Sam Altman is not on YC's board. So why claim to be its chair?
bizjournals.com
bizjournals.com
Corollary: Elon Musk https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1dgyujd/comment/l8...
Hare-brained. It refers not to hair on the brain, but to hares not being the world's smartest animals.
I suppose that's why many HNWI individuals consciously stay below the radar.
(Well not a metal "nail", but a wooden post.)
Makes me feel better about being short (on a good day I'm 5"3')
Sam Altman was CEO and President. The fact he was not Chairman is not material. There's a thousand different explanations how that misstatement could have occurred. Maybe someone wrote that up, and sama didn't review every single line, and other people just assumed it was right. But it's not material. Being being the CEO and President of YC is much, much more important and more material than Chairman of the board, which is largely a figurehead position.
No one is going to care and this is extreme nitpicking. They should fix the misstatement, but to claim some sort of conspiracy around this is stupid.
"Mr. Altman is an entrepreneurial and thought leader with a proven track record of growth investing within the technology industry. He is also the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, a leading AI research and deployment company, and the chairman of Y Combinator"
And as mentioned, "president" and "chairman" aren't fuzzy questions for the law. Saying you're one when you are the other is a lying, not "fudging a bit". Lying in generally, say at cocktail party, isn't against the law. But lying to the SEC is definitely a thing that can have penalties.
And, yes, the article takes an appropriate "why would you even do that?" tone since it seems unlikely he'd get some financial or other payoff for such behavior. The main impression it gives me is of a pathological level of hubris/ego. Like a manager who j-walks in front of cop on company time.
1. Intent to deceive, so it can't just be that the statement is false but that it was intentionally false as opposed to what is likely a mistake made by a third party. As was noted elsewhere, Sam was positioned to be Chairman of Y Combinator after stepping down as President, but that never happened. It's entirely possible that whoever wrote this did not become aware of that change in circumstances.
2. Reliance and harm. The false statement must be something that was or can be relied upon by potential investors that could cause them harm. It's possible an investor can rely on this fact but it would be very hard to demonstrate harm from it.
3. Materiality. The statement must be significant in that the information could sway a potential investor towards the investment. I'd say misstating credentials is material and so this element does count.
Taken altogether however, this does seem like a whole lot of nothing.
This is a just a misstatement. There's plenty of valid things to critique sama on, but this isn't one of them.
the corporation President, VP, Secretary, Treasurer, and Board of Directors and Chairman are legally defined titles, they are material titles, they imply fiduciary duty, loyalty, etc. (CEO isn't really a thing, it was made up to point out whether the President or Chairman wielded the ultimate power in situations where the largest shareholder might be more active than passive)
E.g. It doesn’t tell you what sama had for breakfast.
And btw, there was noone with a Director title working on the project, you were in fact the main project lead
I think someone made a mistake. Also, from looking at the sig page the signing parties are others...
He’s a pretty genuine guy with a lot of advice and wisdom. He definitely doesn’t come off as a capitalist but more of a helper type — someone who helps people become whole.
I felt like OpenAI and the sector in general made a lot of sense — now he can help everyone in the world.
As for the issue at hand, for one it’s doubtful he prepared this, but moreover, I have seen quite a many resumes in my day and not one wasn’t padded so to speak.
A capitalist is an owner of the means of production. It's as simple as that. I think Altman qualifies, especially to the African workers who make $1.50 an hour to get PTSD[1][2][3] in his AI sweatshops.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/ef42e78f-e578-450b-9e43-36fbd1e20...
[2] https://time.com/6275995/chatgpt-facebook-african-workers-un...
[3] https://www.theverge.com/features/23764584/ai-artificial-int...
He always helped when I ping'd him. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thank you for everything Sam.
From the article:
> Yet, Altman has been claiming the chairman title for at least three years in securities filings and a website associated with the AltC Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition corporation, or SPAC, that he registered in 2021.
