I think a lot of people wish this were true as it would justify any envy people have of him.

Unfortunately, I don't think you can be as successful at something like Artificial Intelligence by just sucking up to people with money.

I don't know him, but when a lot of smart independent voices are saying "this guy's wicked smart" I really think it would be a lot harder to fake it than to actually be wicked smart (and deeply altruistic - fella seems pretty genuine about progressing humanity instead of MSFT's share price).

I mostly agree with you, but then again a lot of people say "this guy's wicked smart" about Musk and he's clearly a buffoon.

You can be really smart in some areas and really bad in others - it's all context when people give you compliments.

Would you be comfortable building a competing company against a buffoon? I would. If I could help it though, I wouldn't fancy competing with Musk.

Those aren't opposites. He's clearly a wicked smart buffoon.

> it would justify any envy people have of him.

What envy?

You don't think people don't envy people like him?

Multi-millionaire. CEO of the most promising AI company in the world which might actually crack it. World Leaders are asking him when he's free for a quick chat. How fulfilled do you think he feels?

It would be weird for people not to have some envy of someone like that. It's not super healthy but the only thing productive about envy is that it pushes you to do something better.

> It would be weird for people not to have some envy of someone like that.

I guess that I'm weird, then, because I genuinely have no envy of him.

I made my comment because it's quite common to see people dismiss criticisms of others based on "they're just envious", when in fact envy is rarely the reason for the criticisms.

I know what you mean and I agree that it's an easy reason to use but I felt the original question wasn't a reasonable thought-out argument and sounded more bitter than analytical and bitterness leads to envy which leads to the dark side.

> How fulfilled do you think he feels?

This is such a deliciously strange question to ask about a person who isn’t one’s self.

In a world where our jobs and entire careers are based on "impact" and "fulfilment" I think this an interesting question to ask about someone who's had the impact he's had as in I don't know anyone who hasn't heard of ChatGPT.

It's certainly an interesting question, just not one I had ever considered asking another human who wasn't myself.

Deeply altruistic? Isn’t he the guy behind worldcoin, creating a privacy nightmare? How is collecting biometric data from millions of people ethical, especially when most of those people likely don’t even understand what it is that they’re giving away, for little money?

Different views on what's "good" for humanity, and all that. Lots of historical villains have been doing something they thought was good for humanity -- it's just that most of humanity disagreed.

I agree with you, by the way. It's just an area with a lot of subjective gradation.

It seems to me that the really wicked smart people understood long ago that AI research is very dangerous and that founding a new company along the lines of OpenAI would increase the danger: yes, it would provide significant benefits to humanity, but then it would wipe out the human species, either directly or by helping another AI lab to do so.

I'm praying that the reckless actions of people like Altman and Musk do not kill me and everyone I care about.

Everyone knows someone who is wicked smart and very ambitious, but has a blind spot such that they cannot apply their intelligence to perceive correctly a situation in which they must lose status (i.e., admit that founding OpenAI was a mistake and shut it down) for the sake of the greater good. I figure that Altman is probably one of those.

Also, when in human history have the people who've been most successful in scrambling to the top of some sector of the economy been the ones who successfully recognized when that sector has become destructive? When the commercial excesses of America during the Gilded Age needed to be reined in, was it some industrial magnate like Carnegie or Rockefeller who sounded the alarm and led society's corrective action against the excesses? Was it the CEOs and leading scientists of the fossil-fuel companies that led the charge against global warming?

> It seems to me that the really wicked smart people understood long ago that AI research is very dangerous.

Every time I hear Elon or Altman claiming the "Dangers of AI" I don't see them as intelligent.

I see them as pandering to a misinformed public, trying to upsell AI as the Terminator, when it's nothing more than a sophisticated algorithm. What they're actually doing is anti-competitive, attempting to stop new entrants by securing a monopoly by way of government regulation and misinformation. It's not intelligence, it's sleazy.

So we agree that Altman is behaving badly, but not why.

Even if this is true it's odd to disparage someone based on this. Influencing people is a valuable and important skill.

TIL Elon bought Sam Altman a horse (or I assume he followed through with his promise to in exchange ...)

No, Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI because he build it. He's incredibly smart and driven, the only wealthy person I've worked with who I think is, at his core, a good person who cares.

I don't know the backstory, but they've gone their separate ways since this podcast. Musk left OpenAI after a failed takeover attempt:

> Musk told fellow cofounder Sam Altman in early 2018 that he thought OpenAI, which has since created ChatGPT, was lagging behind Google, people familiar with the matter told Semafor. Musk offered to take charge of OpenAI to lead it himself, but when Altman and other co-founders said no, Musk stepped down from the board and backed out of a huge donation, per Semafor.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-tried-l...

Have you considered that maybe his skill is making other people, like you, believe he is a good person who cares? He is, after all, most known for his ability to influence others (particularly billionaires) into doing what he wants. And the whole doomsday prepper thing is pretty weird.

Maybe! But I wasn’t rich or important when I worked with Sam, and he had no reason to charm me. He barely knew me, and everything I saw about him was genuine and kind — not to me, but how he interacted with the world.

I’ve known many “important” or “rich” people over the years, and there’s always something in their eye that betrays what they want you to think of them. Sam is likely the only person of that sort I’d ever speak fondly of — he’s a genuinely good person who cares about humans more than the abstract concept of humanity.