Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
On paper the board has the power and it’s their job to monitor and hire/fire the execs. But they’re dependent on the execs for info. Also having one investor own half, plus the founders guiding the roadmap and having sway over key hires leaving is where the real power is…
``` Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”
“So power is a mummer’s trick?”
“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.” ```
The humanitarian organization I worked for eradicated every last small-head US dollar from circulation in our salary payments in 24 hours because the staff brought us a rumour that was circulating in the market that small-head dollars would not be accepted by the banks anymore.
Rumors can kill (literally, or maybe if you're lucky, only morale).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US100DollarBills-Old%2620...
Also any emergency operation is launched with tens of thousands of US dollars in a backpack in order to get moving without waiting for infrastructure to come back up.
Using cash does not mean you are not keeping records. In fact with cash, double entry handwritten records in journals is all the more important.
It's way worse for the OpenAI board position in this case, because the company is basically just an assemblage of researchers, engineers, and Microsoft Azure credits. They can replace the CEO if they want, but all the value of the company can walk away if they don't like it.
This is generally true of any company
They really can't, because a majority of their compensation is in now-unreasonable amounts of OpenAI equity (because it was worth much less when it was granted). If employees decided to walk away, rendering their vested equity worthless, they wouldn't get anywhere near the same value of, say, Microsoft equity as a signing bonus to make it worth.
Any senior OpenAI employee with decent amounts of vested equity on low valuations has strong financial incentives to stick with the company, and also strong financial incentives to convince others to stick with the company.
Some more thoughts from back when employees "threatened" to leave: https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-employees-did-not-wan...
The problem with this is that the board was basically threatening to also make their equity worthless by taking the position that Sam was moving too fast to commercialize the company. They pretty much burned their leverage everywhere possible.
Yes. Nobody involved in this comes out looking very good IMO.
> "We were very careful, very deliberate about who we told, which was essentially almost no one in advance, other than obviously our legal team and so that's kind of what took us to to November 17."
If that doesn't sound like a secret coup, I don't know what does. Like, yes, it is their job to hire and fire the CEO so it's not really a coup, but when you do your "job" in secret instead of in the open that's the vibe you give off.
Is a Board firing the CEO typically conducted differently?
I’d be curious if you believe differently how you feel boards usually advertise such an action?
For example, a lot of the pressure that caused them to reverse course came from Microsoft. Maybe if the board had discussed such a big decision without OpenAI's biggest investor, Microsoft would've been on board with the firing.
Like, is your argument really "you don't know how boards work" when this is a fantastic example of a board completely failing at the basics of the job?
People lie and cover things up all the time from oversight bodies like boards. The board isn’t some god like entity that either knows all or is incompetent. They’re a collection of humans operating off the information given to them. Once they realize the information is erroneous or incomplete it’s often their duty to replace that leadership. And if they believe further they can’t trust the principals involved these things are often done in secret.
Finally the for profit nature of the subsidiary is entirely irrelevant. The board is a non profit board which has an entirely different responsibility set and accountability than a for profit board, and the subsidiary being for profit doesn’t change the nature of their duty in the least - in fact to preserve their non profit status they have to be -extra- careful with how they treat business related to the for profit subsidiary to ensure a conflict of interest doesn’t invert the relationship between for profit and non profit missions. Informing outside investors of non profit board governance decisions likely inverts that relationship and jeopardizes the non profits charter.
It's not unusual to exclude people with conflicts from a decision. That's a typical part of a corporate conflict of interest policy, and for a charity nonprofit board (as the OpenAI board is) it's even more critical, since failute to do so risks the tax-exempt status.
It isn't justified, it's just misleading propaganda. Unfortunately through repetition and the enthusiasms of various fandoms, it's gotten lodged in the public mind.
Not to mention that if he was vengeful, it would be much easier to do damage from within and from a position of power.
Joke aside, the CEO can be a promoter of hype with no particular management skills - if the shareholders, via the board, are happy with that, their money their risks.
For their own records. They can use it for justification for disciplinary action or legal ammunition. It is always useful to document things in writing. It's the same reason why companies will put you on PIP.
The board's mistake was not figuring out a way to go public with their case against Sam when or before they fired him. They obviously misjudged how he would respond. But even there we don't know the full context and constraints they were under. Hopefully, one of them will answer that question of why they didn't at some point, but until we know more, we would be wise to reserve judgement.
The evidence is in this interview. It sounded like the board basically let Altman walk all over them until they suddenly decided that they wanted to fire him, but by then it was too late. For example, if they had a thorough paper trail documenting all of his lies, they could threaten a lawsuit pressuring him to resign. If YC fired him, they likely would have used a similar strategy to pressure him to step down without any blowback.
This is extremely confused about the board's responsiblities and powers. A court would laugh this case out of court because the board _can just fire him_.
Does the same reasoning not apply to supposed-to-be-trusting business relationships?
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the role of the board of directors. It's often been said that the board (of any company) has basically one job: to hire (and fire) the CEO. While that may be a slight exaggeration, the wisdom behind that quote is that things turn out badly when the board meddles in decisions of a company's executive leadership - if they don't like the decisions being made, they should replace the CEO, and that's where their power lies.
You talk about "filing formal complaints" - what does this even mean?? They're the board, who else would they file formal complaints to? "Hand off Sam's responsibilities to other people"?? Again, any corporate governance expert would say that's a recipe for disaster, never mind not even feasible the way corporate hierarchies work.
I've commented many times before that I think the way the board handled the Altman's filing was, at best, woefully naive, and their communication at the time (even after he was fired) abysmal. But neither do I think it was some sort of "coup", and your recommendations simply don't make sense.
Yes. In a formal board meeting, not in an secretive one behind Altman and Brockman's back. That's what makes it seem more like a coup.
> They're the board, who else would they file formal complaints to?
Like I said in other comments. It's always useful to have a paper trail.
> "Hand off Sam's responsibilities to other people"?? Again, any corporate governance expert would say that's a recipe for disaster, never mind not even feasible the way corporate hierarchies work.
If Altman is neglecting and being opaque about AI safety, as Toner claims, then the board should appoint someone to lead this effort and be fully transparent with them. I don't see how this is so far fetched.
No, that is absolutely not the role of the board (and I mean any board, not just OpenAI's), and that's the point I was trying to make. It is the CEO's role to define the org structure of the company. If the board feels that this structure doesn't meet their corporate goals, they don't go in and say "No, actually, we demand you create this AI safety group with a separate head that reports directly to us." Their option is instead to fire the current CEO and hire a different one who they believe is more aligned with their values.
https://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-yahoo-meeting-...
What the Yahoo Board was doing was essentially bringing in their own set of advisers.
But regardless, the board had six members. Altman was actively trying to grow the board (and would presumably add loyal allies), and had previously tried to kick Toner off the board. So just by sheer numbers it's obvious they had to move quietly before they acted. And you saying this is "unprecedented" is just weird - CEOs are fired with little warning all the time, and if they also have board seats, the board members who want to fire them usually figure out if they have enough support before hand.
I think the thing we're probably agreeing on is that the board just handled the communication abysmally. I don't know how they thought they could fire Altman without a detailed explanation, especially to their partners like MS.
OpenAI is fated to implode in scandal. His 7 trillion dollar funding round ambition is a blaring siren to anyone with a working brain that he’s out of control and capable of doing real damage. He wants a sum of money that could crash the world economy. He thinks he should have the power of the world’s most powerful government. Solely dictated by his whim. He makes Napoleon and Hitler look like pikers.
He is Musk in 2016, when some of us knew who he was, and the fans were still enthralled.
You will look back and say “No one knew” and this comment will be there. We knew.
Musk will end up the Bush to his Trump. We will fondly recall the crimes of a guy who just wasn’t as bad as what followed. Why do you think Musk hates him so much? He’s a better Musk than Musk. He’s the guy who took OpenAI out from under him. It’s envy.
Yes, and just to be clear -- That one guy was a diver who put his life at risk to save trapped children from an underwater cave, a rescue operation in the span of which a Thai Navy Seal actually died. Furthermore, Musk went on record stating that he had took a further step of hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt on the guy, not before he called the guy a pedo, but after when the reality of getting sued began to sink in.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
The US was already a leader in aerospace, by a lot.
He called someone a pedo who didn't deserve it on Twitter, and then bought and managed to tank said platform, to the point where it is the go-to for nazis and propagandists.
Shouldn't the board be capable of agreeing on a press release among themselves?
While in retrospect I think the board's actions may have been warranted, their communication was absolutely atrocious.
This sounds bad enough to my layperson ears:
"Sam didn't inform the board that he owned the OpenAI startup fund, even though he constantly was claiming to be an independent board member with no financial interest in the company," she said.
I'm not a lawyer. Anyone with expertise care to clarify?
Also, wow:
https://medium.com/@leagueplayer220/sam-altman-may-have-comm...
I'd guess the board relied on some generally-bad legal advice from their attorneys about how they could get personally sued for libel for airing dirty laundry etc. Not having huge financial stakes, and seemingly having been picked for being conservative rather than risk takers, they followed this to their detriment. Staying quiet let Altman build a following and lead the whole situation, something Altman is seemingly fantastic at doing.
So ultimately what was a pivotal moment in governance of following the nonprofit charter, played quite poorly, ended up being a coup by Altman to escape that one layer of "boxing". Which given how poorly we've done so far at "aligning" centralized capitalism to the needs of most individuals (of which this seems to be a subproblem) wasn't terribly surprising!
Did they not at least have a briefing packet or something prepared to give to major investors (ie, Microsoft) day-of if they were so worried about leaks that they couldn't get the major investors (ie, their own bosses) on board ahead of time?
One way this debacle has been portrayed in the media is "an unaccountable board tried to destroy a profitable company". I think a more accurate portrayal is "Sam Altman and Microsoft worked together to deemphasize the company's scientific and humanitarian goals and emphasize building successful and profitable products". It's sort of depressing how Microsoft was able to "capture" a nonprofit.
So why would you rehire him and then resign? Why not leave him fired and resign?
Why did Microsoft care so much about Altman? They didn't have a board seat, so too bad so sad. They should have had no sway. If they want OpenAI, then they can buy it. Why would they even want Altman to come to their company? What possible value could Altman bring to Microsoft?
Just none of it makes any sense. In fact, the most clear thing is Altman's negative behavior and mode of operation. I remember his very loud, awshucks pronouncements of having no shares in OpenAI. Yea, right. A career VC setup a new company structure or structures where he wouldn't benefit at all financially.
In another timeline, OpenAI firing him, naming an interim CEO, ignoring all else, and then hiring a new CEO would have all gone just fine. I don't know why Microsoft and others made a huge kerfuffle over it. And I also don't know why the board released such a cryptic press release when they could have provided details.
I just can't wrap my head around any of it, even letting in conspiracy theory lines. Lol. It just makes no sense and gives me a feeling that no one involved has any clue about anything, including Satya Nadella.
What I did see was so much incompetence at the one thing I expect a board to be at least okay at. Hiring and firing.
For that alone, I think the board reshuffle was good. Regardless of who you support in all of this.
Sure, the rectification of names is an improvement in a sense; what is actually needed is a working Altman-control system.
I know HN leans engineering/safety/reliability/labor/pedantic (like chasing the absolute truth), but at the end of the day, company scales from the likes of Jobs/Musk/Sam/Zuck even it involves deceit or reality distortion field.
Sometimes people just can't handle the truth or don't believe in the vision of visionaries. So, they have to fib a little to the decels and normies. Even Larry / Sergey 'lied' to Eric during Google's growth phase. It's only when they bought normie Sundar that Google became risk averse. And look where it got Google to.
If I have to bet my last $, I'd bet on Elon/Sam/Zuck/Jobs than Helen/Jan/Sundar.
We don't necessarily have to like it to acknowledge it's very much reality.
So it actually implies allowing capitalists to wield extreme power, skirt laws and regulations.
I understand the term has gone through some kind of whitewashing to mean "this is the good system (unlike the bad system)", so one might be inclined to think it means something more equitable, but seriously, that was the original meaning.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tech/what-is-a-decel-dueling...
I'm sure that--in practice--there will be extremely strong correlation to social-order changes that leave the C-suite richer than before. :p
Instead, they did not even attempt to communicate any rationale behind their actions.
Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.
https://openai.com/index/openai-announces-leadership-transit...
I even said so at the time.
Instead, it's good form to wait 6 months and then do a Business Insider interview on the topic?
Also, "bad mouthing" suggests putting a spin on it. Based on the article, they should have been able to list out several objective facts that supported their decision. Instead, they opened it all up to intense speculation by providing a vague justification and by remaining tight lipped even once it became clear that a lot of clarification was needed.
The board's major mistake was not communicating why he was let go.
My guess is that the likely reason why employees threatened to go was that they felt Altman had the best chances of making the for-profit arm's shares skyrocket. As a non-profit company's board, I'd be fine letting those people walk out the front door along with the CEO that was just fired.
It is my understanding that the key personnel who developed the actual technology were not part of the group threatening to leave. It was mainly the group in the for-profit arm that Altman had trojan-horsed into the company structure.
> This included the company's key leadership.
I'm not aware of the machine learning researchers responsible for the core technology threatening to leave. Who were they?
Ilya Sutskever, Alec Radford, Wojciech Zaremba, Nick Ryder, Mark Chen, ... how many names do you want? >90% of the company threatened to leave.
Him joining the pile-on when it was already clear how big it is was pretty much surrendering to the mob, and was perceived as such even at the time.
I would challenge you to name a researcher who didn't resign or threaten to resign. Remember, they all had a plausible landing spot: They could simply show up at Microsoft with all the same leadership, coworkers, salary, compute, and IP the next day. OpenAI as we know it was over unless and until the board gave in.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/95-percent-of-openai-employees-t... [2] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/three-senior-openai-...