The document was signed by Michael Klein and Jay Taragin (whoever they are), not Sam. But that wouldn't make much of a story, so Sam it is.
Yes, but this comes with the assumption that Sam writes and reviews the website copy, PR statements and S1 form submissions, which any organization of significant size, the CEO does not.
I could believe Elon does though.
And if they can't be trusted to get their own team biographies right, what can they get right?
If a run-of-the mill employee were lying about their experience, they'd be fired. But it's okay for the CEO because he's just so busy? What a double standard.
Did they use their own product to write the bio, and it "hallucinated" that he was chairman?
I think it's a mix of feels good to feel empathetic and say gee prolly just slipped by him, things slip by me, and then without interlocutors, could we ever have discussion? But it's an odd one
Do you use an accountant to file your taxes? Do you read the entire tax document they submit, or do you just look at their summary of "after this much in deductions, you owe this much"?
If you do read the document in full, good on you, but I assure you most people don't, in the same way that most CEOs don't read every single document the company's lawyer produces.
Trust but verify.
The news is that lying on those filings is a federal crime and can lead to jail time (for normal people who are actually subject to law).
1) I don't believe even if malicious this would be a criminal case that leads to jail time.
2) The s-1 filings are prepared and audited by third party companies.
3) Most likely in this case, these positions are listed to outline any potential conflicts of interest. I am not well read on the matter but I could see that you would list potential engagements to note the conflict of interest even if they are not finalized.
does it completely release liability?
And signed by…whom?
That's Altman-esque language.
Still, I doubt anyone is getting fired over this. And the document was not written by an oligarch, lol.
No, only about one, in order to pump up his career, and AIUI signed by him. "lol hahaha"
Who is supposedly at risk of being fired if not the person who wrote the document?
Should Altman fire himself or what are you talking about?
> Who is supposedly at risk of being fired if not the person who wrote the document?
The one who stands to benefit from the lie. In the case of the ordinary Joe that is of course one and the same; he can't afford to hire someone to delegate his CV faking to. But just because the bigshots can offload “trivial” tasks like that onto someone else doesn't make the moral responsibility anyone else's than their own.
Suggesting the one who should be fired is the office slave who actually typed the hype is
1) As absurd as Joe Schmoe claiming it isn't he, but the pen he signed his faked CV with that should be fired; and
2) A sign of a wholly non-functional moral compass.
Yes, I'm sure any board would fire their CEO for this if only he wasn't an oligarch. /s
Yeah, let's see the regular Joe Schmoe get away with how he didn't lie on his CV, it was just “a trivial mistake done by whoever was drafting the document.”
He probably won't, so someone else should do it for him.
(Ideally, someone who seems so shady should of course never have ended up in such positions of power in the first place.)
In the article they quote Marc Fagel, who previously served as the regional director for the SEC's office in San Francisco:
"Misstating the qualifications of executives is something the SEC takes seriously,"
Yeah, probably not. The problem is that they should.
The other problem is that people say stuff like "People don't go to jail for errors like these" as if that weren't a problem.
This might seem true in our technical buble, but most of the public probably has no idea who he is. They try ChatGPT for a work task and think it's amazing and love it.
I've seen this happen many times, and once one person in a small team/company tries it, everyone else starts using it and they also love it. These people don't know what OpenAI or who Sam Altman is and there hasn't been any trust broken because ChatGPT works for them.
Where there's smoke there's fire. You don't get to a point where you "destroy public trust" without also destroying investor confidence. The upstream comment mentioned "public trust" - but there were also trust issues with the board. These issues then put further investment in limbo until he was able to change the board.
My point is, that any trust issues aren't likely what they seem given that Apple made such a large bet with the company. Sure, it's "only" a distribution deal. But Apple needs to know that OpenAI will continue to have access to the resources they need to continue servicing massive markets. The trust may be wobbly, but not destroyed.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/29/ex_openai_board_membe...
