the entire board, Helen and Tasha included. The only one
| taking a sexist position is you.
|
| If the board handled this situation like competent adults who
| had ever spoken to an attorney, we wouldn't all be having
| this conversation in the first place.
| abadpoli wrote:
| > defending them because they're women
|
| There's absolutely nothing in my comment that even implies
| I'm defending them and their actions, and also absolutely
| nothing in my comment that implies any of my statement is
| based on their gender.
|
| I seem to have struck a nerve with you, though. I think the
| commenter doth protest too much.
| tristor wrote:
| I suggest you reread your comment then. You claimed the
| only reason people questioned their qualifications was
| sexism.
| Philpax wrote:
| They never said the word "only" or implied it.
| tristor wrote:
| They did not explicitly say it, it was definitely
| implied, since their entire comment was to claim that is
| was misogyny and sexism that were the motivations for
| commenters questioning these board members
| qualifications. I invite folks to actually look into
| qualifications of all of the board members, unless it's
| changed they're on the OpenAI website.
| Philpax wrote:
| > I think part of this
|
| > There has been a lot of thinly veiled sexism
|
| No, they didn't imply it, and they didn't claim it was
| the primary motivation. They just said it was a
| contributor. You are perceiving a stronger claim than
| they made.
| tristor wrote:
| It's literally the only claim they made. There were no
| alternatives, so of course it's perceived and implied to
| be the strongest claim.
|
| They said what they said, trying to weasel out of it
| doesn't make the case.
| stevedewald wrote:
| You introduced sex into a discussion where their sex is
| completely irrelevant.
| empath75 wrote:
| I think most of what you saw as support of Sam was support of
| ChatGPT as a consumer and b2b product, which is pretty clearly
| his baby and was put at risk by this drastic change. A _lot_ of
| people on this site are betting their futures on this
| technology right now and would very much not like to see that
| boat rocked.
| postmodest wrote:
| This entire thing has seemed to be the board saying "don't be
| the guy who went behind our back to summon the Devil" and
| everyone saying "but the Devil promised us Unlimited Moneys!"
| And HN agreeing that Unlimited Moneys are what startups are
| for, and everything else is excusable.
| BryantD wrote:
| I don't think it was everyone, I think there were just some
| loud voices. I also attribute that to human nature rather than
| anything organized. I've made a few Altman-skeptical comments
| and they generally got upvotes rather than getting flagged into
| oblivion; this tends to indicate there wasn't premeditated
| astroturfing.
| JackFr wrote:
| I just don't get his cult of personality. He's an underwhelming
| intellect but a top-notch promoter. And Worldcoin, seriously? I
| can see in 2019 wanting to be in on the grift, but let it die.
| Aunche wrote:
| It doesn't help that the board publicly accused of being a liar
| without any evidence. If they simply left it at "Sam's vision
| no longer aligns with the charter of the nonprofit", I'd bet
| they would be viewed much more sympathetically.
| whyleyc wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20231122121846/https://www.washi...
| CPLX wrote:
| Must say that a spirited defense from Keith Rabois is not the
| best way to dispel rumors you're a predatory sociopath.
| ur-whale wrote:
| https://archive.is/eVZvb
| bananapub wrote:
| it is absolutely fascinating how in all the threads about him,
| there's all these huge fans, and some people who are apparently
| highly connected, but no one ever seems to discuss _why_ he has
| these fancy jobs, why he left others, and why is apparently so
| well regarded?
| Solvency wrote:
| It's strangely paradoxical.
|
| Sam has zero charisma. Zero looks. No technical ability. He's
| not a storyteller. He's not a hype man. He comes off as a
| mildly surly sloth when he talks.
|
| His actual pre-OpenAI achievements from a product perspective
| are a joke.
|
| But he was nevertheless "there" for YC and "there" in OpenAI,
| and a bunch of money was raised, and he's successfully managed
| to get all spotlights on him at all times, so he's highly
| visible.
|
| He's like a weird geek following plays from Trumps book: just
| stay highly visible, associate with any possible win, and be at
| the center of attention.
|
| Why does it work? Because subconsciously who WOULDNT want to
| operate this way in life? It takes the least amount of effort
| compared to many other job tracks or even CEO tracks, and it's
| become wildly profitable for him.
|
| So the cult of personality idolizing America of today can't
| help but want their tech Jesus fantasy to work out.
| CPLX wrote:
| It's actually much less confusing than that. It's clear he
| has a knack for becoming a favorite son of billionaire
| oligarchs who see him as useful.
|
| Which, assuming he's like everyone else who's done that, was
| accomplished by a combination of flattery and willingness to
| operate on behalf of the ruling class totally untethered from
| any principles whatsoever.
| kossTKR wrote:
| It's pretty incredible that the upper echelons have so
| thoroughly psyopped everyone below them that the public
| runs confused around in an endless maze of ideology, false
| pretexts and stirred up drama.
|
| This way only insiders recognise the most fundamental
| realpolitical power struggles of all ages; that the "very
| confusing" wars, coups or power grabs is not very complex
| at all but always - almost as a physical principle -
| stemming from the richest members of society pulling the
| strings to benefit themselves.
|
| Then some note or some FOIA request will be released in 40
| years about the orchestration and no one will care.
|
| Just follow the money, or the networks of people and it's
| easy to see the undercurrents of class warfare, elite power
| via the security state or oligarch clubs siphoning money
| and power away from the public, but that's called
| conspiracy these days and is dangerous (to the ruling
| classes).
| CPLX wrote:
| Yeah this stuff isn't rocket science. If you shut the
| fuck up and play along and don't make people
| uncomfortable you get a kitchen renovation and a vacation
| home and a job for your kid. It's the oldest game there
| is.
| refurb wrote:
| > mildly surly sloth
|
| I had to read that twice, but it was well worth it.
| barrkel wrote:
| What makes you think he has no technical ability?
|
| It seems more likely to me, given his background (programming
| from 8, accepted to Stanford CS) that he has technical
| aptitude, but he has even more dealmaking ability.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Is-Sam-Altman-highly-technical-Has-
| he-... - Patrick Collison says he had technical conversations
| on Lisp machine implementations and iframe security policies,
| which to me is a measure of some depth.
|
| And on hype, I think the carefully staged GPT PR over the
| years had an element of controlled hype. I remember them
| talking about how they couldn't release it because of how
| e.g. spammers could use it -
| https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/14/18224704/ai-machine-
| learn...
|
| (They weren't entirely wrong, there's a flood of junk text
| out there now. Twitter popular posts have their replies
| flooded by AI-generated "on topic" responses by bots. Content
| mills are switching to AI.)
| kubrickslair wrote:
| I have only interacted briefly with Sam but I found him to be
| one of the smartest YC folks. But I will let a Paul Graham
| essay speak [1]:
|
| Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer
| to most when I'm advising startups. On questions of design, I
| ask "What would Steve do?" but on questions of strategy or
| ambition I ask "What would Sama do?"
|
| What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the
| elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most
| people think: 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.
|
| [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html
| pdonis wrote:
| Graham doesn't say Altman is smart. He says he's driven.
| They're not the same thing.
|
| Quite frankly, every time I read one of Altman's essays I
| am seriously underwhelmed as far as smartness goes.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| It's funny, but I adopted a similar approach, and it's
| amazing how the tides turn in your favor when your name is on
| everyone's lips. I'm nothing special, but I have an eye for
| quality people and a great reputation (thanks to it), so I'm
| the one who keeps getting the calls.
|
| Also, some people would rather be shot than talk in front of
| a crowd or get up in front an audience. I used to have panic
| attacks during introductions in small meetings, and now I'm
| the one who spots the nervous professionals and helps them
| feel that they belong.
|
| Anyway, that's all to say there's value in it. I don't
| personally enrich myself off of it, but if I could offer a
| correction to your dim view of the imperfect, the world isn't
| actually run by intimidatingly charismatic, beautiful
| geniuses, and I have found that helping people that have the
| simple capacity for success connect and communicate isn't a
| worthless skill.
| laaaaea wrote:
| This is the confirmation of why people hire him.
|
| Companies, specially start up, are growth garbage. Grow. Grow.
| Grow.
|
| And CEOs today who get visibility win. Period. e.g. Musk, Sam.
|
| relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/125/
|
| Who would you prefer, a sensible, technical, honest CEO driving
| real efforts or this media circus _? There might be a dime a
| dozen AI startups doing more science based innovation instead
| of this moore-law-llm. But they don 't have the media
| attention, so their offices are probably empty.
|
| _ (btw, IMHO i think _all_ of this board non-sense is planned
| PR, by the company or Sam, which might have gotten out of hand)
|
| PS: The _only_ thing people should be talking from that article
| is the only fact. That he was hired by YC to vet startups, and
| instead invested in them from his brother fund. Yet, here we
| are, talking about everything but it.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| He's part of the SV VC royalty? He has the tech/startup
| pedigree, is good at raising money, and made the right
| impression on important people.
| Keats wrote:
| I can't believe someone that created Worldcoin could not be
| trustworthy.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Worldcoin alone is so, so damning of his character. Cartoon
| villain shit.
|
| It's hard to square that whole thing with the way people talk
| about him here. But every once in a while it hits; this is the
| guy who wanted to collect everyone's bloody retina pattern, all
| for a crypto so obviously bad in nearly every fundamental
| aspect.
| Kiro wrote:
| How so? A universal and tamper-proof ID system sounds like a
| good idea. In my country we have a pretty rock solid digital
| ID but the problem is that it's national, so the utility is
| limited.
|
| I want to build global apps where I know every user is real
| and limited to one account but currently that's impossible. I
| don't know enough about Worldcoin to know if that's it
| though.
| 93po wrote:
| that's exactly one of the biggest use cases for WC. the
| internet _needs_ this and will need it 100x more in a few
| years
| AlexandrB wrote:
| _Why_ does the internet "need" this? Anonymity and
| pseudonymity are features, not bugs of the internet.
| Eliminating them will supercharge surveillance and
| government/corporate control.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| The short answer is a lot of potentially useful
| decentralized protocols completely buckle under the
| weight of Sybil attacks, so if Sybil attacks were
| impossible, there is a whole lot more that could be built
| mattstir wrote:
| So how do retinal scans protect against Sybil attacks
| exactly?
| sam0x17 wrote:
| 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.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| I think the people who support Worldcoin do so either on
| the basis of it being another shitcoin they can make
| money speculating with, or because they're in Sam's
| personality cult.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| To keep things polite - I couldn't give a nanofraction of a
| fuck what kind of app you want to build, I am not giving my
| biometric data on such a stupid whim to anybody, not to US
| for-profit, when US laws selectively considers remaining
| 95% of humans on Earth subpar.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| So if it's a great idea, and Worldcoin is a US company, why
| did they not start in the US?
|
| Why instead did they go to some of the least wealthy parts
| of Africa and ask people to give them their biometrics for
| sometimes as much as one month's salary? To seed their
| database? It doesn't really pass the smell test.
| 93po wrote:
| their long term project doesn't save or store retina patterns
| in any way. they store of a hash of it that is mathematically
| impossible to reverse. it's clear you wildly misunderstand
| how this works, i would encourage you to go learn more. i'd
| also welcome you to explain how the crypto side of it is bad
| in comparison to other uses of blockchains
| mandmandam wrote:
| I don't know what the gaps in your knowledge are to not see
| Worldcoin as a scam. And I'm not being paid to find out.
|
| But it's a fuckin scam. It's exploitative, and sleazy as
| fuck. It uses crappy blockchain tech, the orbs are
| proprietary, and you really ought to think twice before
| condescending at people who try to help you out on this.
| Clubber wrote:
| I hear NFT's are gonna really hit soon....
