[HN Gopher] Sam Altman may control our future - can he be trusted?
___________________________________________________________________
Sam Altman may control our future - can he be trusted?
Author : adrianhon
Score : 448 points
Date : 2026-04-06 10:36 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| thm wrote:
| Hybris.
| Cheyana wrote:
| Harvey Dent...
| the_doctah wrote:
| The brighter the picture, the darker the negative
| adrianhon wrote:
| Archive link:
| https://archive.is/2026.04.06-100412/https://www.newyorker.c...
| ronanfarrow wrote:
| Ronan Farrow here. Andrew Marantz and I spent 18 months on this
| investigation. Happy to answer questions about the reporting.
| cmiles8 wrote:
| Great reporting.
|
| Altman describes his shifting views as genuine good faith
| evolution of thinking. Do you believe he has a clear North Star
| behind all this that's not centered on himself?
| i7l wrote:
| (Other people's) money.
| ronanfarrow wrote:
| The piece is an interrogation of this very question, at great
| length and with some nuance. I think what it does most
| usefully is scrutinize an array of different answers to the
| question.
|
| My own impression after many hours of conversation is that he
| is identifying something of a true north star when he frames
| this around "winning." There are people in the story who talk
| about him emphasizing a desire for power (as opposed to, say,
| wealth). I think he probably also believes, to some extent,
| the story he tells that equates winning, and his gaining
| power, with a superabundant utopian future for all.
|
| However, I think critics correctly highlight a tension
| between his statements about centering humanity writ large
| and his tilt into relentless accelerationism.
| cs702 wrote:
| Thank you for coming on HN and offering to answer questions.[a]
|
| This is a _fantastic_ piece, very timely, evidently well-
| researched, and also well-written. Judging by the little that I
| know, it 's accurate. Thank you for doing the work and sharing
| it with the world.
|
| OpenAI may be in a more tenuous competitive position than many
| people realize. Recent anecdotal evidence suggests the company
| has lost its lead in the AI race to Anthropic.[b]
|
| Many people here, on HN, who develop software prefer Claude,
| because they think it's a better product.[c]
|
| Is your understanding of OpenAI's current competitive position
| similar?
|
| ---
|
| [a] You may want to provide proof online that you are who you
| say you are:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet%2C_nobody_know...
|
| [b] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-04-01/openais-
| sh...
|
| [c] For example, there are 2x more stories mentioning Claude
| than ChatGPT on HN over the past year. Compare
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...
| to
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...
| brightbeige wrote:
| He's replying on this twitter thread - perhaps someone with
| an account can ask there and link his comment here?
|
| https://xcancel.com/RonanFarrow/status/2041127882429206532#m
| georgemcbay wrote:
| > You may want to provide proof online that you are who you
| say you are
|
| Unfortunately it probably doesn't even matter here on HN
| considering how brigaded down this story is predictably
| getting.
|
| But yeah, it was a fantastic piece.
| ronanfarrow wrote:
| Fair request, here you go:
| https://x.com/RonanFarrow/status/2041203911697068112
| dang wrote:
| It wasn't getting "brigaded down" - it set off a software
| penalty called the flamewar detector. I turned that off as
| soon as I saw it.
| ronanfarrow wrote:
| Thank you for this, very much appreciate the thoughtful
| response.
|
| The piece captures some of the anxieties within OpenAI right
| now about their competitive position. This obviously ebbs and
| flows but of late there has been much focus on Anthropic's
| relative position. We of course mention the allegations of
| "circular deals" and concerns about partners taking on debt.
| cs702 wrote:
| Thank you. Yes, I saw that. The company's always been
| surrounded by endless talk about insane hype, speculative
| bubbles, and financial engineering. I wasn't asking so much
| about that.
|
| I was asking more about your informed view on how OpenAI's
| technology, products, and roadmap are perceived,
| particularly by customers and partners, in comparison to
| those of competitors.
|
| If you have an opinion about that, everyone here would love
| to hear about it.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Many of us prefer OpenAI's Codex, because we think it's a
| better product.
|
| No comment on the CEO: I just find the product superior in
| everything but UI/UX and conversation. It's better at quality
| code.
