[HN Gopher] Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little...
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Sam Altman's knack for dodging bullets with a little help from
bigshot friends
Author : himaraya
Score : 178 points
Date : 2023-12-24 17:52 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| smoothjazz wrote:
| Full article: https://archive.is/10Rji
| gwern wrote:
| Many points of interest here, including the answer to an earlier
| HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38384090 Why
| were the YC posts about Altman stepping down as YC president &
| becoming chairman so confusingly edited, and Altman seems to have
| either never been chairman or have quickly left? Well, because
| his post lacked candor about him becoming YC chairman:
|
| "To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to
| chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm's
| website announcing the change. But the firm's partnership had
| never agreed, and the announcement was later scrubbed from the
| post."
| anotherhue wrote:
| Gun jumping seems to be his style.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| Not that I agree with this method but it's a pretty effective
| way to force something.
| kdwikzncba wrote:
| No, it's an attempt to force, and has the same flaw as all
| attempts to force, which is: the other side might just call
| your bluff.
|
| "Oh you think that going ahead before a decision is made
| and just publish a post will get us to decide in your favor
| because we're afraid of looking like we're backtracking?
| How about we don't decide in your favor and delete your
| post? What you gonna do now?"
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How about we don 't decide in your favor and delete
| your post?_
|
| This response, the one YC went with, is milquetoast. It's
| rational. But the true fuck you is to counter-programme
| and publicly call out the lie.
| gumballindie wrote:
| The more we learn about this person the more we understand how
| dubious he is. I am not entirely sure what the end game is for
| those protecting and promoting him. He's clearly not steve
| jobs. Behaves and talks more like a cheap imitation.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Is the idea that Steve Jobs never strong armed anyone?
| gumballindie wrote:
| The idea is that steve jobs built something. And those
| promoting altman try to somehow make him look like steve.
| But altman built nothing, has no plan whatsoever, and is an
| impostor. I think even he knows it, which explains his
| attempts at making something stick - be it dodgy crypto,
| corrupt business deals, an ai that fails to live to its
| hype, and so on.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I'm with you. I think the point here is that he _is_ like
| Steve Jobs, and everything that goes with that comparison.
| queuebert wrote:
| No, but he sure stinky feeted quite a few.
| CPLX wrote:
| His values are completely aligned with the ruling class.
|
| Billionaires need on the ground types like him to actually do
| stuff.
|
| It's hard to find people who are young and ambitious and
| effective, and yet fundamentally and ruthlessly aligned with
| corporate hegemony.
|
| And I suspect he must be spectacularly good at flattery.
| alternative_a wrote:
| > [elite's HR issues]
|
| We share this thought.
|
| My pet theory regarding the recruitment efforts of this
| class: two broad fronts, one to drive the herd and the
| other to pick candidates.
|
| The first front permeates our head space in form of content
| in the full spectrum of the bandwidth of this class:
| entertainment, news, organizations. Here the message is
| insistently that "Only suckers play straight", "crime
| pays", "winners and losers". This is a consistent message.
|
| The second front is more selective and here I am
| speculating (unlike the former which one gets to experience
| first hand, whether one likes it or not.) Here I suspect a
| more 'direct' sales pitch is used, and likely references
| the former.
|
| Imagine you are a bright young thing from 'not money'
| raised in that "cultural" environment just mentioned. Now
| you open your favorite "journal of record". You read barely
| disguised lies, note how these lies lead designated
| demographics by the NOSE with them not even aware of this
| fact, and finally your mentor has a conversation with you:
|
| "Do you really think that the general population, these
| same people we were discussing being led by the nose with
| lies, are actually capable of self-governance and should
| have a say in "important" matters?"
| nvy wrote:
| Steve Jobs was a massive piece of shit; not a good figure to
| worship.
| chongli wrote:
| Steve Jobs was a human being. No human should be
| worshipped.
|
| Like all human beings, he wasn't a one-dimensional
| character from a crappy sitcom. He had negative and
| positive traits. Whatever one feels about him personally,
| it is absolutely a mistake to dismiss him. What he achieved
| -- multiple times -- puts him in extremely rarified air in
| the business world.
| gosub100 wrote:
| if apple had gone bankrupt he'd have started his own
| company. his best accomplishment was with UI and actually
| giving a fuck about the end user. thats not brilliant or
| genius. Actually having empathy for the user was such a
| novel concept in computing that it drove him to the top,
| even though he lacked empathy for anyone around him. His
| other notable accomplishments were negotiating with the
| record companies to license iTunes music. I would _love_ to
| have been a fly on the wall for those conversations.
