7 ms·
The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman
- s5300 9mo ago[dead]
- hiddencost 9mo agoWhy. Do. We. Keep. Posting. Gary. Marcus. He's been writing variants of this kind of thing for decades and he's always been wrong.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- elliotec 9mo agoAny examples? I've never heard of him, but that seems like a big statement.
- zelag 9mo agoGary Marcus is not the only one that has been critical of Sam Altman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0K4XPu3Qhg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0K4XPu3Qhg There's many other people but most of them are independent. It is glaringly obvious now most of the media outlets are afraid to ask the tough questions.
- throwitaway222 9mo agoHere is a more fun one to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrgEZ8FeZEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrgEZ8FeZEc
- lkbm 9mo agoSure, but why post Gary Marcus then? That said, MPU has been pretty solidly crazy with their LLM critiques lately (did you know it uses all the drinking water?!?!?). There are plenty of sane, grounded-in-reality critiques. Why not focus on those?
- roadside_picnic 9mo agoI'm not a particularly big Gary Marcus fan, but I'm even less of a fan of the term "always". I browsed back looking for posts of his that most obviously made predictions, and "GPT-5… now arriving Gate 8, Gate 9, Gate 10" make a few very clear predictions and was absolutely correct [0] about them. This was in June 2024, and Marcus claims two major predictions: - "As of today, I am more confident than ever that GPT-5 won’t land this year." - "Gary Marcus is still betting that GPT-5 will continue to hallucinate and make a bunch of wacky errors, whenever it finally drops." It would be over a year from his posting that article that GPT-5 would finally land, and his overall prediction that the result would be lack-luster was also spot on. Again, I don't particularly care one way or another about Gary Marcus, but flat out dismissing his writing doesn't really hold up. 0. https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/gpt-5-now-arriving-gate-8-gate-9 https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/gpt-5-now-arriving-gate-8-...
- ccapitalK 9mo agoHe also posted https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/lets-be-honest-generative-ai-isnt https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/lets-be-honest-generative-..., which got flagged as low effort spam about 30 minutes ago. https://news.ycombinator.com./item?id=46605587 https://news.ycombinator.com./item?id=46605587
- captain_coffee 9mo ago> and he's always been wrong Please explain in as much detail as you can because that is a very bold statement
- codyklimdev 9mo agoI've been wondering for a while if Sam is going to become an Elizabeth Holmes style figure with all of his talk about "a magic intelligence in the sky" and that in 5 years AI will replace 95% of marketing work. It seems like he's set up impossible promises, it'll be interesting to see what comes from their non-delivery.
- mlinsey 9mo agoVery different to lie about what your current product actually does (especially if it's a medical testing product!) vs to give predictions about your future products that turn out to be too overhyped. A good example of the latter is Elon, which also goes to show that you only have to have the pie-in-the-sky vision succeed a couple times for a lot of people to forgive a lot of other overpromises.
- zelphirkalt 9mo agoRight, though both are about lying blatantly, despite better knowledge, with the motivation of personal gain behind it.
- miltonlost 9mo agoWell, Musk does both now. He's lying about the present and his future.
- gizajob 9mo agoHe’s the next SBF.
- dyauspitr 9mo agoPie in the sky is not the same as fraudulent claims about your product.
- codyklimdev 9mo agoTrue but I think if Pie In The Sky marketing leads to a catastrophic market crash and an economic depression, Sam Altman does deserve to be held accountable in some respect
- arjie 9mo agoDo people actually find this kind of dunk content interesting? It's super popular but I wonder if people find it insightful or entertaining. I watched a little of Stephen Colbert and John Oliver and it's mostly boring stuff that is pretty much characterized as "This guy IS AN IDIOT!" and "They're LOSING" and whatnot. It seems like the equivalent of those "Charlie Kirk owns feminists with FACTS and LOGIC". If you go to /r/all you'll see that it's almost all dunk content. I get the appeal in an abstract sense. I get a real kick out of watching yet another Manchester United manager cock it up. But all I do is see the scores and enjoy a bit of schadenfreude. The audience for these guys seems highly enthusiastic about their content. It's like if I watched every United game to get as much enjoyment out of watching them suck. It's particularly annoying because people are clearly not posting this guy because he's right often or because he's good at predicting stuff. They're posting because he's dunking on people they dislike.
- fabian2k 9mo agoHaven't read this one, and there is certainly plenty of useless rage bait on the internet. But in general it is important and serves a purpose to criticize people wielding a lot of power. This doesn't have to be constructive, if those people are idiots and doing harmful things.
- fuzzy2 9mo agoPeople must find it click-worthy, otherwise why would we get the amount of "we got him"-type of content we do?
- concinds 9mo agoGary Marcus is a terrific self-promoter and grifter, and there are very large audiences for that sort of stuff. It's simple. He does more than dunks though, I don't think that's really fair to him. He's trying to position himself as a public intellectual and expert.
