Comment by upwardbound | Hacker News Reader

Comment by upwardbound | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The article refers to Tech Twitter, and that’s where the sexism is.

People on Twitter are making degrading memes of her and posting weird, creepy, harassing comments like this: “Why does Helen Toner have shelf tits” https://x.com/smolfeelshaver/status/1726073304136450511?s=46

Search for “Helen Toner” on Twitter and you will see she is being singled out for bullying by a bunch of weird creepy white dudes who I guess apparently work in tech.

> I think the AI safety community is a little early and notoriety therein probably isn’t sufficient to qualify somebody to direct an $80 bn company.

Normally you’d be right. In the specific case of OpenAI, however, their charter requires safety to be the number one priority of their directors, higher than making money or providing stable employment or anything else that a large company normally prioritizes. This is from OpenAI’s site:

“each director must perform their fiduciary duties in furtherance of its mission—safe AGI that is broadly beneficial” https://openai.com/our-structure

In my opinion...

If you want to be the titan of an industry and do things that put you at the center of media attention, you have to expect comments of this kind and not be surprised when they happen. Whether you are a man, a woman or anybody else.

If you don't expect "not very nice" or ambivalent reactions from people, you are an amateur and you shouldn't be in the board of such a prominent company.

True. I just think it’s messed up that she is equally qualified for this specific board (given the unusual fiduciary duty definition defined in the OpenAI charter I linked above) as e.g. Adam D’Angelo, and I don’t see a bunch of creepy people [note: I edited this part because fsckboy made a good point] hating on him despite him also being part of this same exact power struggle. What does founding Quora have to do with developing safe, beneficial AGI? If anything, Adam seems like more of a token board member than Helen, in that Adam is “token rich dude from early days at Google or Facebook”.

Being at the forefront of the development of new technologies means that you are sailing uncharted territory. It's my belief that in cases like this, previous qualifications are almost irrelevant.

Of course you have to be competent on the subject matter, work hard, iterate and have luck.

>...creepy white dudes

annnnd you just shredded your credibility with some casual bigotry

You’re right. I’m sorry for that blunder and I edited my comment to correct it.

Why? He was right on the money.

Because despite a sudden popularity of viewing white people as sub-human or non-human, they are in fact human, and this made that remark explicitly sexist and racist.

He does seem token in that regard but it was a known quality of tokenism. Being a founder of Quora and a CTO at Facebook has enough cache to explain being on the board of directors for another tech company. I took Tasha and Helen being grouped together happening not due to being women but due to being relatively unknown

> I don’t see a bunch of creepy people [note: I edited this part because fsckboy made a good point] hating on him despite him also being part of this same exact power struggle.

I'm not sure where I am on the creepy scale but I'm happy to hate on him because I really don't think he should be anywhere near that board. And yes, Helen Toner does have a claim. Not sure about the level of experience in the typical role of a board member but plenty of cred when it comes to the subject matter.

That’s a tweet with <500 views, a number of which I assume is because you linked it.

> weird creepy white dudes…

This is racism. And sexist. How do you know it’s white people or dudes?

I don’t know about this tweet’s author. I mean that most of the people slandering her on Twitter are white men based on their profile pictures. But you’re right that I still shouldn’t stereotype; I’m sorry.

Okay some guy posted that with literally no likes? “Weird loner is weird on the internet, gets no engagement, news at 11”

I agreed with you up until I looked her up. Then Tasha McCauley, who I forgot was Joseph Gordon-Levitt's wife. Shivon Zillis, Elon Musk's whatever that is.

So these three plus Mira Murati make 4 for 4 hot women governing OpenAI. I'm not a Data Scientist but that's a pattern. Not one ugly woman who has a concept of AI governance? Not one single George Elliot-looking genius?

I noticed this too but it's easily explainable as a coincidence so calling it a pattern is a bit far stretched, especially when at least two of them have subject creds.

Oh I def think it's a pattern but I don't know that it's a bad pattern. Honestly, being married to Joseph Gordon-Levitt is probably a good sign.

Have you also mentally slotted all of the male board members into “hot” or “not” categories, or is this a treatment that only the women get?

Honestly, maybe you're right and they're all hot, but I'm not attracted to men so I can't really say. I would be surprised if women/et al found Altman or Sutskever physically attractive but who knows maybe they are kinda cute. What do you think?

Are you claiming that physical appearance has nothing to do with politics, or that we just shouldn't comment on it?

I think it's pretty obvious that the OpenAI men aren't too attractive by most standards, as opposed to say US presidents, who are mostly sexually attractive.

"hot women", not quite, they're just not ugly.

Women are socially allowed to use artificial means to greatly improve their appearance. I'm referring to makeup and expensive hair treatments. Women from upper-middle or upper classes have even more of an advantage in using these. So if you're a thin woman, unless you were unlucky enough to be born disfigured, you're a single afternoon away of looking like a movie star.

If Sam Altman was socially allowed to wear makeup and a wig, you'd call him a heartthrob.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com