| Without a critical mass of licensing, iPod would have never
| happened. his glory for iPhone is nonsense, it would have
| happened within a year or 2 anyway as electronics matured.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Also this other bit was news to me:
|
| "Graham said it was his wife's doing. "If anyone 'fired' Sam,
| it was Jessica, not me," he said. "But it would be wrong to use
| the word 'fired' because he agreed immediately." "
| bmitc wrote:
| Why are these people so sycophantic, especially to such an
| inexperienced person?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| ""I saw in a 19-year-old Sam Altman the same thing that I
| see now: an intensely focused and brilliant person whom I
| was willing to bet big on," said Chung, now managing
| general partner of Xfund, a venture-capital firm."
|
| They believe in his focus to get things done, not in his
| ethics. And with ChatGPT, he got things done. Which means,
| he connected the right people and raised money so they can
| work on the important things.
| bmitc wrote:
| > said Chung, now _managing general partner of Xfund, a
| venture-capital firm_.
|
| Emphasis mine. I mean, that's just backs up my original
| question. These people will say anything to garner favor,
| perceived or otherwise. I've seen Altman speak. At what
| point should I expect to see a representative example of
| this focus and insight?
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| > At what point should I expect to see a representative
| example of this focus and insight?
|
| Probably never. He says nothing of substance in public.
| amazingman wrote:
| His keynote at this year's OpenAI DevDay is an example of
| his focus. Have you watched it?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9mJuUkhUzk
|
| His pacing, clarity, and proficiency with the product are
| impressive; regardless of how one might feel about him.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| But of course, as with these things, nobody needs to
| admit to anything and any claim can easily be rejected.
|
| The more polarising the figure, the more polarising the
| assessment of _anything_ concerning them. Disconnecting
| different facets of a figure is not our strong suite.
| queuebert wrote:
| He's surrounded by VCs with confirmation bias.
| natdempk wrote:
| > In early October, OpenAI's chief scientist approached some
| fellow board members to recommend Altman be fired, citing
| roughly 20 examples of when he believed Altman misled OpenAI
| executives over the years.
|
| I also thought this was interesting, not sure if this detail
| had been reported before this article, but seems like there
| were maybe more incidents than initially thought.
| gwern wrote:
| There had been two incidents reported: Sutskever seeing in
| Slack from other OA execs that the attempt to fire Toner was
| not over the paper but over her EA ties, and McCauley
| (apparently) being told by Altman that another board member
| wanted to fire Toner over the paper.
|
| This list of 20 examples is new, albeit unsurprising given
| that there was no reason to think that there were _only_ 2
| incidents, and I highlight it in my longer commentary:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KXHMCH7wCxrvKsJyn/openai-
| fac...
| gkoberger wrote:
| You don't have to like Sam. But people who do big things, by
| definition, have to get there by pushing things along at a
| cadence that differs from most other people. I'm not necessarily
| saying it's a good thing, but I don't get why every article about
| Sam seems to be surprised that the guy who helped build something
| nobody thought was possible (AI this decade) got there by doing
| things in a fast, unique way.
|
| If he followed the norms, he'd be a mid-level manager at FAANG
| company.
| richbell wrote:
| This comment reminds me of when Bird's CEO described their
| intentional subversion of municipal legislation as "innovating
| on the regulatory front."
|
| A lot can be accomplished by skirting pesky rules and
| regulations. It isn't something commendable.
| gkoberger wrote:
| This is a fallacy. You can't say "this other CEO did
| something" if you're trying to make a point about Sam. If you
| have a problem with Sam doing something illegal, say it.
|
| I'm not saying Sam has never done anything illegal, but most
| of the outrage seems to be that he doesn't follow
| social/business norms (not that he doesn't follow
| rules/regulations/laws).
| richbell wrote:
| > This is a fallacy. You can't say "this other CEO did
| something" if you're trying to make a point about Sam. If
| you have a problem with Sam doing something illegal, say
| it.
|
| There is nothing fallacious about my comment. Saying I'm
| not allowed to compare him to other CEOs is ridiculous.
|
| As another commenter said: he isn't unique.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Saying I'm not allowed to compare him to other CEOs is
| ridiculous
|
| You can compare him to other CEO but you have to justify
| why the comparison is valid.
|
| You didn't do that.
|
| If you want to directly claim that Sam did something
| illegal you need to show or say that.
|
| Instead, what you did, is just point to someone else who
| did something illegal, and then criticize that other
| person, while vaguely implying that the criticism applies
| to Sam.
|
| But the criticism doesn't apply to Sam, because you
| didn't demonstrate that Sam did anything illegal.
| blackoil wrote:
| Not OP, but adding it is called false equivalence or
| commonly known as comparing apples and oranges. Just
| because two people are CEO doesn't relate them any more
| than a person with mustache to Hitler.
