5 ms·

Doesn't Sam Altman famously not own OpenAI? His whole arrangement is so shady.

by boringg 5mo ago

meowface 5mo ago
Is there a more benign explanation for these things? Altman is undeniably famously cagey and political but despite most of the tech and non-tech worlds at this point seeing him as some kind of con artist, I still kind of want to try to believe he's not. No doubt some of OpenAI's founding principles like "stop + assist if a competitor gets to AGI first" are likely flying out the window, perhaps in part due to him and also as one might anticipate of initial lofty ideals and promises, but even with the recent New Yorker and other articles he seems like someone who maybe regularly placates people to avoid personal problems and lies to get out of trouble rather than a Machiavellian tech baron.
- bfivyvysj 5mo ago
  We already reached agi a while ago.
- mcmcmc 5mo ago
  > he seems like someone who maybe regularly placates people to avoid personal problems and lies to get out of trouble rather than a Machiavellian tech baron. This would be more plausible were it not for the staggering amount of wealth he’s amassed through those lies.
- mrhottakes 5mo ago
  When someone tells you who they are, you should believe them.
- elmomle 5mo ago
  He will say whatever it takes to get the result he wants. That's manipulative and, when pursued as a lifestyle, sociopathic. Living like that is corrupting. When you treat humans like objects, the question of your starting intentions is really secondary.
  - s1artibartfast 5mo ago
    what did he do to you?
  - genxy 5mo ago
    I like his tactic of talking to everyone individually to be able to tell each person exactly what they want to hear. I now use that one all the time.
    - funimpoded 5mo ago
      Beware that there exist people who will cut you out of their lives—professional, personal, whatever—completely, likely with no warning, and possibly loudly, publicly, and with-receipts (if they’ve seen this kind of thing before or have thought through what your next steps will be after they cut you out) if they find out you do this. All it takes is for a few of them to start comparing notes behind your back. Shit goes sideways extremely fast for people pulling this whose victims start talking to each other without them as the intermediary.
      - genxy 5mo ago
        The secret is to be able to fail up at a rate higher than you burn the ecosystem around you. You are gone before people notice. That and being funny with enough charisma that it doesn't matter. Sam can't actually operate in this environment, everyone already knows his manipulative schticks. This is one of the reasons that startups prefer the young, they often haven't been exposed to the grift and the manipulation. As a tech bro sociopath, I'd be wary of joining a startup with a mixture of ages, genders, experiences across the spectrum of ICs and management. They probably have experienced too much to be griftable in the same ways as an org stacked with young ICs. You also want to make sure that there are other people in the management chain that are more emotionally unstable. It takes much of the focus off of ones own pathologies. Happy Hacking!
- jjulius 5mo ago
  > ... I still kind of want to try to believe he's not. Asking genuinely - why?
  - hx8 5mo ago
    What if it's actually super-intelligence and a human aligned visionary is at the helm. The good case is very good.
    - latexr 5mo ago
      Come on… The guy who said he can’t imagine caring for his child without consulting ChatGPT… The guy who said he didn’t know how to make revenue with ChatGPT, and made a “soft promise” to investors they’d somehow achieve AGI then ask it how to make money… The guy who made a cryptocurrency scam that was banned in multiple countries… The guy who everyone around him says he’s a con artist and a sociopath… That guy? Really?
      - meowface 5mo ago
        Really. That guy. I'm afraid you're one side of the coin in https://paulgraham.com/fh.html https://paulgraham.com/fh.html. Paul himself would agree with me on that if he were to read your post.
        latexr 5mo ago
