This makes sense. He perfectly fits their cliche of a socially-awkward technologist, and he's trusting (foolish?) enough to make complex nuanced statements in public, which they can easily mine for out-of-context clickbait and vilification fodder.
I'm honestly hoping I'm entirely ignorant of his substance and would feel better if someone here can explain there's more to him than that… I would feel better knowing that what could be history's most disruptive tech is being led by someone with some vision for it, beyond the apocalypse that he described in 2016 that he tries not to think about too much:
"The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...
That seems to be the curse of Silicon Valley, worshiping abstractions to the point of nonsense. He would probably say that with AGI, we can make people immortal, infinitely intelligent, and so on. These are just potentialities with, again, 0 concrete vision. What would we use that power for? Altman has no idea.
At least Musk has some amount of storytelling about making humanity multiplanetary you may or may not buy into. AI "visionaries" seem to have 0 narrative except rehashed, high-level summaries of sci-fi novels. Is that it?
Would it be better if Google, Tesla or Microsoft / Apple / CCP or any other for profit company did it?
Personally my take on Elon is something like this – he found a vacuum in the industry of smart engineers who want to work on something truly ambitious, the kind of people who feel most SV startups are bullshit. And as a sci-fi nerd he came in with money and pitched several sci-fi ambitious project ideas/visions that attracted these engineers etc. to make them happen. And I think he was rewarded for this. You could tally that as another vision that he had that was onto something.
I wish that "actual reality" was all that mattered and not such low-knowledge "optics", but sadly we don't live in that world.
2015: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/sam-altman...
2016: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...
..
That last link, Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny, is worth the read. However the last time I posted that link HN went down for an hour right afterwards. (of course correlation is not causation :/)
I'll assume you meant Sam. IMO Sam is mostly just shy and cerebral, but to many people that will come off as awkward and robotic.
Watch his recent Lex Fridman interview. Personally I thought it was great, but I'm aware enough to realize that (sadly) many low-knowledge people will judge such demeanor harshly.
Mark my words: the media will, 10 times out of 10, exploit that misconception, not correct it. "Ye knew my nature when you let me climb upon your back..."
The only things missing were lighting from below and scenes of robots driving human slaves.
Although he s much more prepared to face the next Greta (Yudowksi)
He has to fix his vocal fry however, it is annoying
The headline is a great start. Contradictions are bad. Altman has contradictions. Therefore Altman is bad. They don't say it, but they also know they don't need to. They lead the audience to water and trust that enough of them will drink.
The closing paragraph is another great example. It intentionally leaves the reader hanging on the question "so why did Altman do AI if there are moral downsides," without resolving the question by giving Altman's context when he said it.
Trust me or don't, but what you see here is just the beginning. In 6 month's time Altman will be (in the public's eye) evil incarnate.
I feel they left it on that point not as part of some grand conspiracy theory, but because the potential for this to be good or bad is a question taking place around the world right now.
Overall this piece feels positive towards Sam, despite what you feel is a negatively loaded headline. He's walking a delicate balance between profit and nonprofit, between something that could be harmful or helpful to society -- these things are in contradiction and he's making those choices deliberately. This is an interesting subject for an article.
I find it deeply unlikely he will be viewed like Musk in 6 months. Musk is a fairly special case as he's unhinged and unstable more than evil. If someone wanted to paint Sam with an evil stick, Zuckerberg would be a more apt comparison -- playing with something dangerous that affects all of us.
The media operates on a "nearest cliché" algorithm, and the Mad/Evil Genius cliché is so emotionally appealing here that they'll find it irresistible. Even if it's not true, they'll make it true.
Don't say I didn't warn you. :)