Things do not, in fact, have a way of "working out"
If we don't want bad things to happen, we have to actively stop bad things from happening
There will always be subjectivity, and “the best” is going to be at least partly defined in terms of who is available. Nevertheless we could insist upon certain standards. Not being a pathological liar, a sociopath, deeply conflicted or self-interested, and so on, seem like good starting positions.
I’m not arguing that we live in a reality that reflects this, of course. Just that it would be nice to.
The definition of survivorship bias because you literally are alive to say this.
Tens of millions have been killed by CEOs of tobacco companies, and that's just one industry. Energy companies will likely cause the death of billions.
We got rid of many dangerous American oligarchs in the Gilded Age by using govt to break them up. Things don't "just work out," people sacrifice huge amounts of time and energy to fix them.
For decades, people didn't even know it was dangerous to smoke or have lead in gasoline or burn fossil fuels because the information was systematically suppressed by the producers of those products.
Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
Curious as to why someone would transition so abruptly from the major leagues to the minors, I searched on his name and the first hits were about an active SEC investigation into him for witholding payments to suppliers (small and medium farmers) to inflate the balance sheets to give it a higher valuation for a buyout. He actually turned out to be more effective than the previous 2 CEOs and I forged a perfectly fine working relationship with him, but it made me aware that business people will ignore any variety of moral/legal issues when the dollar signs are in their eyes.
I believe he put the SEC thing behind him, avoiding jail time by not quite admitting nor denying guilt and writing a ~$2M personal check.
I think it’s abundantly clear that if OpenAI fails, powerful people will face prosecution. It’s an uncomfortable but unavoidable part of our justice system that we don’t like to prosecute people until they’re no longer winners.
Dozens of finance executives wiped a decade worth of economic growth off the United States the year before I graduated high school. My generation will never recover. They left their jobs with more money that I'll make in an entire lifetime. None went to prison.
The only people who really “lost” in 2008 were those who were overleveraged from going into debt for houses or education, and then had to default due to income loss in 2008 to 2011 or so. Or those who panic sold all their equities.
The alternative is entering a cool labor market with stagnant or decreasing wages.
Obviously, people who already had assets made out better, but that is not a possibility for 99% of high school/college graduates, so useless to consider.
Median usual weekly earnings are (in 1982 Dollars) Q1 2024: 365 Q1 2013: 331
So over 9 years, including the largest bump in wages in generation during the pandemic, wages grew by 1%
From the early 80s until now, wage growth was like 0.4%
> obtained in demand credentials or skills
From plumbers to programmers, there probably was not a better time in history to get paid. That is the nature of a decade of 0% interest rates, unprecedented in US history.
If you did not get paid, it was because you were not shopping around for a buyer willing to pay more (not ascribing blame).
Even restricting to CS (and I haven't tracked my graduating CS classes that closely from the '08 - '11 range) my memory is that many of the smartest ones didn't end up working in CS for reasons that were never clear to me and sort of muddled by for years. (To a certain extent I'm still not sure how college grads who didn't get internships or work in the field are supposed to land their first job in the field if they're great at c and algorithms but can't and won't market themselves or move.) The only ones who made out like bandits were the ones who landed internships at places like Google or MS or had preexisting connections or niche interests of some form. A solid chunk ended up at big old companies, like IBM, Lockheed Martin, etc. They mostly made out well because getting paid $60k - $90k out of college around then made it easy to buy a house, and because they worked somewhere that made a job switch or career progression work out well enough to start getting paid more circa mid '10s. That said, a solid chunk ended up in smaller companies, government, or non-tech companies that needed devs, and I think for many of them it didn't work out or lead to years of low pay before being able to get more on track. For many, it seems like things didn't really lead to big benefits until the pandemic, which I think unlocked opportunities for more folks to work remote.
