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It’s utterly mundane, completely common knowledge for those who have been around long enough to have watched both the start and end on Loopt that Altman is a da

It’s utterly mundane, completely common knowledge for those who have been around long enough to have watched both the start and end on Loopt that Altman is a dark-triad sociopath with one marketable skill: (in pg’s words) “becoming powerful”. Guy can’t code, can’t design, can’t publish, can’t climb a traditional corporate ladder with even modest guardrails against fraud, can’t keep his hand out of the cookie jar. Can lie, threaten, cajole, manipulate, bribe with zero hesitation or remorse. I’ve been short this nonsense for a decade, and it’s done no favors to me on remaining solvent, but when the market gets rational, it usually gets rational all at once. Karpathy, Ilya, Yoon right off the top of my head, countless others. LeCun woke up the other day and chose violence on X. Insiders are getting short like Goldman dealing with Burry. Guy has nine lives, already been fired for fraud like three times and he’s still living that crime life, so who knows, maybe he lasts long enough to put Ice Nine in my glass after all, but this can only happen so many times.

nradov 2y ago
How do you "short this nonsense"? OpenAI isn't publicly traded.
- benreesman 2y ago
  Metaphorically, I’ve been calling the guy a crook for a long time, and this historically hasn’t been the path to anything short of the cold shoulder at best from anything YC adjacent. It was heresy as recently as a year ago, maybe less. Although a couple of the AI meme chats I’m in starting sending around a link that there’s actually a prediction market on whether he lasts in the CEO chair [1]. I’ve been too busy building shit to even look into whether I can trade it, but it’s been spiking north of 20%. [1] https://kalshi.com/markets/openaiceochange/openai-hires-another-ceo https://kalshi.com/markets/openaiceochange/openai-hires-anot...
  - tim333 2y ago
    That's interesting. I didn't know there was a Sam fired betting market.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
thaumaturgy 2y ago
I think it might be time to turn back the clock a bit and revisit some of the things pg said way back when he was pitching Sam Altman to lead YC and the general reaction was "...who?" 2008: "You could parachute [Sam Altman] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without them. (He wasn't, and he did.) Not everyone has Sam's deal-making ability. I myself don't. But if you don't, you can let the numbers speak for you." https://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html https://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html 2014: "Of all the people we’ve met in the 9 years we’ve been working on YC, Jessica and I both feel Sam is the best suited for that task. He’s one of those rare people who manage to be both fearsomely effective and yet fundamentally benevolent..." https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/sam-altman-for-president https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/sam-altman-for-president Now, this isn't about pg specifically. Maybe he had reservations at the time but still thought he was making the right decision, maybe he's since changed his mind, maybe he hasn't but has pretty well moved on from this scene. Not interesting. I'm more interested in whether Altman, and Musk, and Zuckerberg, and Bezos, and Ellison, and all the other amoral wealth-hoarders, are finally becoming obvious enough now that people might finally begin to see them as the yucky byproducts of a yucky system. Maybe a moralistic, basically decent person couldn't get ChatGPT launched and turned in to the household topic of discussion it is today; maybe nice people can't build cheap rockets. Maybe in the future, when making an endorsement for a leadership position in some company, someone might be brazen enough to say aloud, "I believe this person is sufficiently nasty to make us all more successful." And so then the question is, does society net benefit more from the moralists or more from the capitalists? Do we accept that Sam Altmans are necessary for cool technology? How many Altmans can we have before something goes horribly, irreversibly wrong?
- ryukoposting 2y ago
  > Do we accept that Sam Altmans are necessary for cool technology? Zooming out a bit, do we accept "cool technology" as a virtue? Should it factor into my evaluation of a person at all?
  - margalabargala 2y ago
viking123 2y ago
I always get the Sam Bankman-Fried vibes from him
- benreesman 2y ago
  SBF is dramatically less scary than Altman. Which is why he’s doing 30+ for being likewise a crook but dramatically less dangerous to Enlightenment civilization in the large. SBF was trying to pocket the difference on a regionally lax regulatory climate. Felon? Sure thing. By all means, hand down a sentence. It’s fraud. Altman has blown straight past the “personal financial gain” fraud line multiple times and has amassed enough fear of retribution to now be at the “manipulate both potential executive orders and plausible legislation to arrogate de facto regulator status to myself” stage of the conquest of Arrakis. Both bad. One far scarier.
  - portaouflop 2y ago
    Damn sounds like he will take over the world any day now
    - tim333 2y ago
      Just wait for the AGI robots!
  - fagrobot 2y ago
    [dead]
  - lll-o-lll 2y ago
    Dammit, why are monsters lurking under all my cool tech rocks?
    - benreesman 2y ago
      It comes and goes. This is the twilight of this era of mediocre technologists known by sight by the bouncers at the Battery.
    - 2y ago
WA 2y ago
> I’ve been short this nonsense for a decade I'm curious: are you short all of SPX or just tech companies?
karma_pharmer 2y ago
I just want to say I love this comment and the way it's written, I wish more news articles had such creative verbiage! But could somebody please translate the following into something my helplessly-uncool brain can grok? > I’ve been short this nonsense for a decade, ...this nonsense = deep learning? I mean the current research wave is only just barely 10 years old and its financial/investable effects definitely less than 10 years old.... Or is "this nonsense" something else? Can you short Sam Altman the individual? takemymoney.jpeg I will chug that ice-nine kool-aid. > LeCun woke up the other day and chose violence on X. maybe just a link?