| mliker wrote:
| Who is "us"? It does seem that some scientists prefer Codex
| for its math capabilities but when it comes to general
| frontend and backend construction, Claude Code is just as
| good and possibly made better with its extensive Skills
| library.
|
| Both codex and Claude code fail when it comes to extremely
| sophisticated programming for distributed systems
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Us = me and say /r/codex or wherever Codex users are.
| I've tried both, liked both, but in my projects one
| clearly produces better results, more maintainable code
| and does a better job of debugging and refactoring.
| sampullman wrote:
| That's interesting, I actively use both and usually find
| it to be a toss up which one performs better at a given
| task. I generally find Claude to be better with complex
| tool calls and Codex to be better at reviewing code, but
| otherwise don't see a significant difference.
| aswanson wrote:
| Any difference in performance on mobile development?
| zeroxfe wrote:
| I'm in that camp -- I have the max-tier subscription to
| pretty much all the services, and for now Codex seems to
| win. Primarily because 1) long horizon development tasks
| are much more reliable with codex, and 2) OpenAI is far
| more generous with the token limits.
|
| Gemini seems to be the worst of the three, and some open-
| weight models are not too bad (like Kimi k2.5). Cursor is
| still pretty good, and copilot just really really sucks.
| ed wrote:
| It's worth noting Codex has 2x more stories than Claude
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=codex
| xnx wrote:
| In depth reporting is great. This is a really tricky topic to
| cover over the course of 18 months. A year and a half ago
| OpenAI was ascendant, now it's -at best- stalling and, more
| likely, trending toward irrelevant.
| taurath wrote:
| The statements around the sexual abuse allegations seemed to be
| the most puzzling to me - his sister's allegations and claims
| of underage partners because he has a tendency to hook up with
| younger partners. It does seem like this piece gives him a
| pretty clean bill of health in that matter - I guess would you
| be able to talk about how you investigated?
|
| Did you do any extra investigations into Annie's allegations?
| It feels to me like the unstated conclusion is recovered memory
| can't be trusted, which is a popular understanding but a very
| wrong one put out by the now defunct and discredited False
| Memory Syndrome Foundation. It was founded by the parents of
| the psychologist who coined DARVO, directly in reaction to her
| accusing them of abuse.
|
| Dissociation is real (I have a dissociative disorder, and abuse
| I "recovered" but did not remember for much of my adolescence
| and early adulthood has been corroborated by third parties) and
| many CSA survivors have severe memory problems that often don't
| come to a head until adulthood. I know you didn't dismiss her
| claim, but the way the public tends to think about recovered
| memories is shaped primarily by that awful organization.
| ronanfarrow wrote:
| All fair points on trauma and memory.
|
| As noted in the piece, we spent months talking to Altman's
| partners and what we found and didn't is as described.
| taurath wrote:
| Thanks for the response! Cheers just fully reread the piece
| and appreciate your reporting.
| girvo wrote:
| It's super neat to see you here on HN taking questions,
| kudos :)
| FloorEgg wrote:
| Hi Ronan,
|
| I would love to read your piece and pay you and new Yorker for
| it, but I am not interested in paying a subscription. If I
| could press a button and pay a reasonable one time license such
| as $3 or $5 for just this article, or better yet a few cents
| per paragraph as they load in, I wouldn't hesitate.
|
| However I'm not going to pay for yet another subscription to
| access one article I'm interested in.
|
| I'm sure you can't do anything about this, but I just wanted
| you to know.
|
| You deserve to be compensated for great journalism. In this
| case, unfortunately, I won't read it and you won't earn income
| from me.
| caycep wrote:
| You could hit up a public library...
| eichin wrote:
| Looking online it looks like the newsstand price of an
| issue is around $10 (which I'd assume is heavily ad
| subsidized, if anyone is still buying print ads?) which is
| an interesting data point for a pricing model. (Of course,
| I looked online because I have no idea where I'd find a
| newsstand around here - the nearest newsstand that show up
| on google maps has reviews that say "It's just snacks and
| scratch tickets." and "three newspapers and no magazines" -
| I may have to stop by just to see what three newspapers
| they have :-)
| IrishTechie wrote:
| I've often thought about a model like this and would love to
| see a few news outlets run it as a pilot and see how it
| stacks up.
