3 ms·

It’s a weird time. Elon is similar. The guy says the most ludicrous things but seems to have “delivered” so it’s not easy to discount his insanely stupid commen

It’s a weird time. Elon is similar. The guy says the most ludicrous things but seems to have “delivered” so it’s not easy to discount his insanely stupid comments. Sama is another one. He is part of some sort of success story, makes a bunch of radical 4d chess type claims, so you can’t discount everything he says, however, even if what he says is true, how do you “build for AGI”? The dude sounds legit bonkers, but again, he has some type of cred because his team delivered a working product. It almost feels like this is a common play adopted by a lot of tech elites. It’s not a coincidence. “If you find yourself part of some success story, any success, use it to your advantage. Use your ‘cred’ to drive a lot of hype and cash out, using all the cash you accumulate hire hard working people, have them deliver something which in turn keeps you looking ‘credible’, make more outlandish claims, gain more funding, rinse wash repeat” I feel Jeff Bezos is an example of someone who doesn’t do this. Seems like a practical guy who works really hard and avoids (mostly) making silly claims.

michaeljwalker 3y ago
“Use your ‘cred’ to drive a lot of hype and cash out” you realize that Sam doesn’t own equity in OpenAI, and Elon lives far below his means, right? do you really think they’re trying to play the game to “cash out?”
eurekin 3y ago
They seem to be following the same circulating memo :) Obviously must work, otherwise they would not have done it
- bamboozled 3y ago
  Do you see it too though ? It really feels like a social device. I can’t help fall back to Musk. So much of his success is due to not only his own hard work, but plenty of others, yet he is absolutely wonderful at marketing it like it’s his own and we should hang off everything he says. Even when he does credit his team, it’s brief and then it’s straight back to the hype show. Of course I’m not suggesting the dude is a complete fraud, he is part of some brilliant things, but it doesn’t mean he isn’t taking advantage of it. I mean it is a smart way of operating and it totally works. I just don’t think it’s honest. Sam Altman seems to operate by the exact same playbook, I’d say he is a novice player compared to Elon though.
  - eurekin 3y ago
    That's exactly my impression of his image as well
  - cracrecry 3y ago
    People do not understand the meaning of "Marketing". People believe it is selling what you have(Sales and Advertisement) while it really means understanding Markets: The needs of the people. If you have good intuition on what the needs of the people are, even on things that do not exist yet, you can design your product or service accordly. You could also choose the right people for the job. People like Steve Jobs or Elon are great at understanding markets. i.e Steve knew that people would be using their smartphones on they pockets and that having scratch resistant screens was essential while the rest didn't care. I had a PocketPC and TabletPC and Microsoft cared so much and invested billions in things that few people care while being against most user real needs. They are visionaries that have to imagine a future that does not exist yet. The kind of people that can do that, like Elon or Sam usually can see the future as real as it already exist and can be overoptimistic as for them it is obvious that something is going to happen as for them the future is as real as the present. Elon saved Tesla from bankruptcy choosing a pathway to mass fabrication of EVs. The original Tesla vision was exclusivity and using Lotus car frames. What separates Elon for everybody else is that he risks his own money on what he believes in, not someone else's like Sam. He is a risk taker like nobody. This is what I hear from people that know him personally.
    - bamboozled 3y ago
      Elon and Sam can be as visionary as all hell, they can also be wonderful manipulators too. Both things can be true. Especially if said behaviour gets them more money to take more risks. In the case of Altman, I feel the way he communicates in this sort of secretive, somewhat threatening way (I’m about to unleash my super secret AGI published by my fake nonprofit org, regulate the completion at once) is sociopathic. It’s quite unique to him. I recall Steve Jobs being visionary, I heard stories of him being a perfectionist, but I don’t recall him using the same sociopathic playbook I described. Think of the contrast in behavior between Altman and say, Carl Sagan, the contrast is so stark to me. Between Elon musk and Eric Weinstein. Anyway my original point wasn't focused on the people, just that I think they’ve workouted out how to perfectly game our attention economy to their advantage. I don’t hate them for it per se. I just think it’s dishonest and distracting. I'm not even sure they know they're doing it, but they just do it because it works.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pityJuke 3y ago
> have them deliver something which in turn keeps you looking ‘credible’ Yeah, this is the key part, because a lot of the specific claims do fall over once interrogated (self-driving when?), but usually he is delivering something.
- iDrinkPrimeCred 3y ago
  I find sama, musk, jobs, elizabeth holmes to be in the same category. Only difference is that sama, musk, and jobs were able to not only market and get hype, but also build some 'threshold' of what they claim. Holmes, while nearly as inspirational in the 'marketing' sham they all do, didn't have enough of a product, so she's in jail. People like 'ilya' who understand the tech deeply are hidden and lose out to these 'musk' type folks, like sama.
yoav 3y ago
Maybe the types of wrapper startups and apps people are building with GPT4 are obviously going to be replaced by GPT5 in a few months. There will be huge backlash because startups, VCs, and solo devs aren’t thinking big enough. Could be that he’s dreaming too big about AGI, but I know several people building GPT4 based products that will obviously be replaced by the next small advancement in GPT. Maybe Sam is just trying to push people to think (and fund) a bit longer term ideas that won’t have so much backlash when they’re replaced by native GPT functionality improvements every few months. This will also create less churn in the app store and for users.
- siva7 3y ago
  It seems obvious in hindsight that almost all ai startups last year would die in a few short weeks to months because openai simply integrated the functionality into their own product -> Assistants, GPTs, GPT Store, ChatGPT for teams and businesses, retrieval, voice, vision etc. I wager that 2/3 of all these startups thought these were clever products to work on back then. The difference is: Openai just drops new features without previous announcement, exceeds expectations and kills these api wrapper products instantly. Compare with google who announces their new ai features beforehand, fails to deliver on time and when delivered doesn't meet expectations.

