[HN Gopher] Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinato... ___________________________________________________________________ Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was fired from Y Combinator by his mentor Author : CartyBoston Score : 622 points Date : 2023-11-22 12:17 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com) | CartyBoston wrote: | The bit about PG and Altman parting ways is interesting I wonder | if anyone wants to share more :). | helsinkiandrew wrote: | Hadn't seen the tweet from Geoffrey Irving before: | | https://twitter.com/geoffreyirving/status/172675427022402397... | | > 1. He was always nice to me. | | > 2. He lied to me on various occasions | | > 3. He was deceptive, manipulative, and worse to others, | including my close friends (again, only nice to me, for | reasons) | rwmj wrote: | Like an AI then. | xrd wrote: | It's a very strongly worded statement. Given how connected | Altman is, it's very interesting that Irving would publicly | state this. | | It's either very courageous and in service to changing | silicon valley, or also very manipulative and in service of | benefiting his company. It feels like it could be both. | | I'm left feeling like there are no angels here. (That's | actually funny given how investors love to call themselves | angels.) | | In the end it appears Altman has looked out for himself above | all else, which probably enrages his mentors and investors | who don't like to lose control, including pg. | ethbr1 wrote: | It's difficult to conceptualize someone who is ruthless, | self-interested, and skilled enough to overcome all | problems... except your control over them. | | Eventually they look at you and decide you're the problem | to be overcome. | | Might not happen for a while, but inevitably will. | twic wrote: | Are you talking about Sam or an AGI? | PeterisP wrote: | Nicely worded, but with regard to the OpenAI conflict I | wonder if you intended this to be about Sam Altman or the | topic of (G)AI safety or both? | CSMastermind wrote: | This is incredibly well put and not something I've seen | articulated so clearly before. | theGnuMe wrote: | You've got a few billionaire teams in silicon valley not | unlike say the NFL. | | Team DeepMind Team Google Team Meta Team YC Team OpenAI | Team Microsoft Team nVIDIA Team VC Team Thiel | | There are probably more... | pdonis wrote: | _> I 'm left feeling like there are no angels here._ | | That's my feeling after watching all this play out over the | last few days. I don't trust any of these people to be good | stewards of anything that is supposed to benefit humanity. | bmitc wrote: | He said it in the Tweet that it was because people were | attacking people, such as Helen Toner, that he knows to be | good people. | coliveira wrote: | This is the kind of person we have controlling the future of | AI. He and Elon Musk. Between these two we are assured | complete destruction. | objektif wrote: | What is wrong with Musk again? | nullindividual wrote: | That's a rhetorical question, correct? | bmitc wrote: | He personally does not like the color yellow, so he | required it not used in safety contexts just because of | that. So he put workers' safety at risk because he may | have to see pictures or tour the area once every quarter. | There are more stories like this ad nauseum. Or, you | could just read his Twitter feed. | machdiamonds wrote: | You guys just believe whatever you read. Things that can | easily be debunked with common sense. For example, | there's a lot of yellow in this factory tour he did: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr9kK0_7x08 | bmitc wrote: | I indeed see fairly minimal safety colors and patterns in | that video. I don't know where you see "a lot". | | And you do realize that there have been investigative | journalists, federal inspections, and lawsuits regarding | this? So all those people are just making it all up so | that I can just believe whatever I read? | rsynnott wrote: | I don't see how 1 and 2 are compatible unless you have a | really weird definition of 'nice'. | FireBeyond wrote: | I think it'd be more accurate to substitute 'polite' or | 'courteous' than 'nice'. | helsinkiandrew wrote: | https://archive.ph/fLzoF | neonate wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20231122141935/https://www.washi... | throwawaaarrgh wrote: | People love a good cult of personality, don't they | sparrowInHand wrote: | Billionaire-jesus and his followers, reborn every 10 years. | ethbr1 wrote: | Billionaire dalai lama. | rsynnott wrote: | When did this start, actually? the first I can really think | of is Jobs (at least in the billionaire category); treatment | of Hubbard had a lot of the same vibes, but not the money. | keiferski wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology | 38321003thrw wrote: | This is a very interesting read from the New Thought | original sources: Prentice Mulford's _Your Forces and How | to Use Them_. | | https://archive.org/details/yourforceshowtou02mulfiala/yo | urf... | kelipso wrote: | It's the vibe in almost all of the big silicon valley | companies and probably most of the smaller ones too. | Founder worship etc. Just silicon valley culture I assume. | I guess it takes a certain mindset to dedicate the prime of | your years to making someone else incredibly rich. | lynx23 wrote: | It is hard to see through the unfolding drama. Since I am lacking | data (and we all do), I can only fall back to my intuition. When | I was listening to Sam being interviewed by Lex, I had to turn | the podcast off because I felt I am listening to a deeply flawed | and manipulative character. He left a creepy feeling of "Never | ever trust this guy". | pnut wrote: | Depends on who you are, I guess? He's optimising for business | growth and opportunity, I bet VCs and Moloch have him on on | their Christmas card lists. | refurb wrote: | Billions of dollars can paper over some very serious | personality traits. | bloopernova wrote: | It's something I have to remind myself frequently: leadership | got where they are by surviving the cutthroat backstabbing | executive gauntlet. I also have to trust my gut when it sends | me warning signals about someone, and I get that a lot from | "celebrity" CEOs. | | After some reflection, I've found that I sympathize with Ilya | Sustkever a bit more now. I'm autistic and I suspect he is | neurodiverse in some way. I've definitely been misled by | manipulative leaders and peers, been enthusiastic for whatever | scheme they had, but regretted it after seeing the aftermath or | fallout. I can absolutely see ways Sustkever could have been | manipulated by others on the board. | layer8 wrote: | It's likely that that will eventually be his downfall. | mcpackieh wrote: | Yeah, Lex gives me those vibes too. | dist-epoch wrote: | How dare you question the savior of humanity. | fvdessen wrote: | I've had the 'chance' to work with some deeply manipulative | persons in the past, the kind who goes to your desk and say 'Hey, | I noticed you started to speak to X again, and your performance | seems to suffer as a result", where X is a friendly colleague | that opposed some plan of that person. It is incredibly difficult | to keep those people in check as all that behaviour is off the | record and impossible to prove. When people complain it's a 'you | said, he said' situation where the manipulator inevitably wins. | Wether those persons are positive or negative for the company is | not all that clear, but they create an incredibly unpleasant work | environment. | cma wrote: | This endorsement of Sam from 2011 is actually pretty damning, | though it is so long ago if it were the only thing it wouldn't | be a huge red flag: | | >I just saw Sam Altman speak at YCNYC and I was impressed. I | have never actually met him or heard him speak before Monday, | but one of his stories really stuck out and went something like | this: | | > "We were trying to get a big client for weeks, and they said | no and went with a competitor. The competitor already had a | terms sheet from the company were we trying to sign up. It was | real serious. | | > We were devastated, but we decided to fly down and sit in | their lobby until they would meet with us. So they finally let | us talk to them after most of the day. | | > We then had a few more meetings, and the company wanted to | come visit our offices so they could make sure we were a 'real' | company. At that time, we were only 5 guys. So we hired a bunch | of our college friends to 'work' for us for the day so we could | look larger than we actually were. It worked, and we got the | contract." | | > I think the reason why PG respects Sam so much is he is | charismatic, resourceful, and just overall seems like a genuine | person. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048944 | | I think the article mentions what may be this same incident, | without saying how it was done: | | > Rabois noted that Altman, as a Stanford dropout, persuaded a | major telecommunications company to do business with his start- | up Loopt -- the same quality, he said, that enabled Altman to | persuade Microsoft to invest in OpenAI. | | From the earlier comment, it seems he persuaded the telecom | essentially through fraud though maybe not legally so. | strangescript wrote: | Every good CEO is also a Confidence Man/Woman. | hef19898 wrote: | No, not really. Not even remotely. Business is ruthless, | that's fine. It has to stay clear of fraud and deception. | And funny enough, most old school companies do, mowt of the | time. | sokoloff wrote: | I put that in approximately the same place as the founders of | Reddit making alts and posting things on early Reddit or | Porsche labeling its first-ever car design as Type 7. | | There's a deceptive "fake it 'til you make it" aspect to | both, and both play towards inflating the current appearance | of scale/traction/experience, but I don't find them | particularly damning. | bhouston wrote: | This is sort of par for the course in the world of early | stage startups. No one wants to be your first customer as it | is risky, but you need that first customer. So you "fake it | until you make it." | | It is similar to dressing the part you want - at least when | that mattered. You buy more expensive clothes than you should | be able to afford so that people think you are more | successful than you are, and then they are more willing to | bet on you, and then you become more successful. | | There is nothing that is a red flag for me in the above | story. | | I also had a prospective first client want to visit our | offices so I quickly rented an office and asked my part-time | contractors to all come into the office that day to fill it | out. It worked! And then I could afford an office and hiring | those part-time contractors as full-time employees. So it was | sort of a self-fulfilling. | jen20 wrote: | > There is nothing that is a red flag for me in the above | story. | | Elizabeth? Is that you? | refurb wrote: | If Elizabeth Holmes had been able to pull off some | successful product that made a lot of money, no doubt all | the "fake it 'til you make it" she did at the beginning | (showing demos that didn't work, sending tests to outside | labs and saying they were run on their equipment) would | have been forgiven no doubt. | | Just another nostalgic Silicon Valley "hustler" story. | kelipso wrote: | She really only got into trouble because her lies became | obvious and she risked people's lives. If it was some | CRUD app and she didn't get enough customers or whatever, | more than likely she'd have gotten money for another | company. | shapefrog wrote: | > she risked people's lives | | She was found not guilty of that bit. The conviction and | jail time is only for defrauding the investors. | hef19898 wrote: | Only that Theranos product was techically impossible. | Which makes the whole thing even crazier, nobody did even | the slightest due dilligence there. Seems to be par of th | cours so, other exhibits are FTX and WeWork. | bhouston wrote: | The core FTX crypto exchange business was very | profitable. But Alameda wasn't. Also everyone at FTX was | committing fraud. | hef19898 wrote: | Based on what financial statements do we know FTX was | profitable? Also, the stole customer funds. | bhouston wrote: | > Based on what financial statements do we know FTX was | profitable? | | The crypto-exchange part I have read many times it was | profitable. Running an exchange is a profitable endeavour | as you just take a cut of all transactions. As long as | you control your costs it is a money printer. | | The rest of FTX was full of fraud and Alameda was a money | sink via unprofitable speculation. Also likely helping | laundry money as well via poor KYC. | | Running an exchange is a great business though if you | have the volume, doesn't matter if it is crypto or | futures or stocks. | play_ac wrote: | No, crypto exchanges are only profitable as a result of | massive wash trading and scamming. If they had to | actually compete the margins would be hilariously low. | Probably even lower than a typical bank because the | product is just worse. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _If Elizabeth Holmes had been able to pull off some | successful product_ | | Like Loopt? | shalmanese wrote: | I think OPs point was that this was sama finding the line | of what was the most egregious thing that is acceptable to | admit in public which is almost certainly not the most | egregious thing he's done and could be a large part of the | explaination of why people's opinion of him knowing certain | private actions diverges so much from everyone else. | Jochim wrote: | I believe such behaviour is harmful and that we shouldn't | be rewarding those that engage in it. | 8note wrote: | The bad behaviour is predicating the purchase on seeing | the office. | | Having an office doesn't make a company real, nor any | more or less likely to execute on the project | Jochim wrote: | Both can be bad. Even more so when you don't know which | party established the idea as bad in the first place. | | A purchaser who insists they only see white employees in | the office is bad. Anyone that forces their non-white | employees out of sight to secure that purchase is just as | bad, if not worse. | | To play along is to accept the notion, to contribute to | it's perceived validity, and to harm anyone who happens | to be honest. The result is that people we'd be better | off without are pushed upwards in society. | saiya-jin wrote: | Interesting viewpoint, lie is a lie and amoral is amoral. | We can wrap it in nice package or act like 'it had to be | done because others are doing it', and it may be a correct | statement. But its still a plain in-your-face lie. | | If that telco would know truth they would most probably cut | them out, not due to their size but due to their lies. This | is not how trust is built, this is how you lose it very | quickly and for good. | | Maybe we need to accept that this is expected from all | startup owners/ceos. Fine with me too, but its still | amoral. We define our own legacy, if we ever care (and | these mega egos do care a lot). | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _This is sort of par for the course in the world of early | stage startups_ | | It's _so_ par of the course that I'm willing to bet it | didn't happen. | ackbar03 wrote: | oh sht, this guy can persuade clients and close deals? Better | keep him away from the company! | baq wrote: | VC capital optimises for revolutionaries thus they get | revolutionaries. | | Please note any positive connotations for the word | 'revolution' should be abandoned at this point. Revolutions | are short-term 100% bad and long term coin-toss bad, or | worse. VCs love those odds. | notresidenter wrote: | What about the industrial revolutions? | hackitup7 wrote: | I'm also neither a Sam Altman booster or detractor, but the | types of activities described here (and honestly, sometimes | much much worse) are very common at startups. | BeetleB wrote: | What am I missing? The worst sin is trying to look bigger | than they are? | | You should listen to _How I Built This_. Tricks like this | when starting out are pretty common, be it unicorn startups | or personal businesses. So common that founders are openly | willing to admit to it on public radio. In almost all cases, | both parties came out better. It 's not as if the client is | at all upset at this "fraudulent" behavior. | neilv wrote: | I think that level of honesty isn't unusual in Silicon | Valley. | | Personally, if I were the prospective customer, I'd be angry | at being lied to, and my message to my team would probably be | that we'd be foolish to depend on this startup after they've | shown from the start that they're dishonest. | | If I were an established company, I think I'd also have our | lawyers look at situation, to make sure the institutional | knowledge was captured, and to see whether there's anything | else we needed to do. | | (For example of something else to do: though I'd treat things | as confidential by default, in some future n-ary | relationship/deal, is there a situation in which I'm | obligated to mention to a third company that we previously | had negative vetting info on the other company.) | | But in the context of current startup culture, I don't think | "fake (fraud) it till make it" is that unusual. And it's been | normalized. | | But I still don't want to do business with dishonest startup | founders -- whether it's because they're naturally lying | liars, or because they're surrounded by frequent dishonesty | and they're not smart enough to cut through that. | tibbydudeza wrote: | Remember BillG sold an OS to IBM for the Intel 8086 that was | not even owned or written by Microsoft at the time. | cma wrote: | And somewhat ringing of these current events, his mom was | on a charity board with the head of IBM. | al_borland wrote: | I find it hard to believe this was the kind of environment he | was cultivating at OpenAI if 95% of the staff were ready to | follow him out the door. | | I've worked for the type of people you mention and no one | followed them when they leave. 95% threatening to leave in this | case is hard to ignore. | oldtownroad wrote: | OpenAI is more religion than company. Sam could be a deeply | flawed leader and still have extreme loyalty due to what | OpenAI has achieved under his leadership. The people at | OpenAI are believers in a mission and that means they're far | more likely to allow personal failings to slide. He's more a | Musk figure than a whoever-the-ceo-of-McDonald's-is figure. | seanthemon wrote: | do you have evidence to back this up? | saiya-jin wrote: | I don't think its necessary to prove anything he says, | the keyword is 'could'. We don't know, and people who | actually do don't spill it on HN just because we would | like them to. | | These are generic statements about cult-like leaders, | Musk is a prime example. Its hard won affection, not just | smooth BS, we here all know that. | | That being said, people generally don't change, just | situations (barring some catastrophic accidents or | similar). Whatever actions given person did in the past | describe them well enough in present. Again, generic but | IMHO always valid so far. | seanthemon wrote: | "OpenAI is more religion than company" sounds like a | factual statement to me. | fevangelou wrote: | You don't need to manipulate all employees. Just key ones ;) | elboru wrote: | Well maybe they were not as good at manipulating as others | can be. | imjonse wrote: | I can believe the staff likes or even loves him, but the | following him part was mostly because of money/shares and | because they know he's influential and well connected to | people with money. And peer pressure may have had a part in | that letter signing. You don't want to be on the side of the | losers if Altman gets his way. | Kiro wrote: | > mostly because of money/shares | | How do you know? | imjonse wrote: | I don't obviously. But since those people were ready to | jump ship to Microsoft, I am pretty sure they care more | about their own careers than 'creating AGI that benefits | humanity as a whole in the first place' | 93po wrote: | Presumably they're jumping ship with Sam, and I'd assume | that they'd assume that Sam would uphold the same | perceived integrity at MS | imjonse wrote: | Sam's integrity would be at home at Microsoft, for sure. | dnissley wrote: | Didn't most sign the letter before they knew they had any | offer to join Microsoft in any capacity? | | Also maybe I'm just too risk averse but if I were | concerned about money I wouldn't be putting my name on | such a list. Although at some point past 50% it would | feel pretty safe because what are they going to do, fire | everyone? | dvfjsdhgfv wrote: | > Didn't most sign the letter before they knew they had | any offer to join Microsoft in any capacity? | | I very much doubt it. | narag wrote: | "We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAI | and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary..." so | no, they knew. | antisthenes wrote: | Occam's razor. | | Maybe the simplest explanation isn't the right one for | 100% of the people that followed Sam (or were ready to), | but it's the right one for 90% of them, which is what | matters for practical purposes. | | Follow the money. | objektif wrote: | Of course. I mean come on you may love the guy but your | primary reason for following him will still be money. Why | would you want your years of work to go down to 0$? | dmix wrote: | These people are at the top of the AI industry, they'd | make bank in a ton of jobs if they left tomorrow. They | weren't getting equity at Microsoft yet they still chose | that opportunity as an alternative. | | Clearly they care about working on the most interesting | AI around instead of continuing to work under a CEO and | board whose whole plan is to cripple AI development. Both | the interim CEO Shear and likely coup leader Toner made | it clear they are anti-AI and want to slow progress. | Toner specifically said she'd be okay with the company | collapsing as that was in line with the charter. | | Occams Razor is people working on the most interesting | stuff in the tech industry want to keep working on it | rather than follow some radical EA doomer plan to kill it | off well before we get near AGI. | rrdharan wrote: | > They weren't getting equity at Microsoft | | This is wrong. | norir wrote: | > These people are at the top of the AI industry, they'd | make bank in a ton of jobs if they left tomorrow. | | I know a signatory of the letter and I can assure you | that they were nowhere near the top of the AI industry | six months ago. | hutzlibu wrote: | But being at OpenAI, they now probably have the | reputation of belonging to the top. | ignoramous wrote: | Memetic thinking aside, Ilya signing that letter might have | sealed it for them. Though, working for someone as | formidable as sama in itself is a great pull, nevertheless. | bmitc wrote: | > working for someone as formidable as sama | | His name is Sam Altman. And why is he so formidable? | ignoramous wrote: | > _And why is he so formidable?