| CPLX wrote:
| The outrage is mostly focused on the fact that he doesn't
| seem to tell the truth.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Yeah, those annoying "social/business norms".
| _3u10 wrote:
| Yes, this is why economists recommend against too many rules
| and regulations.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > A lot can be accomplished by skirting pesky rules and
| regulations. It isn't something commendable.
|
| Well that depends.
|
| Is the thing that is being accomplished very good and are the
| regulations bad?
|
| For example, what if there is a law that was passed for the
| sole purpose of protecting a well connected monopoly, so that
| consumers have to pay more money, only so that this one
| monopoly could profit.
|
| I'd say that such a law would be bad and should be under
| minded.
| MicolashKyoka wrote:
| Some rules are stupid and reek of cronyism, enshrining
| established players at the expense of innovation. Those
| deserve to be challenged.
| skullone wrote:
| He's not unique, instead very textbook sociopath. Lines up with
| the alleged abuse of his younger sister too. There's not much
| more to him than a wheeler and dealer, self serving abuser.
| gkoberger wrote:
| If he was brilliant and high agency, rather than a sociopath,
| what would be doing differently right now? The phrase
| "wheeler and dealer" rarely applies to people who have
| genuinely changed the world forever; why do you put him in
| that category when he clearly has had tangible results?
|
| Hey, if you don't like Sam, that's fine. But that doesn't
| make him a sociopath.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I don't know a lot about Sam Altman's history, but I do
| know that there is a lot of misattribution in tech circles
| away from the doers and toward the managers. Has he had
| significant tangible results, or has he managed people who
| have had those tangible results?
|
| This sort of misattribution seems to show up when you have
| individuals with sociopathic tendencies running firms that
| do cool things: Elon Musk is the king of this. The man has
| not, on his own, had any sort of good results on the world
| - Tesla and SpaceX seem to do a lot better when he steps
| away from them - but he has found ways to get himself into
| a position to take credit from the engineers who do.
| Hyperloops and Twitter are the results of Elon Musk's
| original work. That's not to say that the management is
| necessarily negative: someone needs to fund the work of the
| good engineers.
| Method-X wrote:
| What do you think the leader of multiple billion dollar
| companies would be doing exactly? People like Musk are
| like conductors of an orchestra. That's not easy,
| especially with multiple successful companies.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The conductor of an orchestra, and the leader of a
| company, sets the vision and direction. Steve Jobs was
| exceptional at this. Two examples, Sundar Pichai and Elon
| Musk, are clearly not particularly adept at this.
|
| SpaceX and Tesla have the equivalent of the principals of
| each section of the orchestra feeding their conductor his
| cues and making sure he gets them right. Google has
| someone standing on the podium and bowing, but nobody
| waving the baton at all.
|
| OpenAI is more of a research organization than a product
| company, and so it's hard to see where someone like
| Altman _can_ contribute meaningfully to the direction.
| kortilla wrote:
| SpaceX is Elon's original work. There was no preexisting
| company there.
| skullone wrote:
| Keep worshipping, maybe they'll let you even come over
| for Christmas! Oops nevermind, the billionaires make
| people work on Christmas, or just let them off during the
| holidays.
| tester756 wrote:
| Seriously?
|
| It feels like he just wants to do 10 things at the same time.
| queuebert wrote:
| Whatever his issues, I think it's clear that humanity
| absolutely cannot afford people like him to control the
| emergence of AGI.
| Apreche wrote:
| My question is, what do you count as "doing"?
|
| Imagine I win the lottery and hire really smart architects and
| tell them to make a revolutionary new building. They go on to
| make some amazing building that gets all sorts of awards and
| recognition. Is anyone really so naive as to suggest that I am
| deserving of any credit whatsoever? In the words of Urkel, "Did
| I do that?"
|
| There are some leaders in the tech world who have clearly done
| something. John Carmack did something. Steve Wozniak did
| something. There are some questionable cases as well. As far as
| Altman goes, I put him firmly in the same camp as Musk. They
| haven't done jack shit. I give them no respect, recognition, or
| credit. They were just wealthy people spending money. I
| seriously question the people who look at them positively in
| any way whatsoever.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Someone has to be skilled enough in fundraising to be able to
| raise the money to get the talent to do the thing. That alone
| is a difficult skill to master. It's often harder to do than
| to be able to create great things. Carmack and Woz are
| legends for a reason.
| Apreche wrote:
| None of these people were skilled at fundraising. Their
| opportunities were inherited.