| mattbee wrote:
| Or just switch your browser to Reader Mode and it's free.
| cloud_line wrote:
| You could buy a physical copy (and this isn't meant to sound
| sarcastic).
| fblp wrote:
| Hi Ronan appreciate you being here. what would help you and
| others continue to do journalism like this? (including
| commenting on HN?)
| rhlannx wrote:
| I have the feeling that if you write an article in that style,
| the subject of the story becomes the hero even if you insert a
| couple of negatives. In the same manner that Michael Corleone
| becomes the hero of The Godfather.
|
| I'm not pleased with the headline and the general framing that
| AI works. The plagiarism and IP theft aspects are entirely
| omitted. The widespread disillusion with AI is omitted.
|
| On the positive side, the Kushner ad Abu Dhabi involvements
| (and threats from Kushner) deserve a wider audience.
|
| My personal opinion is that "who should control AI" is the
| wrong question. In the current state, it is an IP laundering
| device and I wonder why publications fall silent on this. For
| example, the NYT has abandoned their crown witness Suchir
| Balaji who literally perished for his convictions (murder or
| not).
| Stevvo wrote:
| [delayed]
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Well, no, obviously not. Not one bit.
| LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
| No
| gonzo41 wrote:
| just like Zuck.
| catigula wrote:
| 1. No.
|
| 2. You cannot "control" superintelligent AI.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| No.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Short answer: No. Long answer: Hell, no.
| sumeno wrote:
| Betteridge strikes again
| gchokov wrote:
| He is cooked. Only a matter of time before the whole thing blows
| up. Once a scammer, always a scammer.
| Aboutplants wrote:
| Seeing Sam Altman slowly degrade into the realization that he is
| in fact not as smart as others in this space has been fascinating
| to watch. He used to speak with enthusiasm and confidence and now
| he's like a scared little boy who got in way too deep.
|
| The last person that this happened to was Sam Bankman Fried as
| investors and regular folk finally realized he was full of
| complete shit and could only talk the game for so long until the
| truth emerged.
| therobots927 wrote:
| Let's just hope that scared little boy doesn't run to Daddy
| Trump for a bailout.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| I have a feeling he might be angling for a pardon if he ends
| up bringing the whole global economy down.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| which of the two are you referring to as possibly angling for
| a pardon?
| Findecanor wrote:
| Bankman-Fried has already done it.
| the_doctah wrote:
| And they both peddle the same altruism smokescreen. Sociopath
| leader playbook.
| therobots927 wrote:
| Excellent work. I'll have to wait until we get the print version
| delivered to finish as I'm not signed into the new Yorker on my
| phone.
|
| I've always been a huge fan of Ronan Farrow's journalism and
| willingness to speak truth to power. I think he's pulling at
| exactly the right thread here, and it's very important to
| counteract Altman's reputation laundering given that we run a
| very real risk of him weaseling his way into the taxpayer's
| wallet under the current administration.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| This is above your comment:
| https://archive.is/2026.04.06-100412/https://www.newyorker.c...
| throw4847285 wrote:
| I suspect that they are perfectly capable of clicking an
| archive link or better yet logging in as they are already a
| subscriber. Maybe, like me, they enjoy reading the physical
| magazine.
| lnenad wrote:
| This whole situation goes to show that yesterday's conspiracy
| theorists are today's realists. What's happening to USA's
| leadership and as a country and what's happening with with their
| top companies is really scary for the rest of us. If this trend
| continues we're all definitely gonna end up in a kleptocracy.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Looks like Betteridge's law of headlines applies here too.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any
| headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word
| "NO."
| just_once wrote:
| Amazing that this article and an actual comment from Ronan Farrow
| is this far down the list while...Scientists Figured Out How Eels
| Reproduce (2022) has 6 times the points.
| dang wrote:
| This thread set off a software penalty called the flamewar
| detector.* I turned that off as soon as I saw it.
|
| (* This was predictable from the title, because the question in
| it was inevitably going to trigger an avalanche of crap
| replies. Normally we'd change the title to something less
| baity, and indeed the article is so substantive that it
| deserves a considerably better one. But I'm not going to change
| it in this case, since the story has connections to YC - about
| that see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=fa
| lse&qu....)
| pupppet wrote:
| Ask Conde Nast if he can be trusted..