_ | | Commenting on an article that portrayed him as such? | | > _His name is Sam Altman._ | | Unsure what your point is; sama is his hn username. | bmitc wrote: | I don't know the usernames of people discussed in | articles and prefer not referring to people colloquially. | | And I had assumed that you meant formidable in a positive | sense. To me, he seems like a manipulative grifter. We | even see that in his response to being fired. Instead of | discussing facts, he was trying personal power plays, | manipulating the media and employees, and trying to | simultaneously start a new company, get a new job at | Microsoft, and weasel back in as CEO of OpenAI. That | seems to track as someone only concerned with himself. | | Through all of this, it has remained confusing and | disturbing just why he is considered so important to any | of this. He seems completely replaceable. I haven't ever | read or heard anything from him that didn't seem to come | from some startup 101 playbook, almost like a cosplayer. | ignoramous wrote: | > _almost like a cosplayer_ | | If only growing startups were as easy as cosplay. | | > _And I had assumed that you meant formidable in a | positive sense_ | | Yes, I did. See also: https://twitter.com/karaswisher/sta | tus/1727386273936199893 | | > _prefer not referring to people colloquially_ | | If not everyone, at least for hackernews participants | with 12k+ karma, you'd think they'd know very well who | runs hackernews, or used to. | jakderrida wrote: | > but the following him part was mostly because of | money/shares and because they know he's influential and | well connected to people with money. | | In other words, they believed in his leadership, direction, | and ability to serve their interests more than they | believed in the board's. | | I don't understand why so many people are performing mental | gymnastics attempting to turn the unanimous support behind | him into somehow being evidence that he's the antichrist. | Why wouldn't the employees act in their own self-interest? | What's wrong with them acting in their own self-interest? I | would assume all employees everywhere, more or less, act in | their own self-interest and I don't think that makes them | or their preferred leadership evil incarnate. | neilv wrote: | The money vs. mission question was what I was trying to | answer with this hypothetical polling: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357485 | | (It seems obvious that hitching your wagon to Mr. Altman | probably has a much better chance of making you rich, than | does playing harps on a cloud at an altruistic non-profit. | The question is what you actually want.) | synthos wrote: | If there _was_ a good reason to fire Sam, and the board had | appropriately and clearly communicated their decision, I | think less of the staff would have signed a the petition to | walk. From the public's perspective, and probably most rank | and file employees, this decision came from left field and | had no logic behind it. The waffling and back peddling that | followed certainly didn't help perception | preommr wrote: | I want to know other people's opinion on this. | | Because if it was me working at OpenAI, I would've signed it | just out of peer pressure even if I disliked him. As the CEO, | Altman undoubtedly shaped senior management that would've one | way or another put pressure on everyone else under them. | | When I was salaried, my main concern would've been to just | get my pacheck and keep things going as smoothly as possible | in my day-to-day with the least amount of drama. And I feel | like a lot of people are like this. | gexla wrote: | Isn't this how you gain power? You influence as many people | as you can through suggestion that you can give them what | they desire? Then grow that group to be large enough so that | you're cemented within the org? | | Manipulation doesn't even necessarily feel bad. Just | promising something, or offering a place inside the "in- | group" could do the trick for most. It's when you're up | against someone whose job it is to safeguard something (like | someone on the board dedicated to a mission) where you start | needing to get a bit more gangster with your tactics. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | Dunno, you have to be able to deliver on some of those | promises of desires fulfilled. And as you get older, your | ability to see through it should only increase. At that | point, the only real question becomes: is it to my benefit? | | FWIW, while I follow this saga, I am kinda waiting to see | the full retrospective. I think we don't know everything | relevant yet. | loveparade wrote: | If you give me the choice between making a lot of $$$ by | working for a for-profit company or staying at a nonprofit | with limited upside I'd also choose the former, even if I | don't like the CEO much. Don't know where this myth of | "people followed him" comes from. There is no evidence for | it. | tcgv wrote: | > 95% of the staff were ready to follow him out the door. | | I'd rephrase that to: | | - "95% of the staff were ready to follow him and join | Microsoft" | | Amid so much confusion and uncertainty, the prospect of | joining Microsoft through an acquihire would appear quite | appealing and like the safest choice. This sentiment is | strengthened considering the team's approval of Sam's | leadership. | johnbellone wrote: | I don't work there, but can guarantee that 100% of the | staff wanted to be paid. They're going to follow the person | that is going to make them generational wealth. | dmix wrote: | Working at Microsoft doesn't give you generational wealth | like it doesn working on an AI startup, with a few | exceptions. These AI researchers are in huge demand at | plenty of companies and investors. It's equally as | plausible they just want to keep working with this | collection of very smart people on the cutting edge of AI | rather than have to start over from scratch somewhere | else, as OpenAI was basically DOA under new coup | leadership. | ctvo wrote: | > I find it hard to believe this was the kind of environment | he was cultivating at OpenAI if 95% of the staff were ready | to follow him out the door. | | I work for a startup that's on the cusp of having an exit | event valued at 70 billion dollars. Drama within the board, | who I have no connection with, has reduced the probability of | that happening to 0. There's a chance another company will | hire me and my co-workers and match our total compensation in | liquid stocks we can actually sell. | | It's _really hard_ to imagine why I or anyone else would sign | a letter that turns back the decision impacting the exit | event or join the company that 'll actually let me cash out | the equity portion of my compensation. It definitely reflects | my feelings for the CEO and not my own self interest. | svara wrote: | I don't know anything about the specific situation, but in | general this is totally possible with a tyrannical leader. | | If he does come back and you didn't sign, he'll make your | life hell; if he comes back and you did sign, you will be | rewarded for your loyalty. | synergy20 wrote: | I feel the same way, however. | | The 95% will lose a huge chunk of money if Sam leaves, at | least their fortune are all in serious jeopardy. So, money | might have played a bigger role here. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _95% threatening to leave_ | | Have you never had that employee or colleague who threatens | to leave once a year? Curiously around pay negotiations? | | Nobody joined Microsoft. Nobody left. Two people were fired. | Lots of threats were made, every one magically leaked within | minutes to Twitter. | | Nobody followed anyone anywhere. Instead we saw $81bn | vaporise, and the people who stood to gain from it panic and | throw their weight around. | donsupreme wrote: | When Ilya signed the letter, most of the researchers would | follow suit. | | As for the rest of the non-researching roles, most of them | were hired after Altman's expansion for commercial operation. | The existence and future prospersity of their jobs rely on | having someone like Altman to push for profitabilty/go-to- | market vision. | PheonixPharts wrote: | I suspect the signers were a combination of wanting to follow | _their comp_ out the door and a bit of Tom Wambsgans from | Succession: "Because I've seen you get fucked a lot, and | I've never seen Logan [in this case Sam] get fucked once." | | There's very little risk in signing if everything falls | apart, but there's a lot of risk to _not_ signing if Sam | comes back on as lead. | | > I find it hard to believe | | I also find it hard to believe that anyone on HN interested | in this space doesn't at least have a "friend of a friend" | who works at OpenAI. Based on what I've heard (which is | nothing particularly quotable), it certainly gives off the | vibe of being exactly that "kind of environment" | startupsfail wrote: | It's not exactly a secret. The company structure was a | setup that allowed a high degree of internal alignment (at | a level of a cult, it seems). And at some point there was a | need to realign with making a lot of cash. This resulted in | an alignment on this goal, and of course everyone who is in | on it is supporting Sam Altman's moves. | | https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai- | openai... | fatherzine wrote: | "95% of the staff" -- this is Kim Jong Un approval rate | territory. caution advised. | eric-hu wrote: | Vladimir Putin had 77% of the vote in Russia's 2017. If | Putin can't fake a 95% approval rating, surely the OpenAI | numbers must be real. | sangnoir wrote: | This is reminding me of the Ewok defense. | eric-hu wrote: | Looks like I need to work on my sarcasm phrasing. | stillwithit wrote: | Cult of personality and connection to the 1% of 1% given our | tech fueled economy skews worker motives. | | If you had such a chance to sit around while everyone else | grew your potatoes, you would. | gizajob wrote: | This whole saga whiffs of Machiavellianism | antupis wrote: | I would not be surprised if this is the beginning of the end | for the company. | TerrifiedMouse wrote: | Nah. Microsoft still exist and is thriving. Altman is the | new Bill Gates except he is better at retaining ~~cul~~ | employees. Many at HN love him for those qualities. | PlugTunin wrote: | Can you clarify the meaning of 4 tildes surrounded by the | letters 'cul', for those of us who are new around here? | Thank you | binarytox1n wrote: | I believe they meant to use the tildes to indicate a | strikethrough text format, as with markdown. The "cul", I | would guess is an unfinished "cultists", even though | you'd typically strikethrough a completed word. When | trying to indicate a "change of mind" it would be better | to use a dash: "Better at retaining cul- uh, employees." | henry_viii wrote: | > as Machiavelli said: | | >> Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. | Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to | suffer. | | https://blog.samaltman.com/value-is-created-by-doing | gizajob wrote: | I meant the dark triad personality traits, more than | borrowing from The Prince. | api wrote: | On just Sam's part or all around? Seems like there might be | quite a lot of it. | | Sam gives me a manipulative vibe but the way he was booted | with knives out was also pretty gross. No clue what else was | going on behind the scenes. | | Edit: if the people who booted him were really doing it in | the name of safety paranoia, that doesn't mean it wasn't | Machiavellian. The motive can be whatever but conspiring to | boot someone like that is still a knife in the back. | ilrwbwrkhv wrote: | I have interacted with him a few times and when he decides | to help, he will help you all the way with an almost | maniacal focus and drive. For what it's worth I have never | heard bad things about him from individual interactions. | theGnuMe wrote: | This is basic bullying. I would ask for specific examples of | the performance decline. That will also be a "he said you said" | situation. | | However, sunlight is the best disinfectant. A bully cannot | stand in isolation unless he is enabled. But if left too long | they can amass too much power as the bully can manipulate | enough people to vote for him (see Trump) or manufacture the | vote. | | In those cases it takes a far larger force to bring about | change. | nerbert wrote: | Absolutely. Also reporting these out of the ordinary | behaviors before they become problematic is also a way to | keep these guys in line. Once they see that you have a | systematic way to report (replace report with "ask if this is | normal practice within the company"), they'll avoid you. | ethbr1 wrote: | > _But if left too long they can amass too much power as the | bully can manipulate enough people to vote for him_ | | That feels exactly like why the board did what they did. | Reading between the lines of everything that has been | published, the actual sin that led to Altman's firing seems | obvious: | | (1) Altman went to a board member and proposed something that | would decrease the board's power over him (probably kicking | someone off the board) | | (2) That board member tells other board members about the | conversation | | (3) Board asks Altman if he had that conversation. Altman | denies it | | (4) Board fires him for lack of candid communication with | board | | (5) Board doesn't explicitly say what happened publicly, | because it's inside baseball. But they absolutely know it did | happen, because it they were first parties to it | | This feels less about safety vs commercialization (in the | immediate future) and more about not having faith in a CEO | caught in a lie while trying to remove oversight. | larme wrote: | 909 people followed Jim Jones to jonestown and died, so? | | [edited]: sorry means to replied one comment replied to this | comment | louwrentius wrote: | Worldcoin | | You must be a sociopath to think that's a good idea. | | > "Sam lives on the edge of what other people will accept," | said one of the people who had worked with him closely. | "Sometimes he goes too far." | | Silicon Valley has a profound problem with (a lack of) morals | and ethics. | mikrl wrote: | >When people complain it's a 'you said, he said' situation | where the manipulator inevitably wins | | There's no such thing as a free lunch. These types must have | weaknesses of their own. I'm growing the cynicism necessary to | tolerate them, but I'd like to know more robust strategies to | manage them and keep them in check. | | I find it hard to truly hate people, but with this type I can | muster some pretty flowery invective on the spot. | ethbr1 wrote: | Unfortunately, it's a time disparity issue. | | Someone who politics for more time (with some aptitude) will | generally beat out someone who doesn't. | | One of the marks in favor of being cutthroat about pre- | registering KPIs and expected outcomes, and then evaluating | solely based on them. | | In the end, I think it comes down to organizational culture. | | The companies I've seen with healthier executive ranks all | had a very strong culture/tradition of "brook no bullshit" | and shunned/discouraged up and coming colleagues from doing | the same. As well as a focus on a central, objective mission | (e.g. "Does this help us X?"). | | You still got bad apples, but their behavior wasn't nearly as | pervasive as I've seen other places. | mikrl wrote: | Yea I'm fortunate to have worked in more good companies | than pathological ones, so maybe whatever my strategy is | has worked so far. | marcosdumay wrote: | > One of the marks in favor of being cutthroat about pre- | registering KPIs and expected outcomes, and then evaluating | solely based on them. | | That's the only thing off in your comment. Those KPIs are | always set by politics, always have surprisingly subjective | measurements, and always have unpredictable consequences | that are cleared out by politics. | | An environment with all formal strictly set objective | metrics is one of the easiest ones to manipulate. | ethbr1 wrote: | The worst option, except for all the other ones. | | What's the better alternative? | moralestapia wrote: | (I'll hijack your comment a bit, just want to share my | experience working in something related to it) | | I've had a chance to work with some HR people who genuinely | wanted to improve the work environment on their respective | companies (I know! Please believe me, lol). | | One of the bigger issues was corruption in general, of which | this sort of behavior could fall under. The line of reasoning | for that is that people usually resort to these behaviors in | order to immorally/unlawfully attain some material benefit to | them (it is very strange to find a pure blooded sociopath that | just does it for the sake of it). When people artificially | distort any system that is set up (for acquisitions, | promotions, terminations, you name it) so that it no longer | serves the company's interest but that of a group of rogue | employees, well ... that's corruption. This framing is nice as | it makes company exec's take a look at it from a business' | gain/loss perspective instead of "meh, it's just employee's | gossip". | | Anyway, the proposed solution was a sort of ombudsman for | companies (it's actually a tech thing, not an actual person), a | private channel where people could raise these issues without | fear of retaliation. There cannot be a clear cut criteria by | which one could define whether a particular employee is being | corrupt or not, but we've observed something like a bi-modal | distribution where problematic individuals truly stand out! | Quoting Warren Buffet, _" there's never just one cockroach in | the kitchen"_; you usually observe a lot of employees with no | comments on them, a few getting like one or two remarks per | month (and you can just ignore those, shit happens everyday) | and then you have this guy who is getting 10+ comments _per | week_ and that 's who you really need to sit down with and ask | what's going on. | | Obviously this relies on the HR person being fair and honest, | not part of the plot, and that comes with its own set of | caveats; but at least, it's much easier to control that for one | person than for 100s. Overall, the whole thing felt like an | improvement. | | But, conclusion, the app didn't go much farther than being used | at a couple companies, and then we realized it would be very | hard to monetize, the team disbanded and we all moved on to | other things :P. | asoneth wrote: | I have had similar experiences. | | The best career decision I ever made was to prioritize working | with Good People and one of my few regrets was putting up with | smart jerks for so long. | keepamovin wrote: | Now that he's back with MSOAI I think we've got AGI disaster in 7 | years. Thin possibility of good path for humanity. I wish he'd | stuck to his guns and gone his own way, no MS, and no OAI. No | disrespect to MS, they good, but this path is bad. | Abekkus wrote: | If you want to be a doomer, you don't need agi, just autonomous | weapons, which ML can definitely help build. | kjkjadksj wrote: | You don't even need ML for that plus it already exists, | Soviets had Dead Hand decades ago, an autonomous weapon | system capable of ending the world. | EvanAnderson wrote: | We don't need AGI for an AI disaster. Enough humans using AI- | based tools to drive important decisions (read: outsourcing | thinking) will stand in place of the "G" just fine. | | Corporations have been acting in this capacity (making massive | changes to the ecosystem, human lives, etc) just fine. The | corporate "organisms" have caused humans to erect massive | projects to shave a few milliseconds from HFT, for example. AI- | based decision support tools will just make that process more | efficient. | rsanek wrote: | It sounds like he did stick to his guns though right? He still | gets to do whatever he wants with the people he picked. | sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: | Yeah, the craziest thing for me to come out of this was how | everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent". Poor poor sam | altman, he's a victim. He comes across as a sleazebag to me. | breakfastduck wrote: | I know people are innocent until proven guilty but it does seem | rather bizarre also that he's had literally 0 media scrutiny / | never been asked about (to my knowledge) the fact his own | sister claims he abused her for years when they were young. | sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: | People are innocent until proven guilty in the legal