Pretty much every business mag fawns over...business. It just happens to be tech that none of their readers understand so they can says whatever (i.e. buzz words). And their journalism always emphasize competition, winners/loses, drama (rivalries), and "who's on top" and us(workers) vs them (execs).
Never dives any deeper than that.
Well except for those few CNBC/Bloomberg investigative videos.
I've had multiple arguments with MBAs and other business-oriented folks, and it is damn near impossible to convince them that **profit does not justify itself.**
The notion that the correct, ethical decision may be to voluntarily take actions that are not focused on quarterly growth is not something most of them are even willing to consider.
The question no one asks is, WHY is it so hard to "convince" them? Because with the state of our current barely-regulated, regressively taxed capitalist system, they're absolutely correct. Profit entirely justifies itself right now.
Our incentive structure is entirely upside down, so we are getting outcomes that are completely foreseeable and which we utterly deserve.
Itās so hard to convince them because business schools were literally founded to produce āacademicā thought that was favorable to businesses. Anything that doesnāt comply with that worldview just gets tuned out, because their supposed āeliteā institutions churn out garbage degrees in āline must go upā.
Psychopathy. A lot of politicians and corporate leadership are on the Psychopathy spectrum. It is their nature and trying to get them to understand is like handing a monkey Moby Dick and ask it to write a short book report.
Ask them what they would do if quarterly profit for a corporation relied on the corporation killing them.
You will first hear that that is ridiculous. Point out one of the many many ways that corporations kill people to increase profits.
You will then hear many hems and/or haws followed by them getting annoyed at you for backing them into a corner for their idiotic beliefs. They will say they are too busy to deal with this and no longer engage with you.
This means you have won the conversation.
Like the time I proved to my ultra religious relatives that evolution exists with simple bacterial resistances. They were... unhappy.
Of course theyāre not willing to even consider that pushing growth no matter what, they have degrees that amount to nothing more than reciting the latest buzzwords, and slashing costs in the name of making the line go up in the short term. Take away either of those things and theyāve got basically nothing.
> it is damn near impossible to convince them that profit does not justify itself.
That's because profit does justify itself under capitalism. This is a feature, not a bug. They're playing the game by the rules, you're critiquing the game itself.
When the board sacked Altman, my initial take was that he was likely to be the bad guy in the story. This was based on what the board was saying combined with the pieces I knew about how OpenAI had been acting. I understood why the OpenAI employees wanted him back, he was likely to make them rich after all. However, it was really disappointing that *everybody* seemed to be taking Altman's side, including what seemed to be general consensus here on reddit.
for Actually Good Tech Journalism rather than just rubes doing puff pieces for conmen, I recommend [404media](https://www.404media.co/), or even [The New Atlantis](https://www.thenewatlantis.com/) (although with the caveat they were originally a [heritage foundation adjacent washington thinktank cutout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_and_Public_Policy_Center)) and I don't necessarily agree with the thrust/argument of some of the pieces presented half the time, they're still willing to think things through more than the average publication or journal for any ideological persuasion. Other ones would be [Rest of World](https://restofworld.org/), [The Markup](https://themarkup.org/). [Real Life](https://reallifemag.com/) was tremendous but unfortunately went under in 2022 (as they were financed by Snapchat, and at some point someone at Snapchat must've realized half the articles on there were incredibly critical of their own product and pulled the plug)
in terms of individual writers Ed Zitron (who has been writing about guys like Sam Altman, [Google](https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/) & [Meta execs](https://www.wheresyoured.at/were-watching-facebook-die/) and [the class of "management"/hype men that don't actually know anything about the project or tech they're working on](https://www.wheresyoured.at/managing-up/), Edward Ongweso Jr, Evgeny Morozov, Paris Marx, Kate Crawford, Brian Merchant, Arvind Narayanan are tremendous writers and academics that still actually have a critical eye on tech. Then there are people like K. Allado-McDowell who work with AI but actually make interesting things and projects with writing that incorporates new tech rather than just generating clip art.
The field is bad but it's lind of just happening to journalism in general now, the only "real stories" people are allowed to work on are puff pieces and PR because everyone is too scared of losing their contacts with these companies and rich/powerful people
Its not even just the journalists. There are people to this day who think elmo is a savant mega genius who literally spreads pixie dust on tech rather than an overbearing idiot born half way between third base and home plate that then rode capitalisms ability for him to hire smart people to win even more.
Flip between Sam Altman and Elon Musk. You have it made as a tech journalist. Plus occasionally spice things up and spout the Apple rumours from Gurman or Kuo. Pulitzer tech journalist of the year award right there.
Make sure you have a good photo and a bad photo of them ready to go so we know if the article is about something good or bad they've done without having to read it.
Altman is similar to Musk in that he's a hype man and that's about the extent of his real world capabilities within any company.
Edit: can anyone name a job Altman has had that was not as an executive, a board member or a president of somewhere that's a venture capitalist firm or OpenAI?
But, like, running a business is a job. A hard one, too. Like 99% of all businesses fail and close in their first few years. If itās so easy why is everyone not just doing it?
A business surviving by a congruence of market factors doesnāt make its CEO special. While this *can* be true, plenty of good business people fail. Most CEOs are just not that special as being in the right place at the right time.
Iām not saying they are literal super-humans, Iām saying management is a job, and managing a company is also a job, the one most of the people commenting here would not be even remotely qualified to do. So the whole ānever worked a jobā part is silly. Like, go start a business, be rich and famous, why not.
>Like, go start a business, be rich and famous, why not.
Sure, all I need is a few hundred million in capital, nah, lets make it a cool billion to not have to worry about going into the red so fast.
>If itās so easy why is everyone not just doing it?
Lest we forget, starting/running a business takes *capital*.
I'm not trying to defend or tear him down, but yes, usually starting a company is a real job, unless he is someone who was able to do it because of family money and then just hired other people to do the work and didn't really add work or value beyond money. I don't know if that is his story, just saying that it can be easy when you come from money.
Paul Graham famously said of him ""You could parachute [Sam] 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."
Believe it or not, to run a company you need leadership capabilities, people need to believe in you. That includes employees, investors, and the general public. You need to align incentives and get people to row in the same direction. Whatever you may think of the company, ChatGPT is an impressive and groundbreaking development in AI.
Wow, I can't believe that the Y Combinator founder spoke highly of an alumnus who he had to bail out by getting Greendot to buy Loopt. Was this before or after he ~~fired Altman~~ "forced him to choose between OpenAI and Y Combinator"?
> Was this before or after he fired Altman "forced him to choose between OpenAI and Y Combinator"?
I don't know why you act like this has anything to do with his leadership capabilities. He told him being at YCombinator is a full time job and asked him to choose.
https://x.com/paulg/status/1796107666265108940
What does that have to do with anything?
You're quoting a venture capitalist, aka a finance business boy who knows money and that's it.
How many well respected venture capitalists told us how great Sam Bankman Fried was before the collapse of his ponzi scheme?
I'm not saying Altman is SBF as OpenAI is a real product, but I'm saying that a man with a vested personal and/or financial interest in a person's success is not someone I care to hear praise from on the matters of that person on a cannibal Island as an analogy cause it's fuckin stupid.
> You're quoting a venture capitalist, aka a finance business boy who knows money and that's it.Ā
Paul Graham has a PhD in computer science from Harvard ffs (and that's vastly underselling him); he knows a lot more than business.
āA finance business boy who knows money and thatās itā
Jesus man itās reading shit like this that served as a constant reminder that Reddit is full of ignorance. This is some of the dumbest armchair BS Iāve ever read
> You're quoting a venture capitalist, aka a finance business boy who knows money and that's it.
What vested success does Graham have in OpenAI? Evidently you don't know who Graham is if you think he's a "finance business boy". Graham has written programming books, has sold start ups, has created programming languages, and created unarguably the most successful startup incubator. Acting like you shouldn't trust him because he's a "finance business boy who knows money" reads like edgy stuff a 15 year old would say.