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/VWJVBNzc2u
| simoncion wrote:
| Uncrappified link: <https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments
| /3cs78i/whats_the...>
| HardwareLust wrote:
| Of course he cannot be trusted. Anyone whose motivation is based
| on greed is by nature untrustworthy.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Even if your motivation is some utopian vision of the future,
| you should not be trusted. Utopia is a thought experiment in a
| philosophy of living taken too far, not something to be reached
| for earnestly.
| jesterson wrote:
| Watch Altman's reaction in Tucker Carlson interview to the
| question about (alleged) murder of OpenAI researcher Suchir
| Balaji.
|
| The overall response and particularly the body language speaks a
| lot.
| kmfrk wrote:
| Gobsmacking details about Altmans' time as Y Combinator
| president, in case anyone's wondering.
|
| Fantastic reporting.
| ronanfarrow wrote:
| As is always the case with incredibly precise and rigorously
| fact-checked reporting like this, where every word is chosen
| carefully (the initial closing meeting for this one was nearly
| eight hours long, with full deliberation about each sentence),
| there is more out there on that subject than is explicitly on
| the page.
| kmfrk wrote:
| One of the decidedly eerier parts of this story as you keep
| reading are all the gaps between what people are _saying_
| about Altman, and what they clearly _want_ to say about
| Altman but _can 't_.
| devmor wrote:
| Throughout my life, what colleagues/friends are unwilling
| to remark plainly on has been the most telling factor of
| someone's character to me.
| GlibMonkeyDeath wrote:
| Disclaimer: I have no association with any AI company and have
| never met Altman or any of the other top AI scientists.
|
| The real question is: can _anyone_ be trusted if the fever dreams
| of super-intelligence come true? Go ahead and replace Sam Altman
| with someone else - will it make a difference? Any other CEO is
| going to be under the same overwhelming pressure to make a profit
| somehow. I think the OpenAI story is messier because it was
| founded for supposedly altruistic reasons, and then changed.
|
| Methinks many of Altman's detractors protesteth too much. He's
| doing his job as it is defined (make OpenAI profitable.) Nothing
| of substance in this article seemed to make him exceptionally
| "sociopathic" compared to any other tech CEO. It goes with the
| territory.
|
| What depressed me most is that _trillions_ of dollars are being
| raised for building what will undoubtedly be used as a weapon. My
| guess is the ROI on that money is going to be extremely bad for
| the most part (AI will make some people insanely rich, but it is
| hard to see how the big investors will get a return.) Could you
| imagine if the world shared the same vision for energy
| infrastructure (so we could also stop fighting wars over control
| of fossil fuels and spewing CO2?) A man can dream...
| tim333 wrote:
| People do vary even if none are perfect. Demis Hassabis has a
| pretty good reputation amongst the AI leaders. Altman seems
| unusually shifty.
| almostdeadguy wrote:
| Seems this got buried from the front page very quickly
| ronanfarrow wrote:
| There is dwindling space for sincere independent accountability
| reporting on big tech like this to a) be created, since it's
| incredibly resource-intensive and so many resources flow from
| Silicon Valley, and b) actually reach people, since more
| platforms are now owned or otherwise influenced by interested
| parties.
|
| Thank you for looking. Please do spread this kind of reporting
| in your communities, and subscribe to investigative outlets
| when you can.
| big_toast wrote:
| You can see the vote history here[1]. It's always hard to
| know exactly why something gets buried. I was a little sad to
| see the story down-ranked when I saw that you were here in
| the comments.
|
| But the discussion is generally pretty low quality with these
| sort of posts. People react without having read the story, or
| with whatever was on their mind already, or are
| insubstantive, or simply low effort. I don't think you'll
| lose k-factor not having a bigger post here.
|
| Sometimes if you talk to the mods, they'll let you know their
| perspective. I generally find they're correct that people are
| much better at contributing/disseminating new knowledge to
| the world on more technical topics here.
