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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> Paul Graham came out publicly to defend Sam, and we instantly have this blog post about, wait, just a sec, let's dissect actually why Sam is still evil

I'm not seeing good and evil in this post. It's calling Sam out for not being transparent. Given he's elevated OpenAI, in public testimony, to an extinction-level threat to humanity, that lack of transparency is of public concern.

Not being transparent doesn't make him evil, doesn't mean he is unlikeable and doesn't per se mean he's dishonest. (Though OpenAI and he do have a likeability problem, at least in politics, albeit one I think they can fix.)

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That’s exactly what I was going for — the issue of transparency here. It wasn’t dissecting why he’s “bad”, it’s that the public statements don’t match up with financial realities.

Maybe next time I could press more about the transparency factor, but I thought it was concise enough.

> public statements don’t match up with financial realities

Has he ever plead poverty?

Obviously not, but as I state in the article he has plead:

> “He owns no stake in the ChatGPT developer, saying he doesn’t want the seductions of wealth to corrupt the safe development of artificial intelligence, and makes a yearly salary of just $65,000.”

According to OpenAI themselves.

So he takes a “low” salary and no ownership as to, according to him and the company, not influence his decisions in the pursuit of financial gain — yet that’s a complete omission of the whole truth.

I’ll stop short of calling it a flat-out lie, but a mischaracterization of reality for sure.

> I’ll stop short of calling it a flat-out lie, but a mischaracterization of reality for sure.

In my opinion a mischaracterisation of reality is just a lie with layers of indirection to weasel oneself out of it. It's definitely a lie.

> albeit one I think they can fix

Money, a little image coaching, and have Aaron Sorkin write a movie.

(We've seen a similar situation before.)

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