        I’ve read enough Paul Graham to know he’s not someone whose opinion I care about or respect. He’s yet another rich guy tech bro out of touch with normal people who unfortunately has an army of wannabe tech and finance bro shills clinging to his every word like he’s some sort of sage. He’s not. He isn’t smarter than anyone else, he just has a bigger platform. I don’t abide by cults of personality, they’re a major reason everything is shit right now. They’re the fuel that perpetuates online and offline toxicity. Bragging that Paul Graham would agree with you is like bragging Will Smith or Kim Kardashian agrees with you: it’s not a badge of honour even if it’s true, and doesn’t make your argument stronger or mean you’re right. But since you value his opinion so much, perhaps you should inform yourself of what he has said about Altman, including “Sam had been lying to us all the time”.
- grey-area 5mo ago
  His own sister accused him of sexual assault. He was fired from his first startup. He was abruptly fired from ycombinator in shady circumstances. He was accused by the OpenAI board of lying to them, ousted, and somehow managed to regain control. He took OpenAI from being a non-profit to a for-profit, with obvious benefits to whoever controls it. He was massively misleading about the capabilities of his product and predicted AGI within years. At some point the pattern of all these events should have some weight in your judgement of him, no?
  - meowface 5mo ago
    Paul Graham, founder of the website we're on, still says he likes and trusts him. He just was annoyed he was constantly distracted by AI stuff when he was supposed to be running YC as president (which bears no resemblance to any current events...). He, at worst, finds him to have been (at some point) incompetent, which is very different from finding him immoral. Paul keeps replying to tweets to clarify this when people continue to misportray his stance. "He was accused by the OpenAI board of lying to them, ousted, and somehow managed to regain control." is the only thing you wrote which is plainly true and valid to state. I am sure there may exist good, strong criticisms, but your argument is so tendentiously gish-gallopy that it will if anything just make people more likely to disbelieve his critics. (Not that I would do that, since that'd be just as fallacious.) Why would OpenAI employees all still be happily working for him and publicly supporting him? Why is the company still so successful, and the leader? Why wouldn't most of them have left in droves to Anthropic or elsewhere, by now? Especially given most technical employees at OpenAI (justifiably) share the eschatological views of AI shared' by Anthropic staff and other TESCREALists, in which case they really really try to be careful about who will be responsible for potential future superintelligence. The board and some executives disliked and distrusted him but it's unclear many other people there did or do now. And I'm not just talking about the petition but the people who have continued working there for years afterwards.
    - dug4wt 5mo ago
      [dead]
    - 5mo ago
s1artibartfast 5mo ago
So a non-profit can absolute invest in or own a for-profit subsidary. This is extremely common. The idea is that the for-profit returns will flow back to the non-profit and remain dedicated to the non-profit mission. Where things get really shady and run the risk of IRS violations is when the leadership of the non-profit has a seperate for profit stake in the subsidary.
- boringg 5mo ago
  When your public position is that you don't own equity in the company it implies that you aren't making money off of it. However if you have all sorts of side deals through intermediaries and you are making money off the entity it looks quite bad.
  - s1artibartfast 5mo ago
    Perhaps to some that don't know what equity means. I dont think it looks bad. The devil is always in the details: Were helion and reddit deals fair market value or self dealing?
dagamer34 5mo ago
Sam has stake in Y Combinator from when he was CEO, who also has an ownership stake in OpenAI. So to say that he owns no part of OpenAI is silly.