|
| [1]: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=47659135
| throw4847285 wrote:
| But isn't that circular? If the ranking algorithm used by
| the mods tends to devalue articles like this because they
| don't trust the user base to comment intelligently, doesn't
| that alter the culture of this site to make that more true?
| dang wrote:
| I'm not sure what big_toast meant, but we do trust the
| user base to comment intelligently (which sometimes works
| and sometimes not), and we don't devalue articles like
| this.
|
| We do tend to devalue _titles_ like this, or more likely
| change them to something more substantive (preferably
| using a representative phrase from the article body), but
| I 'm worried that if I did that here we would get howls
| of protest, since YC is part of the story.
| dang wrote:
| Yes, I was surprised that it was downranked when I saw that
| too. Then I realized it had set off the flamewar detector
| and it was a simple matter to turn it off. I'm glad we got
| to this in time, because sometimes we don't, and this was
| an important case not to miss.
| almostdeadguy wrote:
| This was an excellent piece with many new pieces of
| information in it. Thanks to you and your coauthor for
| getting it released.
| dang wrote:
| It set off the flamewar detector. I've turned that off now.
|
| I only saw this thread by chance and almost didn't look,
| because the title made the piece sound like a flamebait blog
| post. Fortunately I saw newyorker.com beside the title and
| looked more closely.
| innocenttop wrote:
| Why is the story so downranked? Folks at HackerNews have
| something to do with it ?
| randycupertino wrote:
| HN generally downvotes and/or flags anything that paints
| ycombinator in a bad light. As Altman was president of yc from
| 2014 to 2019 that could be why this is getting downvoted.
|
| Articles critical of Airbnb, one of yc's biggest wins, also get
| flagged and taken down.
| dang wrote:
| I'm not sure whether you meant this about moderator
| interventions or not, but our actual practice is the
| opposite:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.
| ..
|
| As those comments explain, this has been the #1 rule of HN
| moderation from the beginning. See also https://hn.algolia.co
| m/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
| lovich wrote:
| I don't think the poster you responded to was claiming that
| moderators directly did this. The flagging system is open
| to bias from the community at large and certain types of
| articles(ex. Anything critical of the current admin) get a
| bunch of real users organically flagging them.
| dang wrote:
| It off the flamewar detector, a,k.a. the overheated discussion
| detector. I've turned that off now - this is obviously a
| serious article.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| A new Ronan Farrow piece is a rare gift (and Marantz is no
| slouch). Can't wait to read this in the physical magazine when it
| arrives!
| guzfip wrote:
| > Lehane--whose reported motto, after Mike Tyson, is "Everyone
| has a game plan until you punch them in the mouth"
|
| lol do you think these guys have ever been hit? Let alone in the
| face. They'd probably be less eager to mouth off as much as they
| do if so.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| For those curious about how sama got to where he got and stayed
| on top for so long, I recommend you read the book: The Sociopath
| Next Door by Martha Stout.
|
| I am fairly confident when I say this -- sama is a sociopath. I
| don't know how anyone with solid intuition could even come to any
| other conclusion than the guy is deeply weird and off-putting.
|
| Some concepts from the book:
|
| > Core trait: The defining characteristic is the absence of
| conscience, meaning they feel no guilt, shame, or remorse.
|
| > Identification: Sociopaths can be charming and appear normal,
| but they often lie, cheat, and manipulate to get what they want.
|
| > The Rule of Threes: One lie is a mistake, two is a concern, but
| three lies or broken promises is a pattern of a liar.
|
| > Trust your instincts over a person's social role (e.g., doctor,
| leader, parent)
|
| Check and check.
|
| OpenAI is too important to trust sama with. He needs to go. In
| fact, AI should be considered a public good, not a commodity pay-
| as-you-go intelligence service.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| I suspect there's some other category, which isn't really a
| sociopath and isn't really a not-sociopath, which we don't have
| a good definition for.
|
| We only say a lot of CEOs are sociopaths because they're in
| that third category we haven't named, where they're very good
| at manipulating people, but also can feel conscience, guilt,
| remorse, etc, perhaps just muted or easier to justify against.