nradov 2y ago

How do you "short this nonsense"? OpenAI isn't publicly traded.

benreesman 2y ago
Metaphorically, I’ve been calling the guy a crook for a long time, and this historically hasn’t been the path to anything short of the cold shoulder at best from anything YC adjacent. It was heresy as recently as a year ago, maybe less. Although a couple of the AI meme chats I’m in starting sending around a link that there’s actually a prediction market on whether he lasts in the CEO chair [1]. I’ve been too busy building shit to even look into whether I can trade it, but it’s been spiking north of 20%. [1] https://kalshi.com/markets/openaiceochange/openai-hires-another-ceo https://kalshi.com/markets/openaiceochange/openai-hires-anot...
- tim333 2y ago
  That's interesting. I didn't know there was a Sam fired betting market.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

thaumaturgy 2y ago

I think it might be time to turn back the clock a bit and revisit some of the things pg said way back when he was pitching Sam Altman to lead YC and the general reaction was "...who?" 2008: "You could parachute [Sam Altman] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without them. (He wasn't, and he did.) Not everyone has Sam's deal-making ability. I myself don't. But if you don't, you can let the numbers speak for you." https://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html https://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html 2014: "Of all the people we’ve met in the 9 years we’ve been working on YC, Jessica and I both feel Sam is the best suited for that task. He’s one of those rare people who manage to be both fearsomely effective and yet fundamentally benevolent..." https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/sam-altman-for-president https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/sam-altman-for-president Now, this isn't about pg specifically. Maybe he had reservations at the time but still thought he was making the right decision, maybe he's since changed his mind, maybe he hasn't but has pretty well moved on from this scene. Not interesting. I'm more interested in whether Altman, and Musk, and Zuckerberg, and Bezos, and Ellison, and all the other amoral wealth-hoarders, are finally becoming obvious enough now that people might finally begin to see them as the yucky byproducts of a yucky system. Maybe a moralistic, basically decent person couldn't get ChatGPT launched and turned in to the household topic of discussion it is today; maybe nice people can't build cheap rockets. Maybe in the future, when making an endorsement for a leadership position in some company, someone might be brazen enough to say aloud, "I believe this person is sufficiently nasty to make us all more successful." And so then the question is, does society net benefit more from the moralists or more from the capitalists? Do we accept that Sam Altmans are necessary for cool technology? How many Altmans can we have before something goes horribly, irreversibly wrong?

ryukoposting 2y ago
> Do we accept that Sam Altmans are necessary for cool technology? Zooming out a bit, do we accept "cool technology" as a virtue? Should it factor into my evaluation of a person at all?
- margalabargala 2y ago

viking123 2y ago

I always get the Sam Bankman-Fried vibes from him

benreesman 2y ago
SBF is dramatically less scary than Altman. Which is why he’s doing 30+ for being likewise a crook but dramatically less dangerous to Enlightenment civilization in the large. SBF was trying to pocket the difference on a regionally lax regulatory climate. Felon? Sure thing. By all means, hand down a sentence. It’s fraud. Altman has blown straight past the “personal financial gain” fraud line multiple times and has amassed enough fear of retribution to now be at the “manipulate both potential executive orders and plausible legislation to arrogate de facto regulator status to myself” stage of the conquest of Arrakis. Both bad. One far scarier.
- portaouflop 2y ago
  Damn sounds like he will take over the world any day now
  - tim333 2y ago
    Just wait for the AGI robots!
- fagrobot 2y ago
  [dead]
- lll-o-lll 2y ago
  Dammit, why are monsters lurking under all my cool tech rocks?
  - benreesman 2y ago
    It comes and goes. This is the twilight of this era of mediocre technologists known by sight by the bouncers at the Battery.
  - 2y ago

WA 2y ago

> I’ve been short this nonsense for a decade I'm curious: are you short all of SPX or just tech companies?

karma_pharmer 2y ago

I just want to say I love this comment and the way it's written, I wish more news articles had such creative verbiage! But could somebody please translate the following into something my helplessly-uncool brain can grok? > I’ve been short this nonsense for a decade, ...this nonsense = deep learning? I mean the current research wave is only just barely 10 years old and its financial/investable effects definitely less than 10 years old.... Or is "this nonsense" something else? Can you short Sam Altman the individual? takemymoney.jpeg I will chug that ice-nine kool-aid. > LeCun woke up the other day and chose violence on X. maybe just a link?