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Sam Altman makes a lot of grandiose predictions and statements. For example, in 2019 he said “Human radiologists are already much worse than computer radiologi

Sam Altman makes a lot of grandiose predictions and statements. For example, in 2019 he said “Human radiologists are already much worse than computer radiologists. If I had to pick a human or an AI to read my scan, I’d pick the AI.” [0] However, most people with domain knowledge in this space still would not want their scan not to be read by a human. The AI radiology apps are generally narrowly focused and useful for consultation not diagnosis. [1] In 2015 he predicted: “Self-driving cars are going to get here much faster than people think,” Altman said. He thought we’d see them in three to four years. [2] I think he would be wise to learn from Bill Gates that it's a bad idea to over-predict what will happen in the short term. "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." I'll add to this that it's generally a bad idea to make big predictions outside of areas that you have strong domain knowledge in. I doubt Sam Altman has strong domain knowledge around US higher education. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley culture is full of people who feel that because they've succeeded in one domain they have some kind of hidden insight into others. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/26/sam-altman-on-ai-jobs-may-go-away-but-massive-abundance-likely.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/26/sam-altman-on-ai-jobs-may-go... [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00330-020-07230-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00330-020-07230-9 [2] https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/06/elon-musk-sam-altman-say-self-driving-cars-are-going-to-be-on-the-road-in-just-a-few-years/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/06/elon-musk-sam-altman-say-s...

