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Comment by stadia42 | Hacker News Reader

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This guy writing longform articles and publishing books doesn't know what he's talking about. Take it from me, a random internet commenter with no discernable credentials.

this is the orange site though, so you never know

Which of Altman's credentials do we consider relevant to global-scale wielding of AI?

I’d interview someone who had been President of Y Combinator and most likely offer them my job by the end of the conversation.

Kidding aside, it’s at least in the same world. I’m not even sure what qualified to lead the scaling of AI would look like.

Altman has the job.

Dozens of people are writing about him.

Not all of that writing is relevant or useful in analysis. In particular, writing an article that contains a worry that people are "hating on the wrong part of Altman," is a bit of a giveaway that the author lacks the ability to a deep technical analysis of the problem and has instead decided to focus on personality.

> a deep technical analysis of the problem

Altman isn't a deep technical problem to be solved.

flood management is a deep technical problem

Energy policy is a deep technical problem

Altman is a dude whos wildly rich, in charge of a darling company, and having the same smoke blown up his arse as the other silicon valley darlings. Like Musk, he's deeply predictable.

What he does next depends on how much money he thinks he can burn in the next year.

He will lobby for extension of copyright for fair use (or similar).

He will lobby against any kind of data protections law (that fucks up the training pipeline)

He will dabble with custom silicon.

> Altman isn't a deep technical problem to be solved.

He's running a company that has created one.

> What he does next depends on how much money he thinks he can burn in the next year.

Which is why personality analysis is entirely the wrong tool here. It offers you absolutely zero predictions. Why you would double down on this is beyond me.

> Which is why personality analysis is entirely the wrong tool here

I mean its not really. What is his attitude to risk, how well does he understand people's motivations? what narrative is he selling his investors? what is he aiming for? what's his personal goal?

All of this shape the outcome of the company, and those are dependent on his personality.

In the same way that Musk is short sighted and thin skinned, means that twitter is the way it is. Zuck is happy to burn billions so long as the research looks promising. Bezos is all about market share.

Hum.. he led OpenAI to their achievements?

Like him or not, the guy is competent.

Oppenheimer therefore has the right to wield nuclear weapons?

And from which worldwide schools of fashion you need credentials to even dare to remark that the emperor has no clothes?

To remark - none. To be taken seriously -- probably some, otherwise the noise of millions of bloggers is too much to handle. Which credentials, I'm not sure, hence my question.

FWIW, the author has university education and is currently a Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, New York. I personally don't find it relevant to the topic, but was curious to see what others thought.

When you resort to ad hominem attacks, it makes it seem as though you were unable form any specific objection to the actual content.

This is not an ad hominem attack. It's fair to ask about an author's credentials when they write a public article. (I do believe he lacks the credentials, but happy to hear a counter-argument.)

The author's credentials might help us understand their motivation for writing something, or help us understand any implicit bias they carry, but in no way do they indicate the quality of the argument myself.

Trust me, I went to Yale.

Which parts you credential do we consider relevant to rate the expertise on the topic at hand?

Seriously though, I think the author is overworried about accelerationism but correctly rates sama power grab inclinations. What's your thought re TFA rather than the author?

The non-paywalled start of the article reads like a ChatGPT answer to a high school essay question (i.e., no new insight beyond things anyone knows).

Not saying he's making a good point (or not), but you don't need specific credentials to write an article on your blog about an opinion you have.

Of course you don't. I thought, however, that you may need some credentials to be upvoted by an audience of highly technical readers.

Nothing says hacker culture like needing sufficient credentials to even consider someone’s ideas.

Edit: I hope you can see from the sea of replies that this sort of credential check is not welcome here.

The argument itself is the currency, not the credentials of the person making it.

There's also the other approach: actually reading the content and judging it on its own merit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

the criticism of argument from authority is really only valid for logic-based arguments (which only exist in math). In nearly every argument online, the topic is not logic-based, but more a combination of fuzzy reason and rhetoric. In such situations, we normally allow for some prior belief that people who obtained education and have worked in an area have some level of expertise that makes their arguments carry more weight. While you can argue whether this makes sense, it certainly seems reasonable to me- although I still apply skepticism to expert opinions.

I think you need to make insightful points for that. Having credentials is not a requirement for having insight, although they are sometimes correlated.

Nope. In order to be upvoted by an audience of highly techincal readers, I would hope that all one needs is to make a strong argument, or provide something interesting, or otherwise of value. Credentials can be a shortcut/filter to finding something of value. Someone may reasonably choose not to spend time reading something from someone with no credentials, under the assumption that most of everything is garbage. But, after having chosen to read it, the credentials no longer have any bearing. It's either good or it's not.

why?

BTW, why is the article now flagged? Is it because it's paywalled?

What are your credentials?

None, and that's exactly how many blog articles I wrote on this topic.

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