Back to speaking more generally, I think many more people probably could have reaped the benefits of home ownership than did so in the '08 to '19 interval because houses seemed to stay cheap all over the country for much of that period. But many folks in the age bracket seem like they either (a) didn't realize they could afford to when houses were quite cheap, (b) actually couldn't (student loans?) or (c) were afraid to, because that whole generation never feels secure in a job or their ability to find a job if their current one cuts them, and got somewhat chilled by the foreclosures they saw in the '08 crash. Many of these folks I think only realized how this was screwing them when rents started to skyrocket, though I don't think I clearly have a sense of how student loans play out - I do think college enrollment as a percentage of high school graduates was pretty high, but I'm not sure how big a percentage of those enrolled in high cost vs low cost situations in both absolutes and loans.
But IMO it's important to realize that for most typical workers in those years, median income was not high enough for single income to invest significantly beyond their house if they did save towards home ownership. The number of folks who didn't know how to find anything gainful to do with their degrees and so went back to school for master's or higher in those '08 - '11 years seems significant to me. I personally know plenty of folks who got masters degrees or better in various fields and basically eke out a living doing stuff like writing website copy, teaching at charter schools, and various other things that don't pay well and seem likely to be sort of demoralizing for someone with an advanced degree.
So IMO it's only with two income households and above median incomes that you can realistically do both (invest and own housing) over those years, particularly if there are any student loans. And during those years marriage ages have gone up.
The thing I'm seeing now is that folks who did get housing are kind of stuck doubling or tripling their payment to get a large place if they want to have kids, etc. Which will likely further negate many folks' ability to participate in the market. Or lead to further birth rate decline.
I remember only knowing her because there were posts on this website calling her out very early on.
Humans Want To Believe.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41x244sdEXL._AC_UF894,10...
this can be considered as essential job function, so checking the quality of lying is a part of interviewing process.
Yishan Wong describes the con: https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_bes... Altman admits it's true: https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_bes...
I'm a big fan of sama. It's been said he's a snake. I hope he is. And he will do things you will hate and be successful doing it. And in doing so, will teach you a priceless lesson. DGAF about other people. Be yourself, look out for yourself and fucking bring it and step on the stage, as you are.
You don't have to be a perfect and excruciatingly boring paragon of virtue before you become a public figure. How wonderful!! It's ok to be a character. As long as it's your character.
(And I think in order not to be able to grasp that, one would have to be an asshole or a snake oneself.)
It looks like a mod downweighted this story but also saved it, along with your comment, for me to review. Since the rule is the rule, I'm reducing the downweight now. (Edit: I've since checked with the mod and indeed their intention was to follow the same rule - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40720026.)
This looks like a flimsy story from a couple of months ago about something from many years ago. It's hard to tell if there's any there-there but, given how this sort of story usually works, the odds seem low*. It's obviously getting attention not because of intellectual curiosity (the right reason on HN) but because of celebrity outrage (a popular human pastime but not the right reason on HN). It's also repetitive of many other outrage threads we've had in recent months—an additional reason to downweight it (beyond the outrage aspect). We never let articles like this stay on HN's frontpage normally—if we did, HN would consist of little else.
Still, I'm happy to reduce the downweight on this because that rule is key to the trust we have with the bulk of the community. I think most HN readers know that we moderate shallow outrage stories off the front page, and why; and I think most can appreciate that we bend that rule the other way for the sake of the above principle, even if they don't like it.
It doesn't stop people from making up false claims (edit: I mean about HN moderation, like the parent comment), but it does let us answer them in good conscience, and the rest is just standard internet dynamics (sinister speculation, etc.)
* Note the photo that describes Geoff as YC's "new president". That hasn't been the case for 5 years, and he stopped being president 18 months ago.