| gkoberger wrote:
| I don't think you need to like the people you listed (I, for
| example, hate Musk). But you seem to have no curiosity around
| understanding the value non-technical people can bring to a
| project or company or innovation.
|
| You need both to do something great. And there's thousands of
| Woz's out there whose names we don't know because they never
| met their Jobs.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| But even all Wozzes out there who met their Jobs are still
| relegated to just Wozzes, all credit being vaccumed up by
| their respective Jobs. Not saying that their Jobs don't
| deserve any the credit, i'm just pointing out the unfair
| pattern of how all the credit is being vaccumed up. One
| clearly needs the other but it doesn't look like a two way
| street at all.
| adventured wrote:
| It's not unfair in the case of Jobs & Woz. Wozniak
| represented a few years of Apple's earliest history. His
| contribution was similar to Paul Allen's contribution to
| Microsoft. Extraordinarily important in the first few
| years, and that was the end of that. The reality is,
| people broadly like Woz, and particularly among the HN
| crowd Steve Jobs is disliked; that's the explanation,
| it's purely emotional; so they want to give Woz more
| credit than he deserves.
|
| There's an obsession with trying to discredit people like
| Jobs (and their contributions), particularly among the
| hacker news crowd. Fundamentally it's because most
| hackers don't understand leadership, marketing, sales,
| etc.
|
| In this thread you'll see people claim Elon Musk is non-
| technical. That's bordering on belligerent. A person
| would have to have avoided the dozens of YouTube
| interviews where he demonstrates his technical
| understanding to an elaborate degree. Musk is as
| technical as Bill Gates was in his post coding days at
| Microsoft (which spanned the bulk of his time at
| Microsoft) and I've never seen anyone on HN claim Gates
| as being non-technical. How it works is simple: I dislike
| this person, therefore I shall tear them down; I'm unable
| to be objective about the subject, so I shall be
| emotional and irrational instead.
| dbingham wrote:
| The issue is that if you ask the average person on the
| street who the leadership behind Apple was, they would name
| Jobs, not Woz. I'm not sure, but I think the financial
| compensation also carried that discrepancy.
|
| And that's a really common case.
|
| It is absolutely true that you need both technical and non-
| technical people to make a business work. There are lots of
| jobs to be done, hats to be worn, and they are all valuable
| - many are necessary.
|
| The issue is that our society and economy massively
| overvalues two roles in particular: those who bring the
| capital and those who carry the title executive. It's not
| that those roles don't contribute, they do. But they
| currently get the vast majority of the generated wealth,
| credit, and recognition (which then translates into more
| opportunities to access more capital and thus into an
| exponential feedback loop).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _who the leadership behind Apple was, they would name
| Jobs, not Woz_
|
| Woz was critical to early Apple. He was not involved in
| its modern iteration. Also, plenty of important and
| influential people are unknown in the popular
| imagination.
| wslh wrote:
| > Imagine I win the lottery and hire really smart architects
| and tell them to make a revolutionary new building. They go
| on to make some amazing building that gets all sorts of
| awards and recognition. Is anyone really so naive as to
| suggest that I am deserving of any credit whatsoever? In the
| words of Urkel, "Did I do that?"
|
| This example doesn't work, at least, since the industrial
| revolution. If an average person wins the lottery they would
| need to solve a lot (really a lot) of issues to move a
| business forward and most probably go bankrupt except if
| he/she puts the money in low risk financial instruments.
|
| There is no "I do that" in the complex world of business. It
| is a nice Disney story with a few examples. Organization does
| the work and that includes anonymous engineers, not only CEOs
| and founders. The great ignition could start at a garage
| (e.g. Apple) but the road is long.
| foobaw wrote:
| You're implying that you knew how to hire and identify smart
| architects and provided them the right vision to build a good
| building.
|
| There wouldn't be a counterfactual in your hypothetical
| scenario, but I'm confident that the difference between
| someone that got lucky and hired "smart" architects versus a
| visionary doing the same task would be drastic.
|
| Money can only get you so far.
| bmitc wrote:
| Is there an indication that Altman has a special talent for
| this over others?
| adventured wrote:
| Yes, the accomplishments of OpenAI represent that in
| action. It's an exceptional outcome to say the least.
|
| If everybody could do it, they would be doing it.
| Altman's abilities are every bit as rare as that of a 10x
| software developer. The same was true of Jobs, and the
| same is true of Musk (regardless of whether someone likes
| him or not; who cares if he's likable, it's an infantile
| emotional derangement to obsess so much over likability).
| bmitc wrote:
| > Yes, the accomplishments of OpenAI represent that in
| action. It's an exceptional outcome to say the least.