system, | where we have is a strict process for assigning a binary | guilt outcome. | | In real life I use all available evidence for scoring outcome | likelihoods. I score this guy high on sleazebag, and this | article just increased this score. | kybernetyk wrote: | If you use the "innocent til proven guilty" principle in | your day to day interactions you're bound to get fucked by | every 2nd person. Well, maybe not that bad but you will | still get fucked because you don't have the same resources | as a court does to figure out if someone's fucking with you | or not. | | You just don't have access to tax funded investigators | working for months to figure out if the other person tells | the truth or not. | | So it's down to: Something's off? I'm not trusting you. | Especially when you want something from me. | youcantcook wrote: | I also use stupid sayings sometimes too | coliveira wrote: | I have no doubts about it. The good thing is that now I know a | place I don't want to work for. | hutzlibu wrote: | "how everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent"." | | My impression was rather a overwhelmingly "wtf is going on?" | | edit: I still don't know enough, to judge anyone involved | sigmar wrote: | People love to see things in black and white without nuance, | "oh you think the board should reverse the decision, that | must mean you think Altman was innocent and should never be | fired!". My read was that most people here (at least on | sunday and monday) viewed the board as making major missteps, | that doesn't mean all of HN is "team sam" | dmix wrote: | It's just another hot take instant reaction of a new | headline. Social media threads on controversial topics are | always a whiplash, people love the swings in narratives, | the opportunity to be contrarian or superior to the other | people commenting on the topic, because they knew better. | | A new headline by a journo seeking their own clickbait | angle comes out and the flood of "See it was really just | [black/white] position and you were all wrong" is the most | classic stereotypical social media take to a now past it's | prime story, when IRL it's as nuanced and shades of grey as | ever. | infecto wrote: | While I am certain there were people on both sides of that | camp, I never saw a overwhelming outpour of people framing him | as a victim. Most of what I read was people confused as heck, | including myself. | | What I did see is lots of people wondering how he lied to the | board. Almost a week later and we still don't know how he lied | to the board. We can all speculate away but there has been zero | evidence of wrong doing, what else are we supposed to do? I | guess we can just call him a sleaze-bag like you do. | ruszki wrote: | There were way more people who framed the board, than Altman | as someone who did bad. At least until Monday. There were a | ton of hearsay why ousting Altman is bad, without any context | and internal info. And many of them was written by PR people. | For example, "the last time when this happened was with Steve | Jobs 1985". This is clearly a statement which wants you to | direct towards that Altman is the victim. When it's not even | true, because it happens all the time, like with Emmanuel | Faber at Danone. | | Btw, this is the most probable reason right now: | https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai- | altman-... | sam0x17 wrote: | It's also par for the course in these scenarios for the | public story to be completely fabricated and have nothing to | do with whatever thing actually pissed off the board, so we | may never know what really happened | temp112123 wrote: | I don't know about sleazebag, I've mostly been confused as to | what exactly he brings to the table. Dude gave himself scurvy | after all. | darkerside wrote: | Victims can be sleazebags, and sleazebags can be poor victims. | Both things can be true. Not everyone that is identifying a | victimization is feeling or advocating sympathy. It's not black | and white. | sigmar wrote: | >how everyone in HN just assumed he was "innocent". | | Did they? You should try scrolling through the original thread | and ctrl-Fing [edit: removed the single word that was getting | me downvoted to oblivion, my point is that people were quick to | jump to very serious/troubling conclusions to explain his | firing and explicitly weren't jumping to innocent] | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309611 | sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: | This was so buried that completely escaped me. But it's full | of nuggets | | https://twitter.com/phuckfilosophy/status/163570439893983232. | .. | | > I'm not four years old with a 13 year old "brother" | climbing into my bed non-consensually anymore. | | > (You're welcome for helping you figure out your sexuality.) | | > I've finally accepted that you've always been and always | will be more scared of me than I've been of you. | | I don't know how to use twitter - is she responding to | someone, or talking to herself? | aoeusnth1 wrote: | She is just posting into midair, but at a time when Sam was | in the news and it was implied she was talking to him. | alwayslikethis wrote: | Isn't he also the one wanting to scan everyone's eyeballs? | 93po wrote: | you mean how google scans everyone's fingerprints and apple | scans everyone's faces? | sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: | Yes, that's how he means it. What's your point? Make a | point. | mandmandam wrote: | ... Are you implying all biometric data is equal? Strange | take. | | If fingerprints and faces are the same as retinas, where do | you draw the line - or is there just no privacy line for | you anywhere, as long as a billionaire somewhere is making | lots of money? | TheBlight wrote: | So that puts him in good company? | alamod3 wrote: | I think it is quite different though, in that biometric-as- | a-device-authenticator features keep your biometric data on | your device. The plan with worldcoin is to create a central | database of this data. | JackFr wrote: | Biometric data as authentication vs. differentiate my | shitcoin so I can get in on the crypto grift. | Aunche wrote: | Supposedly Worldcoin deletes your biometric data after | it's done generating a hash of it. If you don't believe | that, then why would you believe that Google and Apple | don't secretly send your fingerprints and facial scans | off device? | FireBeyond wrote: | For one, those entities operate in the US, and are | subject to US law - it may not be great at times, but | that's a start. | | Worldcoin on the other hand went to the third world and | went through Africa offering people almost a month's | wages to give up their biometrics. That, to me, should | merit a deeper dive into what they are doing and why. | kordlessagain wrote: | I'm old enough to realize that I have no idea who someone is | until I sit with them for a time, and even then I only have a | slightly informed way of determining whether they are ethical | and can be trusted. | | I've always said that in another country, like Germany, it | might take time to get to know someone and, if you don't know | them, you certainly shouldn't ask how they are doing. In the | United States, we say hello and ask how people are, even if | they are complete strangers. | | This is a generalization, not something to be used for every | single person, or culture, but it's a good indication of how | cultures deal with trust up front. Here in the US, we'll give | you "trust credit" and then roll over you like a semi truck if | you screw up later. | Waterluvian wrote: | I'm not completely sure if it works the same in the States as | it does in Canada, but asking strangers/distant acquaintances | how they're doing is never a _real_ question. People aren 't | actually asking. You basically have 4 or 5 canned responses | to supply from "great, you?" to "living the dream...", all of | which don't say much. Any more and you're being a nuissance. | bcrosby95 wrote: | I always give a short candid response to those questions. | Sometimes it brings follow up questions. | | My wife says I should just always say good or great. | vik0 wrote: | I think your wife is right lol | bcrosby95 wrote: | She usually is, but it's hard to teach an old dog new | tricks. | Kiro wrote: | But it's OK to assume he's a sleazebag? | 93po wrote: | yeah exactly. everyone is speculating on an event we know | virtually nothing about, involving people virtually no one | here knows or knows well, in a realm of business virtually no | one here has experience with (serving on board of $90b | company) | mandmandam wrote: | If he pushes WorldCoin? Yes. No doubt. | sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: | This. This tells me everything I need to know about this | guy. It tells me that he would happily enslave everybody if | that boosted his shares. | whalesalad wrote: | https://www.themarysue.com/annie-altmans-abuse- | allegations-a... | | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam- | altman... | | He came to visit our office (YC '12 company) a few times and | spoke with our team in very small fireside like gatherings. | Dude always gave me a very creepy vibe. Something aint right | there. | shalmanese wrote: | This feels like a wild misreading of the situation based on a | simplistic good/bad dichotomy. People were mostly stunned at | how poorly the board handled things and that sama probably | wasn't as bad as the board was trying to make him out to be | which is wildly different from him being good. | | Even the worst criminal in the world should be declared "not | guilty" if they were caught for a crime they did not commit for | which the prosecution did not make a convincing case. In law, | there no "innocent", only "not guilty" and most people surmised | that sama is not guilty in this context irrelevant of a larger | backstory. | tux1968 wrote: | Your comment and sentiment is wildly inappropriate. You don't | even bother to raise an accusation, just smear a person's | character. We should all expect better from this forum. | sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: | Ok, my accusation is that this guy wants to scan people | eyeballs, and monetize that. | peruvian wrote: | He's a YC guy who made a lot of money in tech and this is a YC | website full of people wishing they made a lot of money in | tech. | subtra3t wrote: | I think you will get downvoted soon (and I for mentioning | this) but this is the simplest and most logical explanation | on this thread by far. | objektif wrote: | It is a bit of a cultish environment no doubt. But there | are a lot of very very nice people here too. | subtra3t wrote: | I would not say nice. Smart, and sometimes cordial, is | how I would describe people here. | loveparade wrote: | I subscribe to the HN RSS feed, which shows flagged items since | they're published on the feed before they're flagged. The | craziest thing that stands out to me is how so many negative | stories on Sam Altman end up being flagged, even though they | are just as legit as the positive ones. I'm almost 100% certain | that HN is highly manipulated for this story. | | For no other topic have I seen so many flagged stories, and all | of them are the ones that paint Sam in a negative light. | hn1986 wrote: | Similar to Elon Musk stories.. | wahnfrieden wrote: | HN is strongly anti-controversy. So when you have a large | enough minority of users who rally around flagging certain | topics, they easily get taken down even if there's otherwise | interest in the discussion. I don't think it requires owner | manipulation. You can see it in how things like any coverage | of Palestinian perspective getting flagged immediately while | coverage of far-right ancap politics lingers despite both | being contentious political topics (where ancap discussion is | controversial but detractors lack the habitual urge to flag | brigade and are more open to discuss). | verall wrote: | There are topics where I'm interested in discussion but I | don't think HN is mature enough to discuss them so the | early comments are very thin ideology or discrimination so | I just flag the article, even if it was good. I'm probably | not alone in this. | wahnfrieden wrote: | That's my point: yours is a weaker urge than the calls to | take down Palestinian perspective as being terrorist | sympathizing and antisemitic that come from that | particular flag-brigade set (as one example), compared | with diffuse concern over immaturity | hutzlibu wrote: | "to take down Palestinian perspective" | | I sometimes also do other things than reading HN, but | what stood out to me, was that I read nothing about the | conflict here at all and anything related to it was | flagged. Likely because it would evolve into a flamewar | after 3 comments. | phlakaton wrote: | Strongly anti-controversy?! This whole thing has been like | Christmas come early for me. There's a strong contingent of | people here who have no illusions about Altman's ambitions. | | That being said, Hacker News is primarily for news, and | it's tech-oriented. I would not expect Palestinian | broadsides (whether for or against) to fare well. | dagmx wrote: | A large contingent of people here (and anywhere) are prone to | hero worship, especially if it tends towards trendy topics | like generative AI. The natural reaction to criticism of an | idol is to shut it down so you can maintain a singular | narrative lest you have to deal with cognitive dissonance. | | Which I find ironic, because I'll see the same people looking | down on non technical people idolizing celebrities, but not | recognize that it's the same thing in a different field. The | height of Elon worship was identical to Swifties imho. | xracy wrote: | The difference between Elon and Swift, is the scale to | which they are able to use capitalism for their means. I | think Elon is scarier for that reason. (Not absolving Swift | of that, though). | dagmx wrote: | I would say the bigger scary thing is how they capitalize | their fame to progress agenda, in addition to what you | said. | | One of Swift's big appeal outside her media, is that she | presents herself as a blank canvas for her fans to | project themselves on. While I wish she used her platform | for more positive advocation , it's a lot better for her | to be neutral than Musks's aggressively negative use of | his platform (especially in recent times). | bogomipz wrote: | Isn't the scale proportional though as Elon has 6 | companies and Taylor has only 1? | | Fascinatingly Taylor Swift has convinced her fans to | rebuy re-recorded versions of all of her earlier albums. | Not just one album either. So far it has been 4 of them | with 6 in total. Her justification of this is purely | capitalistic. This is kind of unprecedented, and the | success of this for her has been quite spectacular. | | See: | | https://time.com/5949979/why-taylor-swift-is-rerecording- | old... | | https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/arts/music/taylor- | swift-1... | | https://www.billboard.com/lists/taylor-swift-taylors- | version... | lessbergstein wrote: | This website is YCombinator. Sam was with YCombinator | nouveaux wrote: | Did you read the article? Sam was fired by YCombinator. | hutzlibu wrote: | But is this really a solid fact? PG did not comment on it | and all the other sources are anonymous. | dang wrote: | We don't moderate HN according to that. I wrote extensively | about this yesterday if anyone wants a verbose explanation: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372059 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372393 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38372125 | moralestapia wrote: | I've noticed this as well, although empirically. | | I don't sympathize with @sama, more so, my personal opinion | of him is that he definitely shows off a lot of psychopathic | traits, but that said ... | | ... I'm also ok with keeping those topics outside the scope | of this community, which is mainly tech-related and that's | what I enjoy about it. Personal affairs belong elsewhere, | IMO. | dang wrote: | I don't know what you mean by "manipulated" but these flags | were, and are, coming from users, not admins. The likeliest | explanation isn't sinister--it's that readers were fatigued | by the tsunami of stories about this saga, and were flagging | the ones that didn't seem to contain significant new | information (a.k.a. SNI: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=al | l&page=0&prefix=false&so...). | | I realize your perception was that all the negative ones got | flagged, but this perception is most likely a function of | your own preference (you're more likely to notice it when a | story that you agree with gets flagged, because people are | more likely to notice what they dislike: https://hn.algolia.c | om/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Probably Sam | feels like all the positive stories are getting flagged :) | | I wrote a longer explanation about how we treat story floods | like this from a moderation point of view, if anyone wants to | read about that: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38357788. | | Edit: and this applies to the OP, which actually does contain | SNI. I've turned user flags off on this submission and | changed the title to be the article's HTML doc title, which | is more specific. | w10-1 wrote: | > For no other topic have I seen so many flagged stories, and | all of them are the ones that paint Sam in a negative light | | This isn't evaluating products for use with pluses and | minuses. | | Attacks on reputation need to be very, very well | substantiated or they are libel (business libel in this | case). It's also morally wrong, it leads to the worst kinds | of resentful discussions, and frankly, this is not really the | place for that if indeed you want justice. | | In this case, the board made a decision that broke the | reliance of all OpenAI stakeholders on Altman's leadership, | with no evidence and little explanation. If OpenAI was | transitioned properly and with due care to another CEO, it | would have been business as usual. | itsdrewmiller wrote: | Some of the rss feed items are being straight up removed | rather than just the typical flagged/dead that you normally | see - none of them have looked extremely legit to me though. | abadpoli wrote: | I think part of this was also your classic case of tech | industry misogyny, too. There has been a lot of thinly veiled | sexism in the discussions about Helen and Tasha vs Sam. | tristor wrote: | If you're referring to discussing their qualifications to be | on the board, I don't think that is in any way driven by | sexism. There were numerous comment threads discussing the | qualifications of all the board members and these two stood | out as being specifically unqualified, and D'Angelo stood out | for having clear conflicts of interest. | | Given how the board handled this whole situation like an | amateur hour shit show, you will be hard pressed to argue | their competence and qualifications in their favor. | | Rather, you are doing exactly what you are claiming from | others, you're seeing two unqualified board members, who | happen to be women, and defending them because they're women | even though this whole situation displayed the incompetence | of the entire board, Helen and Tasha included. The only one | taking a sexist position is you. | | If the board handled this situation like competent adults who | had ever spoken to an attorney, we wouldn't all be having | this conversation in the first place. | abadpoli wrote: | > defending them because they're women | | There's absolutely nothing in my comment that even implies | I'm defending them and their actions, and also absolutely | nothing in my comment that implies any of my statement is | based on their gender. | | I seem to have struck a nerve with you, though. I think the | commenter doth protest too much. | tristor wrote: | I suggest you reread your comment then. You claimed the | only reason people questioned their qualifications was | sexism. | Philpax wrote: | They never said the word "only" or implied it. | tristor wrote: | They did not explicitly say it, it was definitely | implied, since their entire comment was to claim that is | was misogyny and sexism that were the motivations for | commenters questioning these board members | qualifications. I invite folks to actually look into | qualifications of all of the board members, unless it's | changed they're on the OpenAI website. | Philpax wrote: | > I think part of this | | > There has been a lot of thinly veiled sexism | | No, they didn't imply it, and they didn't claim it was | the primary motivation. They just said it was a | contributor. You are perceiving a stronger claim than | they made. | tristor wrote: | It's literally the only claim they made. There were no | alternatives, so of course it's perceived and implied to | be the strongest claim. | | They said what they said, trying to weasel out of it | doesn't make the case. | stevedewald wrote: | You introduced sex into a discussion where their sex is | completely irrelevant. | empath75 wrote: | I think most of what you saw as support of Sam was support of | ChatGPT as a consumer and b2b product, which is pretty clearly | his baby and was put at risk by this drastic change. A _lot_ of | people on this site are betting their futures on this | technology right now and would very much not like to see that | boat rocked. | postmodest wrote: | This entire thing has seemed to be the board saying "don't be | the guy who went behind our back to summon the Devil" and | everyone saying "but the Devil promised us Unlimited Moneys!" | And HN agreeing that Unlimited Moneys are what startups are | for, and everything else is excusable. | BryantD wrote: | I don't think it was everyone, I think there were just some | loud voices. I also attribute that to human nature