| rrdharan wrote:
| > how the crypto side of it is bad in comparison to other
| uses of blockchains
|
| It sucks and the other uses also suck.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Why are you lying to protect sama's reputation?
|
| Worldcoin stores the biometric data for opt-in users. They
| say it themselves. It's stored "encrypted" which means the
| original data is retrievable, and kept in Worldcoin's
| custody. All Worldcoin claims is that it has safeguards
| against retrieving the data it does collect and store, like
| say Equifax or 23andme claim about your PII.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm a happy Worldcoin user. If the providers are happy and
| the users are happy I'm not sure what's cartoon villainish
| about it?
| blitzar wrote:
| "but he looks like such a nice boy"
| mousetree wrote:
| > One of those people whose career Altman helped propel was Ilya
| Sutskever, chief scientist and board member at OpenAI -- the
| person who ultimately fired him.
|
| Ilya was plenty successful before OpenAI and would've been just
| fine without Altman helping to "propel" his career.
| dishwashing wrote:
| This statement about Ilya seems just ridiculous to me. Ilya was
| one of the people who created all these ML/Deep Learning hype
| with the "ImageNet moment". I don't care much about all this VC
| stuff, but before 2023, Ilya seemed to me much more famous than
| Sam.
| himaraya wrote:
| Indicative that many sources still come from Sam's camp
| screye wrote:
| HAHA, I know.
|
| Ilya, a nobody who wrote the most seminal paper of the last 10
| years. The guy that Eric Schmidt and Elon broke their
| friendship over was just a random nobody.
|
| Come on. It is no secret that when OpenAI formed, every single
| researcher joined so they could work with Ilya (and Zaremba who
| worked with him, but was less famous). Greg is brilliant but ML
| people didn't care for him and Sam 'one of those VC guys'. A
| lot of their best hires had already worked in Ilya/Zaremba
| before they joined OpenAI.
|
| OpenAI might have moved past needing Ilya's brilliance to
| innovate, but if anyone gets to claim that they 'made' OpenAI,
| it is Ilya.
| siva7 wrote:
| and your source for this story is?
| ncann wrote:
| What's that about with Eric Schmidt, Elon and Ilya?
| screye wrote:
| Correction, it was Larry Page (close enough), Elon and
| Ilya.
|
| Source -
| https://youtu.be/7nORLckDnmg?si=1T5qyYAdPrMwsEGG&t=73
| adrr wrote:
| Why did he sign the letter and post:
|
| >I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I
| never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built
| together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.
| jstarfish wrote:
| When you take a shot at someone influential and miss, falling
| on your own sword is a kinder fate than what will happen when
| they turn your direction.
| adrr wrote:
| Did he miss? Sam was fired.
| jstarfish wrote:
| This subthread isn't about the article; we're on a
| tangent about OpenAI.
|
| He was fired [at] and _didn 't die._ Now he's back, and
| looking for revenge.
| adrr wrote:
| Board hired him back. They could have said no and stuck
| to their guns. No shareholders to give them the boot.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Then they'd be falling on their own swords. Literally the
| whole company was ready to walk away. Never in history
| has that ever happened, as far as I know.
| jstarfish wrote:
| It's actually pretty typical for coups/mutinies.
|
| Your position is challenged by military brass, so you
| imprison/execute them. Anyone charismatic enough to take
| you on is going to have been popular with the soldiers,
| so now a heavily-armed mob with tanks and artillery is
| pissed at you. Now you have two problems, with only two
| solutions-- eat some shit and hope to make peace, or die.
|
| Putin played it safe in flipping the script-- negotiate
| surrender, appear to resolve the dispute peacefully, then
| stage an "accident" of the rabblerouser once tensions are
| lower. Cooler heads always prevail.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Or you could do the King Hassan II strategy which is
| basically bury them in underground pits with not even
| enough room to stand up in for 24 hours a day until the
| first Bush comes knocking and needs a favor and tells you
| to clean up your PR.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tazmamart
|
| I guess a L63 DS salary at MS must be the salt mines to
| these guys.
| gwern wrote:
| This is why, the WSJ says: https://www.msn.com/en-
| us/money/companies/openai-s-path-ahea...
|
| "One surprise signee was Ilya Sutskever, the company's chief
| scientist and one of the members of the four-person board
| that voted to oust Altman. On Monday morning, Sutskever said
| he deeply regretted his participation in the board's action.
| "I will do everything I can to reunite the company," he
| posted on X.
|
| Sutskever flipped his position following intense
| deliberations with OpenAI employees as well as an emotionally
| charged conversation with Brockman's wife, Anna Brockman, at
| the company's offices, during which she cried and pleaded
| with him to change his mind, according to people familiar
| with the matter."
| p_j_w wrote:
| It seems obvious that tech media are largely not even close to
| neutral here. Most everything coming out feels manipulative as
| hell. I don't know why anyone thinks they have a clear story of
| what's happening here.
| whyenot wrote:
| > tech media are largely not even close to neutral here
|
| I don't find that surprising at all. Many of those reporting
| are highly dependent on "access journalism." I suspect it's
| pretty hard to be neutral when if you piss off the wrong
| people they will cut you off.
| Merrill wrote:
| Based on the article and the loyalty shown by openai employees,
| he appears to be the "difficult to manage" type, rather than the
| "difficult to work for" type.
|
| That's not necessarily a bad thing in employees. I was once told
| that it is easier to round off the corners of a cube than to
| develop corners on a sphere.
| rsynnott wrote:
| IME one almost always implies the other.
| lobsterthief wrote:
| Not in my experience, at all. Working beneath someone who's
| difficult to work for can make your every day at work
| terrible. Working with someone who's hard to work with is
| much more maintainable since you're more in control of the
| interactions and can effect change by working with people
| higher in the org.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Oh, I mean that if someone's a bad subordinate or peer
| they'll probably also be a bad boss, or vice versa. I'd
| agree that a bad boss tends to be a worse thing to have
| than the other too.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| But not as a truism. It's possible to manipulate well enough
| that people above and below you both believe you are working
| in their interest, but it's quite hard. Great for job
| security if you can pull it off.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I haven't seen that. Some of my favorite coworkers and
| managers have been people who were hard to manage. It's
| because they have strong principles and they prioritize good
| relations with their peers and subordinates over being
| promotable.
|
| I understand you are probably talking about people who
| uniformly act like jerks but I haven't found them to be as
| common.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Not my experience at all. Someone who pushes back on their
| boss to get the team they manage what they need is exactly
| that type of person.
| Jensson wrote:
| From this story sounds more like "difficult to not work for".
| hatenberg wrote:
| Or you know, he personifies paper millions everyone thought
| they had in the bank
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| > "Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence
| benefits all of humanity."
|
| Ahhh now I get that, all humanity, exclude noone :D
|
| > pointed to Altman's aggressive fundraising efforts for a chips
| venture with autocratic regimes in the Middle East, which raised
| concerns about the use of AI to facilitate state surveillance and
| human rights abuses.
| patall wrote:
| > Another person familiar with Altman's thinking said he was
| willing to meet with the board's shortlist of proposed
| candidates, except for one person whom he declined on ethical
| grounds.
|
| Now you have me interested, who could that one person be? Charles
| Koch? Henry Kissinger? Because many of those I would normally
| have guessed are either in the article as possible collaborator
| (middle-easter connection) or is already an investor (like Elmo).
| Honestly, who is too ethically different here and yet still
| within the anglosphere to be considered a board member?
| cma wrote:
| > Henry Kissinger?
|
| I think his stock as potential boardmember probably went down
| with his service on the Theranos board.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Can't imagine Kissinger is a popular choice for boards today...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Assuming he's as manipulative as the worst reports of him say,
| "ethical grounds" translates to "doesn't believe my lies"
| someperson wrote:
| Henry Kissinger is 100 years old
| bmitc wrote:
| It's a joke. The explanation is that who would have to have
| worse morals and ethics than Altman for Altman to dismiss
| considering them on those grounds.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Condoleeza Rice?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The fight over OpenAI's leadership is more like celebrity gossip
| than anything else. The most salient takeaway is that closed-
| source proprietary LLMs are a bad idea and that everyone with any
| long-term interest in the subject should switch over to the open-
| source model.
|
| It also has revealed that non-profit philanthropic business
| models are little more than marketing ploys designed to fool the
| gullible, and that 'corporate values' statements should be viewed
| in the same light as the self-serving claims of narcissitc
| sociopaths are. In particular OpenAI's vague claims about
| 'ensuring AGI benefits humanity' were so subject to
| interpretation as to be meaningless (e.g. some may claim that
| cutting the size of the current human population in half would be
| a great benefit to humanity, others would argue for doubling it,
| see the history of eugenics for more of that flavor).
|
| For-profit entities who are upfront about the fact that their
| only interest is in making money for their investors, executives
| and stock-holding employees are at least honest about their
| goals. Of course, this means their activities must be subjected
| to independent governmental regulation (which is the outcome that
| the whole 'we have values' BS is intended to avoid).
| andsoitis wrote:
| > The most salient takeaway is that closed-source proprietary
| LLMs are a bad idea and that everyone with any long-term
| interest in the subject should switch over to the open-source
| model.
|
| What is your reasoning for stating that closed-source
| proprietary LLMs are a bad idea and that anyone with long-term
| interest in the subject (AGI?) should switch to open-source
| models?
|
| Open-source tends to foster monopoly and relies on free labor
| (see Google, Meta). AI also relies on free labor.
| sfjailbird wrote:
| I really liked the New Yorker portrait 'Sam Altman's Manifest
| Destiny':
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...
|
| It seemed to really get to the depths of his personality, both
| the impressive parts, and with some very subtle jabs.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I objected to his choice of Rickover as a role model in a FB
| comment thread and apparently he had a mutual friend with me so
| he jumped in complaining that the reporter hadn't captured
| everything accurately (not quite to the point of "did me
| dirty")
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| What's wrong with Rickover as a role model? If he'd been able
| to do for the civilian nuclear power sector what he did for
| the Navy, a lot of things would be a lot better now.
| mandevil wrote:
| Rickover effectively seized control of the entire USN
| submarine arm and ran it as a personal fief for three
| decades. I don't think that could possibly work with
| civilian power in the US, because it's NOT a military
| organization and can't be changed by top-down mandate.
|
| A 1978 USNI Proceedings essay on NR and leadership[1],
| which won a bunch of prizes, had this great description of
| Rickover's micromanagement: "Each nuclear submarine is
| commanded by two people: its captain and the Director,
| Division of Naval Reactors [Rickover]. The captain has full
| responsibility for the military operations of his ship as
| well as for power plant safety. He also has full authority
| over the military operations. NR has much of the authority
| over the power plant; its Director has been known to place
| a call to a submarine's engineering space telephone and
| then personally direct the commanding officer how to
| organize his watch bill."
|
| That level of micromanagement wasn't great inside the US
| Navy, a military organization (hence the essay) and would
| have spectacularly bombed and flamed out in the civil power
| world and is also not a great idea for the commercial world
| at large. This is why taking Rickover as a model is
| something that you should do very very carefully. He did
| some things right, but a whole lot of things can't be
| brought over to your company, in a way that suggests using
| him as a baseline takes you further away from a good
| answer.
|
| I wrote a paper decades ago comparing Rickover and Jackie
| Fisher- of HMS Dreadnought/HMS Invincible fame- as
| technological entrepreneur's introducing new technology
| into their respective fleets. And one lesson I took away
| was that both of them took a whole lot of advantage of
| being in a military service where they could issue orders
| and have them be legally obeyed in a way that commercial
| people just can't get away with. Employees will just leave
| your company if you tried a bunch of the crap that Rickover
| did.
|
| [1]: A badly OCR'd version of the essay is available here:
| https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1978/july/leader
| s... The author, then Lt Ralph Chatham, would go on to have
| the first ever novel published by the US Naval Institute
| Press dedicated to him. "To Ralph Chatham, a sub driver who
| spoke the truth" is how Tom Clancy's _Hunt for Red October_
| begins.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Thanks, interesting perspective there that I'm not very
| familiar with. Will have to check out the USNI essay.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I too, wasn't aware of this or I might have cited it in
| the thread as well.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| It's interesting because you can't argue with the success
| he achieved, and given how high the stakes were, you can
| sort of understand the temptation to micromanage. But
| (having read the essay now) you also can't learn much
| from Rickover's methodology, or apply it anywhere else.
| If for no other reason than the fact that few/no similar
| problems exist anywhere else.
|
| We also can't run the experiment multiple times to
| determine if he was really relying on luck all along. The
| Navy's luck ran pretty low at a couple of points
| (Thresher and Scorpion come to mind).