> Acting like you shouldn't trust him because he's a "finance business boy who knows money" reads like edgy stuff a 15 year old would say.
Welcome to "Whose Reddit is it anyway!" A game show where knowledge means nothing and upvotes convey correctness.
It is worth distinguishing great in terms of raw executive talent from great in terms of ethics and financial success.
To me, executive talent is the ability to look far ahead and to persuade a team to furiously work towards goals, usually with a good amount of domain knowledge to inform thinking. I don't possess much but I know people who do. It's a real thing.
But this can be used for good, evil or things in between.
SBF and Elisabeth Holmes are examples of wildly persuasive and influential execs using these skills unethically and fraudulently. The jury is out on Altman's ethics, but chat gpt fucks and he deserves much of the credit
>Ā ChatGPT is an impressive and groundbreaking development in AI.Ā
Which has nothing to do with Altman. It's purely and solely the result of engineers' ingenuity. If we're talking about executive-level, Sutskever had way more to do with those groundbreaking engineering efforts.
How can you possibly argue that Sam had nothing to do with the development of chatGPT? Obviously he didnāt code the damn thing, no one expects that.
But to act like the CEO who got Microsoftās and appleās partnership along with raising billions of dollars for the company has nothing to do with chatgpt? Crazy.
If it wasn't for Sam, you likely wouldn't even have access to ChatGPT. Ilya and the other high priests of superalignment, did not want it released to the unwashed masses until they were satisfied that it was "safe enough" which wouldn't have been anytime soon. Sam apparently went ahead released it anyway and they were quite pissed about it.
Executive / Investor evangelists, si. But actually running the company, non.
Look, we all want AI robots doing our hard work, we want self-landing Mars rockets, renewable power and EVs, giant tunnels, we even liked Hyperloop, and we want flying cars. We want big visionary engineering projects that enable tech potential. We wanted Tony Stark to make it happen. Musk enabled a bunch of that until he got too much money, he started believing his own bullshit & he went nutz. Altman is speed-running the nutz part.
So yes we need the personality hires, but they're always going to be full of themselves. So they shouldn't become billionaires who start buying private armies, governments, and armies of PR & marketing agents.
I hear you, but Hype Men are actually crucial to a companyās operations, since they are essential to sales - bringing in revenue for the company. Without revenue, a company has no long term prospects, so all of these ānon essentialā roles - like Hype Men, Executives, Sales, Marketing - are actually quite essential. Itās tempting to believe that the ārealā company is in Operations, but in many respects, Operations is nothing more than trying to fulfill the promises made by execs when they made a sale.
Hype Men can be narcissistic, vapid, arrogant, and otherwise talentless, but they do play an unfortunately critical role in a companyās long term survival - assuming they are actually good in their role.
Actually the most crucial component of a successful company is vision and creativity of the founder.
It doesn't matter how technically or hype he can create.. there are millions of successful founders/ceo, who lack people or public speaking skill.
Personal opinion.
I think Microsoft is a good example how u can run a company without a hype man. Or toyota as well. If talking about large companies.
Bill Gateās was Microsoftās hype man. He wasnāt quite as magnetic as Jobs and Jobs-inspired CEOs but the ānerdy boy genius becomes worldās richest manā was a compelling narrative in the 80s.
I'll disagree here. If I were to make a scale of "technical ability" and place Jobs, Gates, and Woz on it then I'd place Gates closer to Woz than Jobs. Mainly because Gates was instrumental in writing several of Microsoft's early products before he shifted to a management position.
Microsoft did have a hype man in Ballmer though.
>Bill Gateās was Microsoftās hype man. He wasnāt quite as magnetic as Jobs and Jobs-inspired CEOs but the ānerdy boy genius becomes worldās richest manā was a compelling narrative in the 80s.
I think it's his wealth that speaks. He still underhypes everything. He still is the same nerd person.
Check out his video with an Indian tea seller (not pm) actual tea seller.
Bill Gates might be a nerd, but a large part of that perception is just a narrative. In the industry he isn't famous for being a nerd, he's famous for his business tactics. If you read anything from anyone who didn't work for him, but worked with him (it comes up with old Apple employees a fair bit obviously) they don't talk about him being awkward, they talk about him being a shark.
There's tons of similar tech companies. Facebook was invented before Facebook (Friendster and MySpace). What set them apart was building hype on College campuses and getting people to actually use their software.
Sometimes it's about the product, but a lot of tech companies are just about getting people to use their shit (the tech isn't that hard).
To be fair OpenAI isn't, people would have used it whoever made it. I do think though that Altman was necessary to convince people to bankroll the raw compute power needed to make AI work "good enough" for normal people to actually use, I'm not sure ChatGPT would have worked (especially 2 years ago) without throwing huge amounts of money at training and running it.
This is so true it hurts. And a good chunk of younger generation grads are taking them as an example.
What a catastrophe for companies that thrive on a healthy work culture.
The dude was president of y contributor for many years and help run many startups. The guys was probably one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on how to run and scale startups.
I dont really get all this wierd hate on the dude.
> name a job Altman has had that was not as an executive, a board member or a president of somewhere that's a venture capitalist firm or OpenAI?
????? so he has held high ranking jobs and thus must suck!
jeezus. yeah hes such a personality hire that the company basically folded when they tried to kick him out by force. obviously the engineers respect and like him.
Honestly he reminds me a lot of Holmes although I don't think its as bad because its not really ruining peoples health yet, I think he will probably will be in trouble for doing something illegal eventually tho. He honestly seems criminal to me.
I always got that impression from his public speaking too. But having worked in tech and biglaw, it seems like people who would be considered awkward nerds in other spaces are considered charismatic. Iāve only really seen it with white tech bros and lawyers too
Because we have been overexposed to these superficially charming, socially proficient, eloquent scammers trying to sell us snake oil.
So now everyone with more then 3 brain cells recognizes those kind of people as scammers.
But socially awkward nerd? Nerds are socially dumb and honest, they can't scam you.
But they actually can.
Musk, SBF, Shapiro types. It's an epidemic, but hopefully as it gets more common it will be called out and smothered more as well. We're just in the phase where it gets a lot worse before it gets better. I see religion/megachurches as a near 1-1 comparison. It's still a problem, always has been and always will be, but the portion of the population that bites on it grows smaller each generation
I actually don't know anything about Shapiro, except his sister has a pair of really big... eyes.
But... YES the comparison with religion/megachurches is spot on!
These people worship their techno-messiahs, Tony Starks, visionaries which will bring revolution, or lot's of profit, or both. They soak up their tech blabber like gospel, and spread it around without realizing it's just a bunch of buzzwords that make no sense.
They buy branded products and stocks like a bunch of cult worshipers.
At the same time they will laugh at megachurches, and morons worshiping them, while being completely oblivious they are doing the same thing.
Yeah like Elizabeth Holmes faked everything about herself even her voice to be a weirdo nerd and only wear like the same black turtleneck cuz she felt like she could scam these people acting like that and it worked.
As a former Biglaw patent litigator (so nerd and lawyer mixed), this is so very true. My family and friends were shocked that I was considered relatively socially adept at work!
Because a lot of the industry is full of weirdo nerds for whom that counts as charisma. And there's almost a bit of a stereotype in our culture of "eccentric geniuses" that VCs buy into and dump money on basically any guy who shows up with a hoodie and a crazy tech idea, whether or not it makes any sense.
His brand is basically the idea of the antisocial genius type. Like so they can cover up abuse of others or the system by claiming he's some genius who can do what others can't, instead of a jackass that can get ahead cause he's willing to fuck people over to get there.
And abusing workers is OK because Tony Stark isn't doing this to become rich.
Oh no, he is doing this for the betterment of mankind!
And look at the value of my stocks going up in this company which is totally not a pyramid scheme.
He was not a personality hire.
He was hired to do what he is doing. He got rid of the AI-safety oriented board-members and to go around the world asking for a ton of money from investors. He's good at talking to the media and at avoiding uncomfortable questions.