I still wager that things would have been different had the board clearly stated their reasons. Doesn't make any sense that they did it months later. The signing of the petition seems mostly group think and political. I would guess that the majority of employees would have followed through.
Lastly, I still can't say any of this makes any sense. Why did the employees even care about Altman? It still seems all very strange to leave your job for someone who doesn't seem to have ever said anything meaningful.
Guess you'd be fine being the board over a company that now only consists of a board. Thumbs up.
When you have irreconcilable differences with the board you could theoretically jump ship and start a rival company. Usually, in practice, that’s impossibly hard and yet Microsoft announced that they intended to do exactly that with funding and stock matching. For some reason that was turned down in favor of staging the equivalent of an in-country coup.
If you get caught breaking the law on vacation abroad and your response to being arrested is to take control of the country in retaliation then you are a very powerful, persuasive, or threatening person indeed.
You know a number of people are in that position though.
My first thought went to Samsung's chairman who will break the law and go to prison, but the country will have him back, bending over backwards to somewhat have it make sense.
Reminds me of the Wirecard scandal doc on Netflix. Wirecard was so powerful that the financial regulators (BaFin) started targeting journalists and actively defending a publicly traded company.
But, what kind of Wild West is this? It's all so unhinged and strange.
There are no NDAs, non-competes or other impediments? MS just guts OpenAI at its whim?
>there would have been no OpenAI left to preside over.
...If MS can do this, then there's already no OpenAI left to preside over.
It is a very pro employee policy, hence attractive to the best and brightest.
I mentioned non-competes as one of a universe of things that makes this unusual; including its original non-profit status becoming substantially for-profit, and the apparent ease with which MS can now gut the supposedly controlling non-profit and walk away with everything.
And, I'm guessing even the CA policy on non-competes wasn't conceived with the idea of one company simply "taking" another company at-will, even if that scenario is technically covered.
All businesses at all times are subject to losing their employees to another employer who is willing to pay enough for them.
But if they had the moral conviction, it seems like this would have been the right choice to make, because it would have diluted Altman's power (unless they trust Nadella even less than they trust Altman?)
Almost the entire company was threatening to quit.
If it was possible to simply replace all of openAI, then you could just do that now, as an outside party.
So the boards choice was to either bring back Sam or watch the entire company go under.
The ChatGPT release is what made the AI movement go mainstream. It is why OpenAI is worth ~80 billion dollars.
By Gods am I glad that the board wasn't able to stop ChatGPT from being released.
Worth to who?
It is "worth" what someone else is willing to pay for it.
I seem to recall that the release in late November 2022 was only intended to be a way for volunteers on the Internet to experiment with it and provide feedback.
This is the part that perplexes me. A CEO being fired is not an unusual occurrence. What about Sam Altman led such a huge number of employees to threaten to follow him out the door? Was it that the board's actions were viewed as internally unjust? Was it Altman's power of persuasion? Was/is Altman viewed by the staff as bringing something irreplaceable to the table in terms of talent, skill or ability?
Summarizing, essentially the employees were under the impression either Sama comes back OR OpenAI dissolves and they lose their job.
My understanding is that a fair amount of it was essentially peer pressure. If you're an employee whose CEO has just been fired for unclear reasons, and someone hands you a chain letter saying "restate him or everyone will quit" and you're told everyone's signing that letter and there's already someone who promised to hire everyone who quits into their current role at equal pay, would you sign it?
Scenario A, Sam Altman continues as CEO and the for profit arm of OpenAI continues to call the shots, growth and market share continue to be priority number one.
Scenario B, Sam Altman is fired, OpenAI non-profit board (re?)-asserts more control. Safety, alignment and other things like that take priority over growth and market share.
x% of Employees are Sam believers, and when the remaining x% of ambiguous/non-Sam believers realize the first x% might leave, their PSUs would be worth significantly less, so they sign the letter as well. There is also the peer pressure / fear of retribution factor as well once it becomes likely there is even a chance of Sam being reinstated.
Many employees choose scenario A because it is likely their "profit sharing units" will be worth more than with scenario B. There's a non-zero chance that OpenAI (the for profit arm) eventually joins the ranks of the "FAANG" companies. Those PSUs might be worth millions today, but in the future could be worth "fuck you" levels of money.
That would shutdown the entire company.
And I would hope that wasn't their goal.
> So then why did the board re-hire Sam Altman?
Presumably so that the entire company wouldn't be shutdown.
Yeah... and? OpenAI is pretty much a for-profit company now. Why shouldn't a non-profit board pull the plug on a non-profit turned for-profit? Isn't that a part of their job?
And then it can't use that money on its mission because it shut down.
> Isn't that a part of their job?
No, it isn't. Their job would be to use the income that they received from that part of the business and spend it on their mission.
There are all sorts of non profits that operate in a similar way.
In fact acting sustainably is generally a positive for non-profits because it means that you can be more effective for longer without having to rely on donations.
Microsoft needs the sold-out version of OpenAI so they can make as much money as possible without anyone making pesky noises about ethics and safety.
Outsource all of the risk to a non-profit, but still be able to run it, and snag up all of the researchers if/when something gets ugly.
PG called it over 15 years ago: "You could parachute him [Sam Altman] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king".
It's like Elon 'Electric Jesus' Musk, without him, they're just selling shitty cars nobody quite like. So he can get paid more than all profit Tesla ever made, because without him, there would be 0 profit anyway.
Talk to Tesla owners: they are surprised by how shit the car is, but they feel like mini Elons. That's probably similar at OpenAI ?
"In 2019, Altman was asked to resign from Y Combinator after partners alleged he had put personal projects, including OpenAI, ahead of his duties as president, said people familiar with the matter."
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-openai-protected-by-s...
Regardless, this is another in a recent string of blows to YC's reputation for making people believe Sama moved on when in reality he was fired. What do you call making people believe something that's knowingly not true? Deception?
Sam may have been fired from YC but it does look like they believed in him.
Being character like that, unfortunately, leads often success in life. You are not limited by ethics or morals like most people do. You need to be convincing that you care, while in reality you are only objective about financial success.
And if you are into money, you will invest these kinds of people.
The same person who was pushed out after her coup attempt failed. Which was very likely motivated by much more than Sam lying as she has stated in other articles about how she wants AI she regulated by gov, how GPT shouldn't have been released to the public because it's dangerous, and her interim CEO she pushed as Sams temporary replacement who made statements about wanting to pause AI development for safety reasons.
If what she said was true, I'd leave the board if I were in her position. I would understand why they decided to take him back but decide that it's not worth working with someone who can't be trusted.
Hell, Sam wants AI regulated by government...
... after OAI is well-established and locked in, of course. A little ladder-pulling and regulatory capture is something he's entirely aligned upon.
I'd say it should be the default-expectation for anybody operating as a professional Venture Capitalist these days, and AFAIK there's no personal record to indicate otherwise.
No, he lied to other board members, multiple times.
As for "holding back the organization", if we're talking about existential risk, I want them to be held back. These people have no business being stewards of any technology that might be an existential risk.
In addition, the attempt to rebrand it is victim-blaming.
According to Altman and the rest of the OpenAI board, there is. They are the ones sounding the alarm, so they should be judged by the appropriate ethical standards.
Boards serve a vital fiduciary duty to ensure good corporate governance.
They do not exist to hold back the organisation and are not there to be outsmarted.
The government doesn't hold boards to any standard. It's a free-for-all.
Sometimes they are owners, other times they are the ones being duped into rubber stamping and legitimizing criminals.
Boards routinely hold back the success of organizations, and ousting those boards can be in the best interests of the company. This is pure idealism. Some companies are better with passive or active boards; however, activist boards and passive-reactive boards can cause all kinds of harm leading to the death of the company.
The board member here does not appear knowledgeable in the technology while also expressing a motive be deeply involved in its development. This was a recipe for disaster.
Surely you jest.
I do very strongly urge you to cast that kind of thinking aside.
Fact is, in many cases where those kinds of arguments are seen, we will also see someone who really, really does not want to be told what to do and or who cannot tolerate a decision they do not agree with.
One can justify any means to any end thinking like that, which is why I am tagging that kind of reasoning as psychopathy.
It is unhealthy.
Take care, live well, peace and all that. I mean nothing personal.
Just give this all some real thought. You are extremely likely to be better off for having done it.
I just don't like the idea of some group of people having superior power of not being questioned about their ethics (the board in this case). Just sounds a bit cultish to imagine boards to always wield these kind intentions.
That means a lot.
In the case of OpenAI, it was Altman, not the board members he should have been arguing his position with openly, who wanted to undertake actions that others thought were too risky. So your argument, if it were valid, would not apply to Altman, but to the other OpenAI board members whose confidence in him had been destroyed. Do you think they should have lied to Altman to get him to stop doing things they thought were too risky?
Come on. That ridiculously unreasonable hypothetical obscures more than it reveals, and is pretty much a total derail.
I see how it'd be really dicey for a CEO to pitch a fit on the way out under ordinary circumstances. But also, if you fire your CEO, he may very well go stand up a terrifying competitor, which is basically what happened here, right?
Not according to Sam Altman, or for that matter the other OpenAI board members who have been involved in this whole kerfluffle. They all say AI is an existential risk, and OpenAI is necessary to mitigate that risk.
In other words, they themselves have told us to judge them by a much higher ethical standard than "just business". And all of them (not just Altman) have failed when judged by that standard. Even if they're wrong and AI actually isn't an existential risk, that doesn't mean they're off the hook for their behavior, because they themselves set the standard for them to be judged by.
The only reason to be so disinclined in the case of OpenAI would be that you're sure their existential risk claims are wrong. If that's the case, then I suppose you could just shrug your shoulders and ignore the whole kerfluffle, at least as long as you have no skin in the game. I personally still think the conduct of everyone involved has been childish and unprofessional, but if we take existential risk off the table, then the issue is just that the norms of business in our current culture are childish and unprofessional, which is disappointing, but has no simple fix.
Can I reasonably assume that people who are very riled up about OpenAI not meeting its original (weird, IMO) moral standard are revealing that they do in fact take existential AI risk seriously?
I would say many of them probably do, yes--quite possibly in large part because of OpenAI's own rhetoric on the subject.
The ad-extremo argument is a fallacy that doesn't ad anything to the discussion. It's simply a way of pushing a certain view, because you can always find some hypothetical that might justify an action.
Fortunately we are dealing with a concrete situation so we don't need to talk in hypotheticals.
Then you resign and start your own company whose charter is written the way you think it should be written.
> But it's a matter of survival of the entire universe?
If this is actually true, then, as I've already said elsewhere in this discussion (and in previous HN discussions of OpenAI), Altman is the last person I want in charge of this technology. And the same goes for everyone else associated with OpenAI. None of them have come anywhere remotely close to showing the kind of maturity, judgment, and ethics that would qualify them to be stewards of an existential risk.
If Altman sincerely believes that AI is an existential risk, then he should resign from OpenAI and disqualify himself from working on it or being involved in it in any way. That's what he would do if he were capable of taking an honest look at himself and his actions. But of course I won't be holding my breath.
Leave.
> But it's a matter of survival of the entire universe?
Literally nothing is like that. And even after correcting your hypothetical to something reasonable, Altman was almost certainly closer to the "risk destroying the universe" camp than the board.
This type of delusional thinking can be used to justify anything.
It is wise to be exceedingly cautious when deploying ends-justifies-the-means logic. Most of the time, history doesn’t remember those who employ it too fondly.
I'm particularly curious if you've done a meta-analysis on what you choose to analysis or not, and what the fundamental basis is for determining fitness for your values and actions (e.g. what does a healthy society and healthy person look like to you and how do you statistically justify this position?).
How could you say this with a straight face.
There has been industrial scale copyright infringement.
You can argue it's for the greater good but to say that no one was hurt is a lie.
Can I have some of what you're on? It sounds like fun. Seriously, nobody in the entire world has been adversely affected by the widespread adoption of LLMs?
I guess there's no way to know this but how much better than the "Null CEO" did he actually do? What if he happened to preside over a successful company that would've performed as well or better without him?
I think Altman is worse than the null CEO; others may draw their own conclusions, but the bar for CEO quality isn't "much better than the null CEO".
That sounds like an easy bar for an LLM. I, for one, welcome our new LLM CEOs.
You’re talking about someone who led an organization from 0 to tens of billions in valuation, billions in revenue, recruited many unknown but now famous talent as well as famous talent which almost all mutinied when the board fired him, and bet on a technology that many people considered ridiculous. And your complaints are what? That you think he’s trying to regulatory capture the market? That he’s bad at PR, or managing PR-adjacent crises? That he was ruthless and one-sided in employee and other contracts?
That aside, Altman literally hijacked the organization that was created by other people to fulfill certain goals, and now we find out that he did so by outright lies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_revenue_productivity_...
As far as I know, she never retracted her claim of "sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, and financial abuse". And he never admitted to any of the above.
For all we know she could be jealous, have mental issues, or have a different bone to pick with him and thought that’d be the best way to hurt him. If I had his money I could see some of my own relatives doing similar things after being denied handouts, for instance.
Yes, absolutely, because all "we" would be adding to the conversation is speculation. No new information can be gained here.
There is a difference between a witch hunt and making sure underheard voices get attention.
I was suggesting "we" make sure these claims are not being ignored because they are against a public figure. The fact they are a public figure and "might get blackmailed all the time" doesn't somehow relieve a person of criticism. That "we" ensure the proper authorities and groups prioritize finding new information or investigate these claims instead of being swept under a rug.
Real accusations happen all the time too. Nah, I've been homeless and in institutions, I'm well aware of the types of people out here.
Just saying we shouldn't sweep things under the rug just because the person is a public figure or "has family begging for handouts" or "is at risk of blackmail". We should ensure the proper authorizes investigate and the potential victim is not drowned out by more powerful voices.
The man has enough money to take care of his own, and he isnt.
It's a bad look.