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I think he realized it painted him in a bad light which
| is why he blamed it on the reporter to me but I really
| just should have responded with the Edward Teller quote
| from the 1983 AUR article: 'I liked Rickover better as a
| captain than as an admiral."
| selimthegrim wrote:
| This is what I cited (from the 1983 issue of Air
| University Review) which makes many similar points but
| concentrates more on his impact on the organization at
| the Navy level (https://web.archive.org/web/2013031019221
| 0/http://www.airpow...). I also pointed out to him that
| Rickover didn't think civilian nuclear power should be a
| thing towards the end of his life as well as some points
| about the Shoreham plant and the backup turbines.
|
| e: "In time, he became increasingly conservative if not
| reactionary, putting space between himself and any
| responsibility for failure or accident. When the USS
| Thresher was lost in April 1963, he immediately phoned
| the Bureau of Ships to dissociate himself from any
| likelihood of failure of the nuclear plant in the
| incident. The bureau chief thought this action
| "thoroughly dishonest."
| selimthegrim wrote:
| The reality is we have to give Sam total credit for
| transparency. From the USNI and Air University articles
| mandevil and I cited he was completely open and honest
| about how he intended to run OpenAI (although he was
| still at YC then). Let's just hope his next role model
| isn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naftaly_Frenkel
| throw555chip wrote:
| As a former Submarine sailor, Rickover, destroyed the best part
| of the spirit of the service with his tyrannical control.
| lhnz wrote:
| If Paul Graham fired Sam Altman from YCombinator it's interesting
| that he appears to have such a favourable opinion of him [0].
|
| However, personally, what I've taken away from this is that he is
| a much better strategic/tactical operator than many other high-
| flying executives and very capable of winning the respect and
| trust of a lot of smart people. I wouldn't expect OpenAI to be
| run by anybody that wasn't revered in this way; a lot of CEOs
| aren't saints.
|
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/search?q=from:paulg%20since:2019-01-01%2...
| tom_ wrote:
| I dunno, man. As an English person, to me these tweets sound a
| lot like he is publicly calling Altman a cunt.
| lhnz wrote:
| Really? It seems like a glowing appraisal. He seems to think
| that Sam is devestatingly effective at what he does.
| tom_ wrote:
| If I didn't know Graham was English, perhaps I would take
| them at face value - and, indeed, perhaps I should anyway.
| (And my characterisation was an extreme one!) But: they do
| just all sound rather coldly backhanded, if you ask me.
| skilled wrote:
| I like your way of seeing it and I see the same now. If
| this is true (the article) then for sure it's a nice
| inside jab that only Sam would get.
|
| Also, I doubt pg would hold a grudge for years on end.
| You learn many lessons in life and some you are bound to
| repeat because of stubbornness or whatever.
| itronitron wrote:
| I think with some of pg's tweets he definitely seems to
| be laying it bare, but only for those people that know
| what to watch out for.
| turzmo wrote:
| American, but I read PG's tweets as someone who
| absolutely does not want to piss off Sam but is willing
| to come close to the edge of plausible deniability in
| damning him, e.g.:
|
| > The most alarming thing I've read about AI in recent
| memory. And if Sam thinks this, it's probably true,
| because he's an expert in both AI and persuasion.
|
| There certainly isn't the paternal warmth you might
| expect from a proud mentor.
| lhnz wrote:
| Well, I'm also English and I didn't read them that way.
| However, I do think that Paul is telling people that
| competing with Sam in certain domains would be
| extraordinarily difficult.
|
| The other thing is that if you take a look at Paul
| Graham's blog posts, he used to regularly thank Sam at
| the bottom of these -- this isn't something you do if you
| don't like or respect someone. However, on the other
| hand, perhaps they fell out at some point? I can't
| personally make out that signal from the little data
| there is.
| thatguysaguy wrote:
| They all say he's good at what he does, but none of them
| actually sound like he likes the guy.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Graham is English. The English have a wonderful talent for
| making backhanded "complements." E.g. "you're a truly
| unique individual" or "I always feel more intelligent after
| speaking with you."
|
| The American convention is to look for the positive and
| assume that was intended. The English convention is to look
| for the negative and assume that was the real meaning.
|
| E.g. "Sam is going better than you. Do better." Could mean
| "Even that incompetent dipshit Sam is going to do better
| than you can, that's how much of a hole you're in."
| lhnz wrote:
| I am also English. :)
| specialist wrote:
| Per Guy Kawasaki (The Macintosh Way), the sincerity of
| Jean-Louis Gassee's feedback was inversely proportional
| to the level of praise.
|
| That anecdote prompted me to do the same (in corporate
| battlefields). Works great.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| It's really funny to re read this with that perspective.
|
| >My kid was really surprised to find out that _Sam_ cofounded
| this company.
|
| > _Sam_ is going better than you. Do better.
|
| Etc. I don't know that you're right, since these do sound
| like praise, but it's kind of a funny game to change the tone
| and make them into catty insults.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| I read it like so.
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| Anyone able to quote these xweets for people without an
| account?
| martinclayton wrote:
| Might work: https://nitter.poast.org/search?f=tweets&q=from%3
| Apaulg+sinc...
| justrealist wrote:
| Paul's wife has a huge financial stake in OpenAI, so I suspect
| massive success there has softened his opinion.
| liuliu wrote:
| These are donations. How that becomes investment / financial
| stakes? (It is a question, since how the transition to
| capped-profit left a lot of questions unanswered).
| jpeter wrote:
| Rokos Basilisk
| erikig wrote:
| Is this why there was a power struggle for OpenAI's
| direction?
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Clicksaver: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk
| intellectronica wrote:
| Sensationalist clickbait title. There's nothing in the article
| that supports the claim that Altman has been "fired".
|
| It's almost invariably the case that to most of us, people who
| are powerful and effective appear "manipulative". In fact, they
| are manipulative, which is how they achieve so much. It's only a
| problem if they are manipulative in the service of goals that are
| unethical or harmful.
|
| See also: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
| principle-... - successful, powerful people ("sociopaths" in
| vgr's comical treatise on office politics) are people who create
| and shape reality. Those who are not able to create and shape
| reality themselves (the "clueless", according to vgr) benefit
| from having someone create a reality for them, while at the same
| time, take offence at the manipulation.
| laaaaea wrote:
| > nothing in the article that supports the claim that Altman
| has been "fired".
|
| it's worse. The article say he invested in companies he was
| being paid to evaluate for YC, perfect reason to end an exec
| career. And then was NOT fired.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Isn't that what PG does? Isn't that what YC does?
| DotaFan wrote:
| I am no behaviorist expert, but for me, someone who in world of
| trouble can post tweets as relaxing as Sam's, and do smile poses
| comes of as extremely manipulative.
| imjonse wrote:
| He may turn from powerful and well liked startup poster-child to
| simply powerful (like Larry Ellison, Bezos, Gates and countless
| other CEOs have in the past).
| fevangelou wrote:
| It's oh so weird the article does not mention any of these
| though...
|
| - https://twitter.com/phuckfilosophy/status/163570439893983232...
| (SA's sister - also have a look at her recent posts)
|
| - Also: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-
| altman... (utterly distressing)
|
| - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1727096607752282485 (check
| the comment with snapshots of the letter - "strangely" that Gist
| was deleted)
| whalesalad wrote:
| nitter link
| https://nitter.net/ajayjuneja/status/1727117041977766182#m
| twic wrote:
| Sounds like Roko's Basilisk knows where he lives.
| smegsicle wrote:
| that can't be true- why would sam altman and the rest of their
| family deny annie altman's inheritance? it's not like they need
| the money themselves
|
| either this annie character is making stuff up, or the whole
| rest of her family are some kind of comic book villains
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I haven't read enough into the story to make up an opinion.
| However, purely based on what you're saying, that's
| completely normal abuser behaviour. You wouldn't be denying
| the inheritance to enrich yourself, but rather to prevent
| someone from becoming economically empowered and reducing
| your power over them. It's a very common tactic.
| subpixel wrote:
| While it's true that all unhappy families are unhappy in
| their own way, this sort of seemingly illogical
| vindictiveness is exceedingly common.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > why would sam altman and the rest of their family deny
| annie altman's inheritance? [...] either this annie character
| is making stuff up, or the whole rest of her family are some
| kind of comic book villains
|
| She's done _something_ to alienate herself from the family.
| Usual reason is _drugs,_ but given that she 's publicly
| braying about being molested I'd bet that she's told similar
| stories about _other_ family members, internally, prior to
| this. (ed: she also made the same allegations against her
| other brother too. Damn I 'm good.)
|
| Look at the number of people ascribing manipulative behavior
| to Sammy. This sort of thing runs in families.
|
| Or look at the verbiage of the allegation itself:
|
| > I'm not four years old with a 13 year old "brother"
| climbing into my bed non-consensually anymore. (You're
| welcome for helping you figure out your sexuality.) I've
| finally accepted that you've always been and always will be
| more scared of me than I've been of you.
|
| Nowhere in there does she _actually say_ he did anything more
| than get in bed with her. She just implies it, and our minds
| are filling in the rest, giving her plausible deniability
| against making such a claim. It 's fuckary.
|
| (edit2) Even better, from
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-
| altman...:
|
| > "Annie had (and still was having?) extremely intense,
| nearly all-day PTSD flashbacks of the sexual assault she
| experienced in her childhood from Sam Altman, plus other
| forms of assault from all members of her nuclear family
| (except her Dad, I think.)"
|
| Everyone wants a piece of Little Annie Altman, it seems.
| Histrionic personality disorder (and PTSD!) is treated
| with...Zoloft, dispensing of which was also considered
| "abuse" in her claims.
|
| > Our Dad's ashes being turned into diamonds (not his wishes)
| and that being offered to me instead of money for rent and
| groceries and physical therapy says more about me?
|
| lol. The Altmans know how to push the buttons of someone with
| a spending problem.
| nabakin wrote:
| Fyi the gist was a copy of that letter originally posted to
| board.net. It was created by a user here on HN when the
| board.net link first came out and its servers subsequently
| crashed from the HN hug of death.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Is there any major news reporting on the Annie Altman stuff?
| That looks like front page material to me.
| johnnyworker wrote:
| from the second link:
|
| > Besides Elizabeth Weil's nymag article (here), there has
| been virtually _zero_ (mainstream) media coverage of the
| extremely serious claims that Annie has consistently made
| many, many times against Sam Altman over the past 4 years.
| charred_patina wrote:
| He has always creeped me out. The way pg talks about him is
| meant to be an endorsement, but it makes Sam seem like a
| Svengali whose main quality is the ability to manipulate and
| get what he wants.
| lordfrito wrote:
| Also he does seem to have "crazy eyes" [1].... Yeah it's not
| entirely scientific but a lot of manipulative exec types have
| them. Elizabeth Holmes comes to mind...
|
| [1] https://www.insider.com/you-can-spot-psychopaths-by-
| looking-...
| mcpackieh wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanpaku
|
| > _According to Chinese /Japanese medical [...] when the
| upper sclera is visible it is said to be an indication of
| mental imbalance in people such as psychotics, murderers, and
| anyone rageful. In either condition, it is believed that
| these people attract accidents and violence._
|
| It might not be scientific but people with this look
| certainly do freak me out. (FWIW, I haven't seen any images
| of Sam with these eyes.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Applewhite#/media/Fil.
| ..
| civilitty wrote:
| Paging your friendly neighborhood phrenologist! Have you
| measured the shape of Altman's head yet?