|
| What specifically backs that up? Didn't others create the
| technology? Is it that hard to hire and organize when
| you've got a top researcher that everyone wants to work
| with? By many accounts, he was just using OpenAI to
| further other businesses and investments.
| asfgkadnhiok wrote:
| That's extremely easy. There are awards and magazines and
| Wikipedia. Smart architects are smart because they're able
| to come up with the "right vision" all on their own.
|
| We _know_ it 's possible for someone with no technical
| ability to look like genius just by having lots of money. I
| knew people who believed Musk was going to bring about an
| AI revolution all on his own because of his very special
| brain, but his tenure at Twitter was laughable to anyone
| who has passed CS 101. What makes you convinced all the
| rich "geniuses" who haven't revealed themselves to be
| idiots are actually smart for real this time?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| > but his tenure at Twitter was laughable to anyone who
| has passed CS 101
|
| Honest question: why? Just because your bubble denounces
| him and he's doing things differently than other big
| tech, in a way that upset developers / managers that
| doesn't mean he's automatically wrong.
|
| Twitter is still running and it has a business trajectory
| that looks positive (subscriptions are great). Probably
| if we didn't have a board of do-nothing for years twitter
| could have turned into the Line of the west. Maybe it
| could have captured all the profits which ended up on
| patreon and onlyfans.
|
| If it wasn't for his anti remote stance and general
| disregard for life-work balance I'd love to work for him.
| Finally, an organisation when things get done with few
| hard working people, and not hundreds of drones
| collecting a paycheck and slowing me down and complaining
| all the time.
| kortilla wrote:
| > As far as Altman goes, I put him firmly in the same camp as
| Musk. They haven't done jack shit.
|
| What Musk did with SpaceX is in no way comparable to just
| paying an architect to build a building. Unless the entire
| biography from Isaacson was fabricated, he was extremely
| hands on in design decisions, company direction, and hiring.
|
| If you think none of those were relevant to the success of
| spacex, you're completely delusional.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Per dozens of engineers at SpaceX...the biography from
| Isaacson contains numerous exaggerations and outright
| fabrications.
|
| Elon Musk's involvement in design decisions was limited to
| the typical executive level involvement in hardware design,
| in the sense that he was presented multiple options by the
| engineers and designers and got to pick which one they went
| with.
|
| Indeed, with SpaceX it's usually immediately obvious when
| Musk was involved: does something fail spectacularly in a
| way _it wasn 't supposed to?_ That was Musk, getting
| involved in something he didn't understand and overriding
| the engineers and other professionals. (Contrast the first
| Starship launch this year, which Musk micromanaged, vs the
| second launch in November in which he had minimal
| involvement due to being distracted by X and Tesla.)
| Johnny555 wrote:
| >Imagine I win the lottery and hire really smart architects
| and tell them to make a revolutionary new building. They go
| on to make some amazing building that gets all sorts of
| awards and recognition. Is anyone really so naive as to
| suggest that I am deserving of any credit whatsoever?
|
| You should try hiring a group of really smart people and
| getting them to work together to create something great
| before you dismiss the skills of the person doing that.
| matrix_overload wrote:
| >Imagine I win the lottery and hire really smart architects
| and tell them to make a revolutionary new building.
|
| Each one will end up pulling in their own direction, fighting
| with others over minor things, and nothing will ever get
| done.
|
| Managing smart people, resolving conflicts, and making sure
| stuff gets done is a rare and underappreciated skill.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Which makes me think... how much of the talent in middle
| management in FAANG could be actually useful in the world when
| applied somewhere else!
| BeefDinnerPurge wrote:
| It's less about not following the norms and more about not
| following the norms and doing so at a startup. Big companies
| know how to cut the tall poppies, it's a core corporate
| competency even.
| asfgkadnhiok wrote:
| >If he followed the norms, he'd be a mid-level manager at FAANG
| company.
|
| If _we_ followed the norms, he 's be in prison. If you think
| fraud and self-dealing are justified if it moves a lot of value
| to shareholders, write to your senator. Until then the laws
| should be enforced against the rich as well as the poor.
|
| Of course, I can't much bring myself to care in this case,
| because all that's at stake is a chatbot.
| gkoberger wrote:
| What laws are you accusing him of breaking?
| milkglass wrote:
| Really interesting how Sam gets compared to Steve Jobs quite
| often. Sam in some ways embodies the reality distortion field
| that Steve operated under, and has huge influence on those all
| that are part of that path.
| layer8 wrote:
| The difference is that Sam Altman doesn't seem to be an ideas
| man like Steve Jobs was.
|
| Both have been characterized as being manipulative liars
| though.
