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While I agree, what's puzzling to me is the subtext around this -- why does Altman's take matter on this? Or does Altman's take on everything matter now because

While I agree, what's puzzling to me is the subtext around this -- why does Altman's take matter on this? Or does Altman's take on everything matter now because GPT is the answer to everything and Altman is its father? As a stroke of timely irony, we really need a GPT product that will critique this kind of garbage journalism, including hot takes by AI fathers, denouncing & shaming them from the rooftops of the internet.

scaramanga 3y ago
Yeah, I think the issue is complex: Sam Altman is a remote worker who only sees his bosses 4 times a year on quarterly earnings calls. Why do the shareholders not demand his physical presence to ensure he is collaborating properly with his executives? I think the answer is basically structural: the shareholders are other corporations like banks, pension funds, hedge funds. While the people investing may be rank-and-file asset managers and not CEO's, in order to be trusted with that amount of capital, they really have to have a similar amount of regard for their own CEO as he has for himself (otherwise your career will be in jeopardy, as the IBM exec in OP's link readily explains). The same goes for the press, especially the business press. The journalist really needs to have a high regard for his editors who, in turn, really need to have a high regard for their CEO, because these people are, by their own admission, quite emotionally sensitive to how they are perceived by others. They only feel in charge when others around them assure them that they are in charge. In this way, you end up with sort of personality cults (God is all-powerful, but at the same time, he really needs you to believe in him, because God's own self-worth is insufficient and highly contingent on constant external validation). In this case it manifests as a very inflated sense of the worth and value of CEO's, and a sort of endless fascination with the minutiae of their thoughts and feelings, regardless of how contrary they might be to scientific evidence, or the evidence of one's own immediate experience. Fortune is a magazine almost entirely dedicated to this form of worship. Edit: and yes, combine it with what you said, there is a sort of mystique around tech and AI that probably gives the average fund-manager or CEO-type a feeling of awe, purely because it's not their own field where they're fully aware of all the foibles and all the ways that reality doesn't match external perception.
- junofan 3y ago
  Got a link to one of these Sam Altman quarterly earnings calls?
  - scaramanga 3y ago
    Ah so OpenAI is privately owned partnership.. Pedantry aside, pretty sure its investors aren't standing behind his desk all day, sniffing his musk...

scaramanga 3y ago

Yeah, I think the issue is complex: Sam Altman is a remote worker who only sees his bosses 4 times a year on quarterly earnings calls. Why do the shareholders not demand his physical presence to ensure he is collaborating properly with his executives? I think the answer is basically structural: the shareholders are other corporations like banks, pension funds, hedge funds. While the people investing may be rank-and-file asset managers and not CEO's, in order to be trusted with that amount of capital, they really have to have a similar amount of regard for their own CEO as he has for himself (otherwise your career will be in jeopardy, as the IBM exec in OP's link readily explains). The same goes for the press, especially the business press. The journalist really needs to have a high regard for his editors who, in turn, really need to have a high regard for their CEO, because these people are, by their own admission, quite emotionally sensitive to how they are perceived by others. They only feel in charge when others around them assure them that they are in charge. In this way, you end up with sort of personality cults (God is all-powerful, but at the same time, he really needs you to believe in him, because God's own self-worth is insufficient and highly contingent on constant external validation). In this case it manifests as a very inflated sense of the worth and value of CEO's, and a sort of endless fascination with the minutiae of their thoughts and feelings, regardless of how contrary they might be to scientific evidence, or the evidence of one's own immediate experience. Fortune is a magazine almost entirely dedicated to this form of worship. Edit: and yes, combine it with what you said, there is a sort of mystique around tech and AI that probably gives the average fund-manager or CEO-type a feeling of awe, purely because it's not their own field where they're fully aware of all the foibles and all the ways that reality doesn't match external perception.

junofan 3y ago
Got a link to one of these Sam Altman quarterly earnings calls?
- scaramanga 3y ago
  Ah so OpenAI is privately owned partnership.. Pedantry aside, pretty sure its investors aren't standing behind his desk all day, sniffing his musk...