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Elon is incredibly jealous of Sam. That is why he posted the
| gist.
| greyface- wrote:
| > "strangely" that Gist was deleted
|
| The Gist was posted by HN user xena and deleted after Elon's
| tweet led to a deluge of transphobic comments being left on it.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38371837
| rurp wrote:
| Wow, that's some incredibly damning stuff, especially from his
| own sister. I'm a bit surprised to have never heard about any
| of this before, but I guess the kind of influence Sam has can
| be pretty effective.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Will this tempest in a teapot never end?
| throwaway98221 wrote:
| Possible psychopath:
| https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/psychopathcode/content/preface....
| belligeront wrote:
| I don't have a strong opinion on the events of the past several
| days. But a lot of the behavior I've seen on twitter from Open AI
| employees, some led by Sam, feels very cult like: posting in all
| lower case, the heart emojis, rumors of employees calling each
| other in the middle of the night to pressure people to sign
| letters supporting Sam.
|
| There isn't necessarily anything wrong of this behavior. It is
| good to like your coworkers, but something about the manipulative
| nature of it triggers an "ick" feeling that I can't really put
| into words.
|
| I've also spent very little time in the Bay Area, but from afar,
| there does seem to be something in the DNA that makes people
| there more susceptible to cult like behavior.
| FredPret wrote:
| maybe they all remapped their shift keys
| blitzar wrote:
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121980&page=1
|
| Many aides in the new administration assigned to the
| Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White
| House, discovered Monday that their computer keyboards were
| missing the "W" key -- a critical problem given their boss'
| name is George W. Bush, and he is often referred to simply as
| "W," to distinguish him from his presidential dad.
| elAhmo wrote:
| I found those posts extremely weird, the emojis and lowercase
| tweets and screenshots of Notes. I would imagine people who
| were/are in charge of a company on the fast track to being
| worth hundreds of billions / trillion USD would be a bit more
| serious, but here they are, quoting each other tweets with
| heart emojis.
| gsuuon wrote:
| The absolute uniformity was a bit disconcerting to be honest,
| but I can also see it being just a great display of comradery.
| I'm still unsure about how to feel about the thing with it
| mostly resolved.
| beer2beerPrtcl wrote:
| I think I'm out of the loop on tweet protocol...What's the
| significance of all lowercase?
| blitzar wrote:
| It is done to signal solidarity with sama.
|
| Some people wear flags as lapel pins to show their solidarity
| with a cause, some wave flags in the street, some post black
| images on social media.
|
| Others remove the captials and punctuation from auto correct
| and post in lowercase.
| rsanek wrote:
| People are reading way too much into this, some people just
| prefer the look of all-lowercase. It's not like this is some
| super-unique choice to Sam / OAI, it's all over the internet.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| All lowercase signals casual aloofness; it says the situation
| doesn't meet your bar for formality. It's like Zuckerberg
| wearing a hoodie when meeting with Wall Street types.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| I've talked to OpenAI recruiters. I personally don't like Sama
| from what I've heard/read, but I would still consider working
| there due to Ilya and Karpathy.
|
| However, I absolutely would have been livid at the board and
| wanted Sama to come back if I was an employee, simply because I
| would have _joined_ being aligned with the 'commercialize and
| make money' side, and not the other.
|
| So I think a lot of OpenAI employees probably don't care if
| Sama is CEO vs someone else, as long as they get to ship and
| get paid. The board firing sam wasn't just a 'let's get a new
| CEO' it was a pivot from 'ship and make $$$'.
| anoncow wrote:
| Hit piece by wapo.
| objektif wrote:
| AWS you say.
| jorater wrote:
| From Garry Tan ~2 Months ago:
| https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1702561008190165448
|
| > The scariest sociopaths are the ones you let in to your house,
| who met your family, who you broke bread with
|
| > ...
|
| In a comment:
|
| > Just heard some disturbing news about someone who I once
| thought highly of
| thimkerbell wrote:
| I would like to message jorater warning him about drawing
| conclusions from a subtweet when there's deviousness afoot, but
| hacker news doesn't have that feature.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Of course, what is wisdom but accumulated subtweets from your
| own useraccount.
| ojosilva wrote:
| > Though full reasoning for Altman's initial firing is still
| unclear, one person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the
| condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, pointed to
| Altman's aggressive fundraising efforts for a chips venture with
| autocratic regimes in the Middle East, which raised concerns
| about the use of AI to facilitate state surveillance and human
| rights abuses.
|
| That's a concern of mine from one year ago when ChatGPT exploded:
| Altman holds a feeble position as a zero-equity co-founder of a
| non-profit. He should be enabled to become a stinking rich SV
| mogul of some sort, or at least have his existence tied to
| substantial equity. Otherwise, having power but no (huge, absurd)
| money, or promises thereof, from his commitment to OpenAI will
| only boost these side gigs or even future coups. He's an
| ambitious and powerful leader and entrepreneur, he should be
| compensated accordingly so that OpenAI goals become aligned to
| his own.
|
| Somehow the new board's powerful oversight goals should be
| leveraged with valuable equity for Altman (and other key people,
| employees) or equivalent. Create a path to a for-profit,
| consolidate the Incs and LLCs floating around - OpenAI has a
| complex structure for such a young enterprise. He has a
| comfortable upper hand right now (employees, Ilya, a resigning
| board, MSFT), so this is the moment to rewrite OpenAI's charter.
| fiforpg wrote:
| Wasn't really following the subject, but amazed at how
| tendentious the writing here is. Starting with the title,
| unsubstantiated claims, _really_ weird turns of phrase, etc. Here
| 's an example:
|
| > not just common, it's start-up gospel from Altman's longtime
| mentor, venture capitalist Peter Thiel
|
| -- according to whom? Is it supposed to be common knowledge? Is
| this even a helpful parallel?
|
| In comparison, reporting on FT on this same topic is a lot more
| subdued and matter-of-fact.
| Gaussian wrote:
| Sam is a leader. Let there be no doubt. Does he have foibles? I'm
| sure. I do. Everybody has people out there who will proffer
| criticism of them, especially those at the top of the pyramid.
| Our summer at YC was heavily influenced by him; he always had
| time for us, and always thought hard about our problems.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I think everyone is missing the point. Sam Altman seems to be a
| reasonably effective leader (and certainly flawed and a bit
| sociopathic), but ultimately unimportant and replaceable. This
| was not about Sam, this was about the strategic direction of a
| critical Microsoft partner. Microsoft felt Sam would take orders
| and therefore supported him. If Sam ever asserts himself, he will
| be gone, just like the board was replaced.
| moogly wrote:
| Perhaps the least interesting most talked-about person of 2023.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| CEOs are professional communicators who have reached the highest
| level of the craft, they use their communications to achieve an
| end, expressing their inner selves is not the point. You might
| know a great kind person who is a car salesman, when they are at
| work a good one comes off as genuine and friendly, the things
| they're saying include many truths, but their words and actions
| are primarily designed to sell cars. Assume this is true of any
| professional communicator when they're communicating.
| charlie0 wrote:
| This the main reason I don't trust people who are in the
| business of "selling". On one hand, it's nice being around
| those kinds of people. On the other hand, it's hard to take any
| of the nice things they say seriously. Most of them say nice
| things to be likeable, not because they actually mean or will
| do what they say. I've learned to pay close attention to what
| salesmen do, rather than what is said. The actual truth will be
| revealed by their actions.
| gretch wrote:
| >I've learned to pay close attention to what salesmen do,
| rather than what is said.
|
| Yes this is always a wise thing to do.
|
| >Most of them say nice things to be likeable, not because
| they actually mean or will do what they say.
|
| I disagree with this take. I mean I'm sure there's snakes out
| there. What I see in life though, is that most people don't
| say enough nice things, even things they genuinely feel. They
| hold back from calling their dad or wife and saying "I love
| you". Or giving a compliment to someone on the street if you
| like their outfit that you can tell they put time into.
|
| I think a lot of salespeople are just good at "opening the
| gates" a little.
|
| Personally I've been on a quest to be less stoic when it
| comes to expressing joy, and I highly recommend, especially
| for typical computer science personalities.
| turzmo wrote:
| People could afford to say more nice things. Perhaps it
| would even devalue the false flattery used by salespeople
| to their advantage.
|
| OTOH the parent comment's take seems reasonable. Calling
| your dad and saying "I love you" because you want to be
| written into the will is sort of the level we're dealing
| with here.
| charlie0 wrote:
| No need to disagree, both our statements can be true at the
| same time. I also need to be less stoic, but I refuse to
| put on a mask to achieve that.
|
| My statement was directed at those who wear that mask all
| too well. Example, my landlord, who's in real estate and a
| very nice guy in person. However, he promised to do a few
| things and didn't do them. So his niceties where just that,
| nice words and nothing more. I'd rather deal with a less
| nice person who actually does what they said they will.
| With limits of course, no one likes a-holes.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I've learned to pay close attention to what salesmen do,
| rather than what is said"
|
| I've learned to apply this to every human being. Talk is
| cheap.
| blastro wrote:
| "Your actions speak so loud we can't hear what you say" -
| Jim Harbaugh
| joering2 wrote:
| > CEOs are professional communicators who have reached the
| highest level of the craft
|
| Elon Musk has entered the chat...
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| I think he's gone a little more "experimental" and Avant
| Garde in his practice of the art. /s
| _1 wrote:
| That's the exception for someone born wealthy, buys an
| existing company, and installs themselves as CEO.
| RationalDino wrote:
| The source for his being born wealthy is his father. Who is
| known to be a conman.
|
| For example the emerald story seems to be false.
| https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-father-errol-
| never....
| Geee wrote:
| Founder CEOs are a different breed. There's a plenty of
| successful founder CEOs who don't fit the typical hired CEO
| pattern. Zuckerberg, Sweeney, etc.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Is Elon a founder CEO of Twitter, Tesla, or SpaceX?
| bmitc wrote:
| > CEOs are professional communicators who have reached the
| highest level of the craft
|
| That's kind of silly, isn't it? Altman is a college dropout who
| has barely ever worked and somehow fell upward into CEO
| positions very quickly.
|
| His level of communication in talks and interviews is terrible,
| so I am genuinely confused where all this mystique comes from.
| He sounds like a college student being asked and talking about
| management.
|
| It seems that if you have any title or personal relationship
| attached to you, people will listen to anything you say, and
| _even say things or just conjure up an ora for you_.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Watch him at Dev Day.
| bmitc wrote:
| Yawn.
| lebean wrote:
| Yeah I'm not convinced either. No doubt that good
| communication is a strength in a good CEO. But the only thing
| I can confidently say is an essential part of being a CEO is
| that they are blame-sinks for executive decisions,
| particularly their own.
| runeofdoom wrote:
| If you start thinking that CEOs aren't special and unique,
| then you might start thinking they don't need to be paid 350
| times what the average employee does.
| bmitc wrote:
| Yes.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Then you must not think the job is difficult or
| impactful, as well.
| woooooo wrote:
| That doesn't necessarily follow. Lots of people have
| difficult jobs. Line cooks have to make priority
| decisions under high pressure, and it's impactful.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| A line cook is comparably difficult and impactful a job
| as a fortune 500 CEO?
