Sam has zero charisma. Zero looks. No technical ability. He's not a storyteller. He's not a hype man. He comes off as a mildly surly sloth when he talks.
His actual pre-OpenAI achievements from a product perspective are a joke.
But he was nevertheless "there" for YC and "there" in OpenAI, and a bunch of money was raised, and he's successfully managed to get all spotlights on him at all times, so he's highly visible.
He's like a weird geek following plays from Trumps book: just stay highly visible, associate with any possible win, and be at the center of attention.
Why does it work? Because subconsciously who WOULDNT want to operate this way in life? It takes the least amount of effort compared to many other job tracks or even CEO tracks, and it's become wildly profitable for him.
So the cult of personality idolizing America of today can't help but want their tech Jesus fantasy to work out.
Which, assuming he’s like everyone else who’s done that, was accomplished by a combination of flattery and willingness to operate on behalf of the ruling class totally untethered from any principles whatsoever.
This way only insiders recognise the most fundamental realpolitical power struggles of all ages; that the "very confusing" wars, coups or power grabs is not very complex at all but always - almost as a physical principle - stemming from the richest members of society pulling the strings to benefit themselves.
Then some note or some FOIA request will be released in 40 years about the orchestration and no one will care.
Just follow the money, or the networks of people and it's easy to see the undercurrents of class warfare, elite power via the security state or oligarch clubs siphoning money and power away from the public, but that's called conspiracy these days and is dangerous (to the ruling classes).
It's amazing how much this is actually never true. Politics is largely about sincerely-held ideologies.
That's why it's a minority position. Most people aren't low-openness conspiracy theorists.
It's like the midwit meme where the people at both ends agree.
Do you think we invaded Iraq for their oil, or that anyone profited from it? (Answer to both is no.)
Close. Politics is about interests. It’s about who gets the resources and who gets status and dignity and who doesn’t.
There are a lot of sincerely held ideologies that rise up around those questions. But if you don’t analyze politics through that lens you’re fucking delusional.
These three things are all opposing; you can't "and" them. And you shouldn't put the first one first, as people in the first world are generally too rich to care about it, and when they do care they never put any work into figuring out what would benefit them.
Thus you get votes for president based on gas prices, trust fund kids being communists, Mississippi continually voting 100% for the party that keeps them at the bottom of every state ranking, people thinking the Iraq War was for oil, people thinking the current Ukraine War is good for Russia, and so on.
nb when I said sincerely held ideologies I meant for the people in politics; voters largely have sincerely held nonsensical positions they haven't thought about much, or in other words are "cross-pressured".
This "you're just a conspiracy nut" perspective for looking at actual networks of power and sources, became common after journalism pretty much died with local media as they shifted to ownership from a few parent conglomerates all working for elite interest.
Now news is about "ideas" and "events" not key players, money and networks of power ultimately benefiting the richest that kan in turn easily sway public opinion without resistance through PR, think tanks and media ownership.
I don't know when you think this rather beautiful "sincere belief in ideology" became the primary driver of history and politics, to me that's a highly naive after a bachelors in History and a love for the pretty standard historiographical realpolitical and resource oriented lenses adjacent to works like Guns, Germs and Steel.
Generally when I see people use this they're misreading it. For instance, they'll see donations from people working at Google to a campaign and think they're donations "by Google" to a campaign, but companies can't donate to campaigns. It's also unlikely politicians sincerely care that much about a campaign donation capped at $3000.
In general if you think things are about the money you should be happy with politics, because the highest-raising politicians are Bernie Sanders and crew with $25 Actblue donations. But what actually happens is that they raise more money than Republican politicians and then still lose elections in red states. Republican voters and politicians both actually believe what they're saying.
There's never been an alternative to vote for, and every attempt gets smeared in the media owned by the two-party system representing the oligarchs.
Candidates like Bernie who's still in line with most of above policies are showcased as alternatives but the distribution of power is never challenged outside of the arena of identity political circus boosted by conglomerate media.
Obama was also good example of this, PR outsider on the surface but in reality funded by the same bankers and continued global US adventurism.
Politics is downstream from elite interests when they own the media, the parties, the candidates and intermingle with the security state to take care of the rest.
This becomes especially apparent when looking back at the media landscape pre mergers, where a plurality of opinion and research existed from well respected classical journalists challenging local and state power, in what would today be smeared as conspiracy theorising or anti-patriotism while the overton window has become microscopic unless towing the line for the unfathomably rich.
> There's never been an alternative to vote for, and every attempt gets smeared in the media owned by the two-party system representing the oligarchs.
The two parties aren't controlled by anyone except primary voters. There is hardly any mechanism in the US to stop anyone who wants from joining either party, as long as you can get votes.
This is an unusual case of other countries' politics infecting ours; in other countries the parties actually can fire people and control their candidate list. Here they can't do anything.
Also the US doesn't have oligarchs. That's a specific word with a specific meaning. Closest you can get would be defense contractor CEOs but those just aren't that important here; you probably only know one.
I had to read that twice, but it was well worth it.
It seems more likely to me, given his background (programming from 8, accepted to Stanford CS) that he has technical aptitude, but he has even more dealmaking ability.
https://www.quora.com/Is-Sam-Altman-highly-technical-Has-he-... - Patrick Collison says he had technical conversations on Lisp machine implementations and iframe security policies, which to me is a measure of some depth.
And on hype, I think the carefully staged GPT PR over the years had an element of controlled hype. I remember them talking about how they couldn't release it because of how e.g. spammers could use it - https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/14/18224704/ai-machine-learn...
(They weren't entirely wrong, there's a flood of junk text out there now. Twitter popular posts have their replies flooded by AI-generated "on topic" responses by bots. Content mills are switching to AI.)
Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. On questions of design, I ask "What would Steve do?" but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask "What would Sama do?"
What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want.
Quite frankly, every time I read one of Altman's essays I am seriously underwhelmed as far as smartness goes.
Also, some people would rather be shot than talk in front of a crowd or get up in front an audience. I used to have panic attacks during introductions in small meetings, and now I'm the one who spots the nervous professionals and helps them feel that they belong.
Anyway, that's all to say there's value in it. I don't personally enrich myself off of it, but if I could offer a correction to your dim view of the imperfect, the world isn't actually run by intimidatingly charismatic, beautiful geniuses, and I have found that helping people that have the simple capacity for success connect and communicate isn't a worthless skill.
Companies, specially start up, are growth garbage. Grow. Grow. Grow.
And CEOs today who get visibility win. Period. e.g. Musk, Sam.
relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/125/
Who would you prefer, a sensible, technical, honest CEO driving real efforts or this media circus? There might be a dime a dozen AI startups doing more science based innovation instead of this moore-law-llm. But they don't have the media attention, so their offices are probably empty.
(btw, IMHO i think all of this board non-sense is planned PR, by the company or Sam, which might have gotten out of hand)
PS: The only thing people should be talking from that article is the only fact. That he was hired by YC to vet startups, and instead invested in them from his brother fund. Yet, here we are, talking about everything but it.