Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

The backlash is "painful"? Maybe don't make a moralizing tweet about your principles only to change them three hours later. It comes off as opportunistic grifting.

I don't blame the OpenAI staff (and as far as I am aware most people don't). Most of us end up working for assholes if you go far enough up the chain, but it's different when the CEO tries to earn social credit by having his principles, only to seize on an opportunity and just ignore those principles. He can say "oh well they pinky swore they wouldn't abuse this or redefine laws to say what they're doing is 'lawful'", but I personally would have trouble trusting the words of a convicted fraudster lolcow that we decided to elect as president and an alcoholic Fox News host. I guess that makes me a "radical leftist" though, I'm sure that the 10000 IQ people always trust convicted criminals.

I'm sure Sam Altman will make his money, and I'm sure that OpenAI will continue to take over the world like before, but I don't have to fund it myself, hence why I canceled my ChatGPT Plus and signed up for Claude. I'm sure that the CEO for that company will be a douche eventually too, but at least as of right now he seems to have a shrapnel of integrity.

I can't read most of the article because most of the common archiving sites don't appear to work.

The "Backlash" he is referring to is people canceling their OpenAI accounts and going to Claude. And by "Painful" he means less money. - Professional CEO Sam Speak Interpreter

I mean, I guess. It's not like they're profitable yet are they? At least not at the consumer level as far as I am aware. Me canceling my subscription might have saved them money.

Honestly I think these tech billionaires are very thin-skinned and they don't like people saying mean things about them, and I think a lot of them are completely unable to reconcile this simple fact: when you're a billionaire, you don't fucking get to have a normal life.

You didn't have to get billions of dollars of wealth. If you get into a situation like that, then yes your actions are going to be scrutinized more than a nobody like me. People are going to call you an asshole when you do asshole things more than when some random nobody does something assholey. You chose to be popular and powerful; if you don't like that then there's no law saying you can't get a regular 9-5 job like the rest of us.

Trickles often turn into streams and streams into rivers.

"I'm sure that OpenAI will continue to take over the world like before"

Each day that goes by Im more convinced OAI will not be a healthy going-concern without government help, which most likely will not be granted.

I dunno. They were valued last week at $700+ billion weren't they? When you have that kind of capital available I'm not entirely sure how possible it even is to go bankrupt.

Regardless, my point is that one dude canceling his $20/month subscription probably isn't going to affect anything, but it's basically all I can do.

"They were valued last week at $700+ billion weren't they?" So?

The money they have available is what is on the balance sheet, which they are burning right-through whilst facing immense competition and never-ending reinvestment, given that Google will carry on doing so. Cash flows from operations is a big fat negative.

I see Google first killing OAI, then eventually doing the same to Anthropic, once they figure out a suite of products that truly revolutionises the work of a sofware engineer beyond just talking to a chat interface, and bundle it into their existing offerings for enterprise.

I guess I just feel like when you're worth that much, you can be unprofitable for a very long time before it catches up with you. That's my perspective anyway, I could be wrong.

I agree that if anyone is going to kill OpenAI it's likely Google. They have even more funding and already have giant training indexes for search that they could likely leverage to improve their models in a way that OpenAI can't.

Thing is, that valuation is kind of based on vibes. If people get less enthusiastic about them (or just the sector in general), that valuation will go down. Their ability to raise money off it is limited.

Yeah it takes awhile for investors to start actually valuing things, they usually 'price' them which is mainly driven by mood and momentum.

Given that pricing is the name of the game, all should be wary of what interests founders and their employees who are paid via stock based compensation...

The money they raised is basically already spent.

On DRAM that hasn't even been fabbed yet. :(

Trying to create shortages etc is just typical Scam Altman behaviour and really speaks to how vulnerable he feels against Google's might.

There was a point where Google's existence was questioned, but they've been working away quietly and they'll win the long game. Altman viewed OAI as a way to reduce Google's AI dominance - I think when we look back in history it'll turn out he made it worse. Google wasn't all that interested in releasing LLMs out into the wild.

I tend to think you're right about Google. Just for the simple reason that webmasters everywhere try their best to keep OpenAI's crawlers out, while simultaneously trying their best to attract Google's.

I'm choosing to wear "radical leftist" as a badge of honour, just by the words and actions of those who use that terminology for condemnation.

Stay the course (figurative) brother.

(This account may be permanently disavowed in the unlikely event I need to travel to the US)

> don't make a moralizing tweet about your principles only > to change them three hours later.

I have no inside scoop, but it sure looks like this was all pre-arranged. Altman made a better offer to Hegseth/ Trump (or offered some other "inducement"), so Hegseth found this way to weasel out of the contract with Anthropic. I don't see how this all would have transpired that quickly otherwise. And of course the fact that three days later OpenAI reportedly got the same contingencies on its contract that were the supposed reason for cancelling Anthropic's contract just looks wrong.

Entirely possible, though I think it might have been that Anthropic wanted extra guarantees outside of what was "lawful".

The stuff that Altman mentioned seemed to indicate that they'll support the US government as long as the US government is following the law, ignoring the "if the president does it it's not illegal" mentality that this administration appears to be taking.

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