|
| Say more.
| threeseed wrote:
| Altman founded Loopt.
|
| Not sure how you can say he fell into the CEO position there.
|
| Also at the time he was at YC it was a significantly smaller
| and less prestigious incubator.
| bmitc wrote:
| > Loopt, Inc. was an American company ... which provided a
| service for smartphone users to share their location
| selectively with other people.
|
| Yea, impressive stuff. I'm sure that gave him a lot of
| experience that led to being one of the few "professional
| communicators who have reached the highest level of the
| craft".
| og_kalu wrote:
| That was not the point of that coment.
|
| You act like he just mysteriously found himself in
| executive positions when every company he's headed for a
| significant duration was one he founded. If you didn't
| even know that then you obviously know very little about
| him and couldn't even be bothered to do any research at
| all. This is a simple wikipedia search. So why are you so
| bothered about someone you know nothing about ?
| willis936 wrote:
| If we concede that CEOs deserve their place in society then
| we can claim that we live in a meritocracy, the world is
| fair, and we deserve the good things that happen to us. It's
| a very comfortable thought.
| og_kalu wrote:
| all the companies altman has CEO'd are companies he co-
| founded. Not sure how you "fall upwards" into that.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" is a great book that
| touches on this subject.
|
| I read it in the middle of purchasing a new car in 2010, and
| had signed paperwork and a purchase agreement to buy car at $X.
| Next day I'm told "My manager won't let me sell for anything
| less than $X+Y", after I'd gone through all the trouble of
| filling out all that paperwork.
|
| Fortunetly I'd just finished a chapter in the book outlining
| this EXACT sales technique, that relies on a person being more
| willing to go through with an action if they've committed
| something to it... like filling out half an hours worth of
| paperwork. Said no thanks, and found the exact same car an hour
| away at less than $X.
|
| Haven't underestimated the impact of a salesperson since, and
| no longer delude myself trying to believe somehow I'm special
| and immune to such things.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| And probably the car is dodgy if they are pulling tricks like
| that. If a startup investor does it, probably their "help" is
| suspect.
| bambax wrote:
| I don't know if this counts as selling, though.
|
| Selling is making you want to buy the car, agreeing on a
| price and filling in the paperwork.
|
| Trying to extract more money from you after you have agreed
| on a price is... extorsion? Fraud? But not just "selling".
| tomnipotent wrote:
| It's negotiation, which is absolutely selling. The
| dealership was counting on me accepting the price hike
| because the car I wanted was rare and in-demand, and I had
| already made some commitment to the process by filling out
| initial paperwork. I knew a manager still needed to approve
| the terms, but the sales rep made it sound like it was
| certain.
|
| Turns out this is an incredibly common car sales tactic,
| enough so that it was explicitly called out in the
| aforementioned book.
|
| Rather than harumph about how unfair it is, I decided it
| was better to just learn how to play the game. Unwilling
| participant or not, fair or not, it's better to come
| prepared than feel like you're getting taken advantage of.
| bambax wrote:
| If anything happens after we shake hands, I walk.
| Paperwork or not; book or no book.
|
| I don't question the (un)fairness of it, or the game;
| just the name.
|
| Your guy sounds like Jerry Lundegaard
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2LLB9CGfLs
| Cacti wrote:
| Good CEOs are good communicators. Most CEOs, like literally any
| other profession, are not. People like Jobs are exceptions, and
| for every one of them there are a hundred shitty CEOs who are
| neither talented nor intelligent, even among the companies that
| are still alive, but they don't get discussed here because this
| is a site about making money first, and tech second, and the
| crowd here doesn't like hearing it's all bullshit. For every
| Apple there are a hundred Shitty Integrated, Inc. companies
| that no one talks about, and every one has a CEO.
|
| There are no qualifications to be a CEO, ultimately, except the
| board happens to want you as CEO.
|
| It's just a title.
| robocat wrote:
| > CEOs are professional communicators who have reached the
| highest level of the craft
|
| But Sam the CEO has totally failed to manage the narrative
| throughout this episode. [A CEO needs to communicate better]
|
| Surely he could have stated it was a disagreement in direction?
| Instead he left it open to rumours: rumours which mostly
| assumed the board had good reason to sack him (everyone
| presumed the board couldn't be that stupid plus he didn't
| defend himself). : Many of those rumours were extremely
| damaging to Sam. Even if he couldn't say a thing, he could have
| got other third parties to endorse him.
|
| Nadella and Eric came out looking pretty good.
| greatNespresso wrote:
| It came as a surprise for me to learn that PG fired Sam. It's the
| first time that I read this actually, and if that's true, I find
| it kind of mysterious that it remained a secret for so long. Or
| maybe I missed the news somehow but I could not find any other
| mention of that event on Google.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I've definitely never heard of it, and I was pretty shocked
| when I read it given how much positive stuff pg has written
| about sama, and the article itself says the firing "has not
| been previously reported".
|
| Reading some recent pg tweets through this lens, though, I
| think it makes sense. E.g. there is this tweet:
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1726198939517378988. Both of
| the following can be true (and more to the point, I think the
| following two items are flip sides of the same coin):
|
| 1. Sam is an absolute _masterful_ negotiator and is incredibly
| well-respected in the valley because his skills at assembling
| people and resources are unmatched.
|
| 2. Sam can be manipulative and self-serving, sometimes making
| decisions that are nominally about a higher goal but (not
| really coincidentally) are self-aggrandizing.
|
| I see this trait in lots of effective, famous people. There
| have been tons of comparisons in the news recently to Steve
| Jobs, but for me for some reason Anna Wintour comes to mind. I
| don't think many people would describe Wintour as "nice" as she
| is known for being kind of ruthless and manipulative (she was
| "The Devil" after all...), but tons of people in the fashion
| industry are incredibly loyal to her based on her abilities to
| identify talent and get shit done.
| greatNespresso wrote:
| You make a fair point about that tweet, it can be ironic or
| sincere and it left me a mixed feeling. I am not sure what
| was PG's goal with that tweet but it did not feel necessary.
| btown wrote:
| > sometimes making decisions that are nominally about a
| higher goal but (not really coincidentally) are self-
| aggrandizing
|
| "Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong."
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| It has been a decade, but let me guess, Mass effect 3
| Mordin? I rather not look it up lol.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| Damn this line still pulls at the heart strings... Might
| have to replay
| CSSer wrote:
| We have a tendency to remember the good and not the bad, and we
| want to see our friends do well. Someone else also pointed out
| here in the comments that no one wants to publicly state they
| made a bad call if they can avoid it because it will likely
| damage them personally. We give others lots of chances, or we
| encourage and cheer them when others are taking chances on them
| in the hopes that they'll do better this time even when we
| would no longer risk our own skin.
|
| I imagine most of us think, "S/he was so _close_ to success.
| Maybe s /he'll have learned! What could be the harm in talking
| them up a bit? Besides, no one wants to _ruin_ someone else 's
| _life_ ,"
| twoodfin wrote:
| Weird: The most relevant hn post on Altman's departure from YC
| is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19342184
|
| But despite comments to the effect that the YC post indicated
| Sam's departure, it doesn't seem to say anything about it right
| now?
| greatNespresso wrote:
| Thank you for the article, I saw a comment from Sam in the HN
| post but agreed it did not look obvious that he got fired.
| theschmed wrote:
| Nor in 2022 when it was first archived by Wayback (unless
| archives from previous have been removed)
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.ycom.
| ..
| twoodfin wrote:
| But this contemporaneous TechCrunch article--which is
| clearly talking about the same blog post--says it did!
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/08/y-combinator-president-
| sam...
| jeromegv wrote:
| They actually changed the URL structure
|
| This is the old URL, and they indeed mentioned Sam leaving
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190316222853/https://blog.yco
| m...
| dang wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the HN thread hasn't changed, but you're
| right, the YC post has: https://web.archive.org/web/201903100
| 42303/https://blog.ycom.... One could bisect to find out
| where. Weird! I've never known these things to change like
| that, and it's not as if the news wasn't already public.
| davesque wrote:
| It could be that the parties involved have chosen at this
| moment to re-imagine whatever occurred back then in a less
| favorable light. Since firing is on everyone's mind, and since
| you can get media attention points by playing along with a
| juicy narrative, what might have just been described as a
| disagreement in the past might now be called a firing. I would
| be skeptical of takes like this.
| icelancer wrote:
| I've fired people and later recommended them for jobs where
| they'd be a better fit. Not uncommon at all.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| My immediate thought. Relatively few have been in management
| here, perhaps.
| icelancer wrote:
| It's largely engineers who don't really understand the
| value of a C-level person, as evidenced time and time again
| in the comments.
|
| The concept you could fire someone for business reasons and
| later be their very good friend and recommend them for
| another job - sometimes an even better one than you
| employed them in - doesn't fit the single-input single-
| output mind of a lot of engineers.
|
| It's alright. We all have roles to play.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Your reg dates are 2012 and 2014. As you know, this is
| hacker news. not c-level news, not middle management
| news.. hacker news.
| hackitup7 wrote:
| Agreed, it's very common to see. In many cases you're talking
| about people who worked together very closely for years and
| are verging on as close as family. Also, in higher-level
| roles you often get fired due to a very _specific_ lack of
| skills or a very _specific_ weakness that wouldn 't be at all
| applicable for another job.
|
| Ex "this person is an amazing startup CTO but they get
| problematically overwhelmed when the organization gets to 100
| engineers" - you would 1000% recommend that person to a
| 50-person startup even if they got fired from their job at a
| 500-person company. They might even be better at it the next
| time around.
| demadog wrote:
| I predict his character arch will be similar to Adam Neumann and
| Travis Kalanick - first the media gushes over him and praises him
| as a genius. Then the media starts to question him. Then they
| start to fully dig in and dig up a ton of dirt.
|
| With no mainstream outlet pushing forth the allegations his
| sister is claiming on social, I imagine right now they are
| looking under every rock on that end.
|
| I respect his hustle but there is something about him in watching
| him speak live and in person that comes off as incredibly
| manipulative. He knows how to speak and pause in a way that gets
| the audience to laugh and gives soundbites. I am long OpenAI but
| I don't trust Sam.
|
| He could follow the character arch of his friend Thiel where the
| media come after him but he's too resilient.
|
| Or Zuckerberg where the media hated him for years and then moved
| on.
|
| What do you think?
| skilled wrote:
| I dislike the fact that he peddles the AGI angle too much.
| Literally, way above normal.
|
| It would be nice to see him be down to Earth for a change and
| show some compassion but what do I know.. maybe those aren't
| his strongest qualities.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| I trust Greg, and Greg trusts Sam.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Transitive trust is a bad idea. The telephone game aka
| "chinese whispers" demonstrates why.
| dchftcs wrote:
| >I respect his hustle but there is something about him in
| watching him speak live and in person that comes off as
| incredibly manipulative. He knows how to speak and pause in a
| way that gets the audience to laugh and gives soundbites. I am
| long OpenAI but I don't trust Sam.
|
| You can say the same thing about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is a
| jerk for sure but a bad personality does not predict success or
| failure as much as you (or we) hope to. And what people say
| about your character is also overly dependent on results. Only
| time will tell whether Sam Altman will be considered a villain
| or a flawed hero in media.
| nottorp wrote:
| > there is something about him in watching him speak live and
| in person
|
| Greatest mistake you can make is watch someone speak live about
| what they're selling. If they're a good actor they'll win you
| over.
| doktrin wrote:
| Accurate. Psychology, history and the intersection thereof
| broadly supports the idea that we drastically overestimate
| our ability to measure character and intention based on in-
| person interactions. Some oft cited cases being how numerous
| British public figures who sat down with Hitler tragically
| misread his intentions, in contrast to those who appraised
| him from a distance based on actions, policies and writings.
| Likewise, GWB's famous ability to peer into Putin's soul.
| huytersd wrote:
| His low life sex worker sister trying to wheedle money out of
| him saying she vividly remembers something from when she was 4?
| Vet the allegations before you make claims.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| He's literally saying they are allegations and claims, so
| he's done everything correct:
|
| > With no mainstream outlet pushing forth the allegations his
| sister is claiming on social, I imagine right now they are
| looking under every rock on that end.
|
| Stop being a fanboy and get some arguments.
| huytersd wrote:
| Stop repeating unverified allegations. Anyone can allege
| anything.
| vikramkr wrote:
| At least one of the arguments against him, that he cared too much
| about openai to lead Microsoft effectively, probably helps him
| more than it hurts. Otherwise, idk how much of this was really
| about Sam altman as much as it was a staggeringly incompetent
| board that drove employees and investors to unify and protest en
| masse to save the organisation from itself. I guess there's a
| chance there's an AGI in the basement but if it was actually
| about safety they should fucking say what the hell they were
| freaking out about. But if they leave the only logical conclusion
| as this being a power struggle between someone who wants to move
| fast and make bank and a board that wants to kill the company for
| ego reasons - uhh yeah that's not a hard choice
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| Why are people so obsessed with this guy? Keep falling into the
| same trap of Cult of the Tech CEO
| gumballindie wrote:
| Someone else posted it around here - as religion recedes people
| need new deities. Couple that with an increase in popularity of
| conspiracy theories and you get altman and ai.
| zpeti wrote:
| Why do people watch pro sports? Why do we fall into the cult of
| the sports personality?
|
| Why do people follow movie stars?
|
| Because we're human, and we gossip and obsess over high
| performers.