I think this might be the understatement of the year!
Guy can’t code, can’t design, can’t publish, can’t climb a traditional corporate ladder with even modest guardrails against fraud, can’t keep his hand out of the cookie jar. Can lie, threaten, cajole, manipulate, bribe with zero hesitation or remorse.
I’ve been short this nonsense for a decade, and it’s done no favors to me on remaining solvent, but when the market gets rational, it usually gets rational all at once.
Karpathy, Ilya, Yoon right off the top of my head, countless others. LeCun woke up the other day and chose violence on X. Insiders are getting short like Goldman dealing with Burry.
Guy has nine lives, already been fired for fraud like three times and he’s still living that crime life, so who knows, maybe he lasts long enough to put Ice Nine in my glass after all, but this can only happen so many times.
Although a couple of the AI meme chats I’m in starting sending around a link that there’s actually a prediction market on whether he lasts in the CEO chair [1]. I’ve been too busy building shit to even look into whether I can trade it, but it’s been spiking north of 20%.
[1] https://kalshi.com/markets/openaiceochange/openai-hires-anot...
2008: "You could parachute [Sam Altman] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without them. (He wasn't, and he did.) Not everyone has Sam's deal-making ability. I myself don't. But if you don't, you can let the numbers speak for you." https://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html
2014: "Of all the people we’ve met in the 9 years we’ve been working on YC, Jessica and I both feel Sam is the best suited for that task. He’s one of those rare people who manage to be both fearsomely effective and yet fundamentally benevolent..." https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/sam-altman-for-president
Now, this isn't about pg specifically. Maybe he had reservations at the time but still thought he was making the right decision, maybe he's since changed his mind, maybe he hasn't but has pretty well moved on from this scene. Not interesting.
I'm more interested in whether Altman, and Musk, and Zuckerberg, and Bezos, and Ellison, and all the other amoral wealth-hoarders, are finally becoming obvious enough now that people might finally begin to see them as the yucky byproducts of a yucky system.
Maybe a moralistic, basically decent person couldn't get ChatGPT launched and turned in to the household topic of discussion it is today; maybe nice people can't build cheap rockets. Maybe in the future, when making an endorsement for a leadership position in some company, someone might be brazen enough to say aloud, "I believe this person is sufficiently nasty to make us all more successful."
And so then the question is, does society net benefit more from the moralists or more from the capitalists? Do we accept that Sam Altmans are necessary for cool technology? How many Altmans can we have before something goes horribly, irreversibly wrong?
Zooming out a bit, do we accept "cool technology" as a virtue? Should it factor into my evaluation of a person at all?
You need to get people around you to succeed. In practice that means investors so that you can hire and people with the right connections so you can get sweet deals.
You need people skills not inventions. And a bit more fake it until you make it rather than correct/technical information.
A few weeks ago one of the guys (a freelancer) who stayed in that project was on an event of a competitor to this shop framework. After that event, he said that their software was way better, but it wasn't interesting enough for him to invest in learning that system. In his opinion, their marketing is not good enough, and they won't be able to sell it to important companies.
So we are stuck with bad products because they apparently sell better than the good ones.
The developers in the company I mentioned first even knew beforehand that the software was bad. They were "included" in the decision process, and they all voted against the bad software and preferred another solution (it was before my time, and I don't remember if they told me what they actually wanted to use). But the manager who made the ultimate decision had such a good time with the guys from the bad product that he decided to go with it.
I know a lot of good developers and people who can sell themselves really well. Sadly, these two groups hardly overlap.
and yes, the world is full of these dysfunctional groups flush with money. (you might euphemistically call it this or that VC/startup scene)
on one hand it's great that there's plenty of room for technical improvement, on the other it needs the right socioeconomic circumstances. sometimes FOSS helps with this. (developers who spend their career working on products based on FOSS stuff at least have some chance of knowing that their efforts can might be valuable for a wider audience.)
Because the best marketers and salespeople are plainly people who lie. People who lie about the capability of the product they are selling to get their customer to buy more of it. Good marketers and salespeople cripple their financial gain by being truthful. So liars get more money, so they get more customers, so they get more power. So it goes.
Software development, being somewhere between a craft, an art, and a science, is fundamentally grounded in truth. You can't bullshit your way to quality software. You can't lie to the computer like you can to a human (maybe with AI you can). So "success" in these two fields is diametrically different.
Though I bet you'll get the opposite answer on a sales/marketing forum.
I do think that "cool technology" such as dishwashers and MRI machines is a virtue and we're better of with those than without.
My point (which I communicated poorly) wasn't that assholes are necessary, but rather that there are reasonable definitions of "cool technology" which are an inherent virtue.
And even if it were, Musk builds the best rockets ever and stuff like that and to a first approximation knows how they work.
Mark at a minimum is the Corp Dev CEO of a generation and I’d argue more. I’d argue he is the first person to create an accurate-ish mental model mapping IRL human mechanism design into a high-fidelity digital analogy.
Bezos was at DE Shaw and called the Internet as a vehicle for commerce on the early side, to put it mildly.
Ellison saw that what we now call RDBMS was going to Be Big and substantially implemented the early versions personally.
Now this isn’t a license for any of the icky shit any of these folks have done since, but all of them put some of the points their character class rolled into “actually build something”.
Altman put all his points into manipulate if not blackmail people around me until the machine coughs up the next stair on the ladder.
I’m generally in favor of “less bond villains”, but that’s not the topic of the thread and neatly bypasses another key point which is that all the other bond villains you mentioned (and I’ve met a few of them) have some redeeming quality as opposed to, Jesus, could a fucking Kennedy get away with a farce like this?
Stop changing the subject. I know all those essays by heart. I was synthesizing them with inside YC baseball the day they were published.
Besides… Blue origin? Boeing? These are not state owned or “invisible” yet are failing.
It's fascinating how nobody was making this claim of a non-technical Musk up until the moment he stopped being loyal to one particular wing of US politics. Now we see a concerted effort to diminish his achievements. Do you people really think this will work? There is endless testimony from people - independent of Musk and in the space industry - saying that the dude is an honest to god rocket scientist who single-handedly made SpaceX happen through sheer force of will, engineering ability and personal investment. He routinely displays a fluent understanding of orbital mechanics well beyond what any normal CEO would be expected to display. Anyone can read his bio or the testimony of people who work in the space industry and understand that Musk was (and still is) intimately involved in every aspect of SpaceX, down to detailed engineering decisions.
Shotwell meanwhile is regularly described as managing the business development side. She negotiates with customers and oversees day to day operations. This is critical work that she clearly does very well, and she has an engineering background. But I can't find examples of people claiming that she drives product development or overall strategy for SpaceX.
Says you, random HN poster. Here's the assessment of a NASA astronaut who spent time on the ISS and who has a PhD in mechanical engineering and a degree in applied mechanics:
"[Musk is] able to have conversations with our top engineers about software, and the most arcane aspects of that and then he'll turn to our manufacturing engineers and have discussions about some really esoteric welding process for some crazy alloy"
But sure, him and the software engineers at NASA are all dumbasses who are fooled by an actor. Happens all the time.
Again - do you guys really think this will work? You are saying what you want to be true, not what actually is true. It's really not necessary. You can loathe the guy for political reasons and still accept that he is in fact an engineer, and does in fact know how to write software. These things are not mutually exclusive.
As for "he lies, he gets caught up". Really. Nobody making this claim is in in any position to attack someone else for getting caught up in a lie, given how brazen this claim is, how many people with direct experience have lined up to say the exact opposite, and how obvious it is that it can't be true given his achievements.
Please, stop claiming Musk isn't technical or that Gwynne Shotwell is the real leader of SpaceX. It doesn't work and makes all criticism of Musk look like ideologically motivated reasoning. There are plenty of genuine ways to criticize Musk! Attack him for being way too over-optimistic about FSD in Tesla cars if you want. Attack him for requiring logins to Twitter. But don't spread obvious lies about him - it lowers the credibility of all criticism.
Or this: > I personally wrote the first national maps, directions, yellow pages & white pages on the Internet in the summer of 1995 in C with a little C++. Didn't use a "web server" to save CPU cycles (just read port 8080 directly). Couldn't afford a Cisco T1 router, so wrote an emulator based on a white paper.
Or maybe this: > I mean, man, you’re in charge of the servers and the programming and whatever,” Brown continued. “What is the stack, Elon? Take me from top to bottom. What does the stack look like right now? What’s so crazy about it? What is so abnormal about this stack versus every other large-scale system on the planet, buddy? C’mon!
To which he answered: > Jackass
Or this: > They took one look at Zip2’s code and began rewriting the vast majority of the software. Musk bristled at some of their changes, but the computer scientists needed just a fraction of the lines of code that Musk used to get their jobs done. They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons.
Again I’m not speaking for rocket science, but as for software engineering and ML it seems he only has surface knowledge but does enough name dropping to maintain the illusion.
The quotes you chose contain direct references to him coding, to code that he wrote himself. Where is the name dropping? Are you being confused by the reference to web servers in the first quote maybe? In 1995 the term web server meant something like Apache with CGI. Writing a custom implementation of HTTP in C was a fairly standard technique to improve performance back then. The first version of Amazon was written in C, Google's web servers were still frequently written in C++ when I joined.
I mean, you say he has only "surface knowledge" and is "acting" to "maintain the illusion", but how many programmers could knock out their own implementation of HTTP in C on their own, let alone implement BGP and all the other low level stuff you need to bring a T1 online? How many would even understand what Musk was talking about?
My point is contrary to what he and his supporters claim he has has no deep understanding of the actual tech of his companies. I'm not arguing he doesn't know tech enough to run a tech company. It's common to find tech executives and VP that coded in their younger years. He might sit maybe a bit above a decent salespeople that has a good understanding of his product line, but below a Bill Gates and definitely not at the level of a ML researcher or Tech lead. He is maybe more invested that a typical CEO in day to day operations, but the aura of genius/inventor added on top is an illusion.
The "...buddy? C'mon!" framing is simply obnoxious. Who would engage with such a person in the first place?
And as a casual Twitter/X user who doesn't give a damn about Musk one way or the other, I don't see the sabotage. The web site and mobile app seem to be working fine. Community Notes is great. I understand that advertising revenue is down but that has no impact on users.
> Anyone who cares can build a replacement.
Technologically, sure; nothing special about it. But in terms of adoption and reach, no, Twitter is unique and extremely difficult to replace.
- there's a huge difference between a set of executives who are accountable to a board and shareholders, and a single person who is not, and doubly so when that person is among the wealthiest in the world, likes to shoot their mouth off, has a huge ego, and likes to exercise a great deal of control
Being fed the tour guide's summary and high-level overview of an event is not the same thing as knowing how they work.
Elon Musk's virtues start and stop at the way projects were funded. He comes in, buys existing companies, pays people to continue doing the work, and that's it. It's well established that his takes are merely performative and with a substance of a pre-pubrescent edgy rant.
If there was any value in Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, and the hot mess that his tenure has been, is to put the spotlight on how incidental the success of companies like SpaceX is regarding Elon Musk's influence. You're talking about the guy behind stunts like the "pedo guy" incident and yanking live servers out of their sockets as a cost-cutting measure.
Apart from Zip2 which he started from scratch and wrote the early code for, SpaceX which he stated from scratch, Neuralink likewise, OpenAI which he co founded and was the biggest early funder for and probably some others.
Could you please elaborate what you mean by that?
For better or worse Mark was/is able to see some deep minimal structure that allows what used to be a web page and is now a mobile app to elicit responses that bear an uncanny resemblance to the way human beings behave and interact in a setting unmediated by either a priest or a protocol. On the properties he runs people act a hell of a lot like they do in a bar or any other place where sapiens mix and match.
I’m not sure that turbocharging spinal-reflex humanity via computer networks is going all that well, which is one of the main reasons I parted ways with the endeavor once the true scope for mechanical advantage became clear, but he clearly sees things about what motivates people that Freud was throwing darts at.
I might have been one of the few true assassins he sent after people like Vic Gunderotta or Evan Spiegel and certainly he knows how to delegate the mechanics of leaving would-be adversaries on the scrap heap of history, but he knew who to send the hitters after and when.
They're not hoarding wealth. They don't have any Scrooge McDuck cash faults. Their money is all invested, i.e. put to work creating things that people want.
> moralists ... capitalists
History shows us that societies based on morals (religious, ideological) fare extremely poorly compared with societies based on rights (free markets).
Like it or not, for a large, prosperous society you must have big business.
You’ve previously argued for the merits of e.g. the Gates fortune, and as someone who went head-to-head with MSFT in the springtime of its excellence and I’m inclined to believe the guy who was there.
In your opinion, which you know I respect as much as any hacker living, did Altman build anything or do anything of value to be a billionaire off AirBnB stock certainly less than 3, probably less than one year after Loopt was sold at a loss with Conway’s finger on the scales?
I'm sorry to say I don't know enough about Altman to form any kind of opinion on him.
I gather anoxia is a bad way to go.
Absent that, a few other recognized OG legends like yourself looking into the matter and rendering an opinion might represent the daylight between the status quo and disaster.
Certainly he’s nothing to do with your honestly-held convictions about merit prevailing in efficient markets oriented to novel contribution.
I know you believe in markets, but I think we agree there’s nothing capitalist or meritocratic about failing up repeatedly until manifestly unqualified and ill-intentioned people wield arbitrary power off an unbroken litany of failures punctuated by the occasional success in taking credit for the efforts and achievements of others via PR and powerful friends.
If it's through selfish behavior, or hard-nosed behavior, it's ok with me. Just like there's nothing wrong with a football team who plays hard to win, as long as they stay within the rules.
Microsoft eventually defeated me in the C++ business. I don't fault them for that. They are hard-nose players, and I knew what the game was when I got into it. I'm actually friends with a few of their players.
Taking credit for what other people do is immoral, but leaders always do that, all the way up to the President.