pm90 5y ago
He and others like him really need to just get off Twitter. Get someone to build a VC only Twitter clone, put their garbage opinions there and satisfy the need to post.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >Get someone to build a VC only Twitter clone, put their garbage opinions there and satisfy the need to post. Already done (LinkedIn clone, but close enough), by an HN user too: https://www.shlinkedin.com/ https://www.shlinkedin.com/
- vasco 5y ago
  That was done and called App.net. It's pretty good startup lore from ~2012. Worth giving a look if you're interested. It solved both biggest VC issues around that time. It was paid and it had more characters than Twitter. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net
jmeister 5y ago
Ok? 1. That’s his job as an investor. Getting one big outlier prediction right makes up for a hundred wrong ones. 2. These predictions tend to provoke interesting debates(that’s probably Sama’s intent here).
- WoodenChair 5y ago
  > Ok? That’s his job as an investor. Getting one big outlier prediction right makes up for a hundred wrong ones. But he's not acting as an investor here. He's acting as an influencer on Twitter. And when a public figure consistently makes poor predictions, I think they should be called out for it.
  - jmeister 5y ago
    I mean that it’s what VCs always do. Just as macro investors and political scientists throw out wild prognostications about global affairs all the time. It’s the equivalent of a painter doodling in his notebook. Some of them will turn into paintings.
- pm90 5y ago
  1. If it’s his job at being able to predict, he seems to be doing a bad job by being wrong so many times. 2. There’s so many better ways to spark an interesting conversation than throw bs predictions out on Twitter. If his opinion was informed with facts, he could write a blog or (heavens forbid) a Twitter thread detailing what lead him to the conclusion.
  - sgustard 5y ago
    To be fair, his post does lead into a Twitter thread. Unfortunately it's a mess of the usual reactionary takes: white people are asked to feel guilty; Asians are discriminated against; nobody wants to hear whiny conservatives on campus. And so: "nearer to collapse than it appears." That's not a falsifiable prediction, of course: how long does it "appear" to take to collapse? A decade, a century, never?
smt88 5y ago
To add to this, I would suggest that if Altman were able to predict the future, he wouldn't be betting so hard on the idiotic/alarming WorldCoin boondoggle, nor would his previous startup have failed. The only thing he seems to have succeeded at is convincing Paul Graham he should lead YC.
- lvs 5y ago
  One guy who makes grandiose predictions about the future convinced another guy who pretends to be a philosopher. It's the blind leading the blind. In truth, they both just make bets as any gambler does.
- eterevsky 5y ago
  I think the idea of YC is not to make safe bets, but to bet on projects with low probability of success, but with huge potential gains. In that light Altman's bets on failed projects doesn't reflect bad on his ability to predict.
the_cat_kittles 5y ago
this is a cathartic, beautifully worded comment. there is an incredible tolerance for charlatanery here so long as the charlatan is rich. it drives me insane
- te_chris 5y ago
  And this is wonderful use of language also. "there is an incredible tolerance for charlatanery here so long as the charlatan is rich" Beautiful and concise.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
I don’t think it’s unwise or wise per se. It’s just simply the case of - I’ve got the money, and hence I’ve got an audience, and (hence or not) I’ve got an urgent need to make random proclamations. Founder of this site does that a lot too and just like this post almost always gets a lot of attention. Some people can just afford to do and have people listen to their useless brain flatulations and on the side are often called visionaries and shit. That happens on every socioeconomic levels and sub-levels, of course on different scales. So that’s there.
- somethoughts 5y ago
  I'm curious what the motivation is as well. Just clicks? Like couldn't he have shown some metrics about the YC idea that is going to disrupt higher education - Lambda school - is doing better? I haven't seen as many updates recently. Or is the idea to get people to drop out early so his startup and other YC startups don't have to pay high starting salaries for college educated engineers. To be clear I don't necessarily disagree with the tweet thread - just as usual twitter provides no context and is to short to understand the real motivation for the tweet.
  - shafyy 5y ago
    By now, it's clear that Lambda School is mostly a scam. They closed r/lambdaschool because it was full of people complaining, but you can find a lot of articles and accounts of former students if you search the internet. There's also this subreddit that only has negative reviews: https://www.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchoolReviews/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchoolReviews/
  - cole-k 5y ago
    I'd wager it's just to stoke his ego. If I had a megaphone through which I could reach thousands and they'd all cheer me on because they thought my ideas were great, I'd want to broadcast every good thought I had.
jeffbee 5y ago
You understate your case. This isn't like a famous cosmologist wandering out of his lane and commenting on higher ed. This guy doesn't have domain expertise in anything.
acchow 5y ago
I think that college will have to evolve to keep up. It can no longer be centered around exams and needs to shift towards practical work like projects to give a better educational experience than YouTube
magpi3 5y ago
Perhaps he is wrong about many things, but your post comes across as an ad hominem that doesn't respond to any of his points.
- WoodenChair 5y ago
  I thought about that perception before posting. However, I think when a public figure who people look to for “where things are going” consistently makes poor predictions, they should be called out for it. If not here in a thread about another prediction then where?
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  Putting this guy's twitter posts on HN is an ad hominem in itself. Why should anyone care what this guy thinks if not for ad hominem?
  - MrMan 5y ago
    touche
shafyy 5y ago
Sam Altman and his buddies are incredibly out of touch with the real world. In a related tweet, he said [0]: > A version of college replacement I'm super interested in: Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world, and give them 'tenure'--say a decade+ of salary, resources to work on whatever they want, and a smart peer group--in exchange for small % of future earnings. Completely agree with your statement: > I'll add to this that it's generally a bad idea to make big predictions outside of areas that you have strong domain knowledge in. I doubt Sam Altman has strong domain knowledge around US higher education. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley culture is full of people who feel that because they've succeeded in one domain they have some kind of hidden insight into others. It's a cognitive biased called halo effect [1]. Although, in this case, I would question if Altman is good at anything except somehow convincing Paul Graham to lead YC (as a sister comment points out). [0]: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1505599701864701954 https://twitter.com/sama/status/1505599701864701954 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Didn't he also make a lot of money already? So at least also good at making money.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    When Howard Hughes was at his most batshit crazy and generally out of touch with anything resembling humanity his businesses kept being profitable, perhaps once you have a lot of money it is difficult to really screw it up.
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      So your claim is that Altman used to be capable of making money, but is not anymore? Why? He doesn't come across as crazy and out of touch to me.
      - shafyy 5y ago
nojs 5y ago
> I think he would be wise to learn from Bill Gates that it's a bad idea to over-predict what will happen in the short term. No, if your job is raising money and motivating people to work for you on ambitious moonshots then optimistically over-predicting is probably the correct choice. You don’t win many points for being “pessimistic but correct” in his line of work.
eterevsky 5y ago
> "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." I don't think Altman is making any two-year short-term prediction in this thread. If anything it's closer to ten-year timespan.
visarga 5y ago
> it's generally a bad idea to make big predictions outside of areas that you have strong domain knowledge in It's no fun to make predictions in your field because you know plenty of reasons why things don't work, compared to outsiders who fill in from imagination the missing bits.