| milkglass wrote:
| I think that's a fair statement. Manipulative leader bends
| reality to achieve results, perpetuating a culture where we
| have self fulfilling prophecies.
| wslh wrote:
| After reading more articles about Sam it seems he is a genius in
| the game of power. Am I right? He is at the center of the stage
| and many powerful people and organizations trust on him beyond
| the "anecdotes". He will gain more power while he is an amplifier
| of capital and business opportunities. For an investor point of
| view he is a business ace and you just need to be careful about
| partnering with him because he will always be pursuing new
| opportunities, even ones that eat part of the company you
| invested in.
| bmitc wrote:
| > business ace
|
| What business has he aced?
| wslh wrote:
| He helps business ace, not saying that he is a successful
| entrepreneur. We cannot say that OpenAI is unsuccessful
| either. We don't know if they will be as successful in the
| future but he helped in moving the gears.
| BeefDinnerPurge wrote:
| A combination of real drive and a tremendous amount of dumb
| luck. Never forget the dumb luck part though. Life isn't fair,
| ask Trevor Moore who wrote a song about that, oh wait, you
| can't, life isn't fair...
| wslh wrote:
| If Sam continues to have "luck" it is not survivorship bias.
| As I said before he is at the center of the stage.
| BeefDinnerPurge wrote:
| Tell me you don't understand conditional probability
| without telling me you don't understand conditional
| probability.
|
| CEO of Reddit, how'd that go? Project Covalence, how'd that
| go? Andrew Yang? Our next president, right? 2018, The year
| Sam Altman became the governor of California, no? And of
| course: "I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics,
| batteries, water, gas masks from the Israel Defense Forces,
| and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to." - that
| aged well.
|
| But he's now in a position where all his failures will be
| forgotten and his successes amplified forevermore (unless
| he buys a social media company, but he seems too smart for
| that so far). It is clear he has reached Jeff Dean levels
| of ridiculous hagiography though, but I guess worshipping
| CEOs is a step up from worshipping invisible friends or
| stinky geriatric ex-presidents so there's that.
| wslh wrote:
| Your answer is very rude. You don't differentiate power
| from business success.
| akira2501 wrote:
| You can literally just buy articles like this. The question
| that could be asked is the long term ROI here actually going to
| be worth it for Sam?
|
| The article talks about his "luck" in "surviving." Which is
| about all he has, apparently. No consideration for the future
| of the product, the company, or the industry. The triumphant
| conclusion of this article is "a bunch of CEOs pulled weight
| and Altman got his old job back, again."
|
| The more of these I read, the more convinced I am that his
| company is going nowhere, as they seem more skilled at
| producing "internal drama" than "new product."
| wslh wrote:
| > The question that could be asked is the long term ROI here
| actually going to be worth it for Sam?
|
| Don't you think most entrepreneurs would call Sam if they
| have a chance?
| akira2501 wrote:
| I don't think being overly connected to the "silicon valley
| social graph" is particularly useful. I actually think it's
| probably going to be a negative drain on your time, or
| sacrificing that, a negative drain on your reputation.
| layer8 wrote:
| One would hope for most entrepreneurs to have better
| judgement and be less desperate.
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| > "The senior leadership team was unanimous in asking for Sam's
| return as CEO and for the board's resignation, actions backed by
| an open letter signed by over 95% of our employees. The strong
| support from his team underscores that he is an effective CEO,"
| said an OpenAI spokeswoman.
|
| This is where I stopped reading.
|
| At the risk of sounding defensive of Sam Altman. If there's
| something so fundamentally wrong with him, why does he have such
| broad support? He's just one man, say that what this article
| alleges is true, how many tricks does he have up his sleeve to
| fool the entirety of Silicon Valley?
|
| I mean, we can beat around the bush all day but he managed to get
| his old/new?? job back at OpenAI. This means to me that his
| ouster was either unwarranted or the board was acting blindly and
| should have stepped aside just on account of being clearly
| incapable of making sound decisions.
|
| This article does not ask the right questions. Doesn't answer any
| questions either like the many articles written before it riddled
| with speculation about Sam's much belabored firing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why does he have such broad support?_
|
| He makes people money. Plenty of terrible people commanded
| great loyalty. All the loyalty tells you is he's a good leader.
| Not where he's leading us.
|
| (Not saying anything about Sam. Just pointing out that loyalty
| is orthogonal.)
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| He should be making investors money. That's his #1 job.
|
| Aside from that, who cares about loyalty to the CEO of a tech
| company. He's a replaceable employee and OpenAI should be
| able to continue without him.
|
| What were his actual crimes. It's not clear from the previous
| board nor anyone who's spoken about the matter what those
| were.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What were his actual crimes_
|
| Boards don't judge crimes. And unlike courts, they have no
| disclosure obligation. Particularly for a private company.