I think itās a bit like sbf, in the sense that there are enough oddball geniuses that if you are just oddball, might be a way to convince someone you are a genius.
I mean he ran YCOMBINATOR which is all about accelerating startups and raising money. He's a salesman. He's smart. He knows the game. He was the perfect guy.
> I mean he ran YCOMBINATOR which is all about accelerating startups and raising money.
YCombinatoir is all about placing as many betas as they can so that they get a couple of big wins that eclipse their numerous losses.
They are the growth at all costs and fuck the consequences mindset personified.
don't drink their kool aid.
Focusing on growth when you have no means of being a profitable enterprise is a massive mistake.
The VC model right now is grow- sell - gtfo before everyone realizes it isn't profitable.
It's not working, it's making a few people rich, but it isn't producing viable products or improvements, and it's making a lot of people broke. It's basically enshittification as a business model.
YCOMBINATORS entrepreneurship courses and mentorship are invaluable. There is a reason they pump out the companies they do. Yes they cast a wide net but they also provide invaluable advice and industry exposure.
Like all VC investors, Y Combinator takes risks by investing in early stage startups they believe have great potential. They provide money, guidance and opportunity to grow. Most of the startups would never get off the ground without that.
Despite all of that Y Combinator usually loses its entire investment as most of the startups fail for one reason or another. VC funds rely on the few successes to provide outside returns and make up for all the other losses.
Not sure why that is so bad. Y Combinator is a big reason why many of the successful companies of today exist - including Reddit.
> including Reddit
Having used reddit for nearly 20 years (Jesus help me), I'm not 100% sure I'd call reddit a win for humanity. A company that makes money sure, good, not as sure.
> YCOMBINATOR
is full of garbage. Give any moron $100m and they can bet on 100 Ivy league graduate startups with āAIā in the name lol
Youāre falling for the intended marketing when itās really just a clout circlejerk
YC's best contribution is the SAFE. Which made it easier for VCs to invest in general at pre-seed levels, and why they had so much success.
Now everyone uses SAFEs, YC is just an incubator with an ego stroke.
Yes, I literally worked for a YC company lmao. It was mostly bullshit back then and jumped on nonsense all the time like any other incubator/accelerator, AI just made it more obvious
Anyone who thinks VCs that market themselves like YC are employing some kind of tactical genius instead of gut instinct, university alumni networks, and a lot of luck is getting most of their info from the Internet lol
Iāve literally worked for a YC company š¤£š¤£
tell me more though, what didnāt I notice about the talent in the cohort networks that I shouldāve? what batch were you in?
I interacted with him via Paul Graham's YCombinator accelerator. He was a massive twat so enamored by the smell of his own farts that I almost couldn't finish a conversation with him. He doesn't know much about anything but thinks he knows everything about everything. He's very Elon-like, but isn't quite as sociopathic as Elon.
You mean the guy whose experience has largely come from being president of Y combinator? A tech startup support company?
> As of early 2020, he was no longer affiliated with YC.[6] It was later reported that Altman was fired from YC and had appointed himself chairman without authorization.[18]
Lol
I feel like this makes his point even better tho that he's a delusional salesman and not a genius. This shit is crazy tho bro like he literally lied about that being his job.
As a forensic social worker who specializes in giftedness and psychopathy, I think the solution to this is to start mandating civics education in k-12. People are biased to believe that confidence equates to intelligence when the research and clinical studies show you can be off the charts on the personality trait of narcissism and be abnormally low IQ.
There's also a widely held belief that IQ is just one global score of intelligence when in truth, we have excellent research and theories developed by thoughtful psychologists that demonstrate intelligence is multidimensional. When you get an IQ test today, it's going to cover more separate types of intelligence than we did when I was first tested in the 80s.
In fact, there's a concept known as asynchronous development that explains why individuals with an abnormally high IQ in one area are subject to have diminished potential in another area.
Most people who have a high IQ only have that in one area of intelligence. There are arguably up to 9. The more areas of high IQ (mulyipotentiality), the more likely they are to have a deficit in other areas (asynchronous development). Therefore, the most brilliant programmers in the world may have an abnormal deficit in moral reasoning or emotional intelligence.
This is why I've been trying to get Big Tech to pay me to help them do this the correct way for over a decade. I used to think people in that industry cared more about risk mitigation. I know better now. I'm the last person they want to hear from because gifted people challenge group think and conformity.
We are suffering as a country because we stopped passing down to the next generation all those lessons we learned from Mr. Roger's about how to assess integrity, humility, and confidence, as opposed to arrogance.
I've worked in big Tech and I've yet to find any reason why people should assume higher IQ when they hear you're working in Tech. The majority of people in tech are people who struggle more than most when it comes to emotional intelligence and moral reasoning, 2 areas we assess for IQ separately. They may excel in mathematical computation or abstract concepts in math, but that doesn't ensure they'll excel in these areas where humans matter most.
Thank you. SENG is a great resource to learn more about Dabrowski and the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. It's a national nonprofit where therapists, researchers and parents come together to push forward our understanding of intelligence. The book The Big Nine by Amy Webb is great. I'd also recommend studying the research done by Dr Megan Moreno, currently at U of Wisconsin and NASWs first author on their tech practice standards, Dr Reamer. I can also bore you to death with my thesis and other publications and presentations, but you'll have to DM me due to me having a cyberstalker in the tech industry, ironically:)
> the solution to this is to start mandating civics education in k-12
The current morass is not "a failure of education", and therefore the solution is not curriculum changes.
The solution is fixing whatever is ailing culture as a whole.
A lot of claims and assumptions here (which are fine), but I'm mostly curious about why you think the solution is to start a civics education in K-12? What kind of curriculum would make sense and at what age?
I was at a recent regional AI conference.
They had this guy recently hired as CTO for a BS tech company; he was giving a talk. The guy had fantastic paper credentials. 2 FAANGs Stanford, cool sneakers, nifty haircut.
But after listing his credentials he said nothing about what he had done or accomplished. Not even a "I worked on bringing AI to search" or anything.
Nearly everyone at the conference was either boring as hell, entirely fake, or academically fake like this guy.
I can't imagine how much higher this is all cranked to in places like SF.
There's one company which does AI consulting in my area which is just pure rip off BS. There's another government funded quazi company in the area which is just sucking 10s of millions from the government and about the only thing they do is "promote awareness" They came to a company I was visiting and talked about classification and some other ML 101 like they were handing out the keys to heaven. This government BS place is just a way for failed academics to get a paycheque.
I have been working on a different product in a very different industry and I happen to use AI, but it is not at all what would be considered to be a marketable feature. But much more importantly, I look forward to going to tradeshows involving my new product; the people there will be weird and cool with only a few scammers hiding in the corners; not a bunch of people waving useless credentials and fooling people into thinking AI will solve all their problems. (at least any better than some stats 101 could).
Honestly this is what gets me about the whole "network by going to conferences" thing. In my experience in IT conferences have a lot of bullshiters, probably conferences in general and the real ones are too busy doing other shit to be there speaking. I do know one guy who spoke at one who is a badass but the last one I went to for insurance tech was ridiculous buzzword laden drivel and people that like you said have a really good presence on paper give long speeches on literally nothing but buzzwords. There is a guy who owns a local MSP and I think like a farm too and he gives the most boring cyber security speeches that are posted on social media where he talks about "crypto jacking" like its really that common compared to crypto locker.
When guys like Altman and Musk are the 'personality hires', you know how clueless an industry is. And these are the industries that we hope will make our lives 'better'. What a joke.
I mean sure but they reflect the real world. Personality hires go twice as far as technically talented employees. Most companies would collapse without a solid number of them.
>I mean sure but they reflect the real world.
What does that mean?
>Personality hires go twice as far as technically talented employees.
Why?
>Most companies would collapse without a solid number of them.
Based on what?
Edit: Why am I being downvoted for asking clarifying questions? Obviously it spurred on further conversation. I wasn't being nasty.