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| I was actually just thinking that I really miss the days when
| it was sports teams and athletes that people obnoxiously
| worshipped. Need to go back to Patriots fans being the most
| annoying people around.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| Oh that is still happening, I promise you. Though currently
| the most annoying fanbase is probably the Eagles right now.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| I think it's his consistency; how does he garner this much
| respect from SV? Surely, the logic must go, he's worthy of it.
|
| This whole thing feels like Altman expected some back and forth
| here between him and the board, but in their inexperience they
| vastly overreacted to what was probably "standard" corporate
| maneuvering. He assumed there would be steady escalation, but
| they went right for the endgame well before passing the many
| opportunities for compromise that usually show up in fights
| between CEOs and their board.
| dmalik wrote:
| Like sports I'm here for the drama. It's a distraction to
| follow. If it doesn't interest you just ignore.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| He was CEO of Y combinator, of which this forum is sponsored
| and maintained by.
|
| He's the CEO of OpenAI, which is responsible for the most-
| discussed advancement in technology for the past year. So it's
| not that unusual for this to be discussed on a technology-
| focused forum.
|
| He's also the centre of a massive firestorm, where extremely
| atypical corporate behaviour was very recently taking place.
| Again, highly relevant topic for a forum that deals with
| startups.
|
| In short, it's news, and specifically news of interest to
| people on this site. No need for cults or obsession.
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| I definitely get the high-level of interest and reason it's a
| popular topic on here. What I don't get is the intense
| emotional investment people have in this person. Not so much
| on HN but definitely elsewhere in social media.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| How AI will ultimately affect humanity is uncertain, so the
| stewardship of an extremely influential company in that
| field will be of general interest.
|
| The specific reason for the board shenanigans seems to be
| related to this tension on how AI will or won't be handled
| by the management of the tech companies which create and
| manage them.
|
| All of these feels very relevant to the general public.
| rideontime wrote:
| A reminder that the "e" in "e/acc" does not stand for "ethical"
| reqo wrote:
| Very interesting if this is true, considering how pg has shown
| huge support for sama during this drama!
| tempsy wrote:
| the more outwardly successful someone is by modern standards
| (ceo, celebrities, other powerful people) the more likely it is
| they are ethically compromised in some way
|
| you don't reach the top without screwing over a lot of people
| along the way
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| Red pill: Most very successful people are like this.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| If this is true, interesting, as PG was several times profits
| over ethics (e.G. see the AirBnB discussion on HN he participated
| in).
| joering2 wrote:
| It is somewhat different. AirBnB founder Nathan Blecharczyk was
| not shopping around, but rather at some point he was the
| largest spammer in USA, where even FBI was interested in his
| dealings. Interestingly, the 3 articles I was able to find on
| this subject some 5 years ago (and posted to HN at some point)
| from major news outlets, are all gone now.
|
| I think hurting your own business versus being a scumbag
| scammer will get you much different treatment, even from PG.
| Arson9416 wrote:
| Step 1: Dazzle an influential person Step 2: Persuade them
| to hitch their reputation to you Step 3: Do whatever you
| want with minimal repercussions
|
| Follow these 3 steps and influential people will actively fight
| on your behalf, against their own best interests, to avoid
| embarrassing themselves and diminishing their reputations. Use
| each influential person as a stepping stone to an even more
| influential person and repeat.
| tempaccount420 wrote:
| Or, when you fire people, have a clear reason for it. Not being
| "consistently candid" is not that.
| whatshisface wrote:
| You want companies to post the reasons for every firing on
| Twitter?
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| No, but at least tell the reasons to the CEO you replaced
| him with. Even Shear was kept in dark and was planning to
| leave OpenAI.
| mock-possum wrote:
| I'm ambivalent about it in general, but curious in this
| case specifically.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| No. But if you _are_ going to make a statement, it behooves
| you to fill it with substance.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That's not how board press release are. I can't help but
| feel everyone is using Twitter rules to study a corporate
| game.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Not regular employees. Twitter is one method of
| communication.
| satisfaction wrote:
| lying of any type is always grounds for termination.
| "consistently candid" is just a more PC phrase for lying.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Candid means speaking your mind; truth. "Consistently
| candid" therefore means consistently telling the truth,
| perhaps even to a fault.
| mort96 wrote:
| The details matter here. Consistently lying is grounds for
| termination. Not consistently being outspoken/blunt might
| not be. "Not being consistently candid" can be interpreted
| as either.
| o0-0o wrote:
| Trust your gut. No one here has a good story about "Sam I Am".
| huytersd wrote:
| Steps 1 and 2 are very hard to accomplish.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Tips on step 2?
| rglover wrote:
| Appeal to ego.
| yetanotherloss wrote:
| A really slick slide deck on how your unicorn will make this
| person the envy of his peers.
|
| Also amazing amounts of luck, or family connections.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Helps if you make a good prebirth choice to be born into
| wealth, influence
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I have hung out on HN for over 14 years and took a personal
| interest in "How in the heck did a pretty young woman co-found
| a company with three men, _date_ one of them and not have this
| turn into a _debacle_ and scandal in the headlines??? " It took
| quite a few years for the details behind the founding of YC to
| come out:
|
| 1. Jessica Livingston did not co-found a company with three
| random men.
|
| 2. She and Paul Graham were dating, she was job hunting and
| being jerked around and he said one day "Why don't we start a
| company?"
|
| 3. Within a day or so, he called his two co-founders from Via
| Web and asked them to come on board like part time or something
| and they said "yes."
|
| 4. They initially _hid_ their personal relationship as a dating
| couple to try to appear professional.
|
| So they have a long history of being very private people and
| because I am a woman who has struggled to get any traction and
| blah blah blah, when I learned Sam was _gay_ , I figured "Ah,
| that's probably the real reason he was appointed President of
| YC: Paul Graham wanted to protect his marriage while retiring
| from YC and was concerned about his pretty, younger wife
| working closely with a _man_ other than himself. So he
| appointed a gay guy to take over 45 percent of his duties. "*
|
| So if that had anything to do with the hiring decision, not
| announcing the firing would be in line with long-standing
| personal policy to keep his private life private and not talk
| to the world about his marriage to Jessica Livingston and it
| wouldn't exactly be shocking if that meant it (hiring him)
| wasn't the wisest business move.
|
| She eventually also retired from YC, so her being there while
| Paul Graham is home with the kids is no longer relevant to who
| runs things at YC. They are both founders and presumably major
| stock holders, I imagine they both still have influence there.
|
| /"wild speculation" from an outsider who has never met any of
| these people but did sort of politely cyberstalk Jessica
| Livingston for some years trying to figure "How does a woman
| become a successful business founder?"
|
| * "45 percent" because Paul said somewhere that he continued to
| do "office hours" with program participants and called that "10
| percent" of what he did at YC before retiring. They _also_
| hired Dan Gackle to take over as moderator of Hacker News when
| Paul Graham stepped down.
|
| So Paul was not _replaced_ by Sam Altman. They hired two full-
| time employees that I know of and Paul continued to work part-
| time at the business while his wife worked full-time and
| presumably kept Paul up-to-date about daily goings-on over
| breakfast /dinner, so he likely continued to have significant
| influence on company decisions and day-to-day stuff invisibly
| via his wife.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| That is quite a wild conclusion to jump to. What evidence or
| clues lead you to that.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I spent several _years_ trying to figure this out and I did
| not keep track of my sources because it was a personal
| interest, not an "argument" I was trying to make. But here
| is pg talking about Jessica Livingston and YC:
|
| _YC had 4 founders. Jessica and I decided one night to
| start it, and the next day we recruited my friends Robert
| Morris and Trevor Blackwell. Jessica and I ran YC day to
| day, and Robert and Trevor read applications and did
| interviews with us.
|
| Jessica and I were already dating when we started YC. At
| first we tried to act "professional" about this, meaning we
| tried to conceal it._
|
| http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html
|
| Note: That's from November 2015. I originally joined in
| July 2009 and the company dates to something like 2007.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Good observations, a bit of a stretch,
|
| regarding scandal and not scandal, real life doesnt follow
| rigid ideas of "the power dynamics are too extreme for this
| relationship to exist"
|
| that's just tabloid drama
|
| people can be objective mature partners that met on the job
| where one was an executive and the other doing something
| menial
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| That wasn't the "scandal" I had in mind. I was wondering
| "How in the heck did one of three male co-founders ask her
| for a date, her say _yes_ and this not turn into three male
| co-founders _fighting_ over who gets the girl _instead of_
| focusing on developing the business? "
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Gotcha, its a timeless tale, Paul Graham is king and
| finds the eunuch to act as a proverbial chastity belt to
| while watching over the lady
|
| whether thats what happened or not, it is disarming to
| say the least and many would be more comfortable with the
| same situation given the option
| dchung333 wrote:
| Huh the things I heard about Altman a long time before was
| that he was a couch surfer at YCombinator.
| dchung333 wrote:
| Well I can't edit this and this page has likely been
| archived so... I'll just write this. Sam was essentially
| homeless. A failed startup with not much to it. Sure, it
| was acquired but it gave him essentially just enough to
| continue trying to pursue his dream. He really didn't make
| any progress at all. At YCombinator he was essentially
| stuck for years. There's a lot of fake and editorialized
| stories about his life and his made up genius. The dude
| dropped out of college it's not this amazing story.
| Mentally he had given up everything to try to reach this
| stage. I don't know the full story but almost everything
| online I've read is completely different from what I've
| actually heard.
| Y_Y wrote:
| While I think it's unlikely that you'll summon pg or dang to
| comment on something like that it's is an interesting take
| and I wonder if any of those involved have addressed it
| elsewhere.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Probably not.
|
| 1. Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston tend to keep their
| private life private.
|
| 2. If I'm correct, it seems unlikely Paul told _anyone_ he
| hired Sam to protect his personal interests as a married
| man nervous about his pretty younger wife working closely
| with another men.