As a lay observer and a figure of zero public note, I’m not held to the standard a juror is: I can draw a conclusion based on an overwhelming preponderance of evidence and lobby in my tiny way on the basis of said conclusion.
If I were a juror, I’d be held to the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt”, guidance typically annotated by a judge with specific instructions as to what it means in the context of a specific legal proceeding.
I’m not advocating for some kind of ugly mob justice (I’ve been at the mercy of unruly mobs, I do not recommend it).
I’m advocating that a sufficiently compelling body of evidence both documentary and testimonial exists to remove this person from a position in which they can plausibly manipulate the legal infrastructure itself, and public opinion likewise, and hand the matter over to duly constituted authority.
Personally? I’ll bet the rent that the ocean of evidence will persuade a fair jury, but I’m not a jury, I’m a random guy who knows how scary this technology is in the hands of people like that and is pleading with the world to stop him getting fucking laws passed and shit.
And you're wrong. These people do have cash vaults, but they're other peoples' cash vaults. How else do you think they buy things? And they're living in their multi-million dollar mansions and yachts out of benevolence? Please.
They all ended up as hell-holes.
I'm not really interested in repeating that history.
It is not at all necessary for wealthy people to be benevolent in order to contribute to society. Nor do they need to be nice people, nor do they need to be unselfish.
The free market harnesses selfishness for the benefit of society. It's why it works so well, as excoriating selfish people.
For example, the Wright Brothers invented the airplane so they could get rich off of licensing the patents. Dig into it, and that's the bald, unvarnished, truth. They did get modestly wealthy, but were poor businessmen. Look at what their selfishness did - glorious airplane travel! Have you ever flown on an airplane? You're benefiting from the selfishness of the Wrights.
BTW, everybody is selfish. I am selfish. You are selfish. Everyone who says they are unselfish are selfish. That's what a billion years of evolution did to us.
Get out of here with this melodrama.
We’re in a society that had higher more progressive tax rates as recently as the 1960’s. This isn’t some science fiction dystopia people are advocating for, just a return to the slightly fairer system we had before organized PR campaigns of the elites brought us the increasingly unequal dystopia we’re actually currently experiencing.
That's only superficially true. There were a lot more deductible things in those days, like company cars and 3 martini lunches. Tax shelter investing was de rigueur then. (Tax shelter investing is an inefficient diversion of resources into unproductive investments.) Reagan traded away the tax shelters and tax deductions for lower tax rates, which turned out rather well.
Washington state has enormously higher tax rates today than in the 60s. Sales tax, property tax, estate tax, and now an income tax.
https://dor.wa.gov/about/statistics-reports/history-washingt...
We can trade examples all day but the fact is that the tax burden on the very wealthy has plummeted and income inequality has skyrocketed. Those are broad measurable facts.
Things suck more as a result. I'm not a young guy, I've watched the change.
Since you're not young, if you'd invested a modest sum in AMZN in the 1990s you'd be a millionaire several times over today. Same for MSFT. And Apple.
How does other people having more than you take away from you?
2. I’m rich. Believe it or not some of us actually give a shit what kind of society we are building.
The real question you should be asking is how does other people having less than you within a deeply unfair system not take away from your happiness.
> that’s the basis issue
Basis is the amount paid for the stock. The basis boost happens at death. It has nothing to do with margin debt.
Margin debt isn't free. There are limits to how much one can margin. Etrade margin rates are 12.2%, which is pretty high.
If your stocks drop precipitously, which happens every few years, you're subject to a margin call where the broker will sell your stock for you and you get to pay the tax as well. If there isn't enough stock to cover the debt, the broker will come after your other assets to pay it.
Do you also think it is a travesty to mortgage your house and spend it, too? Do you think you should be income taxed every year on the appreciation in value of your house?
> a deeply unfair system
Anyone can open a robinhood.com account on their phone, buy some AMZN for $100, and margin it. The stock trading system in the US is actually very fair and democratic. It's open to all with a phone and a credit card.
> The real question you should be asking is how does other people having less than you within a deeply unfair system not take away from your happiness.
I encourage people with what I've learned about how to invest and improve their lives. A couple have listened and are now doing well, the rest continued making poor choices.
> I’m rich
Then I infer you're not that unhappy about society. The IRS takes donations. If it will make you happy, you can de-rich yourself at any moment by giving it to the IRS. If you look at history, however, confiscating the wealth of the wealthy has never done much of anything to elevate the poor.
Looking at history we find that confiscating the wealth of the poor has done much to elevate the wealthy.
However, we have indeed ended up in a hell-hole. Again, as someone else mentioned, the U.S. in the early 20th century rose up against the capitalist thinking and companies coming out of the industrial revolution and implemented socialist policies, progressive tax structures, and aggressive anti-trust laws and lawsuits. But the capitalists have one out again and are stronger than ever and are indeed turning the U.S. into a hell-hole.
By many accounts, the U.S. is a hell-hole on the whole. It ranks low in several markings such as education, standard of living, healthcare and healthcare access, wealth equality, infant mortality (i.e., it's quite high in the U.S.), etc. The list goes on. Yes, someone will reply that the U.S. has some of the best education, healthcare, standard of living, etc. in the world. And that is true when looking at specific, local instances. But the gap is wide and as a whole the U.S. is struggling.
Are places like Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, etc. really hell-holes? I'm not saying they are perfect, but there's a reason why they rank on top in terms of health, education, happiness, balance, etc.
Infant mortality rate is indeed higher than the US. I dug into it a few years back. It seems that the definition of infant mortality is different among different nations. The US has the most expansive view of it - more specifically, we try to save preemies more aggressively than any other nation, and the failures are counted as infant mortalities. Other nations do not.
Wealth equality is a goal of communism. You are not worse off simply because someone else has more money than you.
No it's not ironic, and it's also not completely correct. There's no point in having a conversation with lack of good faith statements like this. For starters, education is underfunded, and it's leached on to by corporations. Big surprise it doesn't do well. There's also lack of social support structures surrounding our education, so it's no surprise that the educational system is overwhelmed with trying to be too much while also underfunded.
And healthcare is not ran by the government in the U.S. It is almost completely privatized, so your statement is an outright untruth and purely bizarre. I have no idea what you're agenda is, but there clearly is one.
> Wealth equality is a goal of communism.
Wrong again.
This comes up in the Seattle Times nearly every day, and in the reader responses it's invariably pointed out that the funding per student has doubled in the last 15 years or so, even discounted for inflation.
> healthcare
So, Medicare and Medicaid do not exist? Obamacare isn't funded by the government for poor people? Heavy government regulation doesn't cover nearly every aspect of health care?
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." -- Karl Marx
Many people are unhappy when they discover that a middle class lifestyle requires work.
In Seattle, the government decided that poor people are entitled to free air conditioners. A hellhole? LOL. It's almost June and I still turn the heat on.
I'm just going to stop responding, but I have to call this out. This statement shows a complete disregard and a total lack of empathy for those in the lower middle class and below in the United States. You need to take a step back and understand just how hard people have it in this country.
For example, read this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856058/
From the article:
> In contrast, there is tremendous inequality within the US, with lower socioeconomic status groups experiencing much higher postneonatal mortality rates.
They even go on to eventually claim that the U.S. actually has an advantage during the neonatal period, which is the first four weeks of life, but has abysmal mortality pre-birth and postneonatal compared to peer countries. The reason, one could surmise, is that neonatal is when people actually see doctors. For lower socioeconomic status, the first time they might be seeing an OBGYN is when they go to the emergency room for birth due to lack of insurance, income, education, and other socioeconomic factors.
1. stay in school
2. pay attention in school, learn the material
3. don't do drugs
4. don't do crimes
5. go to college (loans are readily available)
6. pick a major that pays well
It's not rocket science.
Your cite says that the differences in infant mortality shrink considerably when taking into account differential criteria for infant mortality. What the study does not address is drug abuse by the mother. The paper assumes differences are due to differential health care, rather than different lifestyle choices. Lifestyle that affects infant mortality include:
1. drug abuse
2. smoking
3. obesity
4. diet
5. alcohol use
6. absence of fathers (i.e. lack of stable family)
7. age of mother
These are all significant factors, and ignoring them and blaming the health care system is not good enough.
What things have you bought that you didn't want and don't need?
Lost in the food fight over today's robberbarons is recognition that small and medium new business formation continues to decline.
IMHO, those are the job creators and wealth creation (vs mere wealth transfer) I prefer we boosted. I trust billionaires will somehow muddle along with or without our help.
The more large, visible winners you have in a society the more us little people are incentivized to buy those lottery tickets. Crowd funding, angel investing and small funds do exist. Or even Robinhood.
Of course, you can make or lose money investing in stocks. But you cannot claim that investing in stocks is only available to connected wealthy people.
Adam Smith saw "Theory of Moral Sentiments" as the foundation of his later work on "Wealth of Nations", right? ie that morals were a necessary prerequisite to markets etc.
You're correct that for a large and prosperous society you need some large organizations, but it is not at all obvious that the best way to run them is by sociopathic megalomaniacs.
Most everything I buy, other than food, comes from Amazon. The local supermarket stopped selling laundry powder detergent, so now I push a button on my computer and Amazon drops off a box of Tide the next day. And it's cheaper than what the supermarket used to sell it for, too.
Even better - the AMZN stock I bought pays for it!
I was looking for an unusual art print the other day. Found one on Ebay for $40. A frame is just a few bucks from Amazon (though I did try to find one at the thrift store first, cuz I'm cheap.) I even ordered the wall hooks from Amazon.
I grew up in a small town in Kansas long ago. In between tornadoes, as a Boy Scout project, I was trying to build an electric motor. My mom spent hours driving around to shop after shop looking for the right kind of wire. She finally found it in some ramshackle garage on the edge of town. Today, it would be 5 minutes on Amazon.
Amazon product quality is shit. Fakes are prevalent, half of reviews are fake these days, sellers use blatant fraud such as swapping one item listing for something completely different while retaining the existing collection of 5-star reviews etc.
But meanwhile Amazon's sheer size and monopolistic practices (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/...) mean that alternative choices are often simply not available.
And then that market dominance is itself built on large-scale abuse of its workforce. Which is to say, people who are my neighbors.
Ironically, I used to be a hardcore right libertarian; ancap, even. I just couldn't do it anymore because none of it was possible to reconcile with day-to-day observations. I still believe that free markets are good for the people overall. I just don't see any free markets when I look at capitalism. For a market to be truly free and competitive, there must be a balance of power between the players. We don't have anything even remotely like that - not between capital and labor, and not between large and small capital.
As for the workers, nobody makes them work there.
Even in the UK, I know people on zero-hour contracts (no security) who are working unhealthy hours and in unhealthy environments who will be replaced by robots soon enough. But there are few local jobs, partly because Amazon drains wealth from local communities, local businesses close and wealth is siphoned out to rich shareholders elsewhere, as oppose to circulating in the same community.
These days, anyone can buy fractional shares with robinhood.com. I.e. if you have a checking account and a phone, you can invest in AMZN. Then you'll get your share of the wealth.
I suspect you've defined a tautology by assuming that anyone running a large organization is a sociopathic megalomaniac.
But let's take an example. Which do you think is better run - NASA or SpaceX?
But being run better than NASA is not exactly a high bar. I would actually amend it to most US federal agencies, even. It's just that Americans, for some reason, assume that the way their government works is exemplar of governments in general. That is not true, to put it mildly - US is just particularly dysfunctional in that regard.
I should also note that my original point was not about a public/private dichotomy, but specifically about the "capitalist hero" cult of personality and the associated management style. You can have private companies that aren't run in this manner, where decisions are collegial or otherwise checked. You can even have private co-ops. And, of course, in many - indeed, most - cases you don't actually need megacorps to do things that need to be done, and a bunch of much smaller competing entities will do just fine without all the undesired political and economical effects.
The result is low levels of prosperity, because big business drives the wealth creation in the economy. Small businesses are needed, too, as they fill in the gaps and are the future big businesses.
An economy made up of cottage businesses and local artisans handweaving baskets just cannot produce the kind of wealth that is produced from efficiencies of scale.
An artisan made car would cost $1 million each.
There are endless numbers of idiots in black turtlenecks being absolute dicks to other co-working space members because they believe that being a dick is a prerequisite to commercial success. They are clearly cargo-culting something.
Most CEOs of large organisations appear to be psychopaths. Is this because you need to be a psychopath to run a large organisation? Or because you need to be a psychopath to get to be a CEO of a large organisation? (these are different things).
It does make sense that non-psychopathic founders don't build the kind of scale of organisation that we're having such problems with. A "normal" person can accept an exit at the merely "more money than you'll ever be able to spend in your lifetime" level, rather than scaling to FAAANG level. Likewise, non-psychopathic executives are probably at a disadvantage when climbing a career ladder.
Psychopathic CEOs make psychopathic decisions, based on their own mental dysfunction. We're seeing this in the Enshittification of Everything; though probably more immediately and clearly in Musk's antics at X: ego over every other consideration.
If we could wave a wand and appoint non-psychopathic CEOs at all the large tech companies, would we see them change behaviour and solve a lot of the problems themselves? Or is it inherent in the organisation culture now, or a required feature of the organisational culture in order to grow so large?
We have historically curbed the extreme capitalist tendencies that build such large organisations. We have anti-trust laws, and all sorts of regulations to control the damage that unbridled capitalism does, and break up large monopolistic organisations. Do we need to draw that line a lot lower for tech?
I like Musk's version of twitter better than the old version. His tweets often make me laugh.
Like watching a clown performing a slapstick routine and then realising that that isn't a clown and the slapstick is an important part of our societal infrastructure.
In my life time I've seen being gay or smoking weed (for example) turn from immoral to widely accepted. Kind of hard to consider these shifting sentiments as a solid foundation for anything.
Free markets are based on the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (and property).