|
| E.g. if you think you're doing something for the betterment of
| mankind, it doesn't really matter if you lie to some board
| members some year during the multi-decade pursuit.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Na, it will be Dario instead of Sam, Id say? :-))
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/hOYMn
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
| aksss wrote:
| "could", "may", "might" - these words do so much heavy lifting in
| "journalism". Almost always it's an invitation to worry and be
| miserable.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| If you are asking if a single human can be trusted with such a
| responsibility, the answer is, by default, no.
| romeroej wrote:
| Can anybody tho?
| morleytj wrote:
| Yeah, some people can more than others.
| jader201 wrote:
| Am I the only one that feels like Claude is clearly winning code
| generation, and Gemini in general LLM?
|
| I just don't feel like OpenAI has a legitimate shot at winning
| any of the AI battles.
|
| Therefore, I feel like "Sam Altman may control our future" is a
| far stretch.
| dominotw wrote:
| how is gemini winning in general llm. what is general llm .
| SwellJoe wrote:
| General LLM is what Apple is paying Google for.
| guelo wrote:
| Well I just canceled my Claude Pro subscription because of the
| mysterious limits that I don't experience with codex, even
| after paying for "extra usage". If Anthropic can't figure out
| their capacity problems they are in trouble.
| chrisjj wrote:
| [delayed]
| slg wrote:
| One thing that stands out when reading profiles like this is the
| number of positive and negative descriptions of the subject that
| agree. For example, there seems to be little dispute that Altman
| will happily say something that he knows/believes isn't true,
| there's just a lot of people who are willing to forgive any lies
| if the lies are in service of something they themselves agree
| with.
| palata wrote:
| > there's just a lot of people who are willing to forgive any
| lies if the lies are in service of something they themselves
| agree with.
|
| Or if the person lying is in a position of power?
| ambicapter wrote:
| > The day that Altman was fired, he flew back to his twenty-
| seven-million-dollar mansion in San Francisco, which has
| panoramic views of the bay and once featured a cantilevered
| infinity pool, and set up what he called a "sort of government-
| in-exile." Conway, the Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky, and the
| famously aggressive crisis-communications manager Chris Lehane
| joined, sometimes for hours a day, by video and phone. Some
| members of Altman's executive team camped out in the hallways of
| the house. Lawyers set up in a home office next to his bedroom.
| During bouts of insomnia, Altman would wander by them in his
| pajamas. When we spoke with Altman recently, he described the
| aftermath of his firing as "just this weird fugue."
|
| These sociopaths are so good at giving away nothing. He managed
| to engender sympathy instead of saying "I'm not gonna talk about
| anything that happened then".
|
| Also very weird how many of these people are so deeply-linked
| that they'll drop everything they're doing just to get this guy
| back in power? Terrifying cabal.
| arionhardison wrote:
| Hi @ronanfarrow -- I have only had one interaction with Sam
| Altman in person, and I was advised to keep it to myself. I know
| this crowd may not care, but Altman is absolutely terrified of
| Black people -- not in any contextual sense, but in a visceral,
| instinctive way. For someone who, as you put it, "controls our
| future," this should matter.
|
| FYI: I am by far not the only one to have experienced this and it
| 100% impacts hiring and other decisions at OpenAI.
| edbaskerville wrote:
| Can you give more details?
|
| It wouldn't particularly surprise me if Sam Altman were racist,
| but I'm curious what the specific incident you observed was.
| wk_end wrote:
| This anecdote is so absurd it sounds like satire. This is the guy
| with the $23M mansion?
|
| > Amodei's notes describe escalating tense encounters, including
| one, months later, in which Altman summoned him and his sister,
| Daniela, who worked in safety and policy at the company, to tell
| them that he had it on "good authority" from a senior executive
| that they had been plotting a coup. Daniela, the notes continue,
| "lost it," and brought in that executive, who denied having said
| anything. As one person briefed on the exchange recalled, Altman
| then denied having made the claim. "I didn't even say that," he
| said. "You just said that," Daniela replied.
| simoncion wrote:
| He's a liar and untrustworthy. Based on their public
| statements, that's a big part of why the board fired him.
