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> TSMC’s executives found the idea so absurd that they took to calling Mr. Altman a “podcasting bro,” one of these people said. This is very heartwarming.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
Is Altman another Ackman/Musk? I thought he tends to stay on topic when doing interviews.
- Ericson2314 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Ackman and Musk stay on topic in interviews as far as I can tell. They may share viewpoints that much of HN disagrees with, but I don’t see them answering questions with completely unrelated responses. Altman however, dodges questions all the time, with vague corporate speak and generalities. To me it looks like he is avoiding hard questions, although maybe he just doesn’t know the answer and is trying to stumble his way through, or he genuinely wants to not give away confidential things like trade secrets.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Ackman and Musk stay on topic in interviews as far as I can tell. They may share viewpoints that much of HN disagrees with Makes sense. I'd consider Ackman issuing comments on politics off topic for a hedge fund manager. But I suppose he's technically on topic with a narrow view. > Altman however, dodges questions all the time, with vague corporate speak and generalities He has a documented history of dishonesty, correct?
    - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
      I don’t know his history fully enough to say. But it does seem like past claims about not getting equity or about keeping OpenAI’s founding principles may have at least changed. Some claim it may be an honest change - they need capital to compete, attract talent, and complete their mission, and giving equity actually keeps Altman focused on OpenAI instead of side gigs and investments. That could be true. But I’ve found his evasiveness in interviews to be untrustworthy.
- drexlspivey 2y ago
  My opinion after hearing him on multiple interviews is that he always just says various generalities, he can be talking for 5 minutes and never say anything, all noise. I don't know if he is under an NDA and can't say literally anything about OpenAI and the future or if it's just the way he talks.
  - mrweasel 2y ago
    Maybe he doesn't actually know anything?
    - maxwell 2y ago
      But he has such force of will.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      That would be my bet. He's a CEO, I've not once heard it suggested that he's also a researcher (though according to Wikipedia he's a Stanford CompSci dropout). Quite rare to be competent at both CEO-things and the stuff you're hiring people to do.
      - disqard 2y ago
        A Stanford dropout? He must be hot stuff, like Elizabeth Holmes... oops, wrong example.
  - akomtu 2y ago
    Perhaps he uses an earpiece connected to an LLM.
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    I had the same revelation when I read the transcript of one of his interviews with Lex. I found it to be so free of detail or substance that I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a one case of him having a bad day, but reading transcripts of a couple of more interviews confirmed my suspicion that he has nothing of substance to say.
- mrcwinn 2y ago
  It may just be his public persona. I don’t work with him on a day to day basis of course. I find him to be very uninteresting. He speaks with an air of aloof tech-savant but it feels quite hallow, faked, forced. I can’t think of many examples where he said something in an interview and it really challenged or surprised me. By contrast, any random hour with Lisa Su and you will come away quite impressed and easily understand why she is her company’s leader. Plenty of smart money behind Altman, though, so maybe he shows up stronger behind the scenes. [Edit: added "aloof" due to perceived aloofness.]
  - soneca 2y ago
    Magicleap also had plenty of smart money behind them. It ceased to be a useful signal for me then.
