Why is Sam Altman so obsessed with 'Her'? An investigation | Hacker News Reader

Why is Sam Altman so obsessed with 'Her'? An investigation

bloodinthemachine.com

26 pointsgrugagag14 comments

> Finally, Altman’s admiration is also a bit puzzling in that the AIs don’t ever really do anything amazing for society, even while they’re here. They distract lonely people for a while, fuck them, and vanish onto another plane of existence. That’s shaping up to be an increasingly plausible trajectory for OpenAI, too.

Scathing.

What an intriguing viewpoint! Never crossed my mind

Oh so the Elon trajectory.

Altman: mentions “Her” once on Twitter

The guy nobody has ever heard of: “why is he so obsessed”

Really, folks? Slow news day?

You left out that Altman also just launched a real-world version of the AI featured in the film, including replicating the lead actor's voice without her consent.

I'm not sure that qualifies as obsessed, but there's no doubt that he is aiming to specifically imitate the vision of the film, and ignoring (as the article points out) the irony of trying to replicate an AI that, in the end, abandons humanity.

But it’s not the same voice, and it’s not “AI featured in the film”. GPT4 is not designed to sustain romantic relationships with humans, nor is it an “operating system”

The AI in the film is not designed to sustain romantic relationships either. It's sold as a "virtual assistant" that helps you on your computer.

The original Sky voice (which was changed) is arguably as close as you can get to a synthetic Scarlett Johansson voice.

You can take issue with "obsessed", but it's a bit disingenuous to go to other end of the spectrum and misrepresent the entirety of the facts.

In the least, Altman made it a product priority to strive for replicating the AI "experience" illustrated in the movie.

How do you we know this? He first approached the actual actor voicing the AI in the movie way before the product launch.

That’s one version of events, and the “made it product priority” part is not supported by evidence. What I think is more likely: they hired a voice actress that sounds like a “California woman of indeterminate age” and when the resulting model came out someone noticed that this sounds sort of like Johansson with a lot less vocal fry and decided to try and pay her off so she doesn’t raise hell.

> That’s one version of events, and the “made it product priority” part is not supported by evidence. What I think is more likely: they hired a voice actress that sounds like a “California woman of indeterminate age” and when the resulting model came out someone noticed that this sounds sort of like Johansson with a lot less vocal fry and decided to try and pay her off so she doesn’t raise hell.

What are you talking about? The facts are:

(1) OpenAI reached out to ScarJo initially and she declined. (2) They then reached out again a second time 2 days before ChatGPT-4o launched and she didn't respond. (3) OpenAI proceeded with the launch anyway.

Did they reach out to her before or after hiring the voice artist for their TTS model? Credible sources suggest it was after. Do you think they’re stupid enough to use the actual voice of an A list actress without her permission? Before you answer, remember that we’re talking about one of the smartest teams ever assembled in the history of our species.

Establishing credibility with a vacuous statement like this isn’t exactly convincing. What about this team indicates to you that such a mistake is outside the realm of possibility?

OpenAI has brazenly proceeded in questionable (or forbidden) legal territory - why is this case different?

Lol, what are you smoking, mate? The OpenAI standard M.O. is to Just Do It without asking permission.

Not sure why you are so enamored with them, they're just people, of the sort who will do anything to "win", which makes a high degree of scrutiny prudent. Also, OpenAI has a track record of behaving in self-serving ways, which indicates they primarily care more about extracting economic value than anything else.

I wish you all the best.

I’ll tell you why I’m enamored with them. They currently make the closest thing to magic that I’ve seen in my life. If that’s not worthy of admiration, I don’t know what is. They could realistically upend computing and make it far more usable in modalities we humans find “natural” for the first time ever.

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