pm90 5y ago

He and others like him really need to just get off Twitter. Get someone to build a VC only Twitter clone, put their garbage opinions there and satisfy the need to post.

AussieWog93 5y ago
>Get someone to build a VC only Twitter clone, put their garbage opinions there and satisfy the need to post. Already done (LinkedIn clone, but close enough), by an HN user too: https://www.shlinkedin.com/ https://www.shlinkedin.com/
vasco 5y ago
That was done and called App.net. It's pretty good startup lore from ~2012. Worth giving a look if you're interested. It solved both biggest VC issues around that time. It was paid and it had more characters than Twitter. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net

jmeister 5y ago

Ok? 1. That’s his job as an investor. Getting one big outlier prediction right makes up for a hundred wrong ones. 2. These predictions tend to provoke interesting debates(that’s probably Sama’s intent here).

WoodenChair 5y ago
> Ok? That’s his job as an investor. Getting one big outlier prediction right makes up for a hundred wrong ones. But he's not acting as an investor here. He's acting as an influencer on Twitter. And when a public figure consistently makes poor predictions, I think they should be called out for it.
- jmeister 5y ago
  I mean that it’s what VCs always do. Just as macro investors and political scientists throw out wild prognostications about global affairs all the time. It’s the equivalent of a painter doodling in his notebook. Some of them will turn into paintings.
pm90 5y ago
1. If it’s his job at being able to predict, he seems to be doing a bad job by being wrong so many times. 2. There’s so many better ways to spark an interesting conversation than throw bs predictions out on Twitter. If his opinion was informed with facts, he could write a blog or (heavens forbid) a Twitter thread detailing what lead him to the conclusion.
- sgustard 5y ago
  To be fair, his post does lead into a Twitter thread. Unfortunately it's a mess of the usual reactionary takes: white people are asked to feel guilty; Asians are discriminated against; nobody wants to hear whiny conservatives on campus. And so: "nearer to collapse than it appears." That's not a falsifiable prediction, of course: how long does it "appear" to take to collapse? A decade, a century, never?

smt88 5y ago

To add to this, I would suggest that if Altman were able to predict the future, he wouldn't be betting so hard on the idiotic/alarming WorldCoin boondoggle, nor would his previous startup have failed. The only thing he seems to have succeeded at is convincing Paul Graham he should lead YC.

lvs 5y ago
One guy who makes grandiose predictions about the future convinced another guy who pretends to be a philosopher. It's the blind leading the blind. In truth, they both just make bets as any gambler does.
eterevsky 5y ago
I think the idea of YC is not to make safe bets, but to bet on projects with low probability of success, but with huge potential gains. In that light Altman's bets on failed projects doesn't reflect bad on his ability to predict.

the_cat_kittles 5y ago

this is a cathartic, beautifully worded comment. there is an incredible tolerance for charlatanery here so long as the charlatan is rich. it drives me insane

te_chris 5y ago
And this is wonderful use of language also. "there is an incredible tolerance for charlatanery here so long as the charlatan is rich" Beautiful and concise.

crossroadsguy 5y ago

I don’t think it’s unwise or wise per se. It’s just simply the case of - I’ve got the money, and hence I’ve got an audience, and (hence or not) I’ve got an urgent need to make random proclamations. Founder of this site does that a lot too and just like this post almost always gets a lot of attention. Some people can just afford to do and have people listen to their useless brain flatulations and on the side are often called visionaries and shit. That happens on every socioeconomic levels and sub-levels, of course on different scales. So that’s there.