|
| 3. If I'm correct, he probably didn't even tell _Jessica_
| because that would have come off as "I don't trust you"
| and not "I am worried about _his_ behavior. "
| pinewurst wrote:
| That's how Jeffrey Epstein made it, starting with Les Wexner.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Why was Sam fired from Y Combinator? Why was he fired from
| OpenAI?
|
| Not saying he's good or trustworthy, but it's unfair to speak
| badly about him without evidence or even examples of wrongdoing.
| basisword wrote:
| Isn't being fired implicit evidence of wrongdoing? Especially
| when it's not an isolated incident.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| It might just mean your skills weren't appropriate for the
| role you were hired for. It doesn't mean you did anything
| wrong.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| Kind of interesting that Jessica Livingston (Paul Graham's
| spouse) tweeted this a couple of days ago:
|
| > The reason I was a founding donor to OpenAI in 2015 was not
| because I was interested in AI, but because I believed in Sam. So
| I hope the board can get its act together and bring Sam and Greg
| back.
|
| https://twitter.com/jesslivingston/status/172628436492378127...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| To be a fly on the wall when Paul and Jessica talk about Sam in
| private. So many interesting questions never to be answered.
|
| (no other reason than to understand how all the puzzle pieces
| come together)
| hindsightbias wrote:
| On one side Paul calls it AIgiarism and she's throwing
| donations at it.
|
| Maybe we should all hedge our bets when it comes to our AGI
| overlords.
| iaseiadit wrote:
| YC is invested in OpenAI. Wonder if they want a win-at-all-
| costs type person (if we go along with this premise) running a
| company they're invested in, yet not want him running _their_
| company.
| eksapsy wrote:
| ive been working for a company for 3 years and i had great
| behavior, respected the people around me, they hired me from the
| consultant company because they liked me so much they wanted to
| take me because i had already done so much for that company that
| usually employees don't take the initiative to do (performance
| fixes nobody asked or tickets for performance that were abandoned
| because the developer just got bored of it, then being
| congratulated for fixing the performance, making new projects
| inside the company and them realizing my new potentials and
| making new tools and services etc.)
|
| Then I got fired on the spot for just talking a little more
| angrier at the manager because they put me on a task that nobody
| communicated to me they wanted in 1 month, and then when I
| realized after the leader was compaining that they wanted the
| task in 1 month I was like "do you realize you placed me in a
| project I dont know, the devs themselves don't know some answers
| I'm asking for the project, i have to implement a whole driver
| for getting API signals etc." you get the point. The leader asked
| me to put me in a project he did not even code in ever, and he
| thought it was gonna take 1 month and took 4-5 months and when I
| realized that he thought that I contested. To the point that the
| first manager agreed with me that "yeah it's not a 1 month task."
| and he was one of the best programmers in the company and was
| just a manager now. Like the first manager on the line agreed
| with me but on a 1-1 meeting, so his voice was not heard to the
| leader.
|
| So I contacted the second manager on the line to have a
| conversation with the leadership about this task and that I had
| these concerns, and after realizing he agrees with the leader
| despite him not even remotely knowing what we were doing, I was
| kinda pissed off not gonna lie. It was the first time I actually
| just kinda exploded to him which diplomatically ngl is bad move
| ... but i was angry because I've pissed blood for this task, coz
| "the leader wanted it in 1 month" and I did unfortunately work
| days and hours just because I felt like it out of pressure, and I
| thought that I DIDN'T want to be fired for this stupid task
| taking "longer than the leader thought should take" despite him
| not even having direct experience on the project or the Data
| Aggregator API they placed me to get data from.
|
| But was I fired because of MY mistake? No. I was fired, on the
| spot, without notice, after working for 3 years and doing so many
| things for that company, coz I made somebody angry.
|
| And please believe me when I say that when I told this same
| manager "hey this other guy (not the leader) treated me with
| disrespect" he just said "yeah you know how he is we all know, he
| is just this way". Like what the hell? So, I'm so bad you're
| gonna fire me on the spot for making you angry just so you can
| powertrip, but he's "just the way he is"?
|
| You guys get my point. You can get fired, without it being your
| actual fault. Yes, you may have some responsibility, as I had to
| be more diplomatic but I'm a human too. I can be angry about some
| things too some times. But I didn't fire anybody on the spot for
| making them angry.
|
| I'm not claiming Sam's case is the same. But I do claim that just
| because you're fired, doesn't mean you're on the wrong. It seems
| like a cliche point to make that "you were fired thus it was your
| mistake". Things are just not that simple sometimes. You may be
| fired just because you pissed off somebody and he couldn't keep
| his feelings inside and powertripped without second thinking,
| like the board of directors did when they fired Sam without a
| proper discussion with all the individuals first and making sure
| it's the right decision.
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| From Paul Graham's Twitter, three days ago: "No
| one in the world is better than Sam at dealing with this kind of
| situation." Jessica Livingston retweet: "The reason
| I was a founding donor to OpenAI in 2015 was not because I was
| interested in AI, but because I believed in Sam. So I hope the
| board can get its act together and bring Sam and Greg back."
|
| Also from a sibling comment:
| https://twitter.com/search?q=from:paulg%20since:2019-01-01%2...
|
| Seems incredibly respectful and supportive, I'm not buying that
| there's a lot of bad blood there.
| imjonse wrote:
| Paul's tweet is an objective statement, it does not say
| anything about character or values and is not explicitly
| supportive.
| Dudester230602 wrote:
| Reminds me of this (first one):
| https://www.muddycolors.com/2011/09/artistic-insults-from-
| fa...
| ketzo wrote:
| ...you think calling someone "the best in the world" is
|
| a) purely factual
|
| b) not supportive
|
| Uh, what on earth _would_ count as explicitly supportive
| language?
| nerbert wrote:
| Being the best in the world to deal with a situation is a
| neutral statement. Putin is the best in the world to deal
| with the situation he's in right now, if you need a
| negative angle on this.
| loeg wrote:
| > Putin is the best in the world to deal with the
| situation he's in right now, if you need a negative angle
| on this.
|
| Probably not true? It seems like Russia could use another
| Yeltsin (or Gorbachev) more than Putin for its current
| situation.
| plasmatix wrote:
| Not for Russia's benefit but for his own.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It seems like Russia could use another Yeltsin (or
| Gorbachev) more than Putin for its current situation.
|
| He did say best _in the world_ , not best _that can be
| imagined_ ; so unless you are saying there is another
| Yeltsin or Gorbachev _available_...
|
| OTOH, Putin is himself an active reason why alternatives
| aren't _readily_ available.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I think they spent decades growing their economy and
| preparing to be independent of the west and now our
| sanctions are useless.
|
| It feels like this situation is exactly what they want
| (and likely an historical inflection point, where we pit
| east vs west again). Dropping the cold war was needed
| because they had no resources (surprise, socialism
| doesn't work!).
|
| I'm waiting for Taiwan next and then I'd say we are
| completely *** (especially looking at our reliance on the
| east for manufacturing / energy and how useless our
| governments are).
| epicureanideal wrote:
| I don't think most Russians would agree that either of
| the other gentlemen would be preferable. The 80s and 90s
| were not a time of great happiness, prosperity, calm, and
| order.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| That's a really good example of not being explicitly
| supportive. It's an objective statement. If I said "Roy
| Sullivan is the best in the world at being struck by
| lightning" it may implicitly feel like I'm rooting for him.
| But I'm just stating a fact.
|
| What would count?
|
| "I think Roy Sullivan is the man to be struck an eighth
| time. He's the best at it. I hope he succeeds."
| pests wrote:
| Is it though?
|
| When the fact is subjective to begin with?
|
| I would even say "Roy Sullivan is the best in the world
| at being struck by lightning" is not a fact at all but an
| opinion.
|
| And by giving an opinion you are passing judgement.
|
| How can you claim saying something such as "Washington
| was the best president" is in some way a fact? Can you
| find it in reference books? Is it defined from the laws
| of nature? Does anyone even believe my quote?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| He held the world record, so I'm comfortable saying he
| was the best at it. If that's not sufficient and we're
| interested in being a semantic pedantic, that's not a
| discussion that interests me.
| pests wrote:
| Still an opinion, sorry.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| So the statement is that Sam Altman is the best person in
| the world at getting fired?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Not sure. But it's different from saying they support
| Altman's endeavour in being the best at it.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Did you miss the context of the image in that tweet? It's
| the famous "I have a particular set of skills..." speech
| from Taken: https://youtu.be/jZOywn1qArI
|
| In other words, he's basically saying Sam is the best in
| the world at being a ruthless mofo in these situations and
| obliterating those who oppose him. "Admiring language",
| perhaps, but I wouldn't really call that "supportive
| language".
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I wouldn't shake my hand with some of the best in the
| world. Why so damning? Heck we didn't even define in _what_
| they are best in, could be contract killing or lying for
| example (not applying to the actual topic and person, just
| generic statements).
|
| More to the point, some people are natural leaders, they
| can process many stressful complex situations in parallel
| without breaking a sweat. I know I can't, not long term,
| all the kudos to them.
|
| At least some of them are also amoral a-holes, highly
| functioning sociopaths (these get more common the more
| power and money floats around till they become the norm).
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| Any person that gets to this position must be good at some
| things.
|
| Acknowledging it does not mean supporting the person. It is
| just a factual statement.
|
| Even Adolf Hitler was good at certain things like
| manipulating masses of people. Saying this absolutely does
| not mean I support Hitler. It is just a factual statement.
| patmcc wrote:
| If my favourite sports team was in the championship (and
| the underdog), I could easily make the claim "team
| $NOT_MY_TEAM is the best in the world" and still hope that
| my team beats them.
|
| Not saying pg is doing this, of course.
| paulcole wrote:
| > No one in the world is better than Sam at dealing with this
| kind of situation
|
| This is clearly entirely subjective. To prove otherwise, feel
| free to show me the list ranking how people in the world
| would deal with this kind of situation and explain why Sam
| Altman ends up on top of that list.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| it's implausible, because the hyperbole is over the top: he's
| wealthy from writing programs, and clearly has not assessed
| every single person in the world, so he knows better.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I sometimes think that at this level of the game everyone hates
| everyone else and its all politics. You don't "come out" for or
| against anyone publicly, you leave all of that under cover. It
| makes knowing who your friends and enemies are more difficult
| and it restricts your ability to maneuver. Another quote from
| my grandfather was "Mutual respect does not require that you
| like someone."
| jzb wrote:
| I'm sure there's some genuine friendships, but it's always
| interesting to see what people say publicly vs. privately.
| Also fair to say that there are people I've worked with that
| I did not, at the time, appreciate but grew to appreciate
| later on.
|
| Years ago I was at an event talking to a colleague who was
| absolutely bashing someone (with good reason) and then
| another colleague walked up. Same person came up and my first
| colleague changed tone to "yeah, so-and-so is an interesting
| character."
|
| Because I knew that the other colleague _also_ hated the
| person, I called him on it. I wonder, though, how often that
| dynamic plays out where nobody will voice a negative opinion
| publicly - so people slide by without being called on
| behavior that shouldn 't get ignored.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| > I've worked with that I did not, at the time, appreciate
| but grew to appreciate later on.
|
| Exactly right. People are complicated and liking or
| disliking them is adjacent to whether or not they are
| 'good' at their job.
|
| I've known people who sucked at their job, but doing the
| same job in a different environment were stars. That
| experience led me to disassociate what people do as part of
| their job from the person themselves. And I can respect
| someone for doing a good job, even when I find their
| personal attitude or motivations distasteful.
|
| Complicated.
| colecut wrote:
| The comment you are responding to has quotes of people
| definitely coming out "for" Sam.
| tsavo wrote:
| A similar saying that I learned from a business mentor years
| ago, "Just because someone is nice to you doesn't make them
| your friend, just because someone is mean to you doesn't make
| them your enemy."