michaeljwalker 3y ago

“Use your ‘cred’ to drive a lot of hype and cash out” you realize that Sam doesn’t own equity in OpenAI, and Elon lives far below his means, right? do you really think they’re trying to play the game to “cash out?”

eurekin 3y ago

They seem to be following the same circulating memo :) Obviously must work, otherwise they would not have done it

bamboozled 3y ago
Do you see it too though ? It really feels like a social device. I can’t help fall back to Musk. So much of his success is due to not only his own hard work, but plenty of others, yet he is absolutely wonderful at marketing it like it’s his own and we should hang off everything he says. Even when he does credit his team, it’s brief and then it’s straight back to the hype show. Of course I’m not suggesting the dude is a complete fraud, he is part of some brilliant things, but it doesn’t mean he isn’t taking advantage of it. I mean it is a smart way of operating and it totally works. I just don’t think it’s honest. Sam Altman seems to operate by the exact same playbook, I’d say he is a novice player compared to Elon though.
- eurekin 3y ago
  That's exactly my impression of his image as well
- cracrecry 3y ago
  People do not understand the meaning of "Marketing". People believe it is selling what you have(Sales and Advertisement) while it really means understanding Markets: The needs of the people. If you have good intuition on what the needs of the people are, even on things that do not exist yet, you can design your product or service accordly. You could also choose the right people for the job. People like Steve Jobs or Elon are great at understanding markets. i.e Steve knew that people would be using their smartphones on they pockets and that having scratch resistant screens was essential while the rest didn't care. I had a PocketPC and TabletPC and Microsoft cared so much and invested billions in things that few people care while being against most user real needs. They are visionaries that have to imagine a future that does not exist yet. The kind of people that can do that, like Elon or Sam usually can see the future as real as it already exist and can be overoptimistic as for them it is obvious that something is going to happen as for them the future is as real as the present. Elon saved Tesla from bankruptcy choosing a pathway to mass fabrication of EVs. The original Tesla vision was exclusivity and using Lotus car frames. What separates Elon for everybody else is that he risks his own money on what he believes in, not someone else's like Sam. He is a risk taker like nobody. This is what I hear from people that know him personally.
  - bamboozled 3y ago
    Elon and Sam can be as visionary as all hell, they can also be wonderful manipulators too. Both things can be true. Especially if said behaviour gets them more money to take more risks. In the case of Altman, I feel the way he communicates in this sort of secretive, somewhat threatening way (I’m about to unleash my super secret AGI published by my fake nonprofit org, regulate the completion at once) is sociopathic. It’s quite unique to him. I recall Steve Jobs being visionary, I heard stories of him being a perfectionist, but I don’t recall him using the same sociopathic playbook I described. Think of the contrast in behavior between Altman and say, Carl Sagan, the contrast is so stark to me. Between Elon musk and Eric Weinstein. Anyway my original point wasn't focused on the people, just that I think they’ve workouted out how to perfectly game our attention economy to their advantage. I don’t hate them for it per se. I just think it’s dishonest and distracting. I'm not even sure they know they're doing it, but they just do it because it works.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pityJuke 3y ago

> have them deliver something which in turn keeps you looking ‘credible’ Yeah, this is the key part, because a lot of the specific claims do fall over once interrogated (self-driving when?), but usually he is delivering something.

iDrinkPrimeCred 3y ago
I find sama, musk, jobs, elizabeth holmes to be in the same category. Only difference is that sama, musk, and jobs were able to not only market and get hype, but also build some 'threshold' of what they claim. Holmes, while nearly as inspirational in the 'marketing' sham they all do, didn't have enough of a product, so she's in jail. People like 'ilya' who understand the tech deeply are hidden and lose out to these 'musk' type folks, like sama.

yoav 3y ago

Maybe the types of wrapper startups and apps people are building with GPT4 are obviously going to be replaced by GPT5 in a few months. There will be huge backlash because startups, VCs, and solo devs aren’t thinking big enough. Could be that he’s dreaming too big about AGI, but I know several people building GPT4 based products that will obviously be replaced by the next small advancement in GPT. Maybe Sam is just trying to push people to think (and fund) a bit longer term ideas that won’t have so much backlash when they’re replaced by native GPT functionality improvements every few months. This will also create less churn in the app store and for users.

siva7 3y ago
It seems obvious in hindsight that almost all ai startups last year would die in a few short weeks to months because openai simply integrated the functionality into their own product -> Assistants, GPTs, GPT Store, ChatGPT for teams and businesses, retrieval, voice, vision etc. I wager that 2/3 of all these startups thought these were clever products to work on back then. The difference is: Openai just drops new features without previous announcement, exceeds expectations and kills these api wrapper products instantly. Compare with google who announces their new ai features beforehand, fails to deliver on time and when delivered doesn't meet expectations.