Do you think there will ever be in band signaling of when (or perhaps even why) a post was artificially depressed by moderation? Particularly aimed at cases where people are already using tools like https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=40710417 on posts like this where more people have already seen the story drop off and confirmation that it was via moderation than will probably ever see this comment in its later revival explaining how or why. Something like a "downed" with hover alt text next to the flag tag even. Apart from being immediately clearer to everyone without waiting for a comment/email that helps solidify against "and then 5 hours later they back tracked it slightly but not all the way with some other excuse why after being called out" type thinking/arguments. I mean you'll never get rid of that completely but it's a lot more powerful that the message existed there at T=30 minutes than T=5 hours.
Would typically email but this seemed like something good for an open message :).
I'm tired and doubtful that I've expressed this very well, but I've posted quite a bit about this over the years, so if the present comment doesn't help, perhaps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39234189 will, or one of the other comments linked back from there.
Specifically on a full moderation log your links also show how it would be troublesome in some ways I perhaps hadn't thought as deeply about. After all even if you moderate 9999 things right the same crowd is going to want to parade the 1 - now with more details as to why. At the same time I still think the same set of people are going to complain either way and the data isn't really helpful to them as much as the rest of the people anyways. I realize I'm extraordinarily unlikely to budge your views on this due to volume of experience/thought/interaction with this topic you've had but just count me in the selfish "I'd rather the log/actions were public for us average user and then your half a day of emailing was explaining the details to the troublesome bunch rather than with the average user spending time trying to understand".
I'll close with a smaller push of "and even if the site never does a full moderation log, not signaling moderated post/comment actions at any level only feeds that small group on believing everything unpopular they say is being censored 100% of the time instead of x% of the time". With that I'll leave you some peace on the matter :). Thanks for the time and reading through (yet another) user's view on this and for the good moderation of the site as always.
I agree with you that the important thing is not to satisfy the litigious sort of internet user—the ones who take every explanation as fodder for fresh objections. It would be nice, of course, if they would take yes for an answer! and on rare occasions I've managed to pull it off, but it's hard, and ultimately too high a bar.
The important thing to satisfy the "rest of the community", as you put it. But the rest of the community seems to me already satisfied. Adding a new system like a moderation log wouldn't add to their satisfaction and might even diminish it.
I don't mean this in a complacent way! It has not always been the case that the "rest of the community" was more or less satisfied, and it took years to figure out how to get there. But we did figure it out (more or less), and the approach has been stable for a long time now. It boils down to this: we answer questions when people ask them, take their concerns seriously, and acknowledge and correct mistakes when we screw up. Because we do so much of this (I spend the bulk of my time doing it, many days), regular users eventually see repeated cases of it, and this lets them know that if they ever have a concern, a question, or just a curiosity, they can get an answer too.
This turned out to be by far the biggest factor in getting the HN system (community + mods + software) to be more self-regulating. What was lacking before that (mainly because pg didn't have time) was responsive, interactive moderation. It's important to understand that this is not a technical solution (like a moderation log). What makes things work better is human interaction, there's no substitute for that, and we're already doing quite a lot of it.
No, if it looks to them like many/most/all of those posts have been more or less subtly de-emphasized, the impression they'll get is the exact opposite of what you postulate.
The intention was to downweight it enough that it wouldn't be near the top of the front page but not so much that it would leave the front page. That's the same thing I would have done, btw.
It looks like what happened was that more user flags came in and that, together with the moderation downweight, moved the story off the front page. Eventually we noticed this and restored it to the lower part of the front page, which is the standard practice for stories of this kind, which we'd never allow to be on HN's front page if they were about anybody else. (Though, as someone pointed out to me, this story wasn't negative about YC.)
Not at all. The source links the relevant SEC filing.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1849056/000110465921...
On page 111 the false claim is plainly visible:
“ Prior to joining OpenAI, Mr. Altman served as President of Y Combinator from February 2014 until March 2019. Mr. Altman currently serves as the Chairman of the board of directors of Y Combinator.”
There is also a screenshot in the Business Times story showing the false claim was visible on the AltC website in April. You can go to the AltC site and confirm that Sam is CEO.