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| > they have no disclosure obligation.
|
| If true, that board deserved to be dissolved privately
| without being given the courtesy of raising any voices
| against Sam or OpenAI's future.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| > If there's something so fundamentally wrong with him, why
| does he have such broad support?
|
| 75 million people voted for Trump.
| az226 wrote:
| 95% of employees voted with their wallets. Their millions of
| dollars in "stock options" were at risk of being worthless and
| the tender offer of cashing out was halted. Of course they
| wanted him back. And of course they would have joined Microsoft
| too -- but almost none of them would have joined had they
| gotten a standard Microsoft offer, they would only join if they
| got a matching or near matching offer.
| psswrd12345 wrote:
| > "If there's something so fundamentally wrong with him, why
| does he have such broad support?"
|
| Stock options and a carefully built cult of personality, my
| friend
| voxl wrote:
| Many years ago I once tried to share a History channel
| documentary on the JFK assassination with a friend. They
| watched up until the first part, the documentary dramaticized
| the assassination and talked about how the shot seemed
| impossible based off the shape of the car.
|
| See I had already watched this documentary in full, and knew
| that this was just a cliffhanger for the second part that
| explained the car was modified, making the seemingly impossible
| shot very possible. Yet, my friend said "See? That's enough
| evidence." and walked away.
|
| I asked, "don't you want to hear the rest?" the response:
| "nope."
|
| Your comment reminds me of this experience
| GCA10 wrote:
| I've seen variants of this in finance, where the strategy is
| called "outrunning your mistakes."
|
| There's an art to building a rapid growth trajectory, cutting all
| kinds of corners to ramp up your customers/assets/users/whatever
| -- and then pirouetting into a bigger new role, while leaving
| someone else to stabilize your unstable creation.
|
| Take it up a level, and the best practitioners are also very good
| at blaming their successors for messing up a good thing. Also
| very good at cultivating a certain subset of journalists who will
| keep burnishing the legend, never stepping outside the bubble.
|
| Loosely related: does anyone in the brave new AI community have
| the patience and humility to try to solve the hallucinations
| problem? Because it seems as if Sam & Co. are quite determined to
| ignore it, deny it or minimize it, while continuing to push for
| breakneck growth of products with a very troubling design flaw.
| throwaway778945 wrote:
| Yeah, have worked for/been burned by a few of these types. It
| can be really demoralizing and sets a bad example for how to be
| successful. Over time I've decided that how I accomplish things
| matters just as much, if not more than, what I accomplish, and
| outrunning your mistakes is a terrible "how."
| itake wrote:
| This is extremely common in big tech careers.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| _does anyone in the brave new AI community have the patience
| and humility to try to solve the hallucinations problem?_
|
| I think this is akin to asking if anyone in the software
| engineering community has the patience and humility to try to
| solve the software bugs problem.
| voxl wrote:
| So more expressive type systems? Rust has made entire classes
| of bugs impossible, and you can do even better in Idris or
| some other dependent type theory. People don't do it because
| it's expensive and they're not trained it.
|
| No it never eliminated all bugs, but if we're conflating the
| two problems you don't need to eliminate all hallucinations
| either, you just need to make them very unlikely, or a
| consequence of your bad specifications.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| I have to wonder, why is this criticism showing up now? Who would
| benefit from taking him down a peg at this current point in time,
| and how?
| baking wrote:
| It's called journalism. This is going to be happening for a
| while as journalists get more and more of the inside scoop. The
| new board also has a full slate ahead for it, including the
| investigation, recruiting a full board, and dealing with the
| non-profit and corporate structure which has a few holes
| showing. Plus there is all the stuff the company is actually
| doing with new products and the "Preparedness Framework" they
| are working on.
|
| Up until recently, the press about OpenAI has been mostly "look
| at the shiny lights" and now it's going to get the Elon Musk
| treatment.
| asadotzler wrote:
| I benefit. You benefit. Everyone benefits when we learn more.
| Who fears these disclosures at the current point in time and
| why? What's your reason for questioning them? What do you have
| to lose?
| gwern wrote:
| It takes time to report these things, you can't just bang it
| out overnight. In addition, breaking a preference falsification
| cascade can take a lot of hits: a lot of people didn't want to
| talk about Altman, but with every article in WSJ/NYT/WaPo
| revealing some more, that reluctance fades a little bit. That
| is how you go from a few months ago, there being nothing but a
| whisper here or there that Altman had been fired from YC as one
| of the crown jewel secrets of YC known to a handful of people,
| to now Paul Graham casually confirming it to the WSJ.