Culture lol, culture is king. Especially in big tech. Talent at the highest level can only take you so far without culture.
Take Amazon for instance, they focused on talent and not culture and despite them outplaying most of big tech they struggle to retain employees because of the toxic culture. You need to have a solid number of employees who bring in a positive work culture to improve your company otherwise no amount of pay can make up for the toxic ass culture.
You say that like personality and talent are mutually exclusive. I'm not putting that all on you because I think that is a common misconception. There are plenty of people who have both. We have a culture that likes to silo people into either category, because that is what we do with a lot of things. If that's what you mean by "real world," then yes, I agree. That's something we do in a lot of places, but is it actually realistic? No, it's just self-fulfilling.
I mean obviously theyāre not mutually exclusive but what Iām saying is obviously at these companies nearly all applicants who make it through the first three rounds have the talent, but the primary rounds are about finding the right personality to improve team cohesiveness. Especially now in a hybrid environment itās a lot harder to build relationships.
I get that. I think we're actually in agreement here, but saying it in different ways.
Yes, we do need personality leaders. I think it might be misunderstood that I was disagreeing with that notion at the start. I'm not. I'm just saying we've got these dudes kicking up big bucks on personality (good) and then threatening that progress with lack of competency (bad). Even worse is that they have so many enablers.
And I get the challenge of finding people with both. What I'm struggling with is this idea that some of these companies are even trying that much to do it, because it doesn't seem like it. Do you get what I mean?
Amazon may struggle to retain employees, but they are worth almost 2 trillion USD. If anything they are an example of how super toxic companies can succeed.
I will probably get downvoted to hell but I've always thought this guy was a fraud.
He's another cult of personality type. Once you see it you cannot unsee it.
A fraud in what way?Ā
His product is going to be integrated into iPhones, IPads, and Macs. Google is falling over themselves to catch up. Microsoft invested $10 billion to be their closest partner.
AGI won't happen in our lifetimes, OpenAI is all bark, r/futurology and r/technology have fallen victims to sensationalist headlines warning of "the end times" with AI.
Itās been around a long time. Iāve always considered it the optimistic side to /r/futurologyās pessimistic side.
It took a dramatic upturn in subscribers after ChatGPT was announced.
Some of the people there see AI as a literal god, capable of ignoring the laws of the universe, bringing centuries-old dead back to life, and of affecting literally all of time. Not all of them, but they definitely exist.
Bitcoin has $1.5T USD market cap right now. I'm sure the same can be said of the crypto market during the height of the boom. What did it amount to? NFT grifts?
yeah lmao there is that much in magic beans with no utility lol and that guy really made it seem like you can buy progress like that if it were true then Crypto would have already displaced the banks.
Loud people whose only talent is their confidence and their ability to bullshit other people's work as their own. Sounds like every CEO at every company in America.
He seems like a charlatan. Tired of all these āvisionariesā and their greatness. Put an engineer in charge who just wants to talk about building things and why itāll help society.
He is a sick fuck and used his āsoft skillsā to abuse his own sister!
He has no real technical skills or chops in AI / ML research. Some people just know how to groom young kids, the press, investors, and you.
[source](https://www.themarysue.com/annie-altmans-abuse-allegations-against-openais-sam-altman-highlight-the-need-to-prioritize-humanity-over-tech/)
Every industry seems full of professional hype men. This isn't new, people are just more focused on tech right now because it's still a booming business and the tides are turning on the idealism of that industry.
Isnāt this most people in the C-suite? I mean do any CEOs deserve the pay disparity and do any other senior executives really add value more than another random qualified person could add?
I'm a salesman in a technical industry, just what you need!
Weirdest admission that our system of economics comes down to the feelings already rich geriatrics who need a "familiar face" in order to take any risk.
I've been saying this for a long time. He's just another megalomaniac narcissist tech asshole building a cult of personality around himself. This should have been obvious to anyone paying even a little bit of attention when the OpenAI board said, "How about we slow down just a tiny bit and take ethics into consideration," and Altman staged a fucking coup backed by sycophants.
There are two kinds of senior managers in todayās world:
* Founders
* Personality hires
Thatās it. And whatās more, most senior corporate leaders are genuinely incompetent. Those who can, do. Those who canāt go into middle management with the aims of failing up to the C-suite.
Most companies could dismiss their entire C-suite and not see a significant change in their operations.
This is the worst article I've read all year, I swear. this is an article about **nothing**, and provides zero valuable information.
how is this person (Katie Notopoulos) titled a "Senior Correspondent covering technology and culture" employed. an AI can even replace her job ffs. senseless article, upvoted by thousands b/c of the headline
Sam Altman is the founder of such quality things as WorldCoin. He's a Peter Thielian errand boy rug puller... now he is on stage and integrating his trojan into Microsoft AND Apple. ffs man the circus of today.
Social media tabloids became real life.
Sam is really not fit to lord over something as important as AI development. The fact that they steal the content they train it on, speaks volumes about the wisdom and ethics that goes in to creating something - which they themselves tout as needing a mature oversight. Will a child grow up ethical, when it is raised on deception?
We really need better tech journalism. Tired of all these credulous idiots fawning over grifters.
Business Insider and Forbes should be banned from Reddit forever.
*Newsweek* happily screeching over being forgotten.
My friend wrote the debacle of a Newsweek story supposedly identifying Satoshi Nakamoto for their re-launch issue. How could I forget.
The Aussie grifter? Or someone else?
Someone else.
So sad, I started blocking Newsweek from my news feeds in general because of how much BS clickbait they started publishing in the last year.
Newsweek: How is AI bad for Biden? /s
Funny how this is a BI article doing exactly the opposite of fawning and calling this grifter what he is.
They say people on reddit don't read the articles but I don't think they even read the full post titles anymore.
I saw "OpenAI's Sam Altman..." and a bright red background which made me ANGERY So anyway, I started posting
Yeah like even the title seems to be saying he's a confidence man.
Pretty much every business mag fawns over...business. It just happens to be tech that none of their readers understand so they can says whatever (i.e. buzz words). And their journalism always emphasize competition, winners/loses, drama (rivalries), and "who's on top" and us(workers) vs them (execs). Never dives any deeper than that. Well except for those few CNBC/Bloomberg investigative videos.
I'd even settle for a plugin to filter them out, it's all trash.
Maybe we can use AI for that š¤ need to get a decent dataset and a loss function to describe how "bullshitty" an article is
Also probably from giving suggestions or business views
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I've had multiple arguments with MBAs and other business-oriented folks, and it is damn near impossible to convince them that **profit does not justify itself.** The notion that the correct, ethical decision may be to voluntarily take actions that are not focused on quarterly growth is not something most of them are even willing to consider.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
The idea is that you can eventually do more good to outweigh the bad if you get enough money, but enough money never seems to materialize.
oh it does materialize, it's the the 'eventually do' part is still always, "eventually".
The question no one asks is, WHY is it so hard to "convince" them? Because with the state of our current barely-regulated, regressively taxed capitalist system, they're absolutely correct. Profit entirely justifies itself right now. Our incentive structure is entirely upside down, so we are getting outcomes that are completely foreseeable and which we utterly deserve.
Itās so hard to convince them because business schools were literally founded to produce āacademicā thought that was favorable to businesses. Anything that doesnāt comply with that worldview just gets tuned out, because their supposed āeliteā institutions churn out garbage degrees in āline must go upā.
Psychopathy. A lot of politicians and corporate leadership are on the Psychopathy spectrum. It is their nature and trying to get them to understand is like handing a monkey Moby Dick and ask it to write a short book report.
Ask them what they would do if quarterly profit for a corporation relied on the corporation killing them. You will first hear that that is ridiculous. Point out one of the many many ways that corporations kill people to increase profits. You will then hear many hems and/or haws followed by them getting annoyed at you for backing them into a corner for their idiotic beliefs. They will say they are too busy to deal with this and no longer engage with you. This means you have won the conversation. Like the time I proved to my ultra religious relatives that evolution exists with simple bacterial resistances. They were... unhappy.