|
| Of course, (despite the fact that Altman previously publicly
| stated that it was very important that the board can fire him)
| he got himself unfired very quickly.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Sam Altman may control our future"
|
| TLDR but just the heading is already ugly. No single person no
| matter how nice they're should be able to control our future.
| Power corrupts, what fucking trust. We are supposed to be
| democratic society (well looking at what is going on around this
| is becoming laughable)
| nielsbot wrote:
| No one person control our future. Stop there.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Yeah, but one person can fuck a lot of shit up.
| _moof wrote:
| Some people have far, far more power over our lives than
| others. More than they deserve, frankly.
| swingboy wrote:
| It's really interesting reading about how these folks view LLMs.
| Yeah, they're transformative, but I don't know that we're going
| to be eating ramen in a Neo-Tokyo street bar anytime soon. So
| much "A.G.I" mentioned in the article.
| 0x3f wrote:
| It's because they're really good at the kind of busywork the
| average white collar job requires. Most people are out there
| writing documents and making presentations. Only when you use
| them for actual complexity does the shortfall become clear.
| ninjahawk1 wrote:
| OpenAI is like #3 or #4 of the AI companies right now in terms of
| power, and last place in the court of public opinion.
|
| I'd be more concerned about Anthropic both being in the good
| graces of the public and having access to all of our computers
| indirectly with Claude Code.
| 0x3f wrote:
| OpenAI has ~30x the userbase of Anthropic.
| aduffy wrote:
| I'm not sure how much of that converts to revenue. If it's
| free plan users, that's just cost. You can say what you want
| about "creating a training data moat" but that doesn't seem
| like it's prevented the other labs from putting out excellent
| models.
| estearum wrote:
| makes sense if you think the point of journalism is just to
| take everyone down a notch instead of... um... informing the
| public of bad actors
|
| "the local drug-dealing pimp is so passe, we need to
| investigate the most upstanding members of the community _just
| to be sure_ " is a frankly insane strategy
| killbot5000 wrote:
| No. Why is this a question?
| bijowo1676 wrote:
| This article is just another typical New Yorker fluff piece that
| tries to look deep but misses the actual point.
|
| The biggest flaw is that it spends way too much time on high-
| school level drama and "he-said-she-said" gossip about Sam
| Altman's personal life instead of focusing on the actual
| technical and corporate capture of OpenAI.
|
| The author treats the "nonprofit mission" like some holy quest
| that was "betrayed," when anyone with a brain in tech saw the
| Microsoft deal as the moment the original vision died. Instead of
| a hard-hitting look at how compute-monopolies are actually
| forming (MSFT AMZN NVDA and circular debt dealing inflating the
| AI bubble that could crash the economy), we get 5,000 words of
| hand-wringing over whether Sam is a "nice guy" or a "liar."
|
| Who cares???????
|
| The board failed because they had no real leverage against
| billions of dollars, not because they didn't write enough Slack
| messages. It's a long-winded way of saying "Silicon Valley has
| internal politics," which isn't news to anyone here.
| simoncion wrote:
| Can Sam "The board can fire me, I think that's important." Altman
| be trusted?
|
| If for no other reason, given what happened when the board fired
| him... no. I'd say not.
| ergocoder wrote:
| I wonder if Sam might abandon the ship soon. Other co-founders
| already did.
|
| The main reason is that he gets all the downsides without the
| upsides. I know $5B is a lot but, for a 700B company, it isn't.
| If OpenAI was a regular for-profit, he would have been worth
| >$100B already.
|
| This is probably _one_ of the significant factors why other co-
| founders left too. It 's just a lot of headaches with relatively
| low reward.
| asK1ajsh wrote:
| The New Yorker is owned by Conde Nast just as Reddit. Conde Nast
| has a deal with OpenAI:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-signs-deal-with-co...
|
| This is a damage control piece, and you see that the most
| stinging comments here get downvoted.
| primer42 wrote:
| "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the
| word no."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
| ambicapter wrote:
| I didn't have the mental energy to read the whole thing but man
| the final paragraph is some really good writing. Way to tie it
| all in together.
| atlgator wrote:
| Saved you 18 months of investigative journalism: no.
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