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Comment by naremu | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, as far as I can tell, the case FOR Sam seems to largely be of the status quo "Well, idk, he's been rich and successful for years, surely this correlates and we must keep them" type of coddling those in uber superior positions in society.

Which seems like it probably is a self fulfilling prophecy. The private sector lottery winners seem to be awarded kingdoms at an alarming rate.

There's been lots of people asking what Sam's true value proposition to the company is, and...I haven't seen anything other than what could be described above.

But I suppose we've got to be nice to those who own rather than make. Won't anyone have mercy on well paid management?

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The fact that multiple top employees quit in protest when he was fired suggests to me that they found him valuable.

Well, if there's one thing I've learned, is that a venture capitalist proposing biometric world crypto coins does probably have quite a bit of charisma to keep people opening doors for them.

Frankly I've heard of worse loyalties, really. If I was sam's friend I'd definitely be better off in any world he had a hand in defining.

That is something that Sam Altman did with his own money. And it's fair he's criticized for his choices, but that has nothing to do with his role at Open AI.

How many employees have actually quit?

And how many of them work on the models?

He and Greg founded the company. They hired the early talent after a meeting that Sam initiated. Then led the company to what it is today.

Compared to...

The OpenAI Non-Profit Board where 3 out of 4 members appear to have significant conflicts of interest or lack substantial experience in AI development, raising concerns about their suitability for making certain decisions.

Is Ilya not a co-founder as well? And I don't think Sam has substantial AI research experience either.

No he was hired early, but not there from the beginning. Elon recruited him after public announcement of funding.

Looks like he was hired.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-int...

Elon brought him in, which is quite the irony. Funny even. It also is the reason Elon and Larry Page don’t get along anymore.

Ilya is certainly world class in his field, and maybe good to listen to what he has to say

> The private sector lottery winners seem to be awarded kingdoms at an alarming rate.

Proven success is a pretty decent signal for competence. And while there is a lot of good fortune that goes into anyone's success, there are a lot of people who fail, given just as much good fortune as those who excelled. It's not just a random lottery where competence plays no role at all. So, who better to reward kingdoms to?

>Proven success is a pretty decent signal for competence.

Interestingly this is exactly what all financial advice tends to actually warn about rather than encourage, that previous performance does not indicate future performance.

I suppose if they entered an established market and dominated it from the bootstraps that'd build a lot of trust in me. But others have pointed out, Sam went from dotcom fortune, to...vague question marks, to ycombinator, to openai. Not enough is clear to declare him wozniak, or even jobs, as many have been saying (despite investors calling him as such)

Sam altman is seemingly becoming the new post-fame elon musk: the type of person who could first afford the strategic safety net and PR to keep the act afloat.

Ok then what better signal do you propose should be used to predict success as a CEO?

The fact is that most people can't do what Sam Altman has done at all, so at the very least that past success makes him in one of the few percent of people who have a fighting chance.

Stock pickers are not the same as CEOs.

> Interestingly this is exactly what all financial advice tends to actually warn about rather than encourage, that previous performance does not indicate future performance.

It’s important to put those disclaimers in context though. The rules that mandated them came out before the era of index funds. Those disclaimers are specifically talking about fund managers. And it’s true that past performance at picking stocks does not indicate future performance of picking stocks. Out side of that context, past performance is almost always a strong indicator of future performance.

One key reason past performance cannot be used to predict future returns is because market expectations tend to price in expected future returns. Also, nothing competitive is expected to generate economic profit forever— in the long run things even out. In the long run, firms and stock pickers usually end up with normal profit.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t get some useful ideas about future performance from a person’s past results compared to other humans. There is no such effect in play here.

Otherwise, time for me to go beat Steph Curry in a shooting contest.

Of course there’s other reasons past performance is imperfect as a predictor. Fundamentals can change, or the past performance could have been luck. Maybe Steph’s luck will run out, or maybe this is the day he will get much worse at basketball, and I will easily win.

No dotcom fortune, just a failed startup that lost its investors money assuming it ever had an expense in its lifetime. OpenAI might in fact be the first time Altman has been in the vicinity of an object-level success; it depends on how you interpret his tenure at YC.

Often, leaders provide excellent strategic planning even if they are not completely well versed with the business domain, by way of outlining high level plans, communicating well, building a good team culture, and so on.

However, trying to distinguish the exact manners in which the leader does so is difficult[1], and therefore the tendency is to look at the results and leave someone there if the results are good enough.

[1] If you disagree with this statement, and you can easily identify what makes a good leader, you could make a literal fortune by writing books and coaching CEOs on how to not get fired within a few years.

The case for Sam is the success of OpenAI while Sam was CEO. If the status quo is wild success, then keeping the status quo is a good thing.

The company's goal is not your definition of success

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