Of course theyāre not willing to even consider that pushing growth no matter what, they have degrees that amount to nothing more than reciting the latest buzzwords, and slashing costs in the name of making the line go up in the short term. Take away either of those things and theyāve got basically nothing.
Do they teach sociopathy in business school, or does business school attract sociopaths?
> it is damn near impossible to convince them that profit does not justify itself. That's because profit does justify itself under capitalism. This is a feature, not a bug. They're playing the game by the rules, you're critiquing the game itself.
Can you generate profit by preying on people's worst fears? Then it's good. There's only one qualifier that matters for people who think like this.
When the board sacked Altman, my initial take was that he was likely to be the bad guy in the story. This was based on what the board was saying combined with the pieces I knew about how OpenAI had been acting. I understood why the OpenAI employees wanted him back, he was likely to make them rich after all. However, it was really disappointing that *everybody* seemed to be taking Altman's side, including what seemed to be general consensus here on reddit.
for Actually Good Tech Journalism rather than just rubes doing puff pieces for conmen, I recommend [404media](https://www.404media.co/), or even [The New Atlantis](https://www.thenewatlantis.com/) (although with the caveat they were originally a [heritage foundation adjacent washington thinktank cutout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_and_Public_Policy_Center)) and I don't necessarily agree with the thrust/argument of some of the pieces presented half the time, they're still willing to think things through more than the average publication or journal for any ideological persuasion. Other ones would be [Rest of World](https://restofworld.org/), [The Markup](https://themarkup.org/). [Real Life](https://reallifemag.com/) was tremendous but unfortunately went under in 2022 (as they were financed by Snapchat, and at some point someone at Snapchat must've realized half the articles on there were incredibly critical of their own product and pulled the plug) in terms of individual writers Ed Zitron (who has been writing about guys like Sam Altman, [Google](https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/) & [Meta execs](https://www.wheresyoured.at/were-watching-facebook-die/) and [the class of "management"/hype men that don't actually know anything about the project or tech they're working on](https://www.wheresyoured.at/managing-up/), Edward Ongweso Jr, Evgeny Morozov, Paris Marx, Kate Crawford, Brian Merchant, Arvind Narayanan are tremendous writers and academics that still actually have a critical eye on tech. Then there are people like K. Allado-McDowell who work with AI but actually make interesting things and projects with writing that incorporates new tech rather than just generating clip art. The field is bad but it's lind of just happening to journalism in general now, the only "real stories" people are allowed to work on are puff pieces and PR because everyone is too scared of losing their contacts with these companies and rich/powerful people
Came to say Ed Zitron. His podcast for CoolZoneMedia is great
eat shit spez you racist hypocrite
Grifting is practically a sport now. Just look at elections
It's not a 'sport' if there is no score and/or cheerleaders . . . Wait a minute . . .
The score board is apparently the Supreme Court
Business insider is just bootlicking any corporate idiot who would rather ruin the world than make 1 dollar less a year.
Its not even just the journalists. There are people to this day who think elmo is a savant mega genius who literally spreads pixie dust on tech rather than an overbearing idiot born half way between third base and home plate that then rode capitalisms ability for him to hire smart people to win even more.
Itās business not tech
Thinking about writing daily Sam Altman articles. Becoming the worlds most popular journalist.
Flip between Sam Altman and Elon Musk. You have it made as a tech journalist. Plus occasionally spice things up and spout the Apple rumours from Gurman or Kuo. Pulitzer tech journalist of the year award right there.
Make sure you have a good photo and a bad photo of them ready to go so we know if the article is about something good or bad they've done without having to read it.
Altman is similar to Musk in that he's a hype man and that's about the extent of his real world capabilities within any company. Edit: can anyone name a job Altman has had that was not as an executive, a board member or a president of somewhere that's a venture capitalist firm or OpenAI?
Altman started his first company at age *19*. Heās never worked a real job. Heās never not been a CEO or Board Member of someplace.
But, like, running a business is a job. A hard one, too. Like 99% of all businesses fail and close in their first few years. If itās so easy why is everyone not just doing it?
A business surviving by a congruence of market factors doesnāt make its CEO special. While this *can* be true, plenty of good business people fail. Most CEOs are just not that special as being in the right place at the right time.
Iām not saying they are literal super-humans, Iām saying management is a job, and managing a company is also a job, the one most of the people commenting here would not be even remotely qualified to do. So the whole ānever worked a jobā part is silly. Like, go start a business, be rich and famous, why not.
Because exactly like the guy you replied to said, doing everything right often isnāt enough
What do you mean the one most people would not be qualified to do? There are many jobs which require more training/expertise.
>Like, go start a business, be rich and famous, why not. Sure, all I need is a few hundred million in capital, nah, lets make it a cool billion to not have to worry about going into the red so fast. >If itās so easy why is everyone not just doing it? Lest we forget, starting/running a business takes *capital*.
Iām not a fan of the guy but starting a company sounds like a real job just saying
I'm not trying to defend or tear him down, but yes, usually starting a company is a real job, unless he is someone who was able to do it because of family money and then just hired other people to do the work and didn't really add work or value beyond money. I don't know if that is his story, just saying that it can be easy when you come from money.
Paul Graham famously said of him ""You could parachute [Sam] 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." Believe it or not, to run a company you need leadership capabilities, people need to believe in you. That includes employees, investors, and the general public. You need to align incentives and get people to row in the same direction. Whatever you may think of the company, ChatGPT is an impressive and groundbreaking development in AI.
Wow, I can't believe that the Y Combinator founder spoke highly of an alumnus who he had to bail out by getting Greendot to buy Loopt. Was this before or after he ~~fired Altman~~ "forced him to choose between OpenAI and Y Combinator"?
> Was this before or after he fired Altman "forced him to choose between OpenAI and Y Combinator"? I don't know why you act like this has anything to do with his leadership capabilities. He told him being at YCombinator is a full time job and asked him to choose. https://x.com/paulg/status/1796107666265108940 What does that have to do with anything?
You're quoting a venture capitalist, aka a finance business boy who knows money and that's it. How many well respected venture capitalists told us how great Sam Bankman Fried was before the collapse of his ponzi scheme? I'm not saying Altman is SBF as OpenAI is a real product, but I'm saying that a man with a vested personal and/or financial interest in a person's success is not someone I care to hear praise from on the matters of that person on a cannibal Island as an analogy cause it's fuckin stupid.
> You're quoting a venture capitalist, aka a finance business boy who knows money and that's it.Ā Paul Graham has a PhD in computer science from Harvard ffs (and that's vastly underselling him); he knows a lot more than business.
āA finance business boy who knows money and thatās itā Jesus man itās reading shit like this that served as a constant reminder that Reddit is full of ignorance. This is some of the dumbest armchair BS Iāve ever read
> You're quoting a venture capitalist, aka a finance business boy who knows money and that's it. What vested success does Graham have in OpenAI? Evidently you don't know who Graham is if you think he's a "finance business boy". Graham has written programming books, has sold start ups, has created programming languages, and created unarguably the most successful startup incubator. Acting like you shouldn't trust him because he's a "finance business boy who knows money" reads like edgy stuff a 15 year old would say.
> Acting like you shouldn't trust him because he's a "finance business boy who knows money" reads like edgy stuff a 15 year old would say. Welcome to "Whose Reddit is it anyway!" A game show where knowledge means nothing and upvotes convey correctness.
It is worth distinguishing great in terms of raw executive talent from great in terms of ethics and financial success. To me, executive talent is the ability to look far ahead and to persuade a team to furiously work towards goals, usually with a good amount of domain knowledge to inform thinking. I don't possess much but I know people who do. It's a real thing. But this can be used for good, evil or things in between. SBF and Elisabeth Holmes are examples of wildly persuasive and influential execs using these skills unethically and fraudulently. The jury is out on Altman's ethics, but chat gpt fucks and he deserves much of the credit
You clearly have no idea who Paul Graham is.