rather than | anything organized. I've made a few Altman-skeptical comments | and they generally got upvotes rather than getting flagged into | oblivion; this tends to indicate there wasn't premeditated | astroturfing. | JackFr wrote: | I just don't get his cult of personality. He's an underwhelming | intellect but a top-notch promoter. And Worldcoin, seriously? I | can see in 2019 wanting to be in on the grift, but let it die. | Aunche wrote: | It doesn't help that the board publicly accused of being a liar | without any evidence. If they simply left it at "Sam's vision | no longer aligns with the charter of the nonprofit", I'd bet | they would be viewed much more sympathetically. | whyleyc wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20231122121846/https://www.washi... | CPLX wrote: | Must say that a spirited defense from Keith Rabois is not the | best way to dispel rumors you're a predatory sociopath. | ur-whale wrote: | https://archive.is/eVZvb | bananapub wrote: | it is absolutely fascinating how in all the threads about him, | there's all these huge fans, and some people who are apparently | highly connected, but no one ever seems to discuss _why_ he has | these fancy jobs, why he left others, and why is apparently so | well regarded? | Solvency wrote: | It's strangely paradoxical. | | Sam has zero charisma. Zero looks. No technical ability. He's | not a storyteller. He's not a hype man. He comes off as a | mildly surly sloth when he talks. | | His actual pre-OpenAI achievements from a product perspective | are a joke. | | But he was nevertheless "there" for YC and "there" in OpenAI, | and a bunch of money was raised, and he's successfully managed | to get all spotlights on him at all times, so he's highly | visible. | | He's like a weird geek following plays from Trumps book: just | stay highly visible, associate with any possible win, and be at | the center of attention. | | Why does it work? Because subconsciously who WOULDNT want to | operate this way in life? It takes the least amount of effort | compared to many other job tracks or even CEO tracks, and it's | become wildly profitable for him. | | So the cult of personality idolizing America of today can't | help but want their tech Jesus fantasy to work out. | CPLX wrote: | It's actually much less confusing than that. It's clear he | has a knack for becoming a favorite son of billionaire | oligarchs who see him as useful. | | Which, assuming he's like everyone else who's done that, was | accomplished by a combination of flattery and willingness to | operate on behalf of the ruling class totally untethered from | any principles whatsoever. | kossTKR wrote: | It's pretty incredible that the upper echelons have so | thoroughly psyopped everyone below them that the public | runs confused around in an endless maze of ideology, false | pretexts and stirred up drama. | | This way only insiders recognise the most fundamental | realpolitical power struggles of all ages; that the "very | confusing" wars, coups or power grabs is not very complex | at all but always - almost as a physical principle - | stemming from the richest members of society pulling the | strings to benefit themselves. | | Then some note or some FOIA request will be released in 40 | years about the orchestration and no one will care. | | Just follow the money, or the networks of people and it's | easy to see the undercurrents of class warfare, elite power | via the security state or oligarch clubs siphoning money | and power away from the public, but that's called | conspiracy these days and is dangerous (to the ruling | classes). | CPLX wrote: | Yeah this stuff isn't rocket science. If you shut the | fuck up and play along and don't make people | uncomfortable you get a kitchen renovation and a vacation | home and a job for your kid. It's the oldest game there | is. | refurb wrote: | > mildly surly sloth | | I had to read that twice, but it was well worth it. | barrkel wrote: | What makes you think he has no technical ability? | | It seems more likely to me, given his background (programming | from 8, accepted to Stanford CS) that he has technical | aptitude, but he has even more dealmaking ability. | | https://www.quora.com/Is-Sam-Altman-highly-technical-Has- | he-... - Patrick Collison says he had technical conversations | on Lisp machine implementations and iframe security policies, | which to me is a measure of some depth. | | And on hype, I think the carefully staged GPT PR over the | years had an element of controlled hype. I remember them | talking about how they couldn't release it because of how | e.g. spammers could use it - | https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/14/18224704/ai-machine- | learn... | | (They weren't entirely wrong, there's a flood of junk text | out there now. Twitter popular posts have their replies | flooded by AI-generated "on topic" responses by bots. Content | mills are switching to AI.) | kubrickslair wrote: | I have only interacted briefly with Sam but I found him to be | one of the smartest YC folks. But I will let a Paul Graham | essay speak [1]: | | Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer | to most when I'm advising startups. On questions of design, I | ask "What would Steve do?" but on questions of strategy or | ambition I ask "What would Sama do?" | | What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the | elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most | people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to | pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are | a few people with such force of will that they're going to | get whatever they want. | | [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/5founders.html | pdonis wrote: | Graham doesn't say Altman is smart. He says he's driven. | They're not the same thing. | | Quite frankly, every time I read one of Altman's essays I | am seriously underwhelmed as far as smartness goes. | washadjeffmad wrote: | It's funny, but I adopted a similar approach, and it's | amazing how the tides turn in your favor when your name is on | everyone's lips. I'm nothing special, but I have an eye for | quality people and a great reputation (thanks to it), so I'm | the one who keeps getting the calls. | | Also, some people would rather be shot than talk in front of | a crowd or get up in front an audience. I used to have panic | attacks during introductions in small meetings, and now I'm | the one who spots the nervous professionals and helps them | feel that they belong. | | Anyway, that's all to say there's value in it. I don't | personally enrich myself off of it, but if I could offer a | correction to your dim view of the imperfect, the world isn't | actually run by intimidatingly charismatic, beautiful | geniuses, and I have found that helping people that have the | simple capacity for success connect and communicate isn't a | worthless skill. | laaaaea wrote: | This is the confirmation of why people hire him. | | Companies, specially start up, are growth garbage. Grow. Grow. | Grow. | | And CEOs today who get visibility win. Period. e.g. Musk, Sam. | | relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/125/ | | Who would you prefer, a sensible, technical, honest CEO driving | real efforts or this media circus _? There might be a dime a | dozen AI startups doing more science based innovation instead | of this moore-law-llm. But they don 't have the media | attention, so their offices are probably empty. | | _ (btw, IMHO i think _all_ of this board non-sense is planned | PR, by the company or Sam, which might have gotten out of hand) | | PS: The _only_ thing people should be talking from that article | is the only fact. That he was hired by YC to vet startups, and | instead invested in them from his brother fund. Yet, here we | are, talking about everything but it. | TrackerFF wrote: | He's part of the SV VC royalty? He has the tech/startup | pedigree, is good at raising money, and made the right | impression on important people. | Keats wrote: | I can't believe someone that created Worldcoin could not be | trustworthy. | mandmandam wrote: | Worldcoin alone is so, so damning of his character. Cartoon | villain shit. | | It's hard to square that whole thing with the way people talk | about him here. But every once in a while it hits; this is the | guy who wanted to collect everyone's bloody retina pattern, all | for a crypto so obviously bad in nearly every fundamental | aspect. | Kiro wrote: | How so? A universal and tamper-proof ID system sounds like a | good idea. In my country we have a pretty rock solid digital | ID but the problem is that it's national, so the utility is | limited. | | I want to build global apps where I know every user is real | and limited to one account but currently that's impossible. I | don't know enough about Worldcoin to know if that's it | though. | 93po wrote: | that's exactly one of the biggest use cases for WC. the | internet _needs_ this and will need it 100x more in a few | years | AlexandrB wrote: | _Why_ does the internet "need" this? Anonymity and | pseudonymity are features, not bugs of the internet. | Eliminating them will supercharge surveillance and | government/corporate control. | sam0x17 wrote: | The short answer is a lot of potentially useful | decentralized protocols completely buckle under the | weight of Sybil attacks, so if Sybil attacks were | impossible, there is a whole lot more that could be built | mattstir wrote: | So how do retinal scans protect against Sybil attacks | exactly? | sam0x17 wrote: | I don't believe that they do, in fact, it is probably | trivial to make a fake WorldCoin identity, but people who | support WorldCoin largely support it on the assumption | that this is not possible. | mcpackieh wrote: | I think the people who support Worldcoin do so either on | the basis of it being another shitcoin they can make | money speculating with, or because they're in Sam's | personality cult. | saiya-jin wrote: | To keep things polite - I couldn't give a nanofraction of a | fuck what kind of app you want to build, I am not giving my | biometric data on such a stupid whim to anybody, not to US | for-profit, when US laws selectively considers remaining | 95% of humans on Earth subpar. | FireBeyond wrote: | So if it's a great idea, and Worldcoin is a US company, why | did they not start in the US? | | Why instead did they go to some of the least wealthy parts | of Africa and ask people to give them their biometrics for | sometimes as much as one month's salary? To seed their | database? It doesn't really pass the smell test. | 93po wrote: | their long term project doesn't save or store retina patterns | in any way. they store of a hash of it that is mathematically | impossible to reverse. it's clear you wildly misunderstand | how this works, i would encourage you to go learn more. i'd | also welcome you to explain how the crypto side of it is bad | in comparison to other uses of blockchains | mandmandam wrote: | I don't know what the gaps in your knowledge are to not see | Worldcoin as a scam. And I'm not being paid to find out. | | But it's a fuckin scam. It's exploitative, and sleazy as | fuck. It uses crappy blockchain tech, the orbs are | proprietary, and you really ought to think twice before | condescending at people who try to help you out on this. | Clubber wrote: | I hear NFT's are gonna really hit soon.... | rrdharan wrote: | > how the crypto side of it is bad in comparison to other | uses of blockchains | | It sucks and the other uses also suck. | wahnfrieden wrote: | Why are you lying to protect sama's reputation? | | Worldcoin stores the biometric data for opt-in users. They | say it themselves. It's stored "encrypted" which means the | original data is retrievable, and kept in Worldcoin's | custody. All Worldcoin claims is that it has safeguards | against retrieving the data it does collect and store, like | say Equifax or 23andme claim about your PII. | tim333 wrote: | I'm a happy Worldcoin user. If the providers are happy and | the users are happy I'm not sure what's cartoon villainish | about it? | blitzar wrote: | "but he looks like such a nice boy" | mousetree wrote: | > One of those people whose career Altman helped propel was Ilya | Sutskever, chief scientist and board member at OpenAI -- the | person who ultimately fired him. | | Ilya was plenty successful before OpenAI and would've been just | fine without Altman helping to "propel" his career. | dishwashing wrote: | This statement about Ilya seems just ridiculous to me. Ilya was | one of the people who created all these ML/Deep Learning hype | with the "ImageNet moment". I don't care much about all this VC | stuff, but before 2023, Ilya seemed to me much more famous than | Sam. | himaraya wrote: | Indicative that many sources still come from Sam's camp | screye wrote: | HAHA, I know. | | Ilya, a nobody who wrote the most seminal paper of the last 10 | years. The guy that Eric Schmidt and Elon broke their | friendship over was just a random nobody. | | Come on. It is no secret that when OpenAI formed, every single | researcher joined so they could work with Ilya (and Zaremba who | worked with him, but was less famous). Greg is brilliant but ML | people didn't care for him and Sam 'one of those VC guys'. A | lot of their best hires had already worked in Ilya/Zaremba | before they joined OpenAI. | | OpenAI might have moved past needing Ilya's brilliance to | innovate, but if anyone gets to claim that they 'made' OpenAI, | it is Ilya. | siva7 wrote: | and your source for this story is? | ncann wrote: | What's that about with Eric Schmidt, Elon and Ilya? | screye wrote: | Correction, it was Larry Page (close enough), Elon and | Ilya. | | Source - | https://youtu.be/7nORLckDnmg?si=1T5qyYAdPrMwsEGG&t=73 | adrr wrote: | Why did he sign the letter and post: | | >I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I | never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built | together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company. | jstarfish wrote: | When you take a shot at someone influential and miss, falling | on your own sword is a kinder fate than what will happen when | they turn your direction. | adrr wrote: | Did he miss? Sam was fired. | jstarfish wrote: | This subthread isn't about the article; we're on a | tangent about OpenAI. | | He was fired [at] and _didn 't die._ Now he's back, and | looking for revenge. | adrr wrote: | Board hired him back. They could have said no and stuck | to their guns. No shareholders to give them the boot. | adastra22 wrote: | Then they'd be falling on their own swords. Literally the | whole company was ready to walk away. Never in history | has that ever happened, as far as I know. | jstarfish wrote: | It's actually pretty typical for coups/mutinies. | | Your position is challenged by military brass, so you | imprison/execute them. Anyone charismatic enough to take | you on is going to have been popular with the soldiers, | so now a heavily-armed mob with tanks and artillery is | pissed at you. Now you have two problems, with only two | solutions-- eat some shit and hope to make peace, or die. | | Putin played it safe in flipping the script-- negotiate | surrender, appear to resolve the dispute peacefully, then | stage an "accident" of the rabblerouser once tensions are | lower. Cooler heads always prevail. | selimthegrim wrote: | Or you could do the King Hassan II strategy which is | basically bury them in underground pits with not even | enough room to stand up in for 24 hours a day until the | first Bush comes knocking and needs a favor and tells you | to clean up your PR. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tazmamart | | I guess a L63 DS salary at MS must be the salt mines to | these guys. | gwern wrote: | This is why, the WSJ says: https://www.msn.com/en- | us/money/companies/openai-s-path-ahea... | | "One surprise signee was Ilya Sutskever, the company's chief | scientist and one of the members of the four-person board | that voted to oust Altman. On Monday morning, Sutskever said | he deeply regretted his participation in the board's action. | "I will do everything I can to reunite the company," he | posted on X. | | Sutskever flipped his position following intense | deliberations with OpenAI employees as well as an emotionally | charged conversation with Brockman's wife, Anna Brockman, at | the company's offices, during which she cried and pleaded | with him to change his mind, according to people familiar | with the matter." | p_j_w wrote: | It seems obvious that tech media are largely not even close to | neutral here. Most everything coming out feels manipulative as | hell. I don't know why anyone thinks they have a clear story of | what's happening here. | whyenot wrote: | > tech media are largely not even close to neutral here | | I don't find that surprising at all. Many of those reporting | are highly dependent on "access journalism." I suspect it's | pretty hard to be neutral when if you piss off the wrong | people they will cut you off. | Merrill wrote: | Based on the article and the loyalty shown by openai employees, | he appears to be the "difficult to manage" type, rather than the | "difficult to work for" type. | | That's not necessarily a bad thing in employees. I was once told | that it is easier to round off the corners of a cube than to | develop corners on a sphere. | rsynnott wrote: | IME one almost always implies the other. | lobsterthief wrote: | Not in my experience, at all. Working beneath someone who's | difficult to work for can make your every day at work | terrible. Working with someone who's hard to work with is | much more maintainable since you're more in control of the | interactions and can effect change by working with people | higher in the org. | rsynnott wrote: | Oh, I mean that if someone's a bad subordinate or peer | they'll probably also be a bad boss, or vice versa. I'd | agree that a bad boss tends to be a worse thing to have | than the other too. | throwawaaarrgh wrote: | But not as a truism. It's possible to manipulate well enough | that people above and below you both believe you are working | in their interest, but it's quite hard. Great for job | security if you can pull it off. | 1123581321 wrote: | I haven't seen that. Some of my favorite coworkers and | managers have been people who were hard to manage. It's | because they have strong principles and they prioritize good | relations with their peers and subordinates over being | promotable. | | I understand you are probably talking about people who | uniformly act like jerks but I haven't found them to be as | common. | marcinzm wrote: | Not my experience at all. Someone who pushes back on their | boss to get the team they manage what they need is exactly | that type of person. | Jensson wrote: | From this story sounds more like "difficult to not work for". | hatenberg wrote: | Or you know, he personifies paper millions everyone thought | they had in the bank | throwbadubadu wrote: | > "Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence | benefits all of humanity." | | Ahhh now I get that, all humanity, exclude noone :D | | > pointed to Altman's aggressive fundraising efforts for a chips | venture with autocratic regimes in the Middle East, which raised | concerns about the use of AI to facilitate state surveillance and | human rights abuses. | patall wrote: | > Another person familiar with Altman's thinking said he was | willing to meet with the board's shortlist of proposed | candidates, except for one person whom he declined on ethical | grounds. | | Now you have me interested, who could that one person be? Charles | Koch? Henry Kissinger? Because many of those I would normally | have guessed are either in the article as possible collaborator | (middle-easter connection) or is already an investor (like Elmo). | Honestly, who is too ethically different here and yet still | within the anglosphere to be considered a board member? | cma wrote: | > Henry Kissinger? | | I think his stock as potential boardmember probably went down | with his service on the Theranos board. | rsynnott wrote: | Can't imagine Kissinger is a popular choice for boards today... | aidenn0 wrote: | Assuming he's as manipulative as the worst reports of him say, | "ethical grounds" translates to "doesn't believe my lies" | someperson wrote: | Henry Kissinger is 100 years old | bmitc wrote: | It's a joke. The explanation is that who would have to have | worse morals and ethics than Altman for Altman to dismiss | considering them on those grounds. | kevinmchugh wrote: | Condoleeza Rice? | photochemsyn wrote: | The fight over OpenAI's leadership is more like celebrity gossip | than anything else. The most salient takeaway is that closed- | source proprietary LLMs are a bad idea and that everyone with any | long-term interest in the subject should switch over to the open- | source model. | | It also has revealed that non-profit philanthropic business | models are little more than marketing ploys designed to fool the | gullible, and that 'corporate values' statements should be viewed | in the same light as the self-serving claims of narcissitc | sociopaths are. In particular OpenAI's vague claims about | 'ensuring AGI benefits humanity' were so subject to | interpretation as to be meaningless (e.g. some may claim that | cutting the size of the current human population in half would be | a great benefit to humanity, others would argue for doubling it, | see the history of eugenics for more of that flavor). | | For-profit entities who are upfront about the fact that their | only interest is in making money for their investors, executives | and stock-holding employees are at least honest about their | goals. Of course, this means their activities must be subjected | to independent governmental regulation (which is the outcome that | the whole 'we have values' BS is intended to avoid). | andsoitis wrote: | > The most salient