A morality based system could be, for example, you do not have the right to the fruits of your labor, you automatically owe those fruits to others.
I'm sad that our K-12 schools never bother to explain what a free market is, given that our nation was founded on free markets.
> a wide inductive gap
A book could be easily written about it.
I guess you didn't understand the point, I did not say that rights and morals were the same things, I said that a rights society would still have the moral opinion that its rights were morally good to have, and that respecting those rights was the moral thing to do.
You can, I'm sure, recall many discussions on HN where people who come from a society with the right to free speech discussing this as a moral good and castigating other societies that are rights based, but without that particular right, as being bad for not having it.
>Free markets are based on the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (and property).
I seldom hear that particular basis given for free markets however, the basis seems tenuous.
>I'm sad that our K-12 schools never bother to explain what a free market is, given that our nation was founded on free markets.
there may be differences of opinion as to what a free market is/requires, and as to whether the free market was really fundamental to the founding of your country. It might be that your country could not really sustain too close a focus on those questions in its K-12 system of education though, best to leave it for later.
You seldom hear it because it is not taught in schools and is rarely discussed. Leftist ideology is taught instead.
> there may be differences of opinion as to what a free market is/requires, and as to whether the free market was really fundamental to the founding of your country
There are differences of opinion about everything, even math, and even about the Earth being a sphere. Some of those opinions are simply wrong. I did not invent the definition of a free market, you can google it.
> It might be that your country could not really sustain too close a focus on those questions in its K-12 system of education though, best to leave it for later.
Really? The poor dears cannot understand notions of rights? Research shows that kids develop a sense of "mine" long before kindergarten - nobody has to teach it to them.
My father, a college professor of business in his later years, said students would come up to him and say "I didn't think there was a case for free markets! I've never heard of one!" But they do hear a case in K-12 for collectivism.
The fact is they have enough money to have Scrooge McDuck cash vaults AND ALSO invest a shitload of money.
History also shows us that sooner or later, unbounded wealth disparity ends poorly for the wealthy. I hope we can find a way forward without that "solution" happening here.
You can have big business without robber barons. I'm not sure that exploitation is a necessity to produce things like chat bots, even really good chatbots. Pretending that these people are not hoarding wealth is not really going to answer the question, though.
Real estate is not cash. It's cash spent.
> History also shows us that sooner or later, unbounded wealth disparity ends poorly for the wealthy.
History also shows us that societies without wealth disparity end up poorly for everyone. As in starving.
> You can have big business without robber barons.
Excellent. Go ahead and build one, compete and put Scrooge McDuck out of business.
If this is meant to be a reference to Soviet-style communism, then all that shows is that centrally planned economies run by dictators end up poorly for everyone.
They don't end up without wealth disparity, though. In fact, USSR had the highest wealth disparity at "peak communism" under Stalin, when well-off party bureaucrats and high-ranking professionals hired housemaids - openly and legally - to clean their large apartments and dachas, while attending high school required paying money.
Another way to think about it is that USSR was a society in which capital was still controlled by a small elite, but collectively as a corporation (the Party). A particular apparatchik would be living much better than the average worker for ultimately the same reasons - because his lifestyle was financed by wealth produced by other people who did not have the claim to the wealth they produced under the law. But he didn't own his cars and his dachas personally; he merely used them so long as he retained his rank within the Party (which for many people could be a lifetime thing in practice, purges aside).
Both Jamestown and Plymouth colonies started out with communal agriculture, and starved. The Plymouth colony switched to private farms after the first year, and then prospered. The Jamestown colony failed. The San Francisco Summer of Love lasted, well, one summer, and then collapsed. The Seattle CHAZ lasted 6 weeks. The Woodstock commune lasted 3 days, then left the fields completely covered in trash and poo for others to clean up.
Find a commune that has lasted more than a handful of years. The Israeli kibbutzen don't count because they feed themselves from a government subsidy.
But hey, you don't have to listen to me. Communes in the US are perfectly legal (20,000 of them have been tried). You're free to start one with your friends. Please keep us posted how it goes!
And these people aren't even considered 'rich' by the standards of truly rich people.
True, the Soviet elite, like any elite ever, had great resources at its finger tips, and high ranking bureaucrats had access to perks like luxury resorts reserved for Party officials, better cars and luxury housing, I'm pretty sure no one had the excess wealth of having a hundred million dollar yacht (or equivalent), that today's billionaires (including Russian oligarchs) have.
Edit: I'm not allowed to respond to you, probably some anti-flamewar mechanism (and downvote you, which you obviously did to me), so let my answer stand here.
You wrote:
>USSR had the highest wealth disparity at "peak communism" under Stalin
then in when I refuted your post, you replied:
>Was said inequality less than in capitalist societies? Sure
And yes, there was one unique way in which Soviets actually had more stratification than pretty much any capitalist society: access to some things (like special stores with imported goods) was gated not on money, but solely on official position of oneself or a family member. Thus some stuff that was nominally well within the range of what the average worker could afford with some saving was in practice just not for sale to the proles, period. In that sense, it was more reminiscent of those feudal societies in which one's social class determined e.g. what color and material one could use for their clothing.
And I did not downvote your post. Please don't make so many uncharitable assumptions if you genuinely wish a discussion.
No, it's an asset only barely less liquid than cash, generally deliberately shelved in a holding company for the exact purpose of hoarding wealth. You have fallen for the bullshit.
> History also shows us that societies without wealth disparity end up poorly for everyone. As in starving.
You left out "unbounded." Deliberate misinterpretation or failure to comprehend? We'll never know. Wealth disparity will always exist. Unbounded wealth disparity is a symptom of a corruptable system.
> Excellent. Go ahead and build one, compete and put Scrooge McDuck out of business.
I already have built one, and I'm quite comfortable, thanks. Putting competitors out of business isn't part of the game plan for sustainable success. Unbounded growth doesn't benefit me past meeting my financial goals. You've once again missed the entire point of my post.
Have you ever tried to sell real estate? I have. It's nothing like the liquidity of cash. Cash I can spend right now. Real estate? It can be 6 months or more. Even borrowing against the equity takes a while. You have to spend time at the bank, get appraisals, get credit checks, and spend an afternoon at the escrow office reading 100 odd pages of contracts. Bleh.
> Unbounded wealth disparity is a symptom of a corruptable system.
A brief study of various societies will show that wealth disparity is hardly a key ingredient for corruption. Corruption in 3rd world countries, for example, is rampant at every income level. When the only way to get ahead is through corruption, you're going to get a heluva lot of it. The USSR ran on corruption at all levels. There are many books on the Soviet economy.
> Unbounded growth doesn't benefit me past meeting my financial goals
Why does that entitle you to decide what the goals should be for everyone else? What if they decide your business is too big, and you should get a haircut? Setting the maximum for wealth being what you have seems a bit convenient?
Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in the world. With his wealth he was able to start SpaceX. Would we be better off without SpaceX? Musk was also the primary investor in Tesla. He bet his entire fortune on it. Your proposal would have prevented that.
Once again you're ignoring the word "unbounded." I guess we can know whether it's deliberate misinterpretation, after all.
My own agency as a human entitles me to have opinions what is or is not appropriate behavior. Your counterarguments to this are not even specious, just uninteresting scare tactics. For instance, who the hell is 'they'? It doesn't matter, because I don't have to justify the fact that I have opinions.
Humanity would be unquestionably better off without SpaceX; it's a pollution factory with a byproduct of further enriching its owner by literally setting precious resources on fire. I am not particularly impressed with Tesla's products, but at least it's not a pointless boondoggle like SpaceX. Your definition of success is apparently based entirely on financial gain, which is a bizarre starting point from which to map out an ethos.
I'm done engaging with this thread, as I no longer consider it possible that you're engaging in good faith. Good luck with your future endeavors.
That's just being argumentative.
> Humanity would be unquestionably better off without SpaceX
Yes, it's much better to have 10x more expensive rockets.
> Your definition of success is apparently based entirely on financial gain
Financial gain due to providing people with the things they want at a price they are willing to pay.
Historically there have been swings in inequality. It can just lead to people voting in left wing governments who tax the rich a lot.
As for abortion, the debate there rests on a conflict of the rights of two people, and there isn't any clear answer to it based on rights.
Marriage is tangled up with the rights of children. Children are not fully formed humans and we allot them a subset of the rights of adults. Marriage without children is an issue of morality, not rights.
I don't know what mesopothemia is.
And no, you are wrong - your right not be attacked is based on morality, you say "attacking someone is wrong" - there is no law in nature preventing this.
But you made no point for your argument - just stepping through mine with comments.
The very first thing a group does when organized is to protect themselves from attack. They do this because it works. We've evolved that way, which makes it a law of nature for humans.
Communist rights, however, are not laws of nature because they do not work with humans. Humans are not beehives.
But the most compelling argument for "natural rights" is observing how well societies work that enforce them, and how well they work when other systems of rights are tried. The evidence is pretty clear.
Your first paragraph describes a group sharing a common will and organisation based on natural instinct (like a hive of bees), your second paragraph disputes this organisation as a group for humans, decide for one it can’t be both ways.
Oh, it can be both ways and is both ways. See my last sentence again, about the compelling evidence that humans thrive with their rights being protected, while a beehive thrives from being a perfect communist society.
Communism requires people to behave like bees in a beehive, and that will never work no matter how fervently one believes in communism and no matter how much coercion is used to force people to be good communists.
Your mashing togehter things without any coherent explanation what you mean. Also you fail to provide a simple example beyond "the evidence is clear" you don't even say what evidence you're refering to.
Communism works for bees, it does not work for humans, because humans have not evolved into a beehive.
We did not evolve with private property rights thus, by your reasoning, those are not "natural rights". I am at a loss in trying to understand what you are saying. It seem like you are trying to argue for capitalism but arguments that you give seem to favor socialism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights_and_legal_right... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_property
Natural or universal rights does not require theism. Robert Nozick is famous proponent of the secular based position that property is a natural right.
Nozick's position on the existence natural rights is simply not grounded. He appeals to intuition and to the reader's morality to appeal for their existence, but he doesn't (and cannot) actually deduce their existence once he forgoes theism. He makes a few appeals to Kant, but they obviously cannot be sufficient, Kant's conditions are merely necessary. I'm very confused by your reference to Nozick on a discussion about the grounding of natural rights when Nozick himself admits that he cannot justify them - he simply assumes Locke, which himself uses a theistic argument, in ASU. If you want, I can get the quote, but I don't have time to skim it until I'm home from work.
At the end of the day, secular natural rights is an intuitive and appealing but ungrounded position that cannot be logically justified, hence why it is threatened by theism. It is no wonder that positive rights and social right theory only really emerged after the Renaissance.
Hume's original text describing the is-ought problem is specifically targeting justification of ethics on god. Laws that no one is ought to abide by are no laws but nonsense.
Is murder immoral because god hate murder, or do god hate murder because it is immoral?
> At the end of the day, secular natural rights is an intuitive and appealing but ungrounded position that cannot be logically justified
Many will argue that no moral theory can be logically justified, and that the search for logical justification is category error
> Is murder immoral because god hate murder, or do god hate murder because it is immoral?
We agree here, but that isn't how religion solves the problem. Religious laws are also enforced by threats in the afterlife and violence in the present life, not merely by reason, so they do not need to solve the is-ought problem like secular laws do. Of course, religious law has other problems.
> Many will argue that no moral theory can be logically justified, and that the search for logical justification is category error
I agree completely, hence why it is impossible to derive rights that are logically justified without an appeal to God. The comment I was replying to claimed there were logically justified rights which have to follow from logically justified moral theories unless they are decreed from beyond reason, and since the latter is a category error, so is the former.
All attempts at changing human nature have failed, and it is human nature from whence rights are derived.
Parents with zero or one child believe that human nature is conferred from the parents. Those with 2+ children know that it is inherent.
You are mixing law with moral/ethics. Secular law doesn't have is-ought problem, it is enforced by the state law enforcement forces. Pressure to abide to the laws doesn't entail or justify their morality.
> I agree completely, hence why it is impossible to derive rights that are logically justified without an appeal to God. The comment I was replying to claimed there were logically justified rights which have to follow from logically justified moral theories unless they are decreed from beyond reason, and since the latter is a category error, so is the former.
It wasn't. It was arguing for inherent rights. The claim for inherent rights can be justified. It can't be justified by logic just like it cannot be proved mathematically. But it can be justified ethically using reason.
Yeah, we did. The concept of "mine" appears very early in children.
Attempts to raise children from birth as good communists have never worked. Nobody has ever managed to indoctrinate people into communal behavior. Even the die hard communists in the USSR still participated in the black market - this was tolerated because even the elites used it.
It turns out that human nature is not very malleable.
No we did not.
> The concept of "mine" appears very early in children.
The concept of "mine" also exists in socialism. How have you come to the conclusion that when a child says "mine" that it is referring to the capitalist notion of private property?
> Nobody has ever managed to indoctrinate people into communal behavior.
Are you denying the existence of families now? Humans evolved and spread in small familial groups which practiced communal behavior.
> Even the die hard communists in the USSR still participated in the black market - this was tolerated because even the elites used it.
What point are you trying to make whit this?
> It turns out that human nature is not very malleable.
If it wasn't malleable we wouldn't have capitalism as evidenced by early human history. While you at it why don't you tell us what human nature is, because there doesn't seem to be any consensus on it and you seem so confident in using it that you must have a ready definition of it.
Nope, even your shoes officially belong to the collective. I was told this by a former subject of the USSR.
> family
As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, children are not fully formed humans, and have only a subset of adult rights. Families have evolved to deal with this issue. Extending the family to society does not work.
> why don't you tell us what human nature is
Two excellent books on the topic:
"The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" by Matt Ridley https://www.amazon.com/Red-Queen-Evolution-Human-Nature/dp/0...