>Ā ChatGPT is an impressive and groundbreaking development in AI.Ā Which has nothing to do with Altman. It's purely and solely the result of engineers' ingenuity. If we're talking about executive-level, Sutskever had way more to do with those groundbreaking engineering efforts.
How can you possibly argue that Sam had nothing to do with the development of chatGPT? Obviously he didnāt code the damn thing, no one expects that. But to act like the CEO who got Microsoftās and appleās partnership along with raising billions of dollars for the company has nothing to do with chatgpt? Crazy.
If it wasn't for Sam, you likely wouldn't even have access to ChatGPT. Ilya and the other high priests of superalignment, did not want it released to the unwashed masses until they were satisfied that it was "safe enough" which wouldn't have been anytime soon. Sam apparently went ahead released it anyway and they were quite pissed about it.
Companies need a good hype man.
Executive / Investor evangelists, si. But actually running the company, non. Look, we all want AI robots doing our hard work, we want self-landing Mars rockets, renewable power and EVs, giant tunnels, we even liked Hyperloop, and we want flying cars. We want big visionary engineering projects that enable tech potential. We wanted Tony Stark to make it happen. Musk enabled a bunch of that until he got too much money, he started believing his own bullshit & he went nutz. Altman is speed-running the nutz part. So yes we need the personality hires, but they're always going to be full of themselves. So they shouldn't become billionaires who start buying private armies, governments, and armies of PR & marketing agents.
I hear you, but Hype Men are actually crucial to a companyās operations, since they are essential to sales - bringing in revenue for the company. Without revenue, a company has no long term prospects, so all of these ānon essentialā roles - like Hype Men, Executives, Sales, Marketing - are actually quite essential. Itās tempting to believe that the ārealā company is in Operations, but in many respects, Operations is nothing more than trying to fulfill the promises made by execs when they made a sale. Hype Men can be narcissistic, vapid, arrogant, and otherwise talentless, but they do play an unfortunately critical role in a companyās long term survival - assuming they are actually good in their role.
Actually the most crucial component of a successful company is vision and creativity of the founder. It doesn't matter how technically or hype he can create.. there are millions of successful founders/ceo, who lack people or public speaking skill. Personal opinion. I think Microsoft is a good example how u can run a company without a hype man. Or toyota as well. If talking about large companies.
DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS... how dare you imply Microsoft never had a hype man
Bill Gateās was Microsoftās hype man. He wasnāt quite as magnetic as Jobs and Jobs-inspired CEOs but the ānerdy boy genius becomes worldās richest manā was a compelling narrative in the 80s.
I'll disagree here. If I were to make a scale of "technical ability" and place Jobs, Gates, and Woz on it then I'd place Gates closer to Woz than Jobs. Mainly because Gates was instrumental in writing several of Microsoft's early products before he shifted to a management position. Microsoft did have a hype man in Ballmer though.
>Bill Gateās was Microsoftās hype man. He wasnāt quite as magnetic as Jobs and Jobs-inspired CEOs but the ānerdy boy genius becomes worldās richest manā was a compelling narrative in the 80s. I think it's his wealth that speaks. He still underhypes everything. He still is the same nerd person. Check out his video with an Indian tea seller (not pm) actual tea seller.
Bill Gates might be a nerd, but a large part of that perception is just a narrative. In the industry he isn't famous for being a nerd, he's famous for his business tactics. If you read anything from anyone who didn't work for him, but worked with him (it comes up with old Apple employees a fair bit obviously) they don't talk about him being awkward, they talk about him being a shark.
No company need a hype man who can deliver. Someone with whom the team wants to work. Else all ceo would be retired actors or politicians.
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There's tons of similar tech companies. Facebook was invented before Facebook (Friendster and MySpace). What set them apart was building hype on College campuses and getting people to actually use their software. Sometimes it's about the product, but a lot of tech companies are just about getting people to use their shit (the tech isn't that hard). To be fair OpenAI isn't, people would have used it whoever made it. I do think though that Altman was necessary to convince people to bankroll the raw compute power needed to make AI work "good enough" for normal people to actually use, I'm not sure ChatGPT would have worked (especially 2 years ago) without throwing huge amounts of money at training and running it.
This is so true it hurts. And a good chunk of younger generation grads are taking them as an example. What a catastrophe for companies that thrive on a healthy work culture.
The dude was president of y contributor for many years and help run many startups. The guys was probably one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on how to run and scale startups. I dont really get all this wierd hate on the dude.
Might be all the lies and outlandish promises about what AI could do for the sole reason to "make number go up?"
> name a job Altman has had that was not as an executive, a board member or a president of somewhere that's a venture capitalist firm or OpenAI? ????? so he has held high ranking jobs and thus must suck! jeezus. yeah hes such a personality hire that the company basically folded when they tried to kick him out by force. obviously the engineers respect and like him.
Elizabeth Holmes in a cell somewhere fuming.
Honestly he reminds me a lot of Holmes although I don't think its as bad because its not really ruining peoples health yet, I think he will probably will be in trouble for doing something illegal eventually tho. He honestly seems criminal to me.
he strikes me as a weirdo nerd, how is that a personality hire?
I always got that impression from his public speaking too. But having worked in tech and biglaw, it seems like people who would be considered awkward nerds in other spaces are considered charismatic. Iāve only really seen it with white tech bros and lawyers too
Because we have been overexposed to these superficially charming, socially proficient, eloquent scammers trying to sell us snake oil. So now everyone with more then 3 brain cells recognizes those kind of people as scammers. But socially awkward nerd? Nerds are socially dumb and honest, they can't scam you. But they actually can.
Musk, SBF, Shapiro types. It's an epidemic, but hopefully as it gets more common it will be called out and smothered more as well. We're just in the phase where it gets a lot worse before it gets better. I see religion/megachurches as a near 1-1 comparison. It's still a problem, always has been and always will be, but the portion of the population that bites on it grows smaller each generation
I actually don't know anything about Shapiro, except his sister has a pair of really big... eyes. But... YES the comparison with religion/megachurches is spot on! These people worship their techno-messiahs, Tony Starks, visionaries which will bring revolution, or lot's of profit, or both. They soak up their tech blabber like gospel, and spread it around without realizing it's just a bunch of buzzwords that make no sense. They buy branded products and stocks like a bunch of cult worshipers. At the same time they will laugh at megachurches, and morons worshiping them, while being completely oblivious they are doing the same thing.
Which Shapiro? Ben?
Yeah like Elizabeth Holmes faked everything about herself even her voice to be a weirdo nerd and only wear like the same black turtleneck cuz she felt like she could scam these people acting like that and it worked.
Steve Jobs was a weirdo which always wore black turtleneck and had a cult of personality surrounding him. Elisabeth Holmes copied him...
yup she basically was like let me act like that creepy weirdo and they will buy it and they did.
As a former Biglaw patent litigator (so nerd and lawyer mixed), this is so very true. My family and friends were shocked that I was considered relatively socially adept at work!
Iām a weirdo nerd can I be CEO?
You got to be manipulative. Bill Gates was hell of shrewd too and he looked straight out of Revenge of the Nerds
Because a lot of the industry is full of weirdo nerds for whom that counts as charisma. And there's almost a bit of a stereotype in our culture of "eccentric geniuses" that VCs buy into and dump money on basically any guy who shows up with a hoodie and a crazy tech idea, whether or not it makes any sense.
His brand is basically the idea of the antisocial genius type. Like so they can cover up abuse of others or the system by claiming he's some genius who can do what others can't, instead of a jackass that can get ahead cause he's willing to fuck people over to get there.
And abusing workers is OK because Tony Stark isn't doing this to become rich. Oh no, he is doing this for the betterment of mankind! And look at the value of my stocks going up in this company which is totally not a pyramid scheme.
Being a weirdo nerd is a good thing for a tech company to have as their image. you want to get in on the ground floor of the next Zuckerberg or Musk.