takeaway is that closed-source proprietary | LLMs are a bad idea and that everyone with any long-term | interest in the subject should switch over to the open-source | model. | | What is your reasoning for stating that closed-source | proprietary LLMs are a bad idea and that anyone with long-term | interest in the subject (AGI?) should switch to open-source | models? | | Open-source tends to foster monopoly and relies on free labor | (see Google, Meta). AI also relies on free labor. | sfjailbird wrote: | I really liked the New Yorker portrait 'Sam Altman's Manifest | Destiny': | | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma... | | It seemed to really get to the depths of his personality, both | the impressive parts, and with some very subtle jabs. | selimthegrim wrote: | I objected to his choice of Rickover as a role model in a FB | comment thread and apparently he had a mutual friend with me so | he jumped in complaining that the reporter hadn't captured | everything accurately (not quite to the point of "did me | dirty") | CamperBob2 wrote: | What's wrong with Rickover as a role model? If he'd been able | to do for the civilian nuclear power sector what he did for | the Navy, a lot of things would be a lot better now. | mandevil wrote: | Rickover effectively seized control of the entire USN | submarine arm and ran it as a personal fief for three | decades. I don't think that could possibly work with | civilian power in the US, because it's NOT a military | organization and can't be changed by top-down mandate. | | A 1978 USNI Proceedings essay on NR and leadership[1], | which won a bunch of prizes, had this great description of | Rickover's micromanagement: "Each nuclear submarine is | commanded by two people: its captain and the Director, | Division of Naval Reactors [Rickover]. The captain has full | responsibility for the military operations of his ship as | well as for power plant safety. He also has full authority | over the military operations. NR has much of the authority | over the power plant; its Director has been known to place | a call to a submarine's engineering space telephone and | then personally direct the commanding officer how to | organize his watch bill." | | That level of micromanagement wasn't great inside the US | Navy, a military organization (hence the essay) and would | have spectacularly bombed and flamed out in the civil power | world and is also not a great idea for the commercial world | at large. This is why taking Rickover as a model is | something that you should do very very carefully. He did | some things right, but a whole lot of things can't be | brought over to your company, in a way that suggests using | him as a baseline takes you further away from a good | answer. | | I wrote a paper decades ago comparing Rickover and Jackie | Fisher- of HMS Dreadnought/HMS Invincible fame- as | technological entrepreneur's introducing new technology | into their respective fleets. And one lesson I took away | was that both of them took a whole lot of advantage of | being in a military service where they could issue orders | and have them be legally obeyed in a way that commercial | people just can't get away with. Employees will just leave | your company if you tried a bunch of the crap that Rickover | did. | | [1]: A badly OCR'd version of the essay is available here: | https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1978/july/leader | s... The author, then Lt Ralph Chatham, would go on to have | the first ever novel published by the US Naval Institute | Press dedicated to him. "To Ralph Chatham, a sub driver who | spoke the truth" is how Tom Clancy's _Hunt for Red October_ | begins. | CamperBob2 wrote: | Thanks, interesting perspective there that I'm not very | familiar with. Will have to check out the USNI essay. | selimthegrim wrote: | I too, wasn't aware of this or I might have cited it in | the thread as well. | CamperBob2 wrote: | It's interesting because you can't argue with the success | he achieved, and given how high the stakes were, you can | sort of understand the temptation to micromanage. But | (having read the essay now) you also can't learn much | from Rickover's methodology, or apply it anywhere else. | If for no other reason than the fact that few/no similar | problems exist anywhere else. | | We also can't run the experiment multiple times to | determine if he was really relying on luck all along. The | Navy's luck ran pretty low at a couple of points | (Thresher and Scorpion come to mind). | selimthegrim wrote: | I think he realized it painted him in a bad light which | is why he blamed it on the reporter to me but I really | just should have responded with the Edward Teller quote | from the 1983 AUR article: 'I liked Rickover better as a | captain than as an admiral." | selimthegrim wrote: | This is what I cited (from the 1983 issue of Air | University Review) which makes many similar points but | concentrates more on his impact on the organization at | the Navy level (https://web.archive.org/web/2013031019221 | 0/http://www.airpow...). I also pointed out to him that | Rickover didn't think civilian nuclear power should be a | thing towards the end of his life as well as some points | about the Shoreham plant and the backup turbines. | | e: "In time, he became increasingly conservative if not | reactionary, putting space between himself and any | responsibility for failure or accident. When the USS | Thresher was lost in April 1963, he immediately phoned | the Bureau of Ships to dissociate himself from any | likelihood of failure of the nuclear plant in the | incident. The bureau chief thought this action | "thoroughly dishonest." | selimthegrim wrote: | The reality is we have to give Sam total credit for | transparency. From the USNI and Air University articles | mandevil and I cited he was completely open and honest | about how he intended to run OpenAI (although he was | still at YC then). Let's just hope his next role model | isn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naftaly_Frenkel | throw555chip wrote: | As a former Submarine sailor, Rickover, destroyed the best part | of the spirit of the service with his tyrannical control. | lhnz wrote: | If Paul Graham fired Sam Altman from YCombinator it's interesting | that he appears to have such a favourable opinion of him [0]. | | However, personally, what I've taken away from this is that he is | a much better strategic/tactical operator than many other high- | flying executives and very capable of winning the respect and | trust of a lot of smart people. I wouldn't expect OpenAI to be | run by anybody that wasn't revered in this way; a lot of CEOs | aren't saints. | | [0] | https://twitter.com/search?q=from:paulg%20since:2019-01-01%2... | tom_ wrote: | I dunno, man. As an English person, to me these tweets sound a | lot like he is publicly calling Altman a cunt. | lhnz wrote: | Really? It seems like a glowing appraisal. He seems to think | that Sam is devestatingly effective at what he does. | tom_ wrote: | If I didn't know Graham was English, perhaps I would take | them at face value - and, indeed, perhaps I should anyway. | (And my characterisation was an extreme one!) But: they do | just all sound rather coldly backhanded, if you ask me. | skilled wrote: | I like your way of seeing it and I see the same now. If | this is true (the article) then for sure it's a nice | inside jab that only Sam would get. | | Also, I doubt pg would hold a grudge for years on end. | You learn many lessons in life and some you are bound to | repeat because of stubbornness or whatever. | itronitron wrote: | I think with some of pg's tweets he definitely seems to | be laying it bare, but only for those people that know | what to watch out for. | turzmo wrote: | American, but I read PG's tweets as someone who | absolutely does not want to piss off Sam but is willing | to come close to the edge of plausible deniability in | damning him, e.g.: | | > The most alarming thing I've read about AI in recent | memory. And if Sam thinks this, it's probably true, | because he's an expert in both AI and persuasion. | | There certainly isn't the paternal warmth you might | expect from a proud mentor. | lhnz wrote: | Well, I'm also English and I didn't read them that way. | However, I do think that Paul is telling people that | competing with Sam in certain domains would be | extraordinarily difficult. | | The other thing is that if you take a look at Paul | Graham's blog posts, he used to regularly thank Sam at | the bottom of these -- this isn't something you do if you | don't like or respect someone. However, on the other | hand, perhaps they fell out at some point? I can't | personally make out that signal from the little data | there is. | thatguysaguy wrote: | They all say he's good at what he does, but none of them | actually sound like he likes the guy. | adastra22 wrote: | Graham is English. The English have a wonderful talent for | making backhanded "complements." E.g. "you're a truly | unique individual" or "I always feel more intelligent after | speaking with you." | | The American convention is to look for the positive and | assume that was intended. The English convention is to look | for the negative and assume that was the real meaning. | | E.g. "Sam is going better than you. Do better." Could mean | "Even that incompetent dipshit Sam is going to do better | than you can, that's how much of a hole you're in." | lhnz wrote: | I am also English. :) | specialist wrote: | Per Guy Kawasaki (The Macintosh Way), the sincerity of | Jean-Louis Gassee's feedback was inversely proportional | to the level of praise. | | That anecdote prompted me to do the same (in corporate | battlefields). Works great. | thepasswordis wrote: | It's really funny to re read this with that perspective. | | >My kid was really surprised to find out that _Sam_ cofounded | this company. | | > _Sam_ is going better than you. Do better. | | Etc. I don't know that you're right, since these do sound | like praise, but it's kind of a funny game to change the tone | and make them into catty insults. | nothrowaways wrote: | I read it like so. | andrelaszlo wrote: | Anyone able to quote these xweets for people without an | account? | martinclayton wrote: | Might work: https://nitter.poast.org/search?f=tweets&q=from%3 | Apaulg+sinc... | justrealist wrote: | Paul's wife has a huge financial stake in OpenAI, so I suspect | massive success there has softened his opinion. | liuliu wrote: | These are donations. How that becomes investment / financial | stakes? (It is a question, since how the transition to | capped-profit left a lot of questions unanswered). | jpeter wrote: | Rokos Basilisk | erikig wrote: | Is this why there was a power struggle for OpenAI's | direction? | B1FF_PSUVM wrote: | Clicksaver: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk | intellectronica wrote: | Sensationalist clickbait title. There's nothing in the article | that supports the claim that Altman has been "fired". | | It's almost invariably the case that to most of us, people who | are powerful and effective appear "manipulative". In fact, they | are manipulative, which is how they achieve so much. It's only a | problem if they are manipulative in the service of goals that are | unethical or harmful. | | See also: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais- | principle-... - successful, powerful people ("sociopaths" in | vgr's comical treatise on office politics) are people who create | and shape reality. Those who are not able to create and shape | reality themselves (the "clueless", according to vgr) benefit | from having someone create a reality for them, while at the same | time, take offence at the manipulation. | laaaaea wrote: | > nothing in the article that supports the claim that Altman | has been "fired". | | it's worse. The article say he invested in companies he was | being paid to evaluate for YC, perfect reason to end an exec | career. And then was NOT fired. | cactusplant7374 wrote: | Isn't that what PG does? Isn't that what YC does? | DotaFan wrote: | I am no behaviorist expert, but for me, someone who in world of | trouble can post tweets as relaxing as Sam's, and do smile poses | comes of as extremely manipulative. | imjonse wrote: | He may turn from powerful and well liked startup poster-child to | simply powerful (like Larry Ellison, Bezos, Gates and countless | other CEOs have in the past). | fevangelou wrote: | It's oh so weird the article does not mention any of these | though... | | - https://twitter.com/phuckfilosophy/status/163570439893983232... | (SA's sister - also have a look at her recent posts) | | - Also: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam- | altman... (utterly distressing) | | - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1727096607752282485 (check | the comment with snapshots of the letter - "strangely" that Gist | was deleted) | whalesalad wrote: | nitter link | https://nitter.net/ajayjuneja/status/1727117041977766182#m | twic wrote: | Sounds like Roko's Basilisk knows where he lives. | smegsicle wrote: | that can't be true- why would sam altman and the rest of their | family deny annie altman's inheritance? it's not like they need | the money themselves | | either this annie character is making stuff up, or the whole | rest of her family are some kind of comic book villains | sudosysgen wrote: | I haven't read enough into the story to make up an opinion. | However, purely based on what you're saying, that's | completely normal abuser behaviour. You wouldn't be denying | the inheritance to enrich yourself, but rather to prevent | someone from becoming economically empowered and reducing | your power over them. It's a very common tactic. | subpixel wrote: | While it's true that all unhappy families are unhappy in | their own way, this sort of seemingly illogical | vindictiveness is exceedingly common. | jstarfish wrote: | > why would sam altman and the rest of their family deny | annie altman's inheritance? [...] either this annie character | is making stuff up, or the whole rest of her family are some | kind of comic book villains | | She's done _something_ to alienate herself from the family. | Usual reason is _drugs,_ but given that she 's publicly | braying about being molested I'd bet that she's told similar | stories about _other_ family members, internally, prior to | this. (ed: she also made the same allegations against her | other brother too. Damn I 'm good.) | | Look at the number of people ascribing manipulative behavior | to Sammy. This sort of thing runs in families. | | Or look at the verbiage of the allegation itself: | | > I'm not four years old with a 13 year old "brother" | climbing into my bed non-consensually anymore. (You're | welcome for helping you figure out your sexuality.) I've | finally accepted that you've always been and always will be | more scared of me than I've been of you. | | Nowhere in there does she _actually say_ he did anything more | than get in bed with her. She just implies it, and our minds | are filling in the rest, giving her plausible deniability | against making such a claim. It 's fuckary. | | (edit2) Even better, from | https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam- | altman...: | | > "Annie had (and still was having?) extremely intense, | nearly all-day PTSD flashbacks of the sexual assault she | experienced in her childhood from Sam Altman, plus other | forms of assault from all members of her nuclear family | (except her Dad, I think.)" | | Everyone wants a piece of Little Annie Altman, it seems. | Histrionic personality disorder (and PTSD!) is treated | with...Zoloft, dispensing of which was also considered | "abuse" in her claims. | | > Our Dad's ashes being turned into diamonds (not his wishes) | and that being offered to me instead of money for rent and | groceries and physical therapy says more about me? | | lol. The Altmans know how to push the buttons of someone with | a spending problem. | nabakin wrote: | Fyi the gist was a copy of that letter originally posted to | board.net. It was created by a user here on HN when the | board.net link first came out and its servers subsequently | crashed from the HN hug of death. | dwaltrip wrote: | Is there any major news reporting on the Annie Altman stuff? | That looks like front page material to me. | johnnyworker wrote: | from the second link: | | > Besides Elizabeth Weil's nymag article (here), there has | been virtually _zero_ (mainstream) media coverage of the | extremely serious claims that Annie has consistently made | many, many times against Sam Altman over the past 4 years. | charred_patina wrote: | He has always creeped me out. The way pg talks about him is | meant to be an endorsement, but it makes Sam seem like a | Svengali whose main quality is the ability to manipulate and | get what he wants. | lordfrito wrote: | Also he does seem to have "crazy eyes" [1].... Yeah it's not | entirely scientific but a lot of manipulative exec types have | them. Elizabeth Holmes comes to mind... | | [1] https://www.insider.com/you-can-spot-psychopaths-by- | looking-... | mcpackieh wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanpaku | | > _According to Chinese /Japanese medical [...] when the | upper sclera is visible it is said to be an indication of | mental imbalance in people such as psychotics, murderers, and | anyone rageful. In either condition, it is believed that | these people attract accidents and violence._ | | It might not be scientific but people with this look | certainly do freak me out. (FWIW, I haven't seen any images | of Sam with these eyes.) | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Applewhite#/media/Fil. | .. | civilitty wrote: | Paging your friendly neighborhood phrenologist! Have you | measured the shape of Altman's head yet? | cactusplant7374 wrote: | Elon is incredibly jealous of Sam. That is why he posted the | gist. | greyface- wrote: | > "strangely" that Gist was deleted | | The Gist was posted by HN user xena and deleted after Elon's | tweet led to a deluge of transphobic comments being left on it. | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38371837 | rurp wrote: | Wow, that's some incredibly damning stuff, especially from his | own sister. I'm a bit surprised to have never heard about any | of this before, but I guess the kind of influence Sam has can | be pretty effective. | kwertyoowiyop wrote: | Will this tempest in a teapot never end? | throwaway98221 wrote: | Possible psychopath: | https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/psychopathcode/content/preface.... | belligeront wrote: | I don't have a strong opinion on the events of the past several | days. But a lot of the behavior I've seen on twitter from Open AI | employees, some led by Sam, feels very cult like: posting in all | lower case, the heart emojis, rumors of employees calling each | other in the middle of the night to pressure people to sign | letters supporting Sam. | | There isn't necessarily anything wrong of this behavior. It is | good to like your coworkers, but something about the manipulative | nature of it triggers an "ick" feeling that I can't really put | into words. | | I've also spent very little time in the Bay Area, but from afar, | there does seem to be something in the DNA that makes people | there more susceptible to cult like behavior. | FredPret wrote: | maybe they all remapped their shift keys | blitzar wrote: | https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121980&page=1 | | Many aides in the new administration assigned to the | Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White | House, discovered Monday that their computer keyboards were | missing the "W" key -- a critical problem given their boss' | name is George W. Bush, and he is often referred to simply as | "W," to distinguish him from his presidential dad. | elAhmo wrote: | I found those posts extremely weird, the emojis and lowercase | tweets and screenshots of Notes. I would imagine people who | were/are in charge of a company on the fast track to being | worth hundreds of billions / trillion USD would be a bit more | serious, but here they are, quoting each other tweets with | heart emojis. | gsuuon wrote: | The absolute uniformity was a bit disconcerting to be honest, | but I can also see it being just a great display of comradery. | I'm still unsure about how to feel about the thing with it | mostly resolved. | beer2beerPrtcl wrote: | I think I'm out of the loop on tweet protocol...What's the | significance of all lowercase? | blitzar wrote: | It is done to signal solidarity with sama. | | Some people wear flags as lapel pins to show their solidarity | with a cause, some wave flags in the street, some post black | images on social media. | | Others remove the captials and punctuation from auto correct | and post in lowercase. | rsanek wrote: | People are reading way too much into this, some people just | prefer the look of all-lowercase. It's not like this is some | super-unique choice to Sam / OAI, it's all over the internet. | mcpackieh wrote: | All lowercase signals casual aloofness; it says the situation | doesn't meet your bar for formality. It's like Zuckerberg | wearing a hoodie when meeting with Wall Street types. | VirusNewbie wrote: | I've talked to OpenAI recruiters. I personally don't like Sama | from what I've heard/read, but I would still consider working | there due to Ilya and Karpathy. | | However, I absolutely would have been livid at the board and | wanted Sama to come back if I was an employee, simply because I | would have _joined_ being aligned with the 'commercialize and | make money' side, and not the other. | | So I think a lot of OpenAI employees probably don't care if | Sama is CEO vs someone else, as long as they get to ship and | get paid. The board firing sam wasn't just a 'let's get a new | CEO' it was a pivot from 'ship and make $$$'. | anoncow wrote: | Hit piece by