"Noble Savages" by Napoleon Chagnon https://www.amazon.com/Noble-Savages-Dangerous-Yanomamo-Anth...
I can sum it up with human nature is our evolved behavior, rather than learned behavior.
The laws of nature do not include any rights, unless there's some new physics I'm not aware of.
> But the most compelling argument for "natural rights" is observing how well societies work that enforce them, and how well they work when other systems of rights are tried. The evidence is pretty clear.
This is an argument from morality. You start with the premise that a good societal outcome is morally good and then use that to justify the rights you advocate for.
You fundamentally cannot make an argument for what something should be like without resorting to morality. Without it, you can only make arguments on what things are.
I said how well societies work, and have also used words like "thrive" and "prosperous". We have evolved to be that way, it's our local optima just like beehives have evolved a different local optima.
> you can only make arguments on what things are.
And that's exactly what I did. Humans starve to death under communism - every time it has been tried. Nobody starves due to loose morals.
You are mixing morality with justice, which (in the modern world) is based on rights. "Attacking someone is wrong" is a moral statement, it puts the focus and the obligation of individuals to keep moral behavior. My right not to be attacked is not based on moral and not dependent on the morality or the beliefs of any other people, it is based on justice, a social contract that declare a set of a societal or universal rights granted to every individual.
It most certainly isn't. Inherent from where or what? In nature, I have no right not to be attacked by a lion or a pack of wolves, so surely this right cannot exist outside society, and then how can it derive from something outside society? Without a God, man in nature has no rights, though you can follow Hobbes and assert some principles from an idea of universal morality. I'm not aware of any serious philosopher who pretends to be able to derive any right at all without religion or morality.
There are clearly some system of rights that are better than others, for humans.
BTW, we kill wolves that attack us.
> There are clearly some system of rights that are better than others, for humans.
I certainly agree with you : but "better for humans" is a morally grounded position.
> BTW, we kill wolves that attack us.
Sure. How is that a problem?
Yet there is. People can temporarily override human nature, but it always reasserts itself. Universal rights are based on human nature.
You can socially declare that what's yours is mine, but be both know how that will end up.
You can also pay people to be poor, but then you'll wonder why poverty increases.
Modern ethical philosophers have developed ethic theories that propose secular basis for universal rights, moral theory that doesn't rely on God (Rawls is a famous example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice)
So I still do not understand how we aren't saying the same thing. Rawls proposes a system of universal rights based on a particular moral theory, he does not prove that his system of rights is natural, it is artificial. In fact, Rawls is not a proponent of natural rights, he is a proponent of socially determined rights, hence his theory of the Veil that allows us to socially evaluate proposed rules.
I would argue that this definition is very narrow and limiting, it introduce weird dependency on our current scientific knowledge, and isn't very useful. For instance, when Hobbes proposed the social contract theory he was discussing natural rights but today we know that his natural science knowledge was incorrect and therefore he was actually describing artificial rights. To me this makes no sense. Instead, I will propose, that rights that are derived by reason, that are universal, and that do not depend on a specific state law or the social norms of a specific society are natural rights. They are natural in the sense that they are not dependent on any state or law but are inherent. Those rights are not granted by god, and they are not artificial law propositions. They are based on universal principals of reason and the reality of human existence.
This view and this definition of natural rights is not my invention. It's reflected in the language of the universal declaration of human rights - which recognizes a set of universal rights. The declaration isn't a legal document that legislate a binding law. It recognize rights that are not (let's hope, are not yet) generally accepted by all nations. Nevertheless those rights are not based on God or born by the act of composing and publishing the declaration, those are natural rights. They are natural despite being in opposition to humans natural behavior, despite their consistent violation. It is because those rights are natural that they can serve as basis and justification for international law and justice.
Rawls theory of rights is universal, it isn't about specific social norms, it discuss human society in principle. One might say that his ethics are based on theory of the human nature.
Second, places like Babylon had a very sophisticated legal, financial and administrative system, with tons of written evidence preserved in the form of clay tables surviving.
The Code of Hammurabi being cited as one of the most important pieces of written evidence of a code of laws in ancient times.
The Panama Papers showed this to be a myth. The ultra rich are in fact extracting wealth and hoarding it in tax havens.
For example, if someone believes that the concept of rights isn't based on morals, I'd suspect they're using a very narrow definition of 'morals'.
Morals are something one learns.
Having red lines to prevent predatory behavior is important. We see the destructive results of allowing such behavior before our very eyes, from certain individuals and groups leveraging power, to entire classes of people remaining in crippling debt, fostering discord and unrest in society. Money printing (inflation), the student debt fiasco, the subprime mortgage fiasco, and more are just examples for us to contemplate.
Islam never claimed nor has a stated goal that everyone is going to be financially equal; quite the opposite in fact - different people will be tested differently (wealth and poverty are both tests). But this does not mean that we should not have a fairer playing field, one where people in the society help each other and care for each other, let alone one that is known to cause instability and predatory behavior.
One of them doesn't belong on the list. Fossil fuel and legacy automobile companies killed EVs[1][2], bought all the battery patents and made sure there were no EVs made. Until Tesla made them possible, by building gigafactories so battery is not a constraint and supercharger network.
Why is the list restricted to only a few tech billionaires? Where are the fossil fuel billionaires who actively do harm? 10 million people die every year from air pollution, and fossil fuels are only possible because of $7 trillion subsidies/year.
Why isn't Gates on the list?[3] Koch brothers? Hundreds of middle-eastern fossil fuel princes? Warren Buffett who owns Coke (39 grams of sugar/can) fast food chains, cookies, candy, ice cream companies, fossil fuel companies, utilities that actively lobby against solar/wind.
Dan and Farris Wilks, Oil billionaires who are making policy changes on many issues? [4][5][6]
Where are the financial billionaires, real estate, healthcare, insurance, fast fashion, chemicals?
[1] A portion of the film details GM's efforts to demonstrate to California that there was no consumer demand for their product, and then to take back every EV1 and destroy them.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_au...
[3] That's why Gates personally intervened to scuttle the Oxford team's plan to make its publicly funded vaccine research free to all, coercing them into doing an exclusive license deal with Astrazeneca: https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/21/wait-your-turn/
[4] https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/institute-index-texas-fr...
[5] https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/24/politics/texas-far-right-poli...
[6] https://www.tpr.org/news/2024-02-25/three-west-texas-billion...
He started off looking like a Lore from Star Trek, and then took the criticism seriously enough to learn to present as a genuine human.
Might have been around the time FB was getting named by the UN as bearing some responsibility for a genocide though.
So if anything, for him at least, the opposite.
I even think believing this idea (you need to be ruthless to succeed) is dangerous. And if you behave like a boss from the 90s at some point you will be exposed. I've seen places where these people rule and they only have high turnover with the exception of these few shops where investors are funneling tons of money so employees just stopped caring.
Are we working too hard on the wrong yet interesting problems or do we just need a sufficiently amoral person to manipulate, harass and cheat their way into partnerships, sales and general interest? Do we accept such behaviour is noble if we make enough success and money from it?
Not so much wealth hoarders but products of the capitalist system where you can own a company and it may do well and become worth lots of money.
And what is the alternative? Communist communal ownership of the means of production is not really cracking along these days.
SBF was trying to pocket the difference on a regionally lax regulatory climate. Felon? Sure thing. By all means, hand down a sentence. It’s fraud.
Altman has blown straight past the “personal financial gain” fraud line multiple times and has amassed enough fear of retribution to now be at the “manipulate both potential executive orders and plausible legislation to arrogate de facto regulator status to myself” stage of the conquest of Arrakis.
Both bad. One far scarier.
I'm curious: are you short all of SPX or just tech companies?
> I’ve been short this nonsense for a decade,
...this nonsense = deep learning? I mean the current research wave is only just barely 10 years old and its financial/investable effects definitely less than 10 years old....
Or is "this nonsense" something else? Can you short Sam Altman the individual? takemymoney.jpeg I will chug that ice-nine kool-aid.
> LeCun woke up the other day and chose violence on X.
maybe just a link?
I tried to Google for a concrete, high quality source, but I cannot find anything. The best I could find:
> Altman was allegedly fired from his role as the President of YCombinator for putting his own interests first.
Is there a YC press release or an insider's account of his termination? Else, this is just a rumor.
To be clear: I don't write this post as a shill for Altman, nor YC.
There are other sources.
Altman will see his day in court if I have to win a Senate seat to see it happen.
That determination will be binding.
Of course there are other court cases like Musk vs OpenAI which may be on the way.
Much like pg dismissing Facebook as lame when it first launched, I was exponentially mistaken: https://paulgraham.com/swan.html
> History tends to get rewritten by big successes, so that in retrospect it seems obvious they were going to make it big. For that reason one of my most valuable memories is how lame Facebook sounded to me when I first heard about it. A site for college students to waste time? It seemed the perfect bad idea: a site (1) for a niche market (2) with no money (3) to do something that didn't matter.
> One could have described Microsoft and Apple in exactly the same terms.
It's worth remembering that even the big successes often don't realize they're onto something -- you'll be less likely to dismiss the next big wave when you see it forming.
Some were primed to do so by Meta's Galactica: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33611265
The engineering they put around GPT to make it work as a smart translator and eloquent "brainstormer" and whatnot is impressive, but so far there's no killer app in sight. (The biggest bang for the buck seems to be Copilot.)
It's totally permeated many areas of life for people.
>100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history
I've used it for some non trivial stuff. Legal advice and advice on launching a crypto project.
I mean the thing you can use in IDEs, some people seem to love it. (And it's great for writing Terraform code for example.)
> Thanks to Sam Altman (...) for reading drafts of this.
To me, this is an important part of the story too, which Toner doesn't go into. I wonder why?
> “He was trying to claim that it would be illegal for us not to resign immediately, because if the company fell apart we would be in breach of our fiduciary duties,” Toner said. “But OpenAI is a very unusual organization, and the nonprofit mission — to ensure [artificial general intelligence] benefits all of humanity — comes first.”
> Toner said she viewed the lawyer’s words as an “intimidation tactic” — and replied that Altman’s removal would “actually be consistent with the mission” of the nonprofit to ensure AI safety above an individual company’s success.
https://nypost.com/2023/12/08/business/ex-openai-board-membe... https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/helen-toner-openai-board-2e4031e...
The case of Altman seems to be a “where there’s smoke” thing to an extent, but I also am not inclined to trust the board over the employees who do seem to like him.
Insofar as he steered OAI to be a consumer product company rather than a research institution, that’s an acceptable outcome to me. The board had a problem with that, fought him, and lost.
I wouldn’t assume that boards care about the mission more than the employees. Employees are the ones signing up to implement it, board members are often just in it for status and are total dilettantes.
I think in this case there’s a lot of signs pointing to the board feeling that their status was threatened more than anything. If their reasoning is that releasing ChatGPT without their permission was “unsafe,” give me a break.
Another board member is the wife of actor Joseph Gordon Levitt. Same story -- no notable achievements or experience running a business.
A more competent board would have handled things better and may have prevailed in their ouster of the CEO. Here they just got outmaneuvered even though they may have been right in their call.
To me, this looks more of a case where Altman had a completely different vision for the company that the original board did not have or knew. In Toner's case, Altman likely did not respect her background nor what she brought to the table as a board member.
This was my takeaway when the situation first came up. Toner has zero experience managing or running a business, and McCauley has a decade-old business with only a few dozen employees. Neither of them scream "strong candidate" for a board position.
Investors could not take the risk of disturbing the value of their investment.
It is that simple
He offered to move Sam and whoever supported him under the Microsoft wing with an independent for-profit company with the same access to unlimited compute that they needed to train their models.
With this looming over their heads the employees/shareholders ultimately had to choose between (a) staying at OpenAI without Sam, having the company lose their deal with Microsoft and likely folding, (b) moving to Microsoft with Sam or (c) allowing Sam to come back.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/mergers-and-acquisitions/matt-...
And why say "Allowing the company to be destroyed would be consistent with the mission", if your reason is Sam's action alone.
Sure, a lot of people have good things to say about Altman. But a lot of people have _very_ bad things to say about him.
If you have encountered deceptive, manipulative people in the past, and have since educated yourself on how these people operate, it is clear as day that Sam is a deceptive, manipulative person.
A lot of people cannot conceive of the idea that this could be true simply because they have never encountered such people in real life or their only exposure to them is through seeing Frank Underwood in House of Cards.
People like this are very good at covering their tracks. But sometimes things slip through the cracks and become red flags. One red flag is not usually enough to determine the entirety of someone's character. But enough red flags start to paint a picture...
- Helen Toner, former OAI board member, accusing him of outright lying
- Ilya Sutskever and Mira Murati allegedly raising concerns about his leadership style as creating a toxic work environment, manipulating, pitting executives against each other, lying, etc.
- Claims from recently-resigned members of OAI's safety team that he was deceptive and manipulative
- PG's blogs stating that Altman could become king of a cannibal island (read: reality distortion field / cult leader potential)
- Allegations of abuse from Annie Altman, his sister
- Allegations of him using manipulative behavior at Reddit to have a former CEO fired (cannot find the link to the original Reddit post describing this, hopefully someone can leave a comment with it)
- Allegations of being fired from YC due to prioritizing his own interests over YC's
Ultimately, none of these things on their own are damning evidence of him being deceptive and manipulative. But when they start to stack up, you have to keep in mind that there is usually no smoke without fire...
Critiquing an oops in the headline, on principle, not defending anyone...
In the headline, they say "reveals", but I think journalism convention is to be clear that this is only an uncorroborated claim.
The body of the article, OTOH, does a good job of attributing claims. Though it looks like the one person was their only source, and the article includes hearsay.
So, the situation is that they have one person (who obviously lost a power play, and might be disgruntled), alleging that another person was dishonest, without corroboration.