    - disqard 2y ago
      Indeed, and SoftBank flushed a ton down the toilet named WeWork because of Adam Neumann's charisma. I don't think anyone doubts Sam's ability to charm people and tell a good story. The graver concern is "should we trust him"? My gut says NO.
  - botro 2y ago
    "Suddenly, the chat window on Sequoia’s side of the Zoom lights up with partners freaking out. “I LOVE THIS FOUNDER,” typed one partner. “I am a 10 out of 10,” pinged another. “YES!!!” exclaimed a third. What Sequoia was reacting to was the scale of SBF’s vision....We were incredibly impressed, Bailhe says. “It was one of those your-hair-is-blown-back type of meetings.” This is 'smart money' in reference to Sam Bankman Fried.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      Not really the dig you think it is. They were right but got unlucky that SBF broke the law, which is hard to predict.
- ohSidfried 2y ago
  [dead]
- dotnet00 2y ago
  Altman projects more Bankman-Fried vibes to me than Musk vibes. A common sentiment about SpaceX and Musk is that the employees also believe in the mission of making space accessible and going to Mars. Musk has been consistent on that being SpaceX's eventual goal since founding it, and he stuck through it even when SpaceX was one failure away from missing payroll. All of his early employees still publicly support this mission, even after retiring or moving on to found their own space companies. Altman comes off as a "say anything to keep the money flowing" type guy even to his own employees. The fractured leadership all seems to suggest that he can't even manage to convince the people who work with him the most that he actually believes in his oft-repeated lofty goals regarding AGI.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I thought SBF interviews I listened to were excellent, with lots of substance and clear explication, especially the interview with Matt levine
    - dotnet00 2y ago
      Interesting, my impression of him from his interviews was the opposite, while I didn't follow him closely, I felt from the first time I heard him speak that FTX would turn out to be yet another crypto-scam/disaster.
benreesman 2y ago
Never having been an elite semiconductor person myself, I have only the dimmest intuition about the absurd science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that goes into it: but you hear these parts per trillion, measured in angstroms, quantum mechanics type units of account and it’s hard not to imagine it as some world apart. I have a fond fantasy that those folks are laughing their asses off whenever we call the software stuff “high technology”.
- petre 2y ago
  They're laughing their asses off when some CEO of an AI company comes out and asks investors for $7T for AI chips. Sure bro, here's 1/4 of the US GDP for your AI chips.
- bob1029 2y ago
  The hard part of semiconductor manufacturing is all about the emergent complexity of many systems put together all at once. Any one tool can be isolated and dealt with by a finite team in a finite period of time. It's when you combine all of the tools and facilities together that you get this beast that has incomprehensible levels of complexity. Some people like to say that everything is harder in game development, but I'd say that it's even more so in semiconductor systems engineering. Tracing problems through every layer of the factory is like playing Elden Ring without a monitor. All you get is a guy in Korea who speaks very bad English to describe the scene for you. I can guarantee there is nowhere you will find more cursed problems. Imagine enduring a root cause analysis that winds up attributing a yield issue to fertilizer being spread on a field 20 miles away.
- hiddencost 2y ago
  Keep in mind they're also dealing with being potentially the only thing keeping China from invading Taiwan. So keeping their competitive advantage is very important to them.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