somethoughts 5y ago
I'm curious what the motivation is as well. Just clicks? Like couldn't he have shown some metrics about the YC idea that is going to disrupt higher education - Lambda school - is doing better? I haven't seen as many updates recently. Or is the idea to get people to drop out early so his startup and other YC startups don't have to pay high starting salaries for college educated engineers. To be clear I don't necessarily disagree with the tweet thread - just as usual twitter provides no context and is to short to understand the real motivation for the tweet.
- shafyy 5y ago
  By now, it's clear that Lambda School is mostly a scam. They closed r/lambdaschool because it was full of people complaining, but you can find a lot of articles and accounts of former students if you search the internet. There's also this subreddit that only has negative reviews: https://www.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchoolReviews/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchoolReviews/
- cole-k 5y ago
  I'd wager it's just to stoke his ego. If I had a megaphone through which I could reach thousands and they'd all cheer me on because they thought my ideas were great, I'd want to broadcast every good thought I had.

jeffbee 5y ago

You understate your case. This isn't like a famous cosmologist wandering out of his lane and commenting on higher ed. This guy doesn't have domain expertise in anything.

acchow 5y ago

I think that college will have to evolve to keep up. It can no longer be centered around exams and needs to shift towards practical work like projects to give a better educational experience than YouTube

magpi3 5y ago

Perhaps he is wrong about many things, but your post comes across as an ad hominem that doesn't respond to any of his points.

WoodenChair 5y ago
I thought about that perception before posting. However, I think when a public figure who people look to for “where things are going” consistently makes poor predictions, they should be called out for it. If not here in a thread about another prediction then where?
SantalBlush 5y ago
Putting this guy's twitter posts on HN is an ad hominem in itself. Why should anyone care what this guy thinks if not for ad hominem?
- MrMan 5y ago
  touche

shafyy 5y ago

Sam Altman and his buddies are incredibly out of touch with the real world. In a related tweet, he said [0]: > A version of college replacement I'm super interested in: Find the smartest and most driven 18 year olds in the world, and give them 'tenure'--say a decade+ of salary, resources to work on whatever they want, and a smart peer group--in exchange for small % of future earnings. Completely agree with your statement: > I'll add to this that it's generally a bad idea to make big predictions outside of areas that you have strong domain knowledge in. I doubt Sam Altman has strong domain knowledge around US higher education. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley culture is full of people who feel that because they've succeeded in one domain they have some kind of hidden insight into others. It's a cognitive biased called halo effect [1]. Although, in this case, I would question if Altman is good at anything except somehow convincing Paul Graham to lead YC (as a sister comment points out). [0]: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1505599701864701954 https://twitter.com/sama/status/1505599701864701954 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
Didn't he also make a lot of money already? So at least also good at making money.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  When Howard Hughes was at his most batshit crazy and generally out of touch with anything resembling humanity his businesses kept being profitable, perhaps once you have a lot of money it is difficult to really screw it up.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    So your claim is that Altman used to be capable of making money, but is not anymore? Why? He doesn't come across as crazy and out of touch to me.
    - shafyy 5y ago

nojs 5y ago

> I think he would be wise to learn from Bill Gates that it's a bad idea to over-predict what will happen in the short term. No, if your job is raising money and motivating people to work for you on ambitious moonshots then optimistically over-predicting is probably the correct choice. You don’t win many points for being “pessimistic but correct” in his line of work.

eterevsky 5y ago

> "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." I don't think Altman is making any two-year short-term prediction in this thread. If anything it's closer to ten-year timespan.

visarga 5y ago

> it's generally a bad idea to make big predictions outside of areas that you have strong domain knowledge in It's no fun to make predictions in your field because you know plenty of reasons why things don't work, compared to outsiders who fill in from imagination the missing bits.