Doesn't Sam Altman famously not own OpenAI? His whole arrangement is so shady.

by boringg 5mo ago

Doesn't Sam Altman famously not own OpenAI? His whole arrangement is so shady.

Is there a more benign explanation for these things? Altman is undeniably famously cagey and political but despite most of the tech and non-tech worlds at this point seeing him as some kind of con artist, I still kind of want to try to believe he's not. No doubt some of OpenAI's founding principles like "stop + assist if a competitor gets to AGI first" are likely flying out the window, perhaps in part due to him and also as one might anticipate of initial lofty ideals and promises, but even with the recent New Yorker and other articles he seems like someone who maybe regularly placates people to avoid personal problems and lies to get out of trouble rather than a Machiavellian tech baron.

bfivyvysj 5mo ago
We already reached agi a while ago.
mcmcmc 5mo ago
> he seems like someone who maybe regularly placates people to avoid personal problems and lies to get out of trouble rather than a Machiavellian tech baron. This would be more plausible were it not for the staggering amount of wealth he’s amassed through those lies.
mrhottakes 5mo ago
When someone tells you who they are, you should believe them.
elmomle 5mo ago
He will say whatever it takes to get the result he wants. That's manipulative and, when pursued as a lifestyle, sociopathic. Living like that is corrupting. When you treat humans like objects, the question of your starting intentions is really secondary.
- s1artibartfast 5mo ago
  what did he do to you?
- genxy 5mo ago
  I like his tactic of talking to everyone individually to be able to tell each person exactly what they want to hear. I now use that one all the time.
  - funimpoded 5mo ago
    Beware that there exist people who will cut you out of their lives—professional, personal, whatever—completely, likely with no warning, and possibly loudly, publicly, and with-receipts (if they’ve seen this kind of thing before or have thought through what your next steps will be after they cut you out) if they find out you do this. All it takes is for a few of them to start comparing notes behind your back. Shit goes sideways extremely fast for people pulling this whose victims start talking to each other without them as the intermediary.
    - genxy 5mo ago
      The secret is to be able to fail up at a rate higher than you burn the ecosystem around you. You are gone before people notice. That and being funny with enough charisma that it doesn't matter. Sam can't actually operate in this environment, everyone already knows his manipulative schticks. This is one of the reasons that startups prefer the young, they often haven't been exposed to the grift and the manipulation. As a tech bro sociopath, I'd be wary of joining a startup with a mixture of ages, genders, experiences across the spectrum of ICs and management. They probably have experienced too much to be griftable in the same ways as an org stacked with young ICs. You also want to make sure that there are other people in the management chain that are more emotionally unstable. It takes much of the focus off of ones own pathologies. Happy Hacking!
jjulius 5mo ago
> ... I still kind of want to try to believe he's not. Asking genuinely - why?
- hx8 5mo ago
  What if it's actually super-intelligence and a human aligned visionary is at the helm. The good case is very good.
  - latexr 5mo ago
    Come on… The guy who said he can’t imagine caring for his child without consulting ChatGPT… The guy who said he didn’t know how to make revenue with ChatGPT, and made a “soft promise” to investors they’d somehow achieve AGI then ask it how to make money… The guy who made a cryptocurrency scam that was banned in multiple countries… The guy who everyone around him says he’s a con artist and a sociopath… That guy? Really?
    - meowface 5mo ago
      Really. That guy. I'm afraid you're one side of the coin in https://paulgraham.com/fh.html https://paulgraham.com/fh.html. Paul himself would agree with me on that if he were to read your post.
      - latexr 5mo ago
        I’ve read enough Paul Graham to know he’s not someone whose opinion I care about or respect. He’s yet another rich guy tech bro out of touch with normal people who unfortunately has an army of wannabe tech and finance bro shills clinging to his every word like he’s some sort of sage. He’s not. He isn’t smarter than anyone else, he just has a bigger platform. I don’t abide by cults of personality, they’re a major reason everything is shit right now. They’re the fuel that perpetuates online and offline toxicity. Bragging that Paul Graham would agree with you is like bragging Will Smith or Kim Kardashian agrees with you: it’s not a badge of honour even if it’s true, and doesn’t make your argument stronger or mean you’re right. But since you value his opinion so much, perhaps you should inform yourself of what he has said about Altman, including “Sam had been lying to us all the time”.
grey-area 5mo ago
His own sister accused him of sexual assault. He was fired from his first startup. He was abruptly fired from ycombinator in shady circumstances. He was accused by the OpenAI board of lying to them, ousted, and somehow managed to regain control. He took OpenAI from being a non-profit to a for-profit, with obvious benefits to whoever controls it. He was massively misleading about the capabilities of his product and predicted AGI within years. At some point the pattern of all these events should have some weight in your judgement of him, no?
- meowface 5mo ago
  Paul Graham, founder of the website we're on, still says he likes and trusts him. He just was annoyed he was constantly distracted by AI stuff when he was supposed to be running YC as president (which bears no resemblance to any current events...). He, at worst, finds him to have been (at some point) incompetent, which is very different from finding him immoral. Paul keeps replying to tweets to clarify this when people continue to misportray his stance. "He was accused by the OpenAI board of lying to them, ousted, and somehow managed to regain control." is the only thing you wrote which is plainly true and valid to state. I am sure there may exist good, strong criticisms, but your argument is so tendentiously gish-gallopy that it will if anything just make people more likely to disbelieve his critics. (Not that I would do that, since that'd be just as fallacious.) Why would OpenAI employees all still be happily working for him and publicly supporting him? Why is the company still so successful, and the leader? Why wouldn't most of them have left in droves to Anthropic or elsewhere, by now? Especially given most technical employees at OpenAI (justifiably) share the eschatological views of AI shared' by Anthropic staff and other TESCREALists, in which case they really really try to be careful about who will be responsible for potential future superintelligence. The board and some executives disliked and distrusted him but it's unclear many other people there did or do now. And I'm not just talking about the petition but the people who have continued working there for years afterwards.
  - dug4wt 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - 5mo ago

s1artibartfast 5mo ago

So a non-profit can absolute invest in or own a for-profit subsidary. This is extremely common. The idea is that the for-profit returns will flow back to the non-profit and remain dedicated to the non-profit mission. Where things get really shady and run the risk of IRS violations is when the leadership of the non-profit has a seperate for profit stake in the subsidary.

boringg 5mo ago
When your public position is that you don't own equity in the company it implies that you aren't making money off of it. However if you have all sorts of side deals through intermediaries and you are making money off the entity it looks quite bad.
- s1artibartfast 5mo ago
  Perhaps to some that don't know what equity means. I dont think it looks bad. The devil is always in the details: Were helion and reddit deals fair market value or self dealing?

dagamer34 5mo ago

Sam has stake in Y Combinator from when he was CEO, who also has an ownership stake in OpenAI. So to say that he owns no part of OpenAI is silly.