|
| As for what the benefit is, the ongoing report is one benefit.
| If the law firm (named here for the first time, I believe)
| didn't know about, say, Sutskever's list of 20 incidents, well,
| they do now.
| boucher wrote:
| 100+ upvotes in an hour and this story is falling off the front
| page already?
| paganel wrote:
| Altman is the perfect 3-letter inside man, that photo with
| Nadella towards the end of the article is the perfect
| representation of that (MS having won the race of "which IT
| company will the System choose to represent its tech interests?",
| ahead of Amazon and Alphabet).
| throw7764228 wrote:
| The situation leading to Sam's departure from OpenAI could be
| viewed as challenging for US foreign policy.
|
| In the weeks preceding his ouster in mid-November, Sam engaged
| in negotiations in the Middle East for investments in Tigris, a
| new AI chip company. [1]
|
| Speculation arose that the Tigris project might have played a
| role in Sam's removal.[2]
|
| Of note, a month earlier, the Biden administration had
| implemented a national security policy involving export and
| supply chain controls for AI chips.[3] This move could have
| attracted attention to Tigris and Sam for potential
| international cooperation on an R&D project with national
| security implications.
|
| Considering the timeline of Sam's Middle East negotiations
| following the onset of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war in October,
| there might have been concerns about possible interference with
| US administration geopolitical negotiations at a sensitive
| moment.
|
| [1] https://fortune.com/2023/11/19/sam-altman-was-fundraising-
| fo...
|
| [2] https://www.ccn.com/news/tigris-what-is-altman-chip-
| venture-...
|
| [3] https://www.mintz.com/insights-
| center/viewpoints/2191/2023-1...
| MicolashKyoka wrote:
| Sam is great, some eggs might've been cracked along the way, but
| overall, very positive influence on the world.
|
| You could shine a light into most people's lives and find in most
| cases broken egg shells here & there. Fixating on them at the
| expense of the bigger picture is a mistake.
|
| Regarding the openai board, the problem imo is that too much
| weight was given to a nebulous & subjective mission, allowing
| those sitting to make up ridiculous positions and find them
| tenable (ie the company going kaput being in line with the
| mission, like srsly??)
| Gud wrote:
| Regarding your last point,
|
| OpenAI going kaput might indeed be the best for humanity as a
| whole, only time will tell.
| Geisterde wrote:
| Could there be a more dangerous version of reality where we
| allow the government and a chosen monopoly to collude in
| controlling AI for the rest of society? Because that is
| precicely what he was/is attempting to do.
| MicolashKyoka wrote:
| I may not personally like it, but it's the pragmatist thing
| to do if you're leading openai. The gov will eventually get
| involved, better to get in front of it.
|
| However, there won't be a monopoly or anything of the sort
| that will form, our society's institutions wouldn't be able
| to properly enforce it and it's too easy for weights to leak,
| too much alpha for people to not fight back against it. Not
| worried.
|
| The ai safety crowd's problem is that they're focused on a
| hypothetical entity that will take over humanity, imagining
| all sorts of scenarios in lalaland which are ridiculous (some
| of their "thought leaders" even advocating for strikes on
| datacenters to save humanity???), where the real risk is
| criminals/terros being empowered by the ai's cognitive
| ability. For that, we'll need the gov involved one way or
| another.
| Geisterde wrote:
| I appreciate your attitude around the infesability of
| monopolizing software, and agree with you on that and on
| how hysterical people are acting about AI.
|
| I cant picture a case where charges need to be brought
| under a novel framework that couldnt be captured by
| existing laws. If you deploy a computer virus, thats a
| crime, if you hack someones bank account, thats a crime, if
| you slander someone, thats a crime.
|
| Im personally not convinced that any of the public efforts
| made around AI safety have been honest. If these people
| were serious then like you say, they wouldnt be chasing
| evil scifi ai overlords. I can think of some wonderful use
| cases to counter things like AI generated fakes; I am
| actually uncomfortably suprised that every social media
| company hasnt added a banner below every picture that says
| whether scans indicate a picture was deepfaked, twitter
| could scan a picture when you post it and show what a
| variety of algorithms think. That would have a real shot at
| improving information asymmetry at the social level.
| haltist wrote:
| Yet another hack job about the man who is going to save humanity
| and usher in the great age of AGI
|
| Journalists suck. They don't understand the value of people like
| Sam and how they are accelerating the development of technology
| which will help humanity colonize the solar system and beyond.
| It's best to ignore whatever is written here and focus on techno-
| optimism because that is what is needed to stave off extinction
| and fix global warming.
| psswrd12345 wrote:
| Altman is a classic sociopath, tread carefully.
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