| klik99 wrote:
| Def not true. People who operate at this level can separate
| business and friendship. But occasionally when big enough
| deals fall through it can damage long term friendships, but
| it's not common. PG firing sama and keeping it secret sounds
| like PG likes and respects sama but didn't think he should
| run YC. If he didn't like sama he could have done a lot more
| damage by making it more public.
| nabla9 wrote:
| "like" or "hate" are words for people and petty personal
| conflicts.
|
| It's counterproductive to take business conflicts personally.
| PG removed Sam Altman silently without harming his future.
| There is no reason to be enemies after the issue is solved.
| There may be deals to be made again.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| > It's counterproductive to take business conflicts
| personally.
|
| 100% agree with this, but it is productive to understand
| what was behind a business conflict. Personal like or
| dislike can change which alternative of a choice of equal
| alternatives, someone might make. As Tony Soprano would
| say, "It's just business."
| koolba wrote:
| > PG removed Sam Altman silently without harming his
| future.
|
| When police departments do that to overly aggressive cops,
| it's generally considered a bad thing.
| catlover76 wrote:
| There are different sets of concerns governing police
| accountability, transparency, etc., from those governing
| various different types of corporations, and rightly so.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| This is laughably naive or frustratingly bad faith to
| think abusive cops are similar to incompatible business
| partners.
| mihaic wrote:
| Not to me, when those "business partners" are in charge
| of some agencies like YC that do influence the society we
| live in.
| lovich wrote:
| If I didn't know I was on HN I would after a comment like
| this.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Naive, in the extreme.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| That is an astonishingly bad analogy.
|
| Believing that a person is not a good match for a certain
| business position is _worlds apart_ from a public servant
| intentionally abusing his legally sanctioned monopoly on
| violence.
|
| The first kind of person may be well a good match for
| another position, in another company; the latter is just
| a criminal in uniform.
| socketcluster wrote:
| It comes down to alignment of interests and alignment of
| values. I think previous comment is right in suggesting
| that people's interests and values may not be clear at that
| level. People often hide them to appeal more broadly.
|
| The more you reveal about yourself, the fewer people you
| will appeal to because very few people share your exact
| values. People tend to like people who share some obvious
| common values and they assume that the values that are
| unspoken are also a match. In reality, it's rarely so.
|
| As people learn more about the world and themselves, they
| begin to realize that some values that they didn't consider
| before are very important and they may be shocked to find
| that certain people they used to like do not share those
| values which they took for granted.
| themagician wrote:
| It's all politics WAY before this level.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| Mature adults can certainly think that someone else is not fit
| for one job (running YC) and is fit for another (handling OAI).
| Good business people are even better at it, knowing that makes
| them more money. PG certainly seems to fit that.
| personjerry wrote:
| Doesn't this show a vested interest from pg and jessica in
| OpenAI? So it's hard for them to say anything negative.
| haltist wrote:
| As a matter of good policy they wouldn't publicly denounce
| anyone that was associated with YC.
| bigiain wrote:
| Jessica went out of her way to use the slightly awkward
| phrase 'founding donor', so she's at least trying to imply
| she isn't just trying to protect an investment. I'm going to
| take the generous interpretation of that and assume she means
| what she says there, and isn't just playing politics and
| share price PR.
| halfjoking wrote:
| In the made-for-tv movie about OpenAI - PG is played by an
| actor mimicking Trump, and that's Sam's origin story. "You're
| Fired"
|
| Sam with his slick black hair, looking like Tom Hiddleston's
| Loki... "my ambition knows no bounds, I will build AGI and then
| you will understand my TRUE power."
| jeofken wrote:
| > played by an actor
| bzbz wrote:
| What is this comment even trying to say?
| philwelch wrote:
| By the time they make a movie about OpenAI, there will be
| no more human actors.
| yumraj wrote:
| It's not too complicated. Their interests are/were different.
|
| In the case of YC, removing him was better for PG and YC.
|
| In this case, having Sam on top of OpenAI gets them better
| returns on their investment.
| rantee wrote:
| Somebody page Kanye to say something stupid so we can flush SA
| out of the news cycle already. Elon's just not up to par these
| days.
| fhub wrote:
| Shortly after it happened the rumor in SF was that Altman was
| distracted and not really dotting the i's and crossing the t's.
| Like they had a cash flow issue where they had to ask for a top
| up from investors which was a bit embarrassing. Anyway, just a
| rumor.
| 23B1 wrote:
| I for one am just totally _shocked_ that a silicon valley
| executive would exhibit some sociopathic behaviors.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Why would Sam Altman be held as someone irreplaceable....the dude
| seems like a smart guy but c'mon he is not Jobs or Gates. I
| remember first time hearing him when he interviewed Zuck about
| Facebook and entrepreneurship (when he worked for Y Combinator).
| Now we talk about him as the next Gates or Jobs. I think this was
| one big marketing stunt from OpenAI, now the whole software and
| business community talks about them. Big boost in popularity and
| big downfall for Google when we talk about competing in AI. Sam's
| biggest mistake was that Worldcoin privacy nightmare but idk what
| was he thinking about, maybe it was noble idk.
| imjonse wrote:
| He probably has powerful connections beyond SV. He and Greg
| Brockman have been meeting heads of state and he has been
| fundraising in the Middle East recently. I wouldn't be
| surprised if he is sold as representing US interests, hence few
| dare to criticize him openly.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Yeah, it's hilarious people think you just get to travel
| around the world and glad-hand heads of state without
| "friends" among the three-letter folks. And even more so when
| you're doing it in the context of selling a technology with
| quite obvious intelligence service and military applications.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >And even more so when you're doing it in the context of
| selling a technology with quite obvious intelligence
| service and military applications.
|
| Wasn't Peter Thiel's Palantir meant to be something like
| military AI for governments to catch threats in the big
| data. Someone once said that data is the new oil and it's
| so true, just look at LLMs and OpenAI. That's why Google is
| held as the world's most powerful data company....not
| Facebook as a matter of fact.
| mrkramer wrote:
| He surely has connections in SV(he was even a Reddit CEO for
| a short time) but he has connections in the politics too as
| far as I can tell. He is representing US interests? Fine.
| OpenAI is an American company. This was one big marketing
| stunt, a balloon to see how the AI community would react.
| OpenAI is the innovator but the future AI innovations will
| happen somewhere else, that's what history of innovations
| teaches us. I remember when Elon said the Google is the
| biggest threat when it comes to AI, then he founded and
| funded OpenAI and now here we are.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Or is it a big PR stunt for _sam_?
|
| The unfairly maligned genius ceo whose on company fired him for
| some bullshit reason and then had to publicly embarrass
| themselves by begging for him to take them back?
|
| That makes him look pretty cool - and I didn't even know who he
| was a couple weeks ago.
| mrkramer wrote:
| They wanted it to be something like Apple and Steve Jobs but
| Jobs was on the another level of computer fanatic.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| I don't think it's marketing stunt. I just think there is a lot
| of incompetent people involved.
| screye wrote:
| No one knows when to raise like Sam. Some may say that is his
| only skill. But, it is valuable skill to have when you are
| about to be the richest startup of this generation.
|
| Same reason top football players contracted with Mino Raiola.
|
| A scum bag (or tough/sleazy negotiator depending on how you see
| it) who can be a scum bag without everyone hating him is an
| exceedingly rare talent.
|
| Sam seems to have it and is valued accordingly.
| Geee wrote:
| It seems that there are a lot of people who are loyal to Sam
| because they are scared of crossing him. If this is really the
| pattern here, then this is probably not the timeline we want to
| be on.
| drtgh wrote:
| I'm following the whole story to see if there's a sociopath
| involved.
| brap wrote:
| Probably most of them.
| davesque wrote:
| Even if Graham supposedly booted Altman from Y Combinator, I
| don't see any reason to assume that a similar disagreement would
| have occurred in this case. Citing that history also seems to
| assume that Graham himself is an impeccable judge of character.
| And we don't necessarily have any reason to believe that. Seems
| to me like they're swinging at windmills with this narrative.
|
| Given that the board provided very few details about their
| reasoning, the ideological divide seems like the most likely
| explanation because it's the most nebulous by nature. Also likely
| given the climate of hype/doom surrounding ChatGPT.
| davesque wrote:
| And speaking of Graham's judgement:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38384490
|
| Of course it was flagged within a few minutes.
| mattfrommars wrote:
| I am not sure but Sam Altman is probably the next Steve Jobs. One
| of the greatest CEO of our generation.
| p_j_w wrote:
| It seems to me like the PR machine is doing its job pretty
| well.
| fredgrott wrote:
| My read not knowing PG and only having dealt with Sam once is
| that the firing was to push Sam into AI which he already was
| involved with before the firing...a GaryVee mercy firing to be
| sure...
|
| BTW, Sam was wrong about GPS-powered dating at Loopt. He was not
| wrong about pushing teleco's to free up GPS instead of hidding
| behind some wall of forbidden access.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| ""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,
| a prominent venture capitalist who became friendly with Altman
| shortly after he founded Loopt, a location-based social
| networking start-up, in 2005. "I've never seen this kind of
| loyalty anywhere.""
|
| Perhaps this looks like "loyalty" when viewed with the narrow
| mindset of Silicon Valley and so-called "tech" venture
| capitalism. But it also looks like _disloyalty_ to OpenAI and its
| stated mission when viewed more broadly.
|
| "A former OpenAI employee, machine learning researcher Geoffrey
| Irving, who now works at competitor Google DeepMind, wrote that
| he was disinclined to support Altman after working for him for
| two years. "1. He was always nice to me. 2. He lied to me on
| various occasions 3. He was deceptive, manipulative, and worse to
| others, including my close friends (again, only nice to me, for
| reasons)," Irving posted Monday on X."
|
| One could see similarities with the way so-called "tech"
| companies treat computer users.
|
| It's no surprise people working for so-called "tech" companies
| are trying to hide behind labels such as "Effective Altruism".
| These are not altruistic people. They need a cover.
| npalli wrote:
| Like many hotshot young entrepreneurs, it is possible Sam learnt
| a lot from the firing and has done a 180 to go on to supporting
| others (seen by his support from OpenAI rank-and-file). He
| probably needed that life lesson (getting fired) to grow.
| 7e wrote:
| Sounds like Sam Altman is a sociopath.
| bambax wrote:
| > _"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.
| reissbaker wrote:
| The double-dipping charge doesn't seem particularly real -- even
| pg still to this day personally invests in YC companies while
| they're in YC, even before Demo Day (e.g. Phind). I very much
| doubt he fired Sam for doing it too. It reads to me like Sam was
| focusing more on OpenAI (the "absenteeism" that the article
| mentions was primarily due "to his intense focus on OpenAI") and
| pg told him he couldn't do both.
|
| Somehow trying to tie that to the OpenAI board -- which couldn't
| even come up with a concrete reason for firing him to their
| attempted CEO replacements, who both then switched sides to
| supporting Sam -- seems like a stretch.
| lkbm wrote:
| > Graham did not respond to a request for comment.
|
| Not said: "...but has consistently spoken in support of Sam
| Altman."
|
| This article is incredibly disingenuous. Almost to the level that
| I'd cancel my Washington Post subscription over if I hadn't
| already for similarly bad journalism.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Is this actually true?
|
| Did Paul Graham fire Sam Altman?
|
| Is there factual information about this - has pg said anything?
| jgalt212 wrote:
| It seems like many of Sam's sins are basically securities
| professionals know as Selling Away.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sellingaway.asp
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| 2015, so like 8 years ago. People do change. And there's two
| people here.
|
| Also, in general, when you have a CEO that's passionate, they
| tend to be bossy. If you don't have that, then you're just
| passing the time until the VC money is gone.
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