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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Is Altman another Ackman/Musk? I thought he tends to stay on topic when doing interviews.

My opinion after hearing him on multiple interviews is that he always just says various generalities, he can be talking for 5 minutes and never say anything, all noise. I don't know if he is under an NDA and can't say literally anything about OpenAI and the future or if it's just the way he talks.

Maybe he doesn't actually know anything?

But he has such force of will.

That would be my bet. He's a CEO, I've not once heard it suggested that he's also a researcher (though according to Wikipedia he's a Stanford CompSci dropout). Quite rare to be competent at both CEO-things and the stuff you're hiring people to do.

A Stanford dropout? He must be hot stuff, like Elizabeth Holmes... oops, wrong example.

Perhaps he uses an earpiece connected to an LLM.

I had the same revelation when I read the transcript of one of his interviews with Lex. I found it to be so free of detail or substance that I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a one case of him having a bad day, but reading transcripts of a couple of more interviews confirmed my suspicion that he has nothing of substance to say.

That's all of Lex's interviews.

No it's not, for example Yudkowsky gives his standard talk on there. I think it matters if the guest has something ready to go for the allotted time.

  Yodkowsky shouldn’t be taken seriously. Especially after him saying that any person or country working on banned AI research should have their data centers destroyed via an airstrike.

Can you make a case against this? It seems plausible to me that AI could be used as a weapon of mass destruction

americans unironically trying to justify air strikes using the phrase "weapon of mass destruction" in 2024 -- to describe a fucking computer program, no less -- is so far beyond parody

wonder if this guy considers stuxnet a wmd

I think people should generally be allowed to own weapons and general purpose computers, I don't think anyone has a right to build a doomsday device in their garage. If it is impossible to reconcile these, then freedom will be impossible. The only long-term solution is to develop "anti-doomsday" technology.

If you have a massive warehouse to train an AI that, IDK folds proteins to develop a bioweapon or something, then you should not expect everyone else to sit on their hands while you plan to hold the entire world hostage.

Stuxnet was a program that targeted specifically SCADA controllers used in uranium enrichment facilities. It is not a doomsday device, it is a targeted counter-doomsday device. And while the USA has an imperfect track record with respect to "WMD"s/Proliferation, stuxnet is something that I approve of as an american.

>folds proteins to develop a bioweapon or something

That has been possible for a long time. The only thing needed was raw compute power to simulate it. Not sure how AI research suddenly makes itself worthy of a airstrike based on clearly unproven scenarios. What makes you think a rogue nation will sink ridiculous amounts of money building the power , cooling infrastructure, acquiring the necessary computing hardware and knowledge to build an hypothetical tool that will aid them in making a WMD - when they could just create tanks of sarin gas or anthrax for a fraction of the cost plus manpower that could be delivered to the target in multiple ways? A rogue nation having the capability to build AI datacenters, will also have the ability to do simple risk/benefit analysis.

I meant Sam's answers.

That's not my impression from LeCun's or Carmack's (5-hours!) interviews. I would posit that, naturally, it depends on who is being interviewed, and that Lex also tries to keep the topics and their approach as accessible as possible.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought his talk is absolutely devoid of content.

It may just be his public persona. I don’t work with him on a day to day basis of course. I find him to be very uninteresting. He speaks with an air of aloof tech-savant but it feels quite hallow, faked, forced.

I can’t think of many examples where he said something in an interview and it really challenged or surprised me. By contrast, any random hour with Lisa Su and you will come away quite impressed and easily understand why she is her company’s leader.

Plenty of smart money behind Altman, though, so maybe he shows up stronger behind the scenes.

[Edit: added "aloof" due to perceived aloofness.]

Magicleap also had plenty of smart money behind them. It ceased to be a useful signal for me then.

Indeed, and SoftBank flushed a ton down the toilet named WeWork because of Adam Neumann's charisma.

I don't think anyone doubts Sam's ability to charm people and tell a good story. The graver concern is "should we trust him"? My gut says NO.

"Suddenly, the chat window on Sequoia’s side of the Zoom lights up with partners freaking out.

“I LOVE THIS FOUNDER,” typed one partner.

“I am a 10 out of 10,” pinged another.

“YES!!!” exclaimed a third.

What Sequoia was reacting to was the scale of SBF’s vision....We were incredibly impressed, Bailhe says. “It was one of those your-hair-is-blown-back type of meetings.”

This is 'smart money' in reference to Sam Bankman Fried.

Not really the dig you think it is. They were right but got unlucky that SBF broke the law, which is hard to predict.

Altman projects more Bankman-Fried vibes to me than Musk vibes.

A common sentiment about SpaceX and Musk is that the employees also believe in the mission of making space accessible and going to Mars. Musk has been consistent on that being SpaceX's eventual goal since founding it, and he stuck through it even when SpaceX was one failure away from missing payroll. All of his early employees still publicly support this mission, even after retiring or moving on to found their own space companies.

Altman comes off as a "say anything to keep the money flowing" type guy even to his own employees. The fractured leadership all seems to suggest that he can't even manage to convince the people who work with him the most that he actually believes in his oft-repeated lofty goals regarding AGI.

I thought SBF interviews I listened to were excellent, with lots of substance and clear explication, especially the interview with Matt levine

Interesting, my impression of him from his interviews was the opposite, while I didn't follow him closely, I felt from the first time I heard him speak that FTX would turn out to be yet another crypto-scam/disaster.

Ackman and Musk stay on topic in interviews as far as I can tell. They may share viewpoints that much of HN disagrees with, but I don’t see them answering questions with completely unrelated responses. Altman however, dodges questions all the time, with vague corporate speak and generalities. To me it looks like he is avoiding hard questions, although maybe he just doesn’t know the answer and is trying to stumble his way through, or he genuinely wants to not give away confidential things like trade secrets.

> Ackman and Musk stay on topic in interviews as far as I can tell. They may share viewpoints that much of HN disagrees with

Makes sense. I'd consider Ackman issuing comments on politics off topic for a hedge fund manager. But I suppose he's technically on topic with a narrow view.

> Altman however, dodges questions all the time, with vague corporate speak and generalities

He has a documented history of dishonesty, correct?

I don’t know his history fully enough to say. But it does seem like past claims about not getting equity or about keeping OpenAI’s founding principles may have at least changed. Some claim it may be an honest change - they need capital to compete, attract talent, and complete their mission, and giving equity actually keeps Altman focused on OpenAI instead of side gigs and investments. That could be true. But I’ve found his evasiveness in interviews to be untrustworthy.

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