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Nice grift by Sam Altman taking all the donations and good will a non profit gets just to flip 180. He probably would have done the same with his crypto scam s

by Lionga 4y ago

Nice grift by Sam Altman taking all the donations and good will a non profit gets just to flip 180. He probably would have done the same with his crypto scam startup worldcoin if it would not have failed in every way before he could scam.

auggierose 4y ago
Did worldcoin fail or shut down? Is there an article about that? It seems they stopped operating in a few countries in March 2022, anything beyond that?
- sgdpk 4y ago
  I still see these guys in Lisbon's main train station trying to get new customers. They also seem to do some sort of face scan for new customers.
- pax 4y ago
  The last blog post is from last week, same goes for their Twitter account. (TIL Worldcoin)
- Yizahi 4y ago
  It never succeeded to able to fail :) . Last I remember was an artice a few years ago describing how this scheme worked - basically it was a pyramid (incoming dictionary warriors in 3...2...1...), when earlier believers were inviting new people in the sect, to operate these orbs for pittance, and a fraction of funds from newcomers was given to early members. Where the money came in the first place I don't remember, but I won't be surprised if it was from a VC injections.
olalonde 4y ago
It's weird to me that this is even possible legally (turning a nonprofit into a for-profit).
- newyankee 4y ago
  Anything is possible if you are powerful enough and have the world's biggest companies competing for your product. My worry is that even a half baked AI can produce useful wonders in many fields like healthcare, however useful amounts of data will now only be accessible and available to powerful players. Probably OpenAI did the bait and switch to get many competing sides on the same page.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    Yuuup. And just like with Facebook, real power ( information ) in the form of ingested data and prompts will be available to people like Altman, Thiel and Musk, while everyone is gushing over being able to build a simple website automatically ( which is arguably cool ). I wish I could trust FB to deliver on their promises, but this community's only hope is to ensure an open source version of gpt exists. edit: To the best of my knowledge, banks seem to shy away from those tools so far, but I am sure there are analysts out there just waiting for an ok.
    - ramesh31 4y ago
      >I wish I could trust FB to deliver on their promises, but this community's only hope is to ensure an open source version of gpt exists. This is the worrisome part of it all. It's no longer programmer sweat and toil that creates the value, but raw compute, which has a fixed capital cost that cannot be surmounted by skill or dedication. I don't see how, short of massive crowdfunding, open source can possibly release a state of the art LLM.
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        Hmm. Crowdfunding avenues exist. What is missing is trust ( also undermined by OpenAI ). I am trying to think who I would believe to have the knowledge, skill, PR skills ( or at least name recognition ) and ethics necessary to pull it off and I am drawing a blank. I am admittedly merely an interested party, but it does not bode well since the rest of the public knows or cares even less.
jackmott42 4y ago
and think of all the talks he is going to do in the future about "hard work" and "ethics" and "innovation"
- patates 4y ago
  I'm sure they did work hard and the product is innovative from my understanding of the definition of the word but oh boy does the whole "ethics" theater manage to infuriate me...
  - random314 4y ago
    The worst part is that Altman had nothing to do with the success of Open AI. He simply failed upwards into this job, thanks to his Paul Graham friendship and YC connection. We will see Altman all over the place while all the hardwork was done by actual scientists at Open AI who have barely spoken.
    - kunalgupta 4y ago
      His “YC connection” was running YC and being responsible for making it something like 100 times bigger than it was before him?
      - random314 4y ago
        Yes. YC was very well established when he took over after failing with Loopt. YC is paulg and Morris brainchild. You might want to check on the 100X number again. And that's not how success is measured anyway.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
haolez 4y ago
But was this move made by Sam? I understand that he became CEO after a few years in. Genuinely curious.
- ethanwillis 4y ago
  Does he refuse to reap the rewards, does he disavow the actions in a meaningful way? If not, then he's just as guilty whether he "did it" himself or not.
523746849172 4y ago
[flagged]

by Lionga 4y ago

auggierose 4y ago

Did worldcoin fail or shut down? Is there an article about that? It seems they stopped operating in a few countries in March 2022, anything beyond that?

sgdpk 4y ago
I still see these guys in Lisbon's main train station trying to get new customers. They also seem to do some sort of face scan for new customers.
pax 4y ago
The last blog post is from last week, same goes for their Twitter account. (TIL Worldcoin)
Yizahi 4y ago
It never succeeded to able to fail :) . Last I remember was an artice a few years ago describing how this scheme worked - basically it was a pyramid (incoming dictionary warriors in 3...2...1...), when earlier believers were inviting new people in the sect, to operate these orbs for pittance, and a fraction of funds from newcomers was given to early members. Where the money came in the first place I don't remember, but I won't be surprised if it was from a VC injections.

olalonde 4y ago

It's weird to me that this is even possible legally (turning a nonprofit into a for-profit).

newyankee 4y ago
Anything is possible if you are powerful enough and have the world's biggest companies competing for your product. My worry is that even a half baked AI can produce useful wonders in many fields like healthcare, however useful amounts of data will now only be accessible and available to powerful players. Probably OpenAI did the bait and switch to get many competing sides on the same page.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Yuuup. And just like with Facebook, real power ( information ) in the form of ingested data and prompts will be available to people like Altman, Thiel and Musk, while everyone is gushing over being able to build a simple website automatically ( which is arguably cool ). I wish I could trust FB to deliver on their promises, but this community's only hope is to ensure an open source version of gpt exists. edit: To the best of my knowledge, banks seem to shy away from those tools so far, but I am sure there are analysts out there just waiting for an ok.
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    >I wish I could trust FB to deliver on their promises, but this community's only hope is to ensure an open source version of gpt exists. This is the worrisome part of it all. It's no longer programmer sweat and toil that creates the value, but raw compute, which has a fixed capital cost that cannot be surmounted by skill or dedication. I don't see how, short of massive crowdfunding, open source can possibly release a state of the art LLM.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
      Hmm. Crowdfunding avenues exist. What is missing is trust ( also undermined by OpenAI ). I am trying to think who I would believe to have the knowledge, skill, PR skills ( or at least name recognition ) and ethics necessary to pull it off and I am drawing a blank. I am admittedly merely an interested party, but it does not bode well since the rest of the public knows or cares even less.

jackmott42 4y ago

and think of all the talks he is going to do in the future about "hard work" and "ethics" and "innovation"

patates 4y ago
I'm sure they did work hard and the product is innovative from my understanding of the definition of the word but oh boy does the whole "ethics" theater manage to infuriate me...
- random314 4y ago
  The worst part is that Altman had nothing to do with the success of Open AI. He simply failed upwards into this job, thanks to his Paul Graham friendship and YC connection. We will see Altman all over the place while all the hardwork was done by actual scientists at Open AI who have barely spoken.
  - kunalgupta 4y ago
    His “YC connection” was running YC and being responsible for making it something like 100 times bigger than it was before him?
    - random314 4y ago
      Yes. YC was very well established when he took over after failing with Loopt. YC is paulg and Morris brainchild. You might want to check on the 100X number again. And that's not how success is measured anyway.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

haolez 4y ago

But was this move made by Sam? I understand that he became CEO after a few years in. Genuinely curious.

ethanwillis 4y ago
Does he refuse to reap the rewards, does he disavow the actions in a meaningful way? If not, then he's just as guilty whether he "did it" himself or not.

523746849172 4y ago

[flagged]