wapo. | objektif wrote: | AWS you say. | jorater wrote: | From Garry Tan ~2 Months ago: | https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1702561008190165448 | | > The scariest sociopaths are the ones you let in to your house, | who met your family, who you broke bread with | | > ... | | In a comment: | | > Just heard some disturbing news about someone who I once | thought highly of | thimkerbell wrote: | I would like to message jorater warning him about drawing | conclusions from a subtweet when there's deviousness afoot, but | hacker news doesn't have that feature. | thimkerbell wrote: | Of course, what is wisdom but accumulated subtweets from your | own useraccount. | ojosilva wrote: | > Though full reasoning for Altman's initial firing is still | unclear, one person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the | condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, pointed to | Altman's aggressive fundraising efforts for a chips venture with | autocratic regimes in the Middle East, which raised concerns | about the use of AI to facilitate state surveillance and human | rights abuses. | | That's a concern of mine from one year ago when ChatGPT exploded: | Altman holds a feeble position as a zero-equity co-founder of a | non-profit. He should be enabled to become a stinking rich SV | mogul of some sort, or at least have his existence tied to | substantial equity. Otherwise, having power but no (huge, absurd) | money, or promises thereof, from his commitment to OpenAI will | only boost these side gigs or even future coups. He's an | ambitious and powerful leader and entrepreneur, he should be | compensated accordingly so that OpenAI goals become aligned to | his own. | | Somehow the new board's powerful oversight goals should be | leveraged with valuable equity for Altman (and other key people, | employees) or equivalent. Create a path to a for-profit, | consolidate the Incs and LLCs floating around - OpenAI has a | complex structure for such a young enterprise. He has a | comfortable upper hand right now (employees, Ilya, a resigning | board, MSFT), so this is the moment to rewrite OpenAI's charter. | fiforpg wrote: | Wasn't really following the subject, but amazed at how | tendentious the writing here is. Starting with the title, | unsubstantiated claims, _really_ weird turns of phrase, etc. Here | 's an example: | | > not just common, it's start-up gospel from Altman's longtime | mentor, venture capitalist Peter Thiel | | -- according to whom? Is it supposed to be common knowledge? Is | this even a helpful parallel? | | In comparison, reporting on FT on this same topic is a lot more | subdued and matter-of-fact. | Gaussian wrote: | Sam is a leader. Let there be no doubt. Does he have foibles? I'm | sure. I do. Everybody has people out there who will proffer | criticism of them, especially those at the top of the pyramid. | Our summer at YC was heavily influenced by him; he always had | time for us, and always thought hard about our problems. | dougmwne wrote: | I think everyone is missing the point. Sam Altman seems to be a | reasonably effective leader (and certainly flawed and a bit | sociopathic), but ultimately unimportant and replaceable. This | was not about Sam, this was about the strategic direction of a | critical Microsoft partner. Microsoft felt Sam would take orders | and therefore supported him. If Sam ever asserts himself, he will | be gone, just like the board was replaced. | moogly wrote: | Perhaps the least interesting most talked-about person of 2023. | tracerbulletx wrote: | CEOs are professional communicators who have reached the highest | level of the craft, they use their communications to achieve an | end, expressing their inner selves is not the point. You might | know a great kind person who is a car salesman, when they are at | work a good one comes off as genuine and friendly, the things | they're saying include many truths, but their words and actions | are primarily designed to sell cars. Assume this is true of any | professional communicator when they're communicating. | charlie0 wrote: | This the main reason I don't trust people who are in the | business of "selling". On one hand, it's nice being around | those kinds of people. On the other hand, it's hard to take any | of the nice things they say seriously. Most of them say nice | things to be likeable, not because they actually mean or will | do what they say. I've learned to pay close attention to what | salesmen do, rather than what is said. The actual truth will be | revealed by their actions. | gretch wrote: | >I've learned to pay close attention to what salesmen do, | rather than what is said. | | Yes this is always a wise thing to do. | | >Most of them say nice things to be likeable, not because | they actually mean or will do what they say. | | I disagree with this take. I mean I'm sure there's snakes out | there. What I see in life though, is that most people don't | say enough nice things, even things they genuinely feel. They | hold back from calling their dad or wife and saying "I love | you". Or giving a compliment to someone on the street if you | like their outfit that you can tell they put time into. | | I think a lot of salespeople are just good at "opening the | gates" a little. | | Personally I've been on a quest to be less stoic when it | comes to expressing joy, and I highly recommend, especially | for typical computer science personalities. | turzmo wrote: | People could afford to say more nice things. Perhaps it | would even devalue the false flattery used by salespeople | to their advantage. | | OTOH the parent comment's take seems reasonable. Calling | your dad and saying "I love you" because you want to be | written into the will is sort of the level we're dealing | with here. | charlie0 wrote: | No need to disagree, both our statements can be true at the | same time. I also need to be less stoic, but I refuse to | put on a mask to achieve that. | | My statement was directed at those who wear that mask all | too well. Example, my landlord, who's in real estate and a | very nice guy in person. However, he promised to do a few | things and didn't do them. So his niceties where just that, | nice words and nothing more. I'd rather deal with a less | nice person who actually does what they said they will. | With limits of course, no one likes a-holes. | hutzlibu wrote: | "I've learned to pay close attention to what salesmen do, | rather than what is said" | | I've learned to apply this to every human being. Talk is | cheap. | blastro wrote: | "Your actions speak so loud we can't hear what you say" - | Jim Harbaugh | joering2 wrote: | > CEOs are professional communicators who have reached the | highest level of the craft | | Elon Musk has entered the chat... | tracerbulletx wrote: | I think he's gone a little more "experimental" and Avant | Garde in his practice of the art. /s | _1 wrote: | That's the exception for someone born wealthy, buys an | existing company, and installs themselves as CEO. | RationalDino wrote: | The source for his being born wealthy is his father. Who is | known to be a conman. | | For example the emerald story seems to be false. | https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-father-errol- | never.... | Geee wrote: | Founder CEOs are a different breed. There's a plenty of | successful founder CEOs who don't fit the typical hired CEO | pattern. Zuckerberg, Sweeney, etc. | tmpz22 wrote: | Is Elon a founder CEO of Twitter, Tesla, or SpaceX? | bmitc wrote: | > CEOs are professional communicators who have reached the | highest level of the craft | | That's kind of silly, isn't it? Altman is a college dropout who | has barely ever worked and somehow fell upward into CEO | positions very quickly. | | His level of communication in talks and interviews is terrible, | so I am genuinely confused where all this mystique comes from. | He sounds like a college student being asked and talking about | management. | | It seems that if you have any title or personal relationship | attached to you, people will listen to anything you say, and | _even say things or just conjure up an ora for you_. | dr_dshiv wrote: | Watch him at Dev Day. | bmitc wrote: | Yawn. | lebean wrote: | Yeah I'm not convinced either. No doubt that good | communication is a strength in a good CEO. But the only thing | I can confidently say is an essential part of being a CEO is | that they are blame-sinks for executive decisions, | particularly their own. | runeofdoom wrote: | If you start thinking that CEOs aren't special and unique, | then you might start thinking they don't need to be paid 350 | times what the average employee does. | bmitc wrote: | Yes. | WendyTheWillow wrote: | Then you must not think the job is difficult or | impactful, as well. | woooooo wrote: | That doesn't necessarily follow. Lots of people have | difficult jobs. Line cooks have to make priority | decisions under high pressure, and it's impactful. | WendyTheWillow wrote: | A line cook is comparably difficult and impactful a job | as a fortune 500 CEO? | | Say more. | threeseed wrote: | Altman founded Loopt. | | Not sure how you can say he fell into the CEO position there. | | Also at the time he was at YC it was a significantly smaller | and less prestigious incubator. | bmitc wrote: | > Loopt, Inc. was an American company ... which provided a | service for smartphone users to share their location | selectively with other people. | | Yea, impressive stuff. I'm sure that gave him a lot of | experience that led to being one of the few "professional | communicators who have reached the highest level of the | craft". | og_kalu wrote: | That was not the point of that coment. | | You act like he just mysteriously found himself in | executive positions when every company he's headed for a | significant duration was one he founded. If you didn't | even know that then you obviously know very little about | him and couldn't even be bothered to do any research at | all. This is a simple wikipedia search. So why are you so | bothered about someone you know nothing about ? | willis936 wrote: | If we concede that CEOs deserve their place in society then | we can claim that we live in a meritocracy, the world is | fair, and we deserve the good things that happen to us. It's | a very comfortable thought. | og_kalu wrote: | all the companies altman has CEO'd are companies he co- | founded. Not sure how you "fall upwards" into that. | tomnipotent wrote: | "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" is a great book that | touches on this subject. | | I read it in the middle of purchasing a new car in 2010, and | had signed paperwork and a purchase agreement to buy car at $X. | Next day I'm told "My manager won't let me sell for anything | less than $X+Y", after I'd gone through all the trouble of | filling out all that paperwork. | | Fortunetly I'd just finished a chapter in the book outlining | this EXACT sales technique, that relies on a person being more | willing to go through with an action if they've committed | something to it... like filling out half an hours worth of | paperwork. Said no thanks, and found the exact same car an hour | away at less than $X. | | Haven't underestimated the impact of a salesperson since, and | no longer delude myself trying to believe somehow I'm special | and immune to such things. | quickthrower2 wrote: | And probably the car is dodgy if they are pulling tricks like | that. If a startup investor does it, probably their "help" is | suspect. | bambax wrote: | I don't know if this counts as selling, though. | | Selling is making you want to buy the car, agreeing on a | price and filling in the paperwork. | | Trying to extract more money from you after you have agreed | on a price is... extorsion? Fraud? But not just "selling". | tomnipotent wrote: | It's negotiation, which is absolutely selling. The | dealership was counting on me accepting the price hike | because the car I wanted was rare and in-demand, and I had | already made some commitment to the process by filling out | initial paperwork. I knew a manager still needed to approve | the terms, but the sales rep made it sound like it was | certain. | | Turns out this is an incredibly common car sales tactic, | enough so that it was explicitly called out in the | aforementioned book. | | Rather than harumph about how unfair it is, I decided it | was better to just learn how to play the game. Unwilling | participant or not, fair or not, it's better to come | prepared than feel like you're getting taken advantage of. | bambax wrote: | If anything happens after we shake hands, I walk. | Paperwork or not; book or no book. | | I don't question the (un)fairness of it, or the game; | just the name. | | Your guy sounds like Jerry Lundegaard | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2LLB9CGfLs | Cacti wrote: | Good CEOs are good communicators. Most CEOs, like literally any | other profession, are not. People like Jobs are exceptions, and | for every one of them there are a hundred shitty CEOs who are | neither talented nor intelligent, even among the companies that | are still alive, but they don't get discussed here because this | is a site about making money first, and tech second, and the | crowd here doesn't like hearing it's all bullshit. For every | Apple there are a hundred Shitty Integrated, Inc. companies | that no one talks about, and every one has a CEO. | | There are no qualifications to be a CEO, ultimately, except the | board happens to want you as CEO. | | It's just a title. | robocat wrote: | > CEOs are professional communicators who have reached the | highest level of the craft | | But Sam the CEO has totally failed to manage the narrative | throughout this episode. [A CEO needs to communicate better] | | Surely he could have stated it was a disagreement in direction? | Instead he left it open to rumours: rumours which mostly | assumed the board had good reason to sack him (everyone | presumed the board couldn't be that stupid plus he didn't | defend himself). : Many of those rumours were extremely | damaging to Sam. Even if he couldn't say a thing, he could have | got other third parties to endorse him. | | Nadella and Eric came out looking pretty good. | greatNespresso wrote: | It came as a surprise for me to learn that PG fired Sam. It's the | first time that I read this actually, and if that's true, I find | it kind of mysterious that it remained a secret for so long. Or | maybe I missed the news somehow but I could not find any other | mention of that event on Google. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | I've definitely never heard of it, and I was pretty shocked | when I read it given how much positive stuff pg has written | about sama, and the article itself says the firing "has not | been previously reported". | | Reading some recent pg tweets through this lens, though, I | think it makes sense. E.g. there is this tweet: | https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1726198939517378988. Both of | the following can be true (and more to the point, I think the | following two items are flip sides of the same coin): | | 1. Sam is an absolute _masterful_ negotiator and is incredibly | well-respected in the valley because his skills at assembling | people and resources are unmatched. | | 2. Sam can be manipulative and self-serving, sometimes making | decisions that are nominally about a higher goal but (not | really coincidentally) are self-aggrandizing. | | I see this trait in lots of effective, famous people. There | have been tons of comparisons in the news recently to Steve | Jobs, but for me for some reason Anna Wintour comes to mind. I | don't think many people would describe Wintour as "nice" as she | is known for being kind of ruthless and manipulative (she was | "The Devil" after all...), but tons of people in the fashion | industry are incredibly loyal to her based on her abilities to | identify talent and get shit done. | greatNespresso wrote: | You make a fair point about that tweet, it can be ironic or | sincere and it left me a mixed feeling. I am not sure what | was PG's goal with that tweet but it did not feel necessary. | btown wrote: | > sometimes making decisions that are nominally about a | higher goal but (not really coincidentally) are self- | aggrandizing | | "Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong." | SpaceManNabs wrote: | It has been a decade, but let me guess, Mass effect 3 | Mordin? I rather not look it up lol. | noitpmeder wrote: | Damn this line still pulls at the heart strings... Might | have to replay | CSSer wrote: | We have a tendency to remember the good and not the bad, and we | want to see our friends do well. Someone else also pointed out | here in the comments that no one wants to publicly state they | made a bad call if they can avoid it because it will likely | damage them personally. We give others lots of chances, or we | encourage and cheer them when others are taking chances on them | in the hopes that they'll do better this time even when we | would no longer risk our own skin. | | I imagine most of us think, "S/he was so _close_ to success. | Maybe s /he'll have learned! What could be the harm in talking | them up a bit? Besides, no one wants to _ruin_ someone else 's | _life_ ," | twoodfin wrote: | Weird: The most relevant hn post on Altman's departure from YC | is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19342184 | | But despite comments to the effect that the YC post indicated | Sam's departure, it doesn't seem to say anything about it right | now? | greatNespresso wrote: | Thank you for the article, I saw a comment from Sam in the HN | post but agreed it did not look obvious that he got fired. | theschmed wrote: | Nor in 2022 when it was first archived by Wayback (unless | archives from previous have been removed) | | https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.ycom. | .. | twoodfin wrote: | But this contemporaneous TechCrunch article--which is | clearly talking about the same blog post--says it did! | | https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/08/y-combinator-president- | sam... | jeromegv wrote: | They actually changed the URL structure | | This is the old URL, and they indeed mentioned Sam leaving | https://web.archive.org/web/20190316222853/https://blog.yco | m... | dang wrote: | I'm pretty sure the HN thread hasn't changed, but you're | right, the YC post has: https://web.archive.org/web/201903100 | 42303/https://blog.ycom.... One could bisect to find out | where. Weird! I've never known these things to change like | that, and it's not as if the news wasn't already public. | davesque wrote: | It could be that the parties involved have chosen at this | moment to re-imagine whatever occurred back then in a less | favorable light. Since firing is on everyone's mind, and since | you can get media attention points by playing along with a | juicy narrative, what might have just been described as a | disagreement in the past might now be called a firing. I would | be skeptical of takes like this. | icelancer wrote: | I've fired people and later recommended them for jobs where | they'd be a better fit. Not uncommon at all. | washadjeffmad wrote: | My immediate thought. Relatively few have been in management | here, perhaps. | icelancer wrote: | It's largely engineers who don't really understand the | value of a C-level person, as evidenced time and time again | in the comments. | | The concept you could fire someone for business reasons and | later be their very good friend and recommend them for | another job - sometimes an even better one than you | employed them in - doesn't fit the single-input single- | output mind of a lot of engineers. | | It's alright. We all have roles to play. | gardenhedge wrote: | Your reg dates are 2012 and 2014. As you know, this is | hacker news. not c-level news, not middle management | news.. hacker news. | hackitup7 wrote: | Agreed, it's very common to see. In many cases you're talking | about people who worked together very closely for years and | are verging on as close as family. Also, in higher-level | roles you often get fired due to a very _specific_ lack of | skills or a very _specific_ weakness that wouldn 't be at all | applicable for another job. | | Ex "this person is an amazing startup CTO but they get | problematically overwhelmed when the organization gets to 100 | engineers" - you would 1000% recommend that person to a | 50-person startup even if they got fired from their job at a | 500-person company. They might even be better at it the next | time around. | demadog wrote: | I predict his character arch will be similar to Adam Neumann and | Travis Kalanick - first the media gushes over him and praises him | as a genius. Then the media starts to question him. Then they | start to fully dig in and dig up a ton of dirt. | | With no mainstream outlet pushing forth the allegations his | sister is claiming on social, I imagine right now they are | looking under every rock on that end. | | I respect his hustle but there is something about him in watching | him speak live and in person that comes off as incredibly | manipulative. He knows how to speak and pause in a way that gets | the audience to laugh and gives soundbites. I am long OpenAI but | I don't trust Sam. | | He could follow the character arch of his friend Thiel where the | media come after him but he's too resilient. | | Or Zuckerberg where the media hated him for years and then moved | on. | | What do you think? | skilled wrote: | I dislike the fact that he peddles the AGI angle too much. | Literally, way above normal. | | It would be nice to see him be down to Earth for a change and | show some compassion but what do I know.. maybe those aren't | his strongest qualities. | cooper_ganglia wrote: | I trust Greg, and Greg trusts Sam. | mcpackieh wrote: | Transitive trust is a bad idea. The telephone game aka | "chinese whispers" demonstrates