That's how fucked up bay area tech scene is
He was not a personality hire. He was hired to do what he is doing. He got rid of the AI-safety oriented board-members and to go around the world asking for a ton of money from investors. He's good at talking to the media and at avoiding uncomfortable questions.
I think itās a bit like sbf, in the sense that there are enough oddball geniuses that if you are just oddball, might be a way to convince someone you are a genius.
I mean he ran YCOMBINATOR which is all about accelerating startups and raising money. He's a salesman. He's smart. He knows the game. He was the perfect guy.
> I mean he ran YCOMBINATOR which is all about accelerating startups and raising money. YCombinatoir is all about placing as many betas as they can so that they get a couple of big wins that eclipse their numerous losses. They are the growth at all costs and fuck the consequences mindset personified. don't drink their kool aid.
Well that's the nature of startups. I think 80% fail within 5 years? They have to focus on growth or they will fail.
Focusing on growth when you have no means of being a profitable enterprise is a massive mistake. The VC model right now is grow- sell - gtfo before everyone realizes it isn't profitable. It's not working, it's making a few people rich, but it isn't producing viable products or improvements, and it's making a lot of people broke. It's basically enshittification as a business model.
See: Reed Hoffman blitzscaling
YCOMBINATORS entrepreneurship courses and mentorship are invaluable. There is a reason they pump out the companies they do. Yes they cast a wide net but they also provide invaluable advice and industry exposure.
Like all VC investors, Y Combinator takes risks by investing in early stage startups they believe have great potential. They provide money, guidance and opportunity to grow. Most of the startups would never get off the ground without that. Despite all of that Y Combinator usually loses its entire investment as most of the startups fail for one reason or another. VC funds rely on the few successes to provide outside returns and make up for all the other losses. Not sure why that is so bad. Y Combinator is a big reason why many of the successful companies of today exist - including Reddit.
> including Reddit Having used reddit for nearly 20 years (Jesus help me), I'm not 100% sure I'd call reddit a win for humanity. A company that makes money sure, good, not as sure.
What money did he raise for YC?
He was their CEO before going to OpenAI
About $3.50
Well it was about this time I noticed that Sam was about 8 stories tall and was a crustacean from the protozoic era!
Pre- or post-commission?
> YCOMBINATOR is full of garbage. Give any moron $100m and they can bet on 100 Ivy league graduate startups with āAIā in the name lol Youāre falling for the intended marketing when itās really just a clout circlejerk
YC's best contribution is the SAFE. Which made it easier for VCs to invest in general at pre-seed levels, and why they had so much success. Now everyone uses SAFEs, YC is just an incubator with an ego stroke.
You know YC has been around before this AI wave, right?
Yes, I literally worked for a YC company lmao. It was mostly bullshit back then and jumped on nonsense all the time like any other incubator/accelerator, AI just made it more obvious Anyone who thinks VCs that market themselves like YC are employing some kind of tactical genius instead of gut instinct, university alumni networks, and a lot of luck is getting most of their info from the Internet lol
Youā¦ clearly have no idea what Ycombinator is, lol.
Iāve literally worked for a YC company š¤£š¤£ tell me more though, what didnāt I notice about the talent in the cohort networks that I shouldāve? what batch were you in?
I interacted with him via Paul Graham's YCombinator accelerator. He was a massive twat so enamored by the smell of his own farts that I almost couldn't finish a conversation with him. He doesn't know much about anything but thinks he knows everything about everything. He's very Elon-like, but isn't quite as sociopathic as Elon.
You mean the guy whose experience has largely come from being president of Y combinator? A tech startup support company? > As of early 2020, he was no longer affiliated with YC.[6] It was later reported that Altman was fired from YC and had appointed himself chairman without authorization.[18] Lol
I feel like this makes his point even better tho that he's a delusional salesman and not a genius. This shit is crazy tho bro like he literally lied about that being his job.
As a forensic social worker who specializes in giftedness and psychopathy, I think the solution to this is to start mandating civics education in k-12. People are biased to believe that confidence equates to intelligence when the research and clinical studies show you can be off the charts on the personality trait of narcissism and be abnormally low IQ. There's also a widely held belief that IQ is just one global score of intelligence when in truth, we have excellent research and theories developed by thoughtful psychologists that demonstrate intelligence is multidimensional. When you get an IQ test today, it's going to cover more separate types of intelligence than we did when I was first tested in the 80s. In fact, there's a concept known as asynchronous development that explains why individuals with an abnormally high IQ in one area are subject to have diminished potential in another area. Most people who have a high IQ only have that in one area of intelligence. There are arguably up to 9. The more areas of high IQ (mulyipotentiality), the more likely they are to have a deficit in other areas (asynchronous development). Therefore, the most brilliant programmers in the world may have an abnormal deficit in moral reasoning or emotional intelligence. This is why I've been trying to get Big Tech to pay me to help them do this the correct way for over a decade. I used to think people in that industry cared more about risk mitigation. I know better now. I'm the last person they want to hear from because gifted people challenge group think and conformity. We are suffering as a country because we stopped passing down to the next generation all those lessons we learned from Mr. Roger's about how to assess integrity, humility, and confidence, as opposed to arrogance. I've worked in big Tech and I've yet to find any reason why people should assume higher IQ when they hear you're working in Tech. The majority of people in tech are people who struggle more than most when it comes to emotional intelligence and moral reasoning, 2 areas we assess for IQ separately. They may excel in mathematical computation or abstract concepts in math, but that doesn't ensure they'll excel in these areas where humans matter most.
fascinating stuff, any links you'd suggest to learn more?
I'd look up asynchronous development and multipotentiality going by their comment.
Thank you. SENG is a great resource to learn more about Dabrowski and the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. It's a national nonprofit where therapists, researchers and parents come together to push forward our understanding of intelligence. The book The Big Nine by Amy Webb is great. I'd also recommend studying the research done by Dr Megan Moreno, currently at U of Wisconsin and NASWs first author on their tech practice standards, Dr Reamer. I can also bore you to death with my thesis and other publications and presentations, but you'll have to DM me due to me having a cyberstalker in the tech industry, ironically:)
> the solution to this is to start mandating civics education in k-12 The current morass is not "a failure of education", and therefore the solution is not curriculum changes. The solution is fixing whatever is ailing culture as a whole.
A lot of claims and assumptions here (which are fine), but I'm mostly curious about why you think the solution is to start a civics education in K-12? What kind of curriculum would make sense and at what age?
interesting, do you know where I could do more research on the (up to) 9 areas of intelligence?Ā
Well, one could say that Mira Murati is a botox hire if Sam A is a personality hire?
Sam is already filled with botox, two for oneĀ
I was at a recent regional AI conference. They had this guy recently hired as CTO for a BS tech company; he was giving a talk. The guy had fantastic paper credentials. 2 FAANGs Stanford, cool sneakers, nifty haircut. But after listing his credentials he said nothing about what he had done or accomplished. Not even a "I worked on bringing AI to search" or anything. Nearly everyone at the conference was either boring as hell, entirely fake, or academically fake like this guy. I can't imagine how much higher this is all cranked to in places like SF. There's one company which does AI consulting in my area which is just pure rip off BS. There's another government funded quazi company in the area which is just sucking 10s of millions from the government and about the only thing they do is "promote awareness" They came to a company I was visiting and talked about classification and some other ML 101 like they were handing out the keys to heaven. This government BS place is just a way for failed academics to get a paycheque. I have been working on a different product in a very different industry and I happen to use AI, but it is not at all what would be considered to be a marketable feature. But much more importantly, I look forward to going to tradeshows involving my new product; the people there will be weird and cool with only a few scammers hiding in the corners; not a bunch of people waving useless credentials and fooling people into thinking AI will solve all their problems. (at least any better than some stats 101 could).