The story also includes comment from YC confirming that Sam was never chairman after it was announced he would be.
Dang, what is the basis for your comments on this story? The San Francisco Business Times has been a reliable and fairly pro business local source for years. Hardly tabloid journalism. Can you specify and explain one of the “false claims” you allege?
My comment originally included that explicitly, but I was trying to edit it down a bit and thought this would be clear from the context. Since it wasn't, I've added an edit there now.
One can hardly call it the exact opposite of the truth if the feared downweighting of this post actually happened.
It's commendable that it was corrected and that you are attempting to be transparent. But, it sure creates the appearance of a self-protective attempt to moderate.
Different mods inevitably make different calls sometimes, though. That doesn't change the fundamental practice, which has been stable for a long time (long before I took over HN long ago).
One thing I often point out in these situations is that "moderate less" (which is what the rule calls for) is not the same thing as "not moderating at all". Most probably the mod in this case was thinking along the lines of "I'm still moderating less in this case than we normally would, but I'll check with dang just in case".
"Here's me obediently following the rule (Oh, the world is so full of silly rules!), but let me editorialise a bit on why any story about how Sam Altman isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread should be disregarded..."
And you don't see how that undermines any "trust we have with the bulk of the community"?
The reason I post such long explanations when a case like this comes up is not because I think it will satisfy the disgruntled, chronically distrustful fraction of users (though that would be nice!) but because I know that explaining everything that happened, and why, is enough to reassure the bulk of the community.
(I wrote a bit more about this here if anyone cares: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40720410)
It rather obviously does, AFAICS -- would we be having this discussion if it didn't? ;-)
> The reason I post such long
The issue for me certainly isn't the length, but the tone (or "whiff" :-) of your comments.
> explanations when a case like this comes up is not because I think it will satisfy the disgruntled, chronically distrustful fraction of users (though that would be nice!)
Hope I don't count among those. I've been a bit vocally critical recently, but that's just (at least intended as) pointing out where you slip up in your stated goals and policies, which on the whole I'm fairly certain you (all) are doing a pretty good job at.
> but because I know that explaining everything that happened, and why, is enough to reassure the bulk of the community.
OK, so I'm apparently not in that bulk. Hope there's some "moderately sceptical" group between that bulk and your "disgruntled, chronically distrustful fraction" above for me to be counted in.
Of course I'd rather satisfy even more users, but it's hard to figure out how to do that at scale. For one thing, i's not monotonic: making changes to satisfy class X can easily dissatisfy class Y, and then it's unclear if we're worse off or better; probably worse.
That applies in cases like the current thread, btw. I believe the majority of HN readers would find HN less satisfying if flamebait were more prominent on the site. People come here to get away from all that, to find new and (above all) interesting things they haven't seen before. Doing our best to clear away the less intellectually-curious stuff (riler-uppers, mountain-from-molehill clickbait, tawdry drama and so on) helps keep a large part, and actually the more valuable part, of the audience here. It would be foolish to trade that away in the hope of winning over the bitter contingent who, though vocal and prolific, are a tiny sliver of the community. Especially since attempting to win them over would likely be futile. I know, because I've tried—hard and for years.
The conflict-of-interest concern is a real one, of course, and the solution to that is the rule I've been explaining elsewhere in the thread (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). It does the job fine and has held up well. It doesn't satisfy everyone, but the users it doesn't are probably unsatisfiable anyhow; and it reduces the risk of alienating the ones who are here for the right reason (to read interesting things).
> Hope I don't count among those.
Don't worry, we're good! But I appreciate you adding those bits because it's not always easy to tell where people are coming from.
I should say one other thing: criticism is fine, I'm happy to do my best to answer it, and critical users have their place. Even the users (not talking about you here!) who are mad about something we did or didn't do 10 years ago and show up at every opportunity with garish accusations—even they have their place...though they're not necessarily the easiest to relate to.