why. | dchftcs wrote: | >I respect his hustle but there is something about him in | watching him speak live and in person that comes off as | incredibly manipulative. He knows how to speak and pause in a | way that gets the audience to laugh and gives soundbites. I am | long OpenAI but I don't trust Sam. | | You can say the same thing about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is a | jerk for sure but a bad personality does not predict success or | failure as much as you (or we) hope to. And what people say | about your character is also overly dependent on results. Only | time will tell whether Sam Altman will be considered a villain | or a flawed hero in media. | nottorp wrote: | > there is something about him in watching him speak live and | in person | | Greatest mistake you can make is watch someone speak live about | what they're selling. If they're a good actor they'll win you | over. | doktrin wrote: | Accurate. Psychology, history and the intersection thereof | broadly supports the idea that we drastically overestimate | our ability to measure character and intention based on in- | person interactions. Some oft cited cases being how numerous | British public figures who sat down with Hitler tragically | misread his intentions, in contrast to those who appraised | him from a distance based on actions, policies and writings. | Likewise, GWB's famous ability to peer into Putin's soul. | huytersd wrote: | His low life sex worker sister trying to wheedle money out of | him saying she vividly remembers something from when she was 4? | Vet the allegations before you make claims. | RamblingCTO wrote: | He's literally saying they are allegations and claims, so | he's done everything correct: | | > With no mainstream outlet pushing forth the allegations his | sister is claiming on social, I imagine right now they are | looking under every rock on that end. | | Stop being a fanboy and get some arguments. | huytersd wrote: | Stop repeating unverified allegations. Anyone can allege | anything. | vikramkr wrote: | At least one of the arguments against him, that he cared too much | about openai to lead Microsoft effectively, probably helps him | more than it hurts. Otherwise, idk how much of this was really | about Sam altman as much as it was a staggeringly incompetent | board that drove employees and investors to unify and protest en | masse to save the organisation from itself. I guess there's a | chance there's an AGI in the basement but if it was actually | about safety they should fucking say what the hell they were | freaking out about. But if they leave the only logical conclusion | as this being a power struggle between someone who wants to move | fast and make bank and a board that wants to kill the company for | ego reasons - uhh yeah that's not a hard choice | coolbreezetft22 wrote: | Why are people so obsessed with this guy? Keep falling into the | same trap of Cult of the Tech CEO | gumballindie wrote: | Someone else posted it around here - as religion recedes people | need new deities. Couple that with an increase in popularity of | conspiracy theories and you get altman and ai. | zpeti wrote: | Why do people watch pro sports? Why do we fall into the cult of | the sports personality? | | Why do people follow movie stars? | | Because we're human, and we gossip and obsess over high | performers. | coolbreezetft22 wrote: | I was actually just thinking that I really miss the days when | it was sports teams and athletes that people obnoxiously | worshipped. Need to go back to Patriots fans being the most | annoying people around. | WendyTheWillow wrote: | Oh that is still happening, I promise you. Though currently | the most annoying fanbase is probably the Eagles right now. | WendyTheWillow wrote: | I think it's his consistency; how does he garner this much | respect from SV? Surely, the logic must go, he's worthy of it. | | This whole thing feels like Altman expected some back and forth | here between him and the board, but in their inexperience they | vastly overreacted to what was probably "standard" corporate | maneuvering. He assumed there would be steady escalation, but | they went right for the endgame well before passing the many | opportunities for compromise that usually show up in fights | between CEOs and their board. | dmalik wrote: | Like sports I'm here for the drama. It's a distraction to | follow. If it doesn't interest you just ignore. | ninth_ant wrote: | He was CEO of Y combinator, of which this forum is sponsored | and maintained by. | | He's the CEO of OpenAI, which is responsible for the most- | discussed advancement in technology for the past year. So it's | not that unusual for this to be discussed on a technology- | focused forum. | | He's also the centre of a massive firestorm, where extremely | atypical corporate behaviour was very recently taking place. | Again, highly relevant topic for a forum that deals with | startups. | | In short, it's news, and specifically news of interest to | people on this site. No need for cults or obsession. | coolbreezetft22 wrote: | I definitely get the high-level of interest and reason it's a | popular topic on here. What I don't get is the intense | emotional investment people have in this person. Not so much | on HN but definitely elsewhere in social media. | ninth_ant wrote: | How AI will ultimately affect humanity is uncertain, so the | stewardship of an extremely influential company in that | field will be of general interest. | | The specific reason for the board shenanigans seems to be | related to this tension on how AI will or won't be handled | by the management of the tech companies which create and | manage them. | | All of these feels very relevant to the general public. | rideontime wrote: | A reminder that the "e" in "e/acc" does not stand for "ethical" | reqo wrote: | Very interesting if this is true, considering how pg has shown | huge support for sama during this drama! | tempsy wrote: | the more outwardly successful someone is by modern standards | (ceo, celebrities, other powerful people) the more likely it is | they are ethically compromised in some way | | you don't reach the top without screwing over a lot of people | along the way | ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: | Red pill: Most very successful people are like this. | KingOfCoders wrote: | If this is true, interesting, as PG was several times profits | over ethics (e.G. see the AirBnB discussion on HN he participated | in). | joering2 wrote: | It is somewhat different. AirBnB founder Nathan Blecharczyk was | not shopping around, but rather at some point he was the | largest spammer in USA, where even FBI was interested in his | dealings. Interestingly, the 3 articles I was able to find on | this subject some 5 years ago (and posted to HN at some point) | from major news outlets, are all gone now. | | I think hurting your own business versus being a scumbag | scammer will get you much different treatment, even from PG. | Arson9416 wrote: | Step 1: Dazzle an influential person Step 2: Persuade them | to hitch their reputation to you Step 3: Do whatever you | want with minimal repercussions | | Follow these 3 steps and influential people will actively fight | on your behalf, against their own best interests, to avoid | embarrassing themselves and diminishing their reputations. Use | each influential person as a stepping stone to an even more | influential person and repeat. | tempaccount420 wrote: | Or, when you fire people, have a clear reason for it. Not being | "consistently candid" is not that. | whatshisface wrote: | You want companies to post the reasons for every firing on | Twitter? | YetAnotherNick wrote: | No, but at least tell the reasons to the CEO you replaced | him with. Even Shear was kept in dark and was planning to | leave OpenAI. | mock-possum wrote: | I'm ambivalent about it in general, but curious in this | case specifically. | dghlsakjg wrote: | No. But if you _are_ going to make a statement, it behooves | you to fill it with substance. | whatshisface wrote: | That's not how board press release are. I can't help but | feel everyone is using Twitter rules to study a corporate | game. | quickthrower2 wrote: | Not regular employees. Twitter is one method of | communication. | satisfaction wrote: | lying of any type is always grounds for termination. | "consistently candid" is just a more PC phrase for lying. | Buttons840 wrote: | Candid means speaking your mind; truth. "Consistently | candid" therefore means consistently telling the truth, | perhaps even to a fault. | mort96 wrote: | The details matter here. Consistently lying is grounds for | termination. Not consistently being outspoken/blunt might | not be. "Not being consistently candid" can be interpreted | as either. | o0-0o wrote: | Trust your gut. No one here has a good story about "Sam I Am". | huytersd wrote: | Steps 1 and 2 are very hard to accomplish. | bobsmooth wrote: | Tips on step 2? | rglover wrote: | Appeal to ego. | yetanotherloss wrote: | A really slick slide deck on how your unicorn will make this | person the envy of his peers. | | Also amazing amounts of luck, or family connections. | quickthrower2 wrote: | Helps if you make a good prebirth choice to be born into | wealth, influence | DoreenMichele wrote: | I have hung out on HN for over 14 years and took a personal | interest in "How in the heck did a pretty young woman co-found | a company with three men, _date_ one of them and not have this | turn into a _debacle_ and scandal in the headlines??? " It took | quite a few years for the details behind the founding of YC to | come out: | | 1. Jessica Livingston did not co-found a company with three | random men. | | 2. She and Paul Graham were dating, she was job hunting and | being jerked around and he said one day "Why don't we start a | company?" | | 3. Within a day or so, he called his two co-founders from Via | Web and asked them to come on board like part time or something | and they said "yes." | | 4. They initially _hid_ their personal relationship as a dating | couple to try to appear professional. | | So they have a long history of being very private people and | because I am a woman who has struggled to get any traction and | blah blah blah, when I learned Sam was _gay_ , I figured "Ah, | that's probably the real reason he was appointed President of | YC: Paul Graham wanted to protect his marriage while retiring | from YC and was concerned about his pretty, younger wife | working closely with a _man_ other than himself. So he | appointed a gay guy to take over 45 percent of his duties. "* | | So if that had anything to do with the hiring decision, not | announcing the firing would be in line with long-standing | personal policy to keep his private life private and not talk | to the world about his marriage to Jessica Livingston and it | wouldn't exactly be shocking if that meant it (hiring him) | wasn't the wisest business move. | | She eventually also retired from YC, so her being there while | Paul Graham is home with the kids is no longer relevant to who | runs things at YC. They are both founders and presumably major | stock holders, I imagine they both still have influence there. | | /"wild speculation" from an outsider who has never met any of | these people but did sort of politely cyberstalk Jessica | Livingston for some years trying to figure "How does a woman | become a successful business founder?" | | * "45 percent" because Paul said somewhere that he continued to | do "office hours" with program participants and called that "10 | percent" of what he did at YC before retiring. They _also_ | hired Dan Gackle to take over as moderator of Hacker News when | Paul Graham stepped down. | | So Paul was not _replaced_ by Sam Altman. They hired two full- | time employees that I know of and Paul continued to work part- | time at the business while his wife worked full-time and | presumably kept Paul up-to-date about daily goings-on over | breakfast /dinner, so he likely continued to have significant | influence on company decisions and day-to-day stuff invisibly | via his wife. | quickthrower2 wrote: | That is quite a wild conclusion to jump to. What evidence or | clues lead you to that. | DoreenMichele wrote: | I spent several _years_ trying to figure this out and I did | not keep track of my sources because it was a personal | interest, not an "argument" I was trying to make. But here | is pg talking about Jessica Livingston and YC: | | _YC had 4 founders. Jessica and I decided one night to | start it, and the next day we recruited my friends Robert | Morris and Trevor Blackwell. Jessica and I ran YC day to | day, and Robert and Trevor read applications and did | interviews with us. | | Jessica and I were already dating when we started YC. At | first we tried to act "professional" about this, meaning we | tried to conceal it._ | | http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html | | Note: That's from November 2015. I originally joined in | July 2009 and the company dates to something like 2007. | yieldcrv wrote: | Good observations, a bit of a stretch, | | regarding scandal and not scandal, real life doesnt follow | rigid ideas of "the power dynamics are too extreme for this | relationship to exist" | | that's just tabloid drama | | people can be objective mature partners that met on the job | where one was an executive and the other doing something | menial | DoreenMichele wrote: | That wasn't the "scandal" I had in mind. I was wondering | "How in the heck did one of three male co-founders ask her | for a date, her say _yes_ and this not turn into three male | co-founders _fighting_ over who gets the girl _instead of_ | focusing on developing the business? " | yieldcrv wrote: | Gotcha, its a timeless tale, Paul Graham is king and | finds the eunuch to act as a proverbial chastity belt to | while watching over the lady | | whether thats what happened or not, it is disarming to | say the least and many would be more comfortable with the | same situation given the option | dchung333 wrote: | Huh the things I heard about Altman a long time before was | that he was a couch surfer at YCombinator. | dchung333 wrote: | Well I can't edit this and this page has likely been | archived so... I'll just write this. Sam was essentially | homeless. A failed startup with not much to it. Sure, it | was acquired but it gave him essentially just enough to | continue trying to pursue his dream. He really didn't make | any progress at all. At YCombinator he was essentially | stuck for years. There's a lot of fake and editorialized | stories about his life and his made up genius. The dude | dropped out of college it's not this amazing story. | Mentally he had given up everything to try to reach this | stage. I don't know the full story but almost everything | online I've read is completely different from what I've | actually heard. | Y_Y wrote: | While I think it's unlikely that you'll summon pg or dang to | comment on something like that it's is an interesting take | and I wonder if any of those involved have addressed it | elsewhere. | DoreenMichele wrote: | Probably not. | | 1. Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston tend to keep their | private life private. | | 2. If I'm correct, it seems unlikely Paul told _anyone_ he | hired Sam to protect his personal interests as a married | man nervous about his pretty younger wife working closely | with another men. | | 3. If I'm correct, he probably didn't even tell _Jessica_ | because that would have come off as "I don't trust you" | and not "I am worried about _his_ behavior. " | pinewurst wrote: | That's how Jeffrey Epstein made it, starting with Les Wexner. | armchairhacker wrote: | Why was Sam fired from Y Combinator? Why was he fired from | OpenAI? | | Not saying he's good or trustworthy, but it's unfair to speak | badly about him without evidence or even examples of wrongdoing. | basisword wrote: | Isn't being fired implicit evidence of wrongdoing? Especially | when it's not an isolated incident. | jeffreyrogers wrote: | It might just mean your skills weren't appropriate for the | role you were hired for. It doesn't mean you did anything | wrong. | _fizz_buzz_ wrote: | Kind of interesting that Jessica Livingston (Paul Graham's | spouse) tweeted this a couple of days ago: | | > The reason I was a founding donor to OpenAI in 2015 was not | because I was interested in AI, but because I believed in Sam. So | I hope the board can get its act together and bring Sam and Greg | back. | | https://twitter.com/jesslivingston/status/172628436492378127... | toomuchtodo wrote: | To be a fly on the wall when Paul and Jessica talk about Sam in | private. So many interesting questions never to be answered. | | (no other reason than to understand how all the puzzle pieces | come together) | hindsightbias wrote: | On one side Paul calls it AIgiarism and she's throwing | donations at it. | | Maybe we should all hedge our bets when it comes to our AGI | overlords. | iaseiadit wrote: | YC is invested in OpenAI. Wonder if they want a win-at-all- | costs type person (if we go along with this premise) running a | company they're invested in, yet not want him running _their_ | company. | eksapsy wrote: | ive been working for a company for 3 years and i had great | behavior, respected the people around me, they hired me from the | consultant company because they liked me so much they wanted to | take me because i had already done so much for that company that | usually employees don't take the initiative to do (performance | fixes nobody asked or tickets for performance that were abandoned | because the developer just got bored of it, then being | congratulated for fixing the performance, making new projects | inside the company and them realizing my new potentials and | making new tools and services etc.) | | Then I got fired on the spot for just talking a little more | angrier at the manager because they put me on a task that nobody | communicated to me they wanted in 1 month, and then when I | realized after the leader was compaining that they wanted the | task in 1 month I was like "do you realize you placed me in a | project I dont know, the devs themselves don't know some answers | I'm asking for the project, i have to implement a whole driver | for getting API signals etc." you get the point. The leader asked | me to put me in a project he did not even code in ever, and he | thought it was gonna take 1 month and took 4-5 months and when I | realized that he thought that I contested. To the point that the | first manager agreed with me that "yeah it's not a 1 month task." | and he was one of the best programmers in the company and was | just a manager now. Like the first manager on the line agreed | with me but on a 1-1 meeting, so his voice was not heard to the | leader. | | So I contacted the second manager on the line to have a | conversation with the leadership about this task and that I had | these concerns, and after realizing he agrees with the leader | despite him not even remotely knowing what we were doing, I was | kinda pissed off not gonna lie. It was the first time I actually | just kinda exploded to him which diplomatically ngl is bad move | ... but i was angry because I've pissed blood for this task, coz | "the leader wanted it in 1 month" and I did unfortunately work | days and hours just because I felt like it out of pressure, and I | thought that I DIDN'T want to be fired for this stupid task | taking "longer than the leader thought should take" despite him | not even having direct experience on the project or the Data | Aggregator API they placed me to get data from. | | But was I fired because of MY mistake? No. I was fired, on the | spot, without notice, after working for 3 years and doing so many | things for that company, coz I made somebody angry. | | And please believe me when I say that when I told this same | manager "hey this other guy (not the leader) treated me with | disrespect" he just said "yeah you know how he is we all know, he | is just this way". Like what the hell? So, I'm so bad you're | gonna fire me on the spot for making you angry just so you can | powertrip, but he's "just the way he is"? | | You guys get my point. You can get fired, without it being your | actual fault. Yes, you may have some responsibility, as I had to | be more diplomatic but I'm a human too. I can be angry about some | things too some times. But I didn't fire anybody on the spot for | making them angry. | | I'm not claiming Sam's case is the same. But I do claim that just | because you're fired, doesn't mean you're on the wrong. It seems | like a cliche point to make that "you were fired thus it was your | mistake". Things are just not that simple sometimes. You may be | fired just because you pissed off somebody and he couldn't keep | his feelings inside and powertripped without second thinking, | like the board of directors did when they fired Sam without a | proper discussion with all the individuals first and making sure | it's the right decision. | QuadrupleA wrote: | From Paul Graham's Twitter, three days ago: "No | one in the world is better than Sam at dealing with this kind of | situation." Jessica Livingston retweet: "The reason | I was a founding donor to OpenAI in 2015 was not because I was | interested in AI, but because I believed in Sam. So I hope the | board can get its act together and bring Sam and Greg back." | | Also from a sibling comment: | https://twitter.com/search?q=from:paulg%20since:2019-01-01%2... | | Seems incredibly respectful and supportive, I'm not buying that | there's a lot of bad blood there. | imjonse wrote: | Paul's tweet is an objective statement, it does not say | anything about character or values and is not explicitly | supportive. | Dudester230602 wrote: | Reminds me of this (first one): | https://www.muddycolors.com/2011/09/artistic-insults-from- | fa... | ketzo wrote: | ...you think calling someone "the best in the world" is | | a) purely factual | | b) not supportive | | Uh, what on earth _would_ count as explicitly supportive | language? | nerbert wrote: | Being the best in the world to deal with a situation is a | neutral statement. Putin is the best in the world to deal | with the situation he's in right now, if you need a | negative angle on this. | loeg wrote: | > Putin is the best in the world to deal with the | situation he's in right now, if you need a negative angle | on this. | | Probably not true? It seems like Russia could use another | Yeltsin (or Gorbachev) more than Putin for its current | situation. | plasmatix wrote: | Not for Russia's benefit but for his own. | dragonwriter wrote: | > It seems like Russia could use another Yeltsin (or | Gorbachev) more than Putin for its current situation. | | He did say best _in the world_ , not best _that can be | imagined_ ; so unless you are saying there is another | Yeltsin or Gorbachev _available_... | | OTOH, Putin is himself an active reason why alternatives | aren't _readily_ available. | jokethrowaway wrote: | I think they spent decades growing their economy and | preparing to be independent of the west and now our | sanctions are useless. | | It feels like this situation is exactly what they want | (and likely an historical inflection point, where we pit | east vs west again). Dropping the cold war was needed | because they had no resources (surprise, socialism | doesn't work!). | | I'm waiting for Taiwan next and then I'd say we are | completely *** (especially looking at our reliance on the | east for manufacturing / energy and how useless our | governments are). | epicureanideal wrote: | I don't think most Russians would agree that either of | the other gentlemen would be preferable. The 80s and 90s | were not a time of great happiness, prosperity, calm, and | order. | Waterluvian wrote: | That's a really good example of not being explicitly | supportive. It's an objective statement. If I said "Roy | Sullivan is the best in the world at being struck by | lightning" it may implicitly feel like I'm rooting for him. | But I'm just stating a fact. | | What would count? | | "I think Roy Sullivan is the man to be struck an eighth | time. He's the best at it. I hope he succeeds." | pests wrote: | Is it though? | | When the fact is subjective to begin with? | | I would even say "Roy Sullivan is the best in the world | at being struck by lightning" is not a fact at all but an | opinion. | | And by giving an opinion you are passing judgement. | | How can you claim saying something such as "Washington | was the best president" is in some way a fact? Can you | find it in reference books? Is it defined from the laws | of nature? Does anyone even believe my quote? | Waterluvian wrote: | He held the world record, so I'm comfortable saying he | was the best at it. If that's not sufficient and we're | interested in being a semantic pedantic, that's not a | discussion that interests me. | pests wrote: | Still an opinion, sorry. | snickerbockers wrote: | So the statement is that Sam Altman is the best person in | the world at getting fired? | Waterluvian wrote: | Not sure. But it's different from saying they support | Altman's endeavour in being the best at it. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Did you miss the context of the image in that tweet? It's | the famous "I have a particular set of skills..." speech | from Taken: https://youtu.be/jZOywn1qArI | | In other words, he's basically saying Sam is the best in | the world at being a ruthless mofo in these situations and | obliterating those who oppose him. "Admiring language", | perhaps, but I wouldn't really call that "supportive | language". | saiya-jin wrote: | I wouldn't shake my hand with some of the best in the | world. Why so damning? Heck we didn't even define in _what_ | they are best in, could be contract killing or lying for | example (not applying to the actual topic and person, just | generic statements). | | More to the point, some people are natural leaders, they | can process many stressful complex situations in parallel | without breaking a sweat. I know I can't, not long term, | all the kudos to them. | | At least some of them are also amoral a-holes, highly | functioning sociopaths (these get more common the more | power and money floats around till they become the norm). | onetimeuse92304 wrote: | Any person that gets to this position must be good at some | things. | | Acknowledging it does not mean supporting the person. It is | just a factual statement. | | Even Adolf Hitler was good at certain things like | manipulating masses of people. Saying this absolutely does | not mean I support Hitler. It is just a factual statement. | patmcc wrote: | If my favourite sports team was in the championship (and | the underdog), I could easily make the claim "team | $NOT_MY_TEAM is the best in the world" and still hope that | my team beats them. | | Not saying pg is doing this, of course. | paulcole wrote: | > No one in the world is better than Sam at dealing with this | kind of situation | | This is clearly entirely subjective. To prove otherwise, feel | free to show me the list ranking how people in the world | would deal with this kind of situation and explain why Sam | Altman ends up on top of that list. | jjtheblunt wrote: | it's implausible, because the hyperbole is over the top: he's | wealthy from writing programs, and clearly has not assessed | every single person in the world, so he knows better. | ChuckMcM wrote: | I sometimes think that at this level of the game everyone hates | everyone else and its all politics. You don't "come out" for or | against anyone publicly, you leave all of that under cover. It | makes knowing who your friends and enemies are more difficult | and it restricts your ability to maneuver. Another quote from | my grandfather was "Mutual respect does not require that you | like someone." | jzb wrote: | I'm sure there's some genuine friendships, but it's always | interesting to see what people say publicly vs. privately. | Also fair to say that there are people I've worked with that | I did not, at the time, appreciate but grew to appreciate | later on. | | Years ago I was at an event talking to a colleague who was | absolutely bashing someone (with good reason) and then | another colleague walked up. Same person came up and my first | colleague changed tone to "yeah, so-and-so is an interesting | character." | | Because I knew that the other colleague _also_ hated the | person, I called him on it. I wonder, though, how often that | dynamic plays out where nobody will voice a negative opinion | publicly - so people slide by without being called on | behavior that shouldn 't get ignored. | ChuckMcM wrote: | > I've worked with that I did not, at the time, appreciate | but grew to appreciate later on. | | Exactly right. People are complicated and liking or | disliking them is adjacent to whether or not they are | 'good' at their job. | | I've known people who sucked at their job, but doing the | same job in a different environment were stars. That | experience led me to disassociate what people do as part of | their job from the person themselves. And I can respect | someone for doing a good job, even when I find their | personal attitude or motivations distasteful. | | Complicated. | colecut wrote: | The comment you are responding to has quotes of people | definitely coming out "for" Sam. | tsavo wrote: | A similar saying that I learned from a business mentor years | ago, "Just because someone is nice to you doesn't make them | your friend, just because someone is mean to you doesn't make | them your enemy." | klik99 wrote: | Def not true. People who operate at this level can separate | business and friendship. But occasionally when big enough | deals fall through it can damage long term friendships, but | it's not common. PG firing sama and keeping it secret sounds | like PG likes and respects sama but didn't think he should | run YC. If he didn't like sama he could have done a lot more | damage by making it more public. | nabla9 wrote: | "like" or "hate" are words for people and petty personal | conflicts. | | It's counterproductive to take business conflicts personally. | PG removed Sam Altman silently without harming his future. | There is no reason to be enemies after the issue is solved. | There may be deals to be made again. | ChuckMcM wrote: | > It's counterproductive to take business conflicts | personally. | | 100% agree with this, but it is productive to understand | what was behind a business conflict. Personal like or | dislike can change which alternative of a choice of equal | alternatives, someone might make. As Tony Soprano would | say, "It's just business." | koolba wrote: | > PG removed Sam Altman silently without harming his | future. | | When police departments do that to overly aggressive cops, | it's generally considered a bad thing. | catlover76 wrote: | There are different sets of concerns governing police | accountability, transparency, etc., from those governing | various different types of corporations, and rightly so. | unethical_ban wrote: | This is laughably naive or frustratingly bad faith to | think abusive cops are similar to incompatible business | partners. | mihaic wrote: | Not to me, when those "business partners" are in charge | of some agencies like YC that do influence the society we | live in. | lovich wrote: | If I didn't know I was on HN I would after a comment like | this. | LightBug1 wrote: | Naive, in the extreme. | inglor_cz wrote: | That is an astonishingly bad analogy. | | Believing that a person is not a good match for a certain | business position is _worlds apart_ from a public servant | intentionally abusing his legally sanctioned monopoly on | violence. | | The first kind of person may be well a good match for | another position, in another company; the latter is just | a criminal in uniform. | socketcluster wrote: | It comes down to alignment of interests and alignment of | values. I think previous comment is right in suggesting | that people's interests and values may not be clear at that | level. People often hide them to appeal more broadly. | | The more you reveal about yourself, the fewer people you | will appeal to because very few people share your exact | values. People tend to like people who share some obvious | common values and they assume that the values that are | unspoken are also a match. In reality, it's rarely so. | | As people learn more about the world and themselves, they | begin to realize that some values that they didn't consider | before are very important and they may be shocked to find | that certain people they used to like do not share those | values which they took for granted. | themagician wrote: | It's all politics WAY before this level. | LeafItAlone wrote: | Mature adults can certainly think that someone else is not fit | for one job (running YC) and is fit for another (handling OAI). | Good business people are even better at it, knowing that makes | them more money. PG certainly seems to fit that. | personjerry wrote: | Doesn't this show a vested interest from pg and jessica in | OpenAI? So it's hard for them to say anything negative. | haltist wrote: | As a matter of good policy they wouldn't publicly denounce | anyone that was associated with YC. | bigiain wrote: | Jessica went out of her way to use the slightly awkward | phrase 'founding donor', so she's at least trying to imply | she isn't just trying to protect an investment. I'm going to | take the generous interpretation of that and assume she means | what she says there, and isn't just playing politics and | share price PR. | halfjoking wrote: | In the made-for-tv movie about OpenAI - PG is played by an | actor mimicking Trump, and that's Sam's origin story. "You're | Fired" | | Sam with his slick black hair, looking like Tom Hiddleston's | Loki... "my ambition knows no bounds, I will build AGI and then | you will understand my TRUE power." | jeofken wrote: | > played by an actor | bzbz wrote: | What is this comment even trying to say? | philwelch wrote: | By the time they make a movie about OpenAI, there will be | no more human actors. | yumraj wrote: | It's not too complicated. Their interests are/were different. | | In the case of YC, removing him was better for PG and YC. | | In this case, having Sam on top of OpenAI gets them better | returns on their investment. | rantee wrote: | Somebody page Kanye to say something stupid so we can flush SA | out of the news cycle already. Elon's just not up to par these | days. | fhub wrote: | Shortly after it happened the rumor in SF was that Altman was | distracted and not really dotting the i's and crossing the t's. | Like they had a cash flow issue where they had to ask for a top | up from investors which was a bit embarrassing. Anyway, just a | rumor. | 23B1 wrote: | I for one am just totally _shocked_ that a silicon valley | executive would exhibit some sociopathic behaviors. | mrkramer wrote: | Why would Sam Altman be held as someone irreplaceable....the dude | seems like a smart guy but c'mon he is not Jobs or Gates. I | remember first time hearing him when he interviewed Zuck about | Facebook and entrepreneurship (when he worked for Y Combinator). | Now we talk about him as the next Gates or Jobs. I think this was | one big marketing stunt from OpenAI, now the whole software and | business community talks about them. Big boost in popularity and | big downfall for Google when we talk about competing in AI. Sam's | biggest mistake was that Worldcoin privacy nightmare but idk what | was he thinking about, maybe it was noble idk. | imjonse wrote: | He probably has powerful connections beyond SV. He and Greg | Brockman have been meeting heads of state and he has been | fundraising in the Middle East recently. I wouldn't be | surprised if he is sold as representing US interests, hence few | dare to criticize him openly. | bugglebeetle wrote: | Yeah, it's hilarious people think you just get to travel | around the world and glad-hand heads of state without | "friends" among the three-letter folks. And even more so when | you're doing it in the context of selling a technology with | quite obvious intelligence service and military applications. | mrkramer wrote: | >And even more so when you're doing it in the context of | selling a technology with quite obvious intelligence | service and military applications. | | Wasn't Peter Thiel's Palantir meant to be something like | military AI for governments to catch threats in the big | data. Someone once said that data is the new oil and it's | so true, just look at LLMs and OpenAI. That's why Google is | held as the world's most powerful data company....not | Facebook as a matter of fact. | mrkramer wrote: | He surely has connections in SV(he was even a Reddit CEO for | a short time) but he has connections in the politics too as | far as I can tell. He is representing US interests? Fine. | OpenAI is an American company. This was one big marketing | stunt, a balloon to see how the AI community would react. | OpenAI is the innovator but the future AI innovations will | happen somewhere else, that's what history of innovations | teaches us. I remember when Elon said the Google is the | biggest threat when it comes to AI, then he founded and | funded OpenAI and now here we are. | mock-possum wrote: | Or is it a big PR stunt for _sam_? | | The unfairly maligned genius ceo whose on company fired him for | some bullshit reason and then had to publicly embarrass | themselves by begging for him to take them back? | | That makes him look pretty cool - and I didn't even know who he | was a couple weeks ago. | mrkramer wrote: | They wanted it to be something like Apple and Steve Jobs but | Jobs was on the another level of computer fanatic. | gardenhedge wrote: | I don't think it's marketing stunt. I just think there is a lot | of incompetent people involved. | screye wrote: | No one knows when to raise like Sam. Some may say that is his | only skill. But, it is valuable skill to have when you are | about to be the richest startup of this generation. | | Same reason top football players contracted with Mino Raiola. | | A scum bag (or tough/sleazy negotiator depending on how you see | it) who can be a scum bag without everyone hating him is an | exceedingly rare talent. | | Sam seems to have it and is valued accordingly. | Geee wrote: | It seems that there are a lot of people who are loyal to Sam | because they are scared of crossing him. If this is really the | pattern here, then this is probably not the timeline we want to | be on. | drtgh wrote: | I'm following the whole story to see if there's a sociopath | involved. | brap wrote: | Probably most of them. | davesque wrote: | Even if Graham supposedly booted Altman from Y Combinator, I | don't see any reason to assume that a similar disagreement would | have occurred in this case. Citing that history also seems to | assume that Graham himself is an impeccable judge of character. | And we don't necessarily have any reason to believe that. Seems | to me like they're swinging at windmills with this narrative. | | Given that the board provided very few details about their | reasoning, the ideological divide seems like the most likely | explanation because it's the most nebulous by nature. Also likely | given the climate of hype/doom surrounding ChatGPT. | davesque wrote: | And speaking of Graham's judgement: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38384490 | | Of course it was flagged within a few minutes. | mattfrommars wrote: | I am not sure but Sam Altman is probably the next Steve Jobs. One | of the greatest CEO of our generation. | p_j_w wrote: | It seems to me like the PR machine is doing its job pretty | well. | fredgrott wrote: | My read not knowing PG and only having dealt with Sam once is | that the firing was to push Sam into AI which he already was | involved with before the firing...a GaryVee mercy firing to be | sure... | | BTW, Sam was wrong about GPS-powered dating at Loopt. He was not | wrong about pushing teleco's to free up GPS instead of hidding | behind some wall of forbidden access. | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: | ""Ninety plus percent of the employees of OpenAI are saying they | would be willing to move to Microsoft because they feel Sam's | been mistreated by a rogue board of directors," said Ron Conway, | a prominent venture capitalist who became friendly with Altman | shortly after he founded Loopt, a location-based social | networking start-up, in 2005. "I've never seen this kind of | loyalty anywhere."" | | Perhaps this looks like "loyalty" when viewed with the narrow | mindset of Silicon Valley and so-called "tech" venture | capitalism. But it also looks like _disloyalty_ to OpenAI and its | stated mission when viewed more broadly. | | "A former OpenAI employee, machine learning researcher Geoffrey | Irving, who now works at competitor Google DeepMind, wrote that | he was disinclined to support Altman after working for him for | two years. "1. He was always nice to me. 2. He lied to me on | various occasions 3. He was deceptive, manipulative, and worse to | others, including my close friends (again, only nice to me, for | reasons)," Irving posted Monday on X." | | One could see similarities with the way so-called "tech" | companies treat computer users. | | It's no surprise people working for so-called "tech" companies | are trying to hide behind labels such as "Effective Altruism". | These are not altruistic people. They need a cover. | npalli wrote: | Like many hotshot young entrepreneurs, it is possible Sam learnt | a lot from the firing and has done a 180 to go on to supporting | others (seen by his support from OpenAI rank-and-file). He | probably needed that life lesson (getting fired) to grow. | 7e wrote: | Sounds like Sam Altman is a sociopath. | bambax wrote: | > _"Ninety plus percent of the employees of OpenAI are saying | they would be willing to move to Microsoft because they feel | Sam's been mistreated by a rogue board of directors," said Ron | Conway (...) "I've never seen this kind of loyalty anywhere."_ | | 95% is the kind of score one sees when there's an "election" in a | dictatorship. Unanimity is often suspect. | reissbaker wrote: | The double-dipping charge doesn't seem particularly real -- even | pg still to this day personally invests in YC companies while | they're in YC, even before Demo Day (e.g. Phind). I very much | doubt he fired Sam for doing it too. It reads to me like Sam was | focusing more on OpenAI (the "absenteeism" that the article | mentions was primarily due "to his intense focus on OpenAI") and | pg told him he couldn't do both. | | Somehow trying to tie that to the OpenAI board -- which couldn't | even come up with a concrete reason for firing him to their | attempted CEO replacements, who both then switched sides to | supporting Sam -- seems like a stretch. | lkbm wrote: | > Graham did not respond to a request for comment. | | Not said: "...but has consistently spoken in support of Sam | Altman." | | This article is incredibly disingenuous. Almost to the level that | I'd cancel my Washington Post subscription over if I hadn't | already for similarly bad journalism. | andrewstuart wrote: | Is this actually true? | | Did Paul Graham fire Sam Altman? | | Is there factual information about this - has pg said anything? | jgalt212 wrote: | It seems like many of Sam's sins are basically securities | professionals know as Selling Away. | | https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sellingaway.asp | throwitaway222 wrote: | 2015, so like 8 years ago. People do change. And there's two | people here. | | Also, in general, when you have a CEO that's passionate, they | tend to be bossy. If you don't have that, then you're just | passing the time until the VC money is gone. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-11-22 23:01 UTC)