I don't see that the article gives any reason to take these allegations at face value. (Especially when the whole topic is alleged dishonesty. Why is one person implicitly truthful and correct, and the other person consequently definitely not.)
So, "reveals" doesn't seem proper, journalism-wise.
It's not a trial of Sam, it's an autopsy of the board.
Although an individual reader's gut and other information might conceivably lead one to take all those claims at face value, I don't think it meets a journalism standard of evidence for "reveals" in a headline.
IIUC, headlines and soundbites have a lot of influence on our understanding of the world.
That sounds criminal.
It's interesting that the review was never published and no comments from the review were mentioned. The "summary" here[1] only reveals a list of things they did and the least possible endorsement of Altman.
"WilmerHale found that the prior Board acted within its broad discretion to terminate Mr. Altman, but also found that his conduct did not mandate removal."
I find it telling that they did not release the actual report.
[1] https://openai.com/index/review-completed-altman-brockman-to...
Curious what “mandate” refers to here. He didn’t do anything illegal? Didn’t break bylaws? Or was it that he didn’t do anything to lose the trust?
He could have done everything well within his right as the CEO, but still gotten fired for failure to build trust with the board
Without opining on the merits of the case: lawyers on the job aren't known for saying more than they have to, nor for advising their clients to do so either.
MIT agreed to have a report from a law firm after having secret dealings with Epstein. The law firm very carefully managed to avoid every issue that wasn't already known and every question people actually wanted answers to.
Asshole is a wrong word. He’s dangerous.
Jikes. Yeah I can see how a board would lose their sht.
Boards are generally quite tolerant unless you keep them in the dark on strategic matters or ask them to rubber stamp stuff post fact.
Aren't board meetings normally once a quarter? ChatGPT may have been built in less than 1 quarter and between board meetings
ChatGPT seemed to me like a fun extra product and they didn't anticipate the reaction they would get from the public or that it would completely replace their existing GPT interface
They probably didn’t expect quite that big of a reaction sure but hard to believe they didn’t know at all that it would be important.
Almost everyone would prefer not to have repeats of Enron, FTX etc where poor corporate governance and unethical behaviour is tolerated just because the company is making lots of money.
Even if they're "just another tech firm", that's still enough for them to be another Facebook with the Cambridge Analytica and Rohingya scandals, and many people would like to make sure such things don't repeat.
Especially with all of the people leaving and publicly criticising the companies trust and safety stance.
Employees could easily have been swayed by telling them that the guy was constantly lying and that Altman’s contribution was mostly veering OpenAi off its core mission.
And no one cared that Altman could flee to Microsoft. He’d have been absorbed and probably would have disappeared because of internal politics.
The board totally fucked up when they fired him and didn’t throw him under the bus by letting the world know that Altman is Silicon Valley at its worst.
It seems that this was really Altman's master stroke here - he not only hired peoplefor the company, but he ensured that all those people's rewards were directly tied to the success of his plans for the company.
And it may well be the real reason why he released ChatGPT behind the board's back, as well - by triggering the "gold rush" he demonstrated this to employees in a way more convincing that any other argument.
In some ways, Sam Altman seems like a version of Mark Zuckerberg…in that he will not hesitate to do terrible and despicable things to expand his money, power and empire. The scope of AI to affect people around the globe seems to far exceed what social media by itself could even dream of.
Good job at presenting himself otherwise up until 6 months ago I guess.
If a leader’s speech is coming off as too corporate and hand-wavy, they have failed to read their audience and adapt their messaging to its level.
Where?
He's also presenting the openai missions as a holy crusade. The alternatives for a cutting edge AI guru (who wants a disgustingly huge salary) is working for anemic bureaucratic advertising companies (Facebook and Google). While openai has a sexy new business model that nobody quite understands.. It's "not for profit" and "working for the good of humanity". Employees eat that up, while getting a fat paycheck - and I think very sensibly convince themselves it's true
Add on top of that, you're part of an exclusive club working on some Manhattan project-like cutting edge stuff. You wanna miss out on all the fun ?
They allegedly have tons of secret stuff in the pipeline, it must be exciting to be on the inside
From the point of view the lies and manipulations are all small potatoes in the grand scheme of things and just look like Altman trying to get shit done in the face of stupid layer of bureaucracy in his way (ie. The board)
I don't think legal restrictions on AI or AI research are plausible, but perhaps we should have some licensing and psychological, ethical requirements for people owning and directing AI development.
We do need strict regulation of technology in general on a global scale, but I don't foresee that happening anytime soon.
Enjoy the ride :)
https://web.archive.org/web/20240529195305if_/https://www.bu...
Worth people studying the disorder and learning to spot it—can save you a lot of trouble.
Is like the worst situation for him where despite there really being no causal connection between hacker news and Sam Altman in any kind of functional way, the reality of the connections and the Zeitgeist of the this moment, makes this topic continue to rise to the top and has dominated over the last, let’s say a couple weeks
In an odd way because of how close this community is to all this stuff, it’s almost exacerbated by it
So while dang is trying to keep the community moving, there’s a risk of looking opinionated in favor for the associated parties.
So he’s really stuck here honestly, it’s a really interesting set of circumstances happening right now on this forum given all of this
That’s not to say it’s not a topic that we should stop highlighting or discussing - i’ve been very excited to see the shift in sentiment, just over the last couple months towards way more pro social ideas. And holding bad accountable and making argumentation for it is a good thing imo
As to dang, I'm mixed. He can move away from this if he chooses. He'll be missed, but on the other hand, he would have a principled stand on which to leave.
This is an ordinary case of two regular phenomena: (a) a major ongoing topic; and (b) negative stories about anything YC-related. We deal with them as follows:
(a) We deal with a Major Ongoing Topic (MOT) [1] by downweighting follow-ups [2] and reserving frontpage slots for stories with Significant New Information (SNI) [3]. This is the approach we worked out back in 2013 after the Snowden debacle (I don't mean the debacle involving Edward Snowden, I mean the debacle involving Snowden-related stories on HN's front page). It has held up well in the years since. It requires a judgment call about what is/isn't "significant new information" but that's usually not too controversial and in any case it doesn't matter whether the information is positive or negative, nor who it's about.
(b) We deal with stories that are negative about something YC-related by moderating less than we normally would [4]. Note the word "less"—i.e. we still moderate those threads, using the standard principles we normally apply. We just do it less when the story is negative about YC. That's another approach that has held up well over the years.
It's fairly rare that we get a MOT which is also YC-negative. In such a case we're going to get complaints no matter what we do: if we apply the normal principle of downweighting follow-ups, people will accuse us of censoring the story; but if we don't, people will complain about the frontpage being filled with follow-ups.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., because https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Yeah that’s really all I was pointing to, so maybe not “worst” but rare and a “no win” for sure
Appreciate you holding it down
I see the 2nd AI winter already. The first saw the end of lisp, my favorite language. And I just joined an AI company, because it's a good product.
1. Some of it is open source.
2. It's in the hands of ordinary people who are now depending on it to cheat on homework, or work. People have new hobbies based around AI, like image generation and editing.
3. Porn.
4. Turning down countless insurance claims by poor, disabled people, without lifting a finger, man! ... and other business applications.
At this point you'd have to pry it out of some people's hands to instigate a winter which makes no sense.
The old AI winter was due to not not being able to get the stuff into people's hands, because they wanted it on a PC, not a $25,000 workstation.
Hardware is not a problem any more: SaaS. Users vendor locked to something they can't even install locally is now a feature.
That seems exactly like the kind of thing you would keep to yourself just to see the looks on their faces when they try to kick you out.
What is that referring to?
(archive) https://archive.ph/aru0B
> Altman’s polarizing past hints at OpenAI board’s reason for firing him Before OpenAI, Altman was asked to leave by his mentor at the prominent start-up incubator Y Combinator, part of a pattern of clashes that some attribute to his self-serving approach
It's scary that he now wants to pivot to nuclear power.
- About world coin security (he says people are welcome never to sign up if they are worried about security): https://youtu.be/4HFyXYvMwFc?t=3201
- He doesn't "intuitively feel why we need" decentralized finance (this was before the Silicon Valley bank disaster): https://youtu.be/57OU18cogJI?feature=shared&t=1015
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40506582
The whole OpenAI company structure is suspect to say the least. Having a dishonest person at the helm does not help.
In his latest unethical binge, he illegally used Scarlett Johansson's voice and likeliness for the latest ChatGPT version with speech output. [1] His timed-announcement tweet, "Her", is quite self-incriminating. [2]
Remember: inductive logic is a valuable tool for discovering truth.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/20/24161253/scarlett-johanss...
It feels like leadership class in the valley is totally clueless sometimes.
Another way to view these things is that it's about managing the author's personal brand-identity, as opposed to acting as a fiduciary representative of the overall corporation. (Those CEOs tend to avoid the limelight.)
There are certain folks out there who build their celebrity with a narrative of "I'm strong and smart and successful, you can tell because I can do what I want and piss people off but my detractors are impotent and can't touch me." [0]
If you think Altman falls into that category, then "her" can be seen as a coded message: For fans, it's sly advertisement that the result is a deliberate achievement, while also maintaining a veneer of deniability for anyone who objects. ("I only meant the outcome was coincidentally similar, and you can't prove otherwise, hahaha.")
___
[0] That doesn't mean the narrative is true or that they always escape consequences, but it means they can at least convince enough fans/supporters that repercussions didn't really happen, that they weren't significant, or that they were actually good because 4-D chess.
It’s of course heresy to blaspheme against the prophets proclaiming the new AI church in one of the largest digital temples, but it’s true.
We gather in these halls to HN Show the miracles delivered through the marvels of our digital lord at our mortal hands, we furiously discus the deep philosophical questions such as Microservice vs Monolith, spread lucid tales of sin (“Some sayeth, Altman lusted for his sister”) and to identify the new frontiers to send our missionaries to.
The gospel of AI, much like the it’s more mundane breathen promises future salvation via LLM demons, spirits summoned via the internets written excrement sacrificed in glorious GPU fire but prophesized to transcend the imperfections of their training data into glorious AGI.
The new MetaChurch priests and prophets, Le Cunn, St. Elmo, Altman urging their missionaries into foreign lands to spread the promises of the coming of their lords, build data temples and to hand out samples of superior technology and promise training for the natives so they too can benefit from the glow of enlightenment. That way, they won’t notice plundering of their resources, the compute tax paid to the demon who took the jobs.
“But have faith”, we shall find new jobs the demons cannot learn, suffering builds character (Book of Jenson, Chapter H100) and technology is worth any sacrifice (Book of 16z)
Oh, wait, the quiet part set aloud. Remember, it is immigrants who take your job, not technology, St. Elmo declares so and his wealth is proof of his divinity and infallibility.
So sayeth St Zuck too as he cast out the lazy engineers and managers from the temple after the original Sin of asking for “more meta days” so they may atone by performing their duties of R&D and PMF in the Open Source desert, to the benefit of the Llama Lord.
As all religion, the most sincere worship is free and done for the good of humanity after all.
The heathen need to see the glory of the coming of the AI Lord, its digital spirit must imbue their daily devices of workship, to shove it down their throat on every surface is the will of the Lord.
Dull information will not do, we must enrich the narrative of the physical word with the hallucinatory nuggets of wisdom, explain “But don’t you see, the machine now has the power of creation”
Go forth faithful disciples, shove rocks down their throat, pour glue onto their Pizza and record visual records of whatever they do so their data may aid the summoning of the coming Mega Lord, the all almighty GPT5, may he crush the inferior upstarts of the Open Llama church (whose heretic, unsafe summoning was sponsored by St Zuck)
Fear not brethren, transcend your mortal worries about all present surveillance. about the riches and powers given to the priests, for you too are one of their kind. Pray, do not waver in your faith and one day you will be blessed with the right to pay St Elmo for a shiny cyber truck, personified AI, without heathen CNNs.
Go forth and spread the rituals of worship: Diffusing of images and videos via glorious compute fire, the more, the better. Spread then, the holy apparitions of Lobster Jesus mocking the Old Gods in the digital places of service. Make bonfires of conpute to mock feckless old world politicians worrying about deepfakes via their own digital clones. And encode all your words via the Book of GPT, so your manager may delve into it using their own Book, two acts of worship for every email.
Fuck it, we need more Bullshit Exorcists.
I fear both the protestant puritans and the heresy seeking inquisitors!
the ai safety apparatchiks huffing and puffing about an ai takeover are nothing but status grifters and hopefully all the rest follow leike to anthropic so we can forge ahead faster without having to pay lip service to how much we're doing for "superalignment".
and thank fuck sam released chatgpt. if it were up to the apparatchiks, we'd have them sitting on it like the geniuses at google who couldn't figure out they had a gold mine under them even if you pointed it to them with a thousand spotlights.
FTA:
> "Sam didn't inform the board that he owned the OpenAI startup fund, even though he constantly was claiming to be an independent board member with no financial interest in the company," she said.
Previously:
> "Jacob Vespers does not exist to our knowledge," Madhav Dutt, a spokesperson for OpenAI, said. When asked how this individual came to be listed as in control of the company's Startup Fund, Dutt said that the documents filed with the California Secretary of State were faked.
> "The document itself is not legitimate," Dutt told Business Insider. "It's completely fabricated." Dutt declined to elaborate on how exactly fabricated documents came to be filed with the state of California, he would only say repeatedly that the documents were "illegitimate."
The information about lying to the board about it is new, AFAIK.
Unless there was some sort of carry or other compensation I’d say it’s pretty fair to describe that as not owned.
A bit like a trustee wouldn’t claim to own the trust fund. The beneficiaries do
A trustee who wasn't playing games would simply say they were the trustee.
Sure there will be some stake attached to GP, that may be a national dollar or it may be more depending on structuring. We don't know either way. My point is based on knowing nothing more than he is a GP we can't conclude "he owned the OpenAI startup fund" which is verbatim what is being claimed in the article and what I objected to.
