Sam Altman Is Full of Shit | Hacker News Reader

Sam Altman Is Full of Shit

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111 points_tk_18 comments

Title is a bit inflammatory.

It will be interesting to see what happens when big tech starts battling big content again. The two titans of American industry occasionally spar, but it's a bit of a crapshoot who ends up winning -- Google beat the publishers, AI will probably beat them as well, the music industry lost to an overwhelming assault from all sides, but the movie industry has stayed fairly strong.

I think that OpenAI might have made a bit of mistake trying to pull a fast one with someone in the motion picture industry. If there's a lot of truth to the story that SJ put out there, it'll cost OpenAI a bit.

Long-term this will probably just be a blip and I'd give this story another month before it gets forgotten. Not a huge fan of Sam's antics, but this feels like everyone is a bit hyperfocused on a minor civil/ethics issue (of which there are more, I'm sure).

I'm really enjoying this blog. It's nice to know there's someone else out there that doesn't lionise these arseholes. HN can easily make you think otherwise.

I have to concur with the title. I had thought he was a decent guy but that was just spin.

Lest we also forget WorldCoin, where Sam thinks it's a good idea and ok to scan people's retinas for funny fake internet money. Oh and he decided to start the collection of retinas in sub-Saharan Africa, targeting people who have a higher chance of not knowing what this project really is.

A project that has been banned in multiple countries already.

Yeah, no, no-one should trust a single thing Sam Altman says or does.

As a WorldCoiner it's not that bad. We're happy, Worldcoin is happy. It's only people not involved on forums who seem upset at us. And the odd politician but not actual users.

The possibly good content in this article was ruined by the fact that the author hasn’t seen AI produce anything yet, and completely dismisses AI.

His rant extends to all the big players building AI in a way that just seems anti-AI, with Altman being used because he’s topical.

In other words I can’t trust the source—even if he might have some actual insights—because he’s outed himself as a hater.

Haters hating things isn’t signal.

He really is. Listen to the interviews he's given lately, completely content-free, it's like he's GPT-4 himself. Perhaps that's not a fair way to judge someone's character, but even the most buttoned-up corporate mouthpieces comes off as genuine compared to him. It's much much harder to earn back the benefit of the doubt once you've lost it and he's pretty close to losing it entirely.

> This was also the week where OpenAI dissolved its team focused on the long-term risks of AI, and Jan Leike, its former co-head, resigned claiming that he disagreed with the "core priorities" of OpenAI's leadership, saying that his team — which, to be clear, dealt with the safety implications of artificial intelligence — was "sailing against the wind" at OpenAI

This is more than enough reason to be severely critical of companies that dissolve their ethics committees like this.

How has this submission dropped from the front page to page 9?

It could have been flagged by some. The title is quite harsh.

I flagged it because

1. As the general public we don't have the full picture, and Sam Altman (as far as I know) hasn't even had the opportunity to provide his own side to the story.

2. It's inflammatory clickbait

3. It's unkind

4. The author is being reactive, again without the full picture or knowing either person involved

It could take years to lawyer this out in court. Why shouldn't we discuss it now?

Sam Altman has plenty of opportunity to give his side. Everything he says gets published and repeated. His reaction — pulling the voice — tells us what we need to know, because if OpenAI and Altman didn’t steal Johansson’s voice they could confidently defend against the claim.

Altman’s track record and ongoing behavior make giving him the benefit of the doubt an increasingly stupid decision. He earned the skepticism and cynicism with his own statements and behavior. We need to stop worshipping and enabling sociopaths.

1. Not a reason to avoid discussion. More than that, we have enough of a picture as this blog post shows with its blizzard of supporting links.

2. It's on the nose, though.

3. The truth is often unkind, especially for con-men. It's like listing out all the crap Bernie Madoff or SBF pulled and then saying "it's unkind" to list those things out.

4. The author is sounding an alarm of rationality. Again, we have enough of a picture, and there is enough at stake to discuss things that are happening in public, in front of the world, to the public.

Edward Zitron is on a roll raging against "the man" in tech - google, Facebook, OpenAI. I guess it's good for readership.

It warms my heart to see this sentiment shared more on HN.

We're lucky that Scarlett Johansson is such a bad ass.

She was the one who led the legal battle for streaming residuals, and now she's behind the first instance of successful push back against these unethical sociopaths.

I wish I could thank her.

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