Is Altman another Ackman/Musk? I thought he tends to stay on topic when doing interviews.

Ericson2314 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Ackman and Musk stay on topic in interviews as far as I can tell. They may share viewpoints that much of HN disagrees with, but I don’t see them answering questions with completely unrelated responses. Altman however, dodges questions all the time, with vague corporate speak and generalities. To me it looks like he is avoiding hard questions, although maybe he just doesn’t know the answer and is trying to stumble his way through, or he genuinely wants to not give away confidential things like trade secrets.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Ackman and Musk stay on topic in interviews as far as I can tell. They may share viewpoints that much of HN disagrees with Makes sense. I'd consider Ackman issuing comments on politics off topic for a hedge fund manager. But I suppose he's technically on topic with a narrow view. > Altman however, dodges questions all the time, with vague corporate speak and generalities He has a documented history of dishonesty, correct?
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    I don’t know his history fully enough to say. But it does seem like past claims about not getting equity or about keeping OpenAI’s founding principles may have at least changed. Some claim it may be an honest change - they need capital to compete, attract talent, and complete their mission, and giving equity actually keeps Altman focused on OpenAI instead of side gigs and investments. That could be true. But I’ve found his evasiveness in interviews to be untrustworthy.
drexlspivey 2y ago
My opinion after hearing him on multiple interviews is that he always just says various generalities, he can be talking for 5 minutes and never say anything, all noise. I don't know if he is under an NDA and can't say literally anything about OpenAI and the future or if it's just the way he talks.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  Maybe he doesn't actually know anything?
  - maxwell 2y ago
    But he has such force of will.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    That would be my bet. He's a CEO, I've not once heard it suggested that he's also a researcher (though according to Wikipedia he's a Stanford CompSci dropout). Quite rare to be competent at both CEO-things and the stuff you're hiring people to do.
    - disqard 2y ago
      A Stanford dropout? He must be hot stuff, like Elizabeth Holmes... oops, wrong example.
- akomtu 2y ago
  Perhaps he uses an earpiece connected to an LLM.
- surfingdino 2y ago
  I had the same revelation when I read the transcript of one of his interviews with Lex. I found it to be so free of detail or substance that I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a one case of him having a bad day, but reading transcripts of a couple of more interviews confirmed my suspicion that he has nothing of substance to say.
mrcwinn 2y ago
It may just be his public persona. I don’t work with him on a day to day basis of course. I find him to be very uninteresting. He speaks with an air of aloof tech-savant but it feels quite hallow, faked, forced. I can’t think of many examples where he said something in an interview and it really challenged or surprised me. By contrast, any random hour with Lisa Su and you will come away quite impressed and easily understand why she is her company’s leader. Plenty of smart money behind Altman, though, so maybe he shows up stronger behind the scenes. [Edit: added "aloof" due to perceived aloofness.]
- soneca 2y ago
  Magicleap also had plenty of smart money behind them. It ceased to be a useful signal for me then.
  - disqard 2y ago
    Indeed, and SoftBank flushed a ton down the toilet named WeWork because of Adam Neumann's charisma. I don't think anyone doubts Sam's ability to charm people and tell a good story. The graver concern is "should we trust him"? My gut says NO.
- botro 2y ago
  "Suddenly, the chat window on Sequoia’s side of the Zoom lights up with partners freaking out. “I LOVE THIS FOUNDER,” typed one partner. “I am a 10 out of 10,” pinged another. “YES!!!” exclaimed a third. What Sequoia was reacting to was the scale of SBF’s vision....We were incredibly impressed, Bailhe says. “It was one of those your-hair-is-blown-back type of meetings.” This is 'smart money' in reference to Sam Bankman Fried.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Not really the dig you think it is. They were right but got unlucky that SBF broke the law, which is hard to predict.
ohSidfried 2y ago
[dead]
dotnet00 2y ago
Altman projects more Bankman-Fried vibes to me than Musk vibes. A common sentiment about SpaceX and Musk is that the employees also believe in the mission of making space accessible and going to Mars. Musk has been consistent on that being SpaceX's eventual goal since founding it, and he stuck through it even when SpaceX was one failure away from missing payroll. All of his early employees still publicly support this mission, even after retiring or moving on to found their own space companies. Altman comes off as a "say anything to keep the money flowing" type guy even to his own employees. The fractured leadership all seems to suggest that he can't even manage to convince the people who work with him the most that he actually believes in his oft-repeated lofty goals regarding AGI.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I thought SBF interviews I listened to were excellent, with lots of substance and clear explication, especially the interview with Matt levine
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    Interesting, my impression of him from his interviews was the opposite, while I didn't follow him closely, I felt from the first time I heard him speak that FTX would turn out to be yet another crypto-scam/disaster.

benreesman 2y ago

Never having been an elite semiconductor person myself, I have only the dimmest intuition about the absurd science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that goes into it: but you hear these parts per trillion, measured in angstroms, quantum mechanics type units of account and it’s hard not to imagine it as some world apart. I have a fond fantasy that those folks are laughing their asses off whenever we call the software stuff “high technology”.

petre 2y ago
They're laughing their asses off when some CEO of an AI company comes out and asks investors for $7T for AI chips. Sure bro, here's 1/4 of the US GDP for your AI chips.
bob1029 2y ago
The hard part of semiconductor manufacturing is all about the emergent complexity of many systems put together all at once. Any one tool can be isolated and dealt with by a finite team in a finite period of time. It's when you combine all of the tools and facilities together that you get this beast that has incomprehensible levels of complexity. Some people like to say that everything is harder in game development, but I'd say that it's even more so in semiconductor systems engineering. Tracing problems through every layer of the factory is like playing Elden Ring without a monitor. All you get is a guy in Korea who speaks very bad English to describe the scene for you. I can guarantee there is nowhere you will find more cursed problems. Imagine enduring a root cause analysis that winds up attributing a yield issue to fertilizer being spread on a field 20 miles away.
hiddencost 2y ago
Keep in mind they're also dealing with being potentially the only thing keeping China from invading Taiwan. So keeping their competitive advantage is very important to them.