3 ms·

The tweet is weird. For starters, it features a guy blaming his wife for a decision. Sounds like a certain Supreme Court justice. It is inherently bullshit. S

The tweet is weird. For starters, it features a guy blaming his wife for a decision. Sounds like a certain Supreme Court justice. It is inherently bullshit. Separately, corporate communications are as much about what you don't talk about as what you do. Paul Graham probably wishes he could turn back the clock, and never fire Altman from YC in the first place. They would have loved to have Altman be the figurehead of YC at this time. I'm sure they had these conversations for months: "You can come back to YC as a figurehead president." The conversations went nowhere. Maybe YC was ready to genuflect, ready to co-administer the OpenAI startup fund, which is obviously Altman's BANTA. Like why deal with YC at all, when Altman could administer an index on all AI startups better than they can? That's what happened. What's in it for this billionaire Altman to generate wealth for YC LPs, at this stage? The best Graham could do was this tweet. YC is not yet an index on all the best AI startups. End of story. This is an existential crisis for them. They are of course a great organization who sincerely care about people succeeding, but so do many accelerators and venture studios. So it's very hard to see this play out. Sam Altman was incomprehensibly lucky. His feet which people stepped on were constantly connected to his ass which they had to kiss tomorrow. His executive collaborators also were people whose feet were stepped on and whose ass now gets kissed. Satya Nadella - the CEO of a far more successful and influential company - has to kiss these asses! He even got fired from OpenAI - of course the science PhDs were right, he had to go, what's wrong with you people, you should always be on Team PhD - and yet again you must kiss his ass after stepping on his toes. The OpenAI board got mocked in the media, implications of being unqualified, with all the associated sexism, for doing their jobs correctly! Sounds like a certain toxic politician. Truthfully, all of his antagonists should stop wasting their time worrying about this guy. Anthropic is likely to be very successful. Work for them! There are alternatives. It took only a year for competition to force OpenAI to make its core offering free. All the Thrive ass kissers may yet have bought billions of dollars of units of OpenAI that will turn out to be worth far less than they bargained for. Time will tell.

Aloha 2y ago
I think we're about to see yet another AI winter, and the people who did not invest in AI will look smart in 2-3 years. I think we're a long way off from a general purpose AI - its not that AI isn't useful as a tool, it is - but its an additive tool to leverage human creativity.
burnished 2y ago
I'm curious how that read as blame to you? Because it read like a good and reasonable decision that he attributed to an important person at YC.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  Always, in all the limited history of the world of corporate communications, attribution of a statement or a decision is meant to assign blame and infamy. This is corporate speech! It plays by different rules than the kids gloves stuff the 22 year old engineer hears from his 30 year old engineering manager. I mean, it's called `git blame` for a reason. For every 1 person clicking "Annotate" to see who wrote some excellent code, there are 99 people clicking it to see whom to blame.
  - burnished 2y ago
    Your comment about git blame pierces me, but I still think you are off base about this thing specifically - Paul Grahm is talking about someone he respects, that he feels does not get seen as occupying an important role/decision maker due to eschewing credit. It may pattern match as blame (and I think that heuristic about corporate speech is probably a good one), but I don't think that tracks in this context. Partially because it doesn't make sense on the personal and emotional level, and partially because it doesn't read as blame at all.
bookaway 2y ago
>For starters, it features a guy blaming his wife for a decision. Sounds like a certain Supreme Court justice. It is inherently bullshit. As he happens to be a guy who frequently compliments his wife publicly on her contribution to YC, as well as on her being a good judge of character, it seems more likely it was meant as a compliment. As in, "it was her decision and I think it was the right one."[0] But this interpretation hilariously makes the statement less generous to Altman than it would have been. [0] He also uses "We" even though he is technically retired from YC (?), thereby taking some responsibility for the decision and acknowledging that he wasn't a complete bystander.
khazhoux 2y ago
> For starters, it features a guy blaming his wife for a decision No. Jessica's role here was a founding partner of YC, not as "his wife." His tweet says that Jessica (not Paul himself, or both together) was the person who communicated with Sam that he needed to choose (and possibly also handled the matter overall).

Aloha 2y ago

I think we're about to see yet another AI winter, and the people who did not invest in AI will look smart in 2-3 years. I think we're a long way off from a general purpose AI - its not that AI isn't useful as a tool, it is - but its an additive tool to leverage human creativity.

burnished 2y ago

I'm curious how that read as blame to you? Because it read like a good and reasonable decision that he attributed to an important person at YC.

doctorpangloss 2y ago
Always, in all the limited history of the world of corporate communications, attribution of a statement or a decision is meant to assign blame and infamy. This is corporate speech! It plays by different rules than the kids gloves stuff the 22 year old engineer hears from his 30 year old engineering manager. I mean, it's called `git blame` for a reason. For every 1 person clicking "Annotate" to see who wrote some excellent code, there are 99 people clicking it to see whom to blame.
- burnished 2y ago
  Your comment about git blame pierces me, but I still think you are off base about this thing specifically - Paul Grahm is talking about someone he respects, that he feels does not get seen as occupying an important role/decision maker due to eschewing credit. It may pattern match as blame (and I think that heuristic about corporate speech is probably a good one), but I don't think that tracks in this context. Partially because it doesn't make sense on the personal and emotional level, and partially because it doesn't read as blame at all.

bookaway 2y ago

>For starters, it features a guy blaming his wife for a decision. Sounds like a certain Supreme Court justice. It is inherently bullshit. As he happens to be a guy who frequently compliments his wife publicly on her contribution to YC, as well as on her being a good judge of character, it seems more likely it was meant as a compliment. As in, "it was her decision and I think it was the right one."[0] But this interpretation hilariously makes the statement less generous to Altman than it would have been. [0] He also uses "We" even though he is technically retired from YC (?), thereby taking some responsibility for the decision and acknowledging that he wasn't a complete bystander.

khazhoux 2y ago

> For starters, it features a guy blaming his wife for a decision No. Jessica's role here was a founding partner of YC, not as "his wife." His tweet says that Jessica (not Paul himself, or both together) was the person who communicated with Sam that he needed to choose (and possibly also handled the matter overall).