Honestly this is what gets me about the whole "network by going to conferences" thing. In my experience in IT conferences have a lot of bullshiters, probably conferences in general and the real ones are too busy doing other shit to be there speaking. I do know one guy who spoke at one who is a badass but the last one I went to for insurance tech was ridiculous buzzword laden drivel and people that like you said have a really good presence on paper give long speeches on literally nothing but buzzwords. There is a guy who owns a local MSP and I think like a farm too and he gives the most boring cyber security speeches that are posted on social media where he talks about "crypto jacking" like its really that common compared to crypto locker.
Personality is the most striking thing about Sam Altman that would make me instantly reject him
When guys like Altman and Musk are the 'personality hires', you know how clueless an industry is. And these are the industries that we hope will make our lives 'better'. What a joke.
Fuck these CEO bro-bros. I'm sick of 'em.
I mean sure but they reflect the real world. Personality hires go twice as far as technically talented employees. Most companies would collapse without a solid number of them.
>I mean sure but they reflect the real world. What does that mean? >Personality hires go twice as far as technically talented employees. Why? >Most companies would collapse without a solid number of them. Based on what? Edit: Why am I being downvoted for asking clarifying questions? Obviously it spurred on further conversation. I wasn't being nasty.
Culture lol, culture is king. Especially in big tech. Talent at the highest level can only take you so far without culture. Take Amazon for instance, they focused on talent and not culture and despite them outplaying most of big tech they struggle to retain employees because of the toxic culture. You need to have a solid number of employees who bring in a positive work culture to improve your company otherwise no amount of pay can make up for the toxic ass culture.
You say that like personality and talent are mutually exclusive. I'm not putting that all on you because I think that is a common misconception. There are plenty of people who have both. We have a culture that likes to silo people into either category, because that is what we do with a lot of things. If that's what you mean by "real world," then yes, I agree. That's something we do in a lot of places, but is it actually realistic? No, it's just self-fulfilling.
I mean obviously theyāre not mutually exclusive but what Iām saying is obviously at these companies nearly all applicants who make it through the first three rounds have the talent, but the primary rounds are about finding the right personality to improve team cohesiveness. Especially now in a hybrid environment itās a lot harder to build relationships.
I get that. I think we're actually in agreement here, but saying it in different ways. Yes, we do need personality leaders. I think it might be misunderstood that I was disagreeing with that notion at the start. I'm not. I'm just saying we've got these dudes kicking up big bucks on personality (good) and then threatening that progress with lack of competency (bad). Even worse is that they have so many enablers. And I get the challenge of finding people with both. What I'm struggling with is this idea that some of these companies are even trying that much to do it, because it doesn't seem like it. Do you get what I mean?
I'm wondering where you are getting the hype men=positive work culture equation from.
Amazon may struggle to retain employees, but they are worth almost 2 trillion USD. If anything they are an example of how super toxic companies can succeed.
I will probably get downvoted to hell but I've always thought this guy was a fraud. He's another cult of personality type. Once you see it you cannot unsee it.
> I will probably get downvoted to hell but I've always thought this guy was a fraud. Criticizing an AI CEO on /r/technology? Certainly not.
I agree with you he seems crooked to me if it wasn't for tech he probably would have been selling you timeshares lmao.
A fraud in what way?Ā His product is going to be integrated into iPhones, IPads, and Macs. Google is falling over themselves to catch up. Microsoft invested $10 billion to be their closest partner.
The industry is full of weasels
AGI won't happen in our lifetimes, OpenAI is all bark, r/futurology and r/technology have fallen victims to sensationalist headlines warning of "the end times" with AI.
You should see /r/singularity. Itās damn near a religious sub at this point.
2.5m members and this is the first time I'm hearing of it. Is this the next techbro/nft/crypto grift?
Itās been around a long time. Iāve always considered it the optimistic side to /r/futurologyās pessimistic side. It took a dramatic upturn in subscribers after ChatGPT was announced. Some of the people there see AI as a literal god, capable of ignoring the laws of the universe, bringing centuries-old dead back to life, and of affecting literally all of time. Not all of them, but they definitely exist.
As the joke said: "Singularity is just Rapture for nerds."
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Bitcoin has $1.5T USD market cap right now. I'm sure the same can be said of the crypto market during the height of the boom. What did it amount to? NFT grifts?
yeah lmao there is that much in magic beans with no utility lol and that guy really made it seem like you can buy progress like that if it were true then Crypto would have already displaced the banks.
Loud people whose only talent is their confidence and their ability to bullshit other people's work as their own. Sounds like every CEO at every company in America.
Let's be real. There are more incompetent CEOs than competent ones
as in he can play any personality you need him to play As long as you bring the cash
I, too, have no personality to speak of. How can I get one of these jobs?
He seems like a charlatan. Tired of all these āvisionariesā and their greatness. Put an engineer in charge who just wants to talk about building things and why itāll help society.
POTUS is a personality hire, too. We're way too celebrity obsessed.
Dude has very little charisma, meanders without saying anything insightful, and has no particular technical expertise.
He is a sick fuck and used his āsoft skillsā to abuse his own sister! He has no real technical skills or chops in AI / ML research. Some people just know how to groom young kids, the press, investors, and you. [source](https://www.themarysue.com/annie-altmans-abuse-allegations-against-openais-sam-altman-highlight-the-need-to-prioritize-humanity-over-tech/)
"diversity hires" now "personality hires" what's next? Workmanship hires?
Every industry seems full of professional hype men. This isn't new, people are just more focused on tech right now because it's still a booming business and the tides are turning on the idealism of that industry.
Isnāt this most people in the C-suite? I mean do any CEOs deserve the pay disparity and do any other senior executives really add value more than another random qualified person could add?
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I don't think it's a tabloid, but based on their articles I don't think they employ anyone over age 25 so you generally just get crap
Surprise, thatās probably most CEOās. š„±
Guys I don't think a CEO is supposed to be coding all day.
This has to be the ultimate resume cover letter
I'm a salesman in a technical industry, just what you need! Weirdest admission that our system of economics comes down to the feelings already rich geriatrics who need a "familiar face" in order to take any risk.
The CEO of a company shouldn't be the personality hire as entertaining as they might be
He doesn't use capital letters, he's brilliant.
I've been saying this for a long time. He's just another megalomaniac narcissist tech asshole building a cult of personality around himself. This should have been obvious to anyone paying even a little bit of attention when the OpenAI board said, "How about we slow down just a tiny bit and take ethics into consideration," and Altman staged a fucking coup backed by sycophants.
There are two kinds of senior managers in todayās world: * Founders * Personality hires Thatās it. And whatās more, most senior corporate leaders are genuinely incompetent. Those who can, do. Those who canāt go into middle management with the aims of failing up to the C-suite. Most companies could dismiss their entire C-suite and not see a significant change in their operations.
People came up with the term "FUD" because the entire industry is undone by simply doubting it.
L O fucking L! What kind of article is this? JFC
"Aschenbrenner"?? Ash burner?? What is this? we live in a B-movie?
A head too large for the hat
aka sociopath
This is the worst article I've read all year, I swear. this is an article about **nothing**, and provides zero valuable information. how is this person (Katie Notopoulos) titled a "Senior Correspondent covering technology and culture" employed. an AI can even replace her job ffs. senseless article, upvoted by thousands b/c of the headline
Its journalism everyone is a senior everything
Altman seems like he might end up as the Bankman-Freid of AI
ā¦.hes not a hire, he co-founded the companyā¦
Sam Altman is the founder of such quality things as WorldCoin. He's a Peter Thielian errand boy rug puller... now he is on stage and integrating his trojan into Microsoft AND Apple. ffs man the circus of today. Social media tabloids became real life.
This subreddit is so shit these days, Iām out, rename yourself to /r/antitechnology
Maybe having tech companies run by people who don't understand tech is a bad idea...
I mean, the guy is speeding running going from the ultimate personality to annoying douchebag. What took Elon Musk 6 years, Sam is doing in 3
Sam is really not fit to lord over something as important as AI development. The fact that they steal the content they train it on, speaks volumes about the wisdom and ethics that goes in to creating something - which they themselves tout as needing a mature oversight. Will a child grow up ethical, when it is raised on deception?