- arjie 9mo agoI did a quick Algolia search https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=garymarcus.substack.com&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... If I'm being honest, the combination of the HN audience and him is that he's just a dunk machine. It's all right. I get it. People here like this kind of content. I have to killfile the domain and users who post positively about it if I want to improve my personal feed. That's on me to curate rather than to post Yet Another Complaint Comment (the lesser known yacc). The rapid rise and slow decline of Sam Altman Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well Marcus Weighs in (Mostly) for LeCun Why ChatGPT can't be trusted with breaking news The AI bubble is all over now, baby blue Six (or seven) predictions for AI 2026 from a Generative AI realist The Core Misconception That Is Driving American AI Policy "Scale Is All You Need" Is Dead ChatGPT 3 turned 3 today. It still hasn't come close to meeting expectations A trillion dollars (potentially) wasted on gen-AI Has the bailout of generative AI begun? Yann LeCun originated none of his ideas Hot take on Google's Gemini 3 The False Glorification of Yann LeCun Sam Altman's pants are on fire Is Vibe Coding Dying? OpenAI probably can't make ends meet. That's where you come in Five signs that Generative AI is losing traction Usage may be declining Could China devastate the US without firing a shot? Five signs that Generative AI is losing traction Is vibe coding dying? Erdosgate AGI is not imminent, and LLMs are not the royal road to getting there Game over for pure LLMs. Even Rich Sutton has gotten off the bus New AI hype "Our language models are so 'conscious' we need to give them rights" Peak Bubble OpenAI's Future, Foretold?
- submeta 9mo agoThe man brought us LLMs and ever more capable models. I don’t know about the critics, but my work life completely changed from Dec 2022 on. Ever since chatgpt was released. I cannot imagine working without LLMs and agents anymore. They make me literally 10-100x more productive, transforming text, generating text, doing research, writing code, documenting systems, doing web search and so much more. And for that I am forever thankful to Sam Altman and all the people who made this possible.
- droopyEyelids 9mo agoIt can be a bit tricky to attribute the product of an entire company to the CEO... even if the CEO is a founder!
- submeta 9mo agoComputers existed before Steve Jobs made them usable. Sam Altman created a company that created a product that millions of people started to use witin days.
- palmotea 9mo ago> The man brought us LLMs and ever more capable models. ... And for that I am forever thankful to Sam Altman and all the people who made this possible. Why thank Altman and not thank Joe Biden? He was running the country when these models you praise were released, and they both had about as much real involvement in their actual construction. The CEO didn't do the work, he shouldn't get all (or even most) of the credit.
- cadamsdotcom 9mo agoNot sure why you’re getting downvoted. Sam Altman despite his flaws played a key role in kickstarting the capital war that’s led to the insane investment in infrastructure that’ll carry us to a new age once the hype dies down. He created and continues to create an atmosphere for innovation inside OpenAI that showed the way for the fast-followers. He lit a fire under the ass of Google for gods sake. Whatever he did or didn’t invent, he made a ton of invention possible. Where to from here is uncertain but without sama maybe ChatGPT didn’t happen the same way - or maybe it crashed and people shrugged. Maybe in the other timeline that leads to another AI winter. But one thing is for certain, without sama the whole thing would’ve been a lot smaller.
- fairity 9mo agoWords are cheap. I really wish there was a way to incentivize authors like this to put their money where their mouth is, before seeking attention for their ideas.
- twoodfin 9mo agoI’m guessing it’s hard to go short OpenAI without also going short a bunch of other companies riding the AI wave that aren’t led by Sam Altman? Would love to hear how that could work.
- CodingJeebus 9mo agoShorting a security means risking exponential losses if the stock you're shorting continues to increase in value. As the saying goes: the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
- gizajob 9mo agoJust short Nvidia. If the thing goes bang then that’ll be one of the big losers.
- tucnak 9mo ago"Just short Nvidia" Is this financial advice? :-)
- lkbm 9mo agoIf so, keep in mind that it's contingent advice. The question was how to profit from predicting an AI bubble popping [or something along those lines]. The answer is shorting Nvideo (assuming your prediction also includes a timeline). It's always a way to lose a massive amount of money if you're wrong, so the advice is also contingent on confidence level.
- tucnak 9mo agoI'm not trying to be facetious here, but I think it's very naive to assume you get to "profit from predicting an AI bubble." In theory, maybe, but in reality you will lose money. Shorting is never the solution... it's a very niche tool for very niche group of investors. When retail guys talk shorting, it's very hard to take them seriously.
- Animats 9mo agoLosing Apple as a customer is kind of a problem.
- vld_chk 9mo agoWhile general vibe of Sam and OpenAI losing steam is correct for me; I genially disagree with all “hate” of GPT-5. It was indeed not a crazy breakthrough, but, honestly, 5.2 model at extended thinking path in Pro version is utterly scary to me. I can give it some complicated multi-tier question which requires modeling, abstract thinking, computation, and rationality; it can walk away for 45 minutes, produce CoT with a length of Empire State Building and give me fairly good and well written response. I can’t speak for all industries, but 5.2-Pro-extended is really scarce when it comes to math and reasoning. Here I am a bit on Sam side when he said that most of people severely underutilize modern AI by using it same as in 2023. The capability of recent models sounds to me way beyond current typical use cases.
- eyfuh 9mo agoIME it still can’t answer “is the state of Oregon entirely north of New York City” correctly. It’s possible they hard coded it since I posted about it online. How do you reconcile its inability to answer this simple question with your rather optimistic view of its capabilities? Edit: lmao at downvotes over discussion…well, I use burner accounts. You have no power here.
- octernion 9mo agodoes he think truly think e.g. opus 4.5 is "plateaued"? i really can't even vaguely take him seriously if he actually thinks that. what a silly man.
- gusmally 9mo agowhat do you mean?
- Incipient 9mo agoI absolutely think AI will be/has been comoditised. The real value is in integrations and being able to draw in the right context, cleanly, to get the right outputs. This is something where Google, Microsoft, and Apple, will really be able to dominate. Lots of businesses I've seen have already been using copilot for asking questions about their entire sharepoint library. The underlying model I expect could quite easily be gpt5, Claude, or even DS R1 without anyone really caring or noticing.