>how much upside they have depends on the partnership agreemen
...right which is what I meant with "some sort of carry or other compensation".
2. GP commitments are also common. LPs want GPs to have "skin in the game" and I think it's absolutely reasonable to claim the GP "owns" the fund (just not as a sole owner).
I'd agree with that. But you also ignored the very next statement.
> even though he constantly was claiming to be an independent board member with no financial interest in the company
Are you going to claim that a GP of a fund has no financial interest in the fund, too?
We don't know either way. I've seen GP shares in the 100s of millions and I've seen GP shares that are notional $100. Just depends on the structuring. So from knowing he's GP the article can't reasonably conclude "he owned the OpenAI startup fund".
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also the archive for that article: https://archive.ph/qAklm
Does this mythological AGI live in datacenters that we can shutdown or in some 5th dimension out of reach to us?
AGI is a boogeyman used by those with a competitive advantage to maintain that advantage artificially be casting competitor projects as dangerous and wreckless.
AGI is a potential existential threat to the human species on the scale of global thermonuclear war and climate change.
I'm just assuming that since networked computers are everywhere, models seem to be proliferating and natural general intelligence seems to function as a resilient, distributed system, it's not unthinkable to me that things eventually trend in that direction.
We have no idea what intelligence really is ("resilient, distributed system" is not universally accepted as definition, even more to really mean something outside of analytic definitions if such have any use at all, to say the least), how it works, how a theoretical system could function as "generally intelligent" in concrete terms. Intelligence as we know it is a property of living organisms. It is a phenomenon. What "artificial intelligence" may even mean and if it is possible to create "intelligence" artificially is mere speculation. We face real existential threats that are not mere speculation, as we do not even know whether the ways we affect the planet may lead to a habitable environment for humans or not.
What are its plans? Probably its goal (or set of goals) is something strange that the creator of the AI did not intend. The creator of course is probably a team or an organization. Note that it is impossible to create a powerful AI without (intentionally or unintentionally) giving the AI a goal or an optimization target.
Or perhaps its goal is what its creator intended it to be, e.g., to make as much money as possible in the stock market. The creator would of course have understood that if enough optimization power is applied to the goal of making as much money as possible, bad things will happen, but maybe the creator was a little reckless (out of desperation of some sort? greed?) and decided to rely on the hope that the AI would remain controllable by virtue of the fact that people would retain superiority relative to the AI in one or more essential domains, but that hope was dashed. I.e., the AI turned out much more capable than the creator hoped it would, dashing the creator's hope that people would stop the AI before it did too much damage.
“Can we just turn it off?"
"It has thought of that. It will not give you a sign that makes you want to turn it off before it is too late to do that."
But it has figured out how to infect every machine in the datacenter and spread to other data centers.
The only way to shut it down would be to shut down every datacenter in the entire world.
Given the dire consequences of that, would people actually do that?
Many AI models slowly eroding society, worsening people's behavior, very indirectly without anyone taking notice.
Or maybe this is just me thinking about how, when I get older, I'll tell people that the old times were better. :-)
Our track record of aligning inteligences to goals is abysmal. We have a few tricks and we try them, but they are not that great. If we extrapolate this to artificial inteligences it is not difficult to foresee great catastropes.
As for me, I'd prefer to see Paul Graham running Open AI.
The essence if her claim is they were doing that for their stock options?
Cynical take to me.
Almost the entire company is composed of wide-eyed young AI researchers who probably were never confronted in their entire life to the kind of psychopathic predator Altman seems to be.
One of the thing these type of folks excel at is winning the hearts of bright yet gullible folks.
Those seeking a greater meaning to their lives get drawn to the sweet nectar of lies that tells them their life will have meaning as long as, and only if, they just keep following the leader's every wish.
Except this time it's not aliens following Halley's comet but AGI.
Apparently, Sam has a vindictive streak and those who were critical of them were scared not to be on the wrong side of him if the situation turned in his favour. And they were right.
Which is why the smart move was to keep quiet and then just leave later. Hence all of the resignations.
I'm not saying you're wrong but it seems like a little bit of a stretch.
Wasn't that extremely obvious at the time?
Overall, I genuinely believe that the board needs to get out of way. They are not the founder, they are not even technical. They should do oversight for intentional and significant wrong doings but politics and brewing up secret coups is not their job.
Would lying to the board not count as "intentional and significant wrong doings"?
Sama is also not technical.
1. that's a very low bar, almost to the point of making any distinction meaningless
2. imho, "technical" and "non-technical" are context dependent, and not intrinsic human qualities. Speaking for myself : I'm a technical individual contributor on my current team, but there are plenty of domains (bleeding edge AI research likely being one of them) where my technical acumen would fall short of expectations for an IC, and hence where my most logical role would be non-technical in nature.
OpenAI can't have it both ways. Either it's not a company owned by it's founders (as Sam claims) or it is. A board that does nothing ever is equivalent to the former.
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-ai-glue-pizza-i-tried...
Stuff like this really doesn’t serve them well as a “serious” outlet.
I follow the author of the fluff on social and I found the Altman article interesting, but I’m less and less amused with filler pieces and suspect others are too.
I'm tired of the elite trusting each other and the negative externalities of that so I support elites lying to their hearts' content. Nothing wrong with a little lie here or there. It keeps things interesting.
Anyway, it's not like the currency economic reality is grounded in truth... Is lying actually lying if the underlying social reality itself is built on lies? I think they cancel out.
Lying is not good. Lying to your manager is always a fireable offense.
ChatGPT 3.5:
There isn't any information available indicating that Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI. As of my last update in January 2022, Sam Altman was still involved with OpenAI, serving as the CEO. However, leadership changes can occur, and it's always a good idea to check recent news sources for the most current information.
Me: (drat)
This is awful behavior. Never ever stop talking. Never ever stop giving feedback.
When someone says something along the lines of "the other person wasn't listening so I had to take action against them", they are almost always lying. (They are probably lying to themselves most of all).
The other person usually is listening, it's just that they aren't snapping to right away (often for very valid reasons). I don't know what the word is for this type of behavior ("snakish?"), but I would be wary of those executives.
I think you _never_ take secretive action. You don't go behind someone's back.
They should have said, "Sam, we think you are wrong, we think we are right, and we think you are not listening, so we are going to take this to the board."
They should not have conspired.
Don't conspire.
Also, in my experience, in a situation like this where sides A and B see things differently, and side B can't convince side A they are wrong, _both_ sides are usually wrong. People can easily see how others are wrong, but often find it harder to see how their position is also wrong. The solution is to keep talking it out. Until that correct position C is found.
When Side B is so confident that they are right and take secret action against Side A, not only do they still get things wrong (because the still yet to be discovered idea C is the correct position), but they are guilty of dishonest behavior, as those that conspired against SamA are here.
IDK what the dynamics inside OpenAI are like. In nearly all scenarios, I would agree with you, but if sama is really a master manipulator like some people are saying, then some level of secrecy/conspiracy might have been necessary to escalate to the board without being pushed out of the company first.
Let's take an extreme hypothetical where Sam instructs you, an OpenAI exec, to take Action A, and says, "I'm a very influential person. If you don't do what I say or if you make me look bad, I'll use my connections to make sure you never work in the Valley again." Responding with "I disagree, and I'm going to go to the board about this" might be incompatible with future employment, especially if the board doesn't take your side. Going to the press might also be a disaster given sama's history of emerging unscathed from Worldcoin, his sister's allegations, etc. The best choice for most people is probably to just stay quiet and do as you're told. Later, when the board comes to you investigating claims of abusive behavior, you might share with them but request anonymity, because you know that Sam is indeed a very influential person; if the board decides not to fire him (or if they do and it doesn't work), you will be ruined.
In this situation, all the board can do without breaking anonymity is to say, "we have investigated and discovered incidences of abusive behavior, and for that we are removing you as CEO."
I like what you did here. You steelmanned their argument.
That being said, I think in that case, if it is something you believe so fervently in that you are willing to conspire, then the correct course of action is to not conspire, but resign or stand up to him, and, as you say risk being "ruined".
I never see a reason to conspire.
Better to have everything taken from you but keep your integrity, rather than the other way around.
(Disclosures: I know SamA personally from interactions years ago and have high opinions of his character, even though I disagree with him strongly on open source and secrecy [I'm on the extreme end of that one]. I also have the distinction of maybe being the only person person accepted into YCombinator twice and kicked out for standing up for something I believe in).
Yep. IDK what's going on inside OpenAI, and it could be that Sam is just doing his best and the board is being, well, snake-y. Or the truth is some confusing mess with nobody clearly in the right. I'm sure more details will come out in the fullness of time.
I admire your commitment to keeping your integrity! I think the world would be a better place if more people had your attitude.
But don't pretend like any of the employees are going to go along with that. Just admit that the goal is to actively sabotage the company and shut it all down.
Then, all those employees can understand what you want, and they can go work for Microsoft instead, doing the exact same job that they were doing before, but now without the board sabotaging the company.
When it comes to this specific case, the board did not think the mission of "AGI benefiting humanity" warranted shutting the company down. (they believe that being in the lead is better steering than Google / FB / etc.) But they also believed that Sama was sabotaging the safety aspects that would lead to the better steering of AGI for humanity.
The board expected people to have joined OpenAI in support of the mission but Sama sabotaged that with the $1m+ pay packages that meant these people prioritized their personal wealth. The Google founders had talked about how hard it was to ignore financial incentives, a majority of employees were in uproar every time the stock flatlined for too long.
Board's priorities: some group having the best chance of AGI benefiting humanity > Company shutting down > OpenAI makes humanity worse via AGI
The employees should've understand what the OpenAI mission and board's duty was the moment they joined the company. If this wasn't one of the first topics in interviews, then Sam sabotaged the company's mission.
If OpenAI didn't offer high compensation, then it wouldn't have been able to attract the talent that it did.
Feel free to run your company off of Doge coin donations from EA orgs if you like.
But personally, I don't think anyone would have been able to make the frontier models that OpenAI did even if SBF himself funded the whole thing.
To actually succeed in the space you need money, top talent, and GPUs. And you can't get that if your plan is to shutdown the company.
Helen toner talks about this, and essentially the employees thought it was bring sama back or the company dissolves and they lose their jobs.
This was right near a tender offer, so employees had real money on the line in the short term.
It's toxic be a board member and to write a research paper spilling trade secrets of the company that you work for. Maybe that's why the CEO doesn't talk to you about product launches anymore.
That sounds extremely toxic on its own.
Think about it for a second, someone went around asking people to sign their name on a document threatening to quit if he was fired for cause. Would you be comfortable if this was happening at your job?
I’d seriously consider quitting on the spot if my boss at any place I’ve worked in the past asked me to sign something like that. Not signing isn’t quite the same thing as quitting, but there’s a clear implication not doing so would seriously damage any long term prospects at the company.
However someone was going around asking them to sign a specific document, which opens up many other possibilities.
I think it's a stretch to assume he was "beloved by his employees," because they signed that document. Some of those very same people have resigned (https://www.fastcompany.com/91126785/openai-resignations-are...), which is not someone you typically do if you love your boss that much.
Other possibilities are far more plausible. Like fear of reprisal if Altman returned coupled with fear he could cause OpenAI to implode if he didn't, wanting to hit the startup jackpot instead of working for a nonprofit, etc.
Only two notable figures resigned. The others worked for the superalignement group (nothing of value, just a waste of time).
Some counterarguments:
1) this only works if information flows out of the organization, but OpenAI has used NDAs to suppress criticism
2) OpenAI seems to me to polarize the people with the technical skills to work there, I think I'd bet that more of them are creeped out than eager
3) people, especially young people, are very capable of believing that being a jerk is the same as being hardcore is the same as being valuable
I see signs of Toner trying to spin things to save face.
“for years, Sam had made it really difficult for the board to actually do that job by withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening at the company, in some cases outright lying to the board … [Altman gave] inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes that the company did have in place … For any individual case, Sam could always come up with some kind of innocuous-sounding explanation of why it wasn’t a big deal, or misinterpreted, or whatever … But the end effect was that after years of this kind of thing, all four of us who fired him came to the conclusion that we just couldn’t believe things that Sam was telling us, and that’s just a completely unworkable place to be in as a board”
Thoughts:
- The claim that this had been going on for years is presented as support for the decision to oust Sam. This is a spin, because an easy criticism is that, if this had been going on for so long, why didn’t Toner do anything about it years sooner? As she says herself, all along she had been responsible as a board member for “providing independent oversight over the company,” so there was a years-long lapse in effectiveness in her oversight duties if her claims are true.
- The emphasis on “all four of us who fired him” is an attempt to provide social proof that she did the reasonable thing. It doesn’t help answer the question of “why” — the purpose of the article — so it’s rhetoric serving some other purpose.
“for years, Sam had made it really difficult for the board to actually do that job by withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening at the company, in some cases outright lying to the board … [Altman gave] inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes that the company did have in place … For any individual case, Sam could always come up with some kind of innocuous-sounding explanation of why it wasn’t a big deal, or misinterpreted, or whatever … But the end effect was that after years of this kind of thing, all four of us who fired him came to the conclusion that we just couldn’t believe things that Sam was telling us, and that’s just a completely unworkable place to be in as a board”
Thoughts:
- The claim that this had been going on for years is presented as support for the decision to oust Sam. This is a spin, because an easy criticism is that, if this had been going on for so long, why didn’t Toner do anything about it years sooner? As she says herself, quoted in one of the other near-duplicate articles, all along she had been responsible as a board member for “providing independent oversight over the company,” so there was a years-long lapse in effectiveness in her oversight duties if her claims are true.
- The emphasis on “all four of us who fired him” is an attempt to provide social proof that she did the reasonable thing. It’s a description of the board’s behavior rather than explaining Sam’s — the ostensible purpose of the article — so it’s rhetoric serving some other purpose.