Altman has proven time and again that he is little more than a huckster wrt technology, and in business he is a stone cold shark.

Conman plain and simple.

Not going to lie, he had me. He appeared very genuine and fair in almost all media he appeared like podcasts but many of his actions are just so hard to justify.

He has a certain charm and seeming sincerity when he talks. But the more I see of him, the more disturbing I find him -- he combines the Mark Zuckerberg stare with the Elizabeth Holmes vocal fry.

Do you have a link to a video of Altman's voice shifting from controlled deep to nasal? The videos of Elizabeth Holmes not being able to keep up with the faked deep tone are textbook-worthy...

so all psychopaths do, aren't they?

CEO's have been studied to have a disproportionately higher rate of psychopathy. So there's a little correlation. You don't get to the top of a company in this kind of society without having some inherent charm (assuming you aren't simply inheriting billions from a previous generation).

All power position attract psychopaths, so naturally we find more when we look at those.

Not the physically violent ones with impulse control problems.

I have exactly the same feeling as I think you do. When you reach the levels of success he has, there will always be people screaming that you are incompetent, evil and every other negative adjective under the sun. But he genuinely seemed to care about doing the right thing. But this is just so lacking of basic morals that I have to conclude that I was wrong, at least to an extent.

I feel that this is a classic tale of success getting to you. It almost feels like it's impossible to be successful at this level and remain true. At least, I hadn't seen it yet.

Or "success" itself acts as a filter selecting for those who are ruthless enough to do amoral and immoral things.

He just, to his credit, understands his public persona has to be the non-douchy-tech-bro and the media will eat it up. Much like a politician. He doesn't want to be like Elon or Travis K in public (though he probably agrees with them more than his public persona would imply).

This is why it's a mistake to go by "vibes" of a person when they're speaking to an audience. Pay attention to what they do, not what they say.

You'd think that Worldcoin would be enough proof of what he is but I guess people missed that memo.

Much as I dislike crypto, that's more of "having no sense of other people's privacy" (and hubris) than general scamminess.

It's a Musk-error not an SBF-error. (Of course, I do realise many will say all three are the same, but I think it's worth separating the types of mistakes everyone makes, because everyone makes mistakes, and only two of these three also did useful things).

It's not just about privacy either.

Worldcoin is centrally controlled making it a classic "scam coin". Decentralization is the _only_ unique thing about cryptocurrencies, when you abandon decentralization all that's left is general scamminess.

(Yes, there's nuance to decentralization too but that's not what's going on with Worldcoin.)

True decentralisation is part of the problem with cryptocurrencies and why they can't work the way the advocates want them to.

Decentralisation allows trust-less assurance that money is sent, it's just that's not useful because the goods or services for which the money is transferred still need either trust or a centralised system that can undo the transaction because fraud happened.

That's where smart contracts come in, which I also think are a terrible idea, but do at least deserve a "you tried!" badge, because they're as dumb as saying "I will write bug-free code" rather than as dumb as "let's build a Dyson swarm to mine exactly the same amount of cryptocurrency as we would have if we did nothing".

> Decentralisation allows trust-less assurance that money is sent

That is indeed something it does.

But it also gives you the assurance that a single entity can't print unlimited money out of thin air, which is the case with a centrally controlled currency like Worldcoin.

They can just shrug their shoulders and claim that all that money is for the poor and gullible Africans that had their eyeballs scanned.

> But it also gives you the assurance that a single entity can't print unlimited money out of thin air, which is the case with a centrally controlled currency like Worldcoin.

Sure, but the inability to do that when needed is also a bad thing.

Also, single world currencies are (currently) a bad thing, because when your bit of the world needs to devalue its currency is generally different to when mine needs to do that.

But this is why economics is its own specialty and not something that software nerds should jump into like our example with numbers counts for much :D

> Sure, but the inability to do that when needed is also a bad thing.

When and why would BTC or ETH need to print unlimited money and devalue themselves?

Wrong framing, currencies don't have agency. You should be asking when would you need your currency to be devalued, regardless of what it's called or made from.

And the answer to that is all the reasons governments do just that, except for the times where the government is being particularly stupid and doing hyperinflation.

Not a very convincing answer at all.

What would a convincing answer look like?

Convincing to who? It's not like crypto is widely used as currency anywhere

There's a difference between the answer being unconvincing to people who understand it and not understanding the answer.

When the economy grows, the amount of currency needs to grow as well. Otherwise prices will fall (deflation). That hurts the economy as a whole because e.g. real wages might increase too much

> that's more of "having no sense of other people's privacy"

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

It's not particularly advanced, it's the same thing that means the supermajority of websites have opted for "click here to consent to our 1200 partners processing everything you do on our website" rather than "why do we need 1200 partners anyway?"

It's still bad, don't get be wrong, it's just something I can distinguish.

If it fools billions of people and does significant damage to the lives of people, then it's plenty advanced to me, even if it happens through a more simple or savant-like process than something that looks obviously deliberate.

I don't think the cookies thing is a good example. That's passive incompetence, to avoid the work of changing their business models. Altman actively does more work to erode people's rights.

> It's still bad, don't get be wrong, it's just something I can distinguish.

Can you? Plausible deniability is one of the first things in any malicious actor's playbook. "I meant well…" If there's no way to know, then you can only assess the pattern of behavior.

But realistically, nobody sapient accidentally spends multiple years building elaborate systems for laundering other people's IP, privacy, and likeness, and accidentally continues when they are made aware of the harms and explicitly asked multiple times to stop…

I think those websites actually have only one partner, one of the tiny oligopoly of advertisement brokers. That partner (*cough*Google*cough*), in turn, bows to the fig leaf of user consent via those interminable dialogs. So the site owners' question should probably be "Why do we need to partner with this behemoth that shackles us to 1200 'partners?".

> that's more of "having no sense of other people's privacy" (and hubris) than general scamminess.

It’s both.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40427454

Because of course he's got a crypto grift going. Shocking.

I think people tend to assume our own values and experiences have some degree of being universal.

So scammers see other scammers, and they just think there's nothing wrong with it.

While normal people who act in good faith see scammers, and instinctively think that there must be a good reason for it, even (or especially!) if it looks sketchy.

I think this happens a lot. Not just with Altman, though that is a prominent currently ongoing example.

Protecting yourself from dark triad type personalities means you need to be able to understand a worldview and system of values and axioms that is completely different from yours, which is… difficult. …There's always that impulse to assume good faith and rationalize the behavior based on your own values.

I'm glad more people are thinking this. It's amazing that he got his way back into OpenAI somehow. I said as much that he shouldn't go back to OpenAI and got downvotes universally both here and on reddit.

Altman's biggest accomplishment is being out of the way. Great work is done despite management, not because of it. It's the ability to hire the right people and get out of their hair. Altman himself has no talents, he is not technical. He is just well-connected in the Valley. But, at least Altman is not the wrecking ball like Elon Musk is, and that's really his only job - to not micromanage.

Aspiring technofeudalist.

almost every tech ceo is like that. Could list many examples. It's an effect of capitalism.

if this account is true, Sam Altman is a deeply unethical human being. Given that he doesn't bring any technical know how to building of AGI, I just don't see the reason to have such a person in charge here. The new board should act.

He rubs elbows with very powerful people including CEOs, heads of state and sheiks. They probably want 'one of them' in charge of the company that has the best chances of getting close to AGI. So it's not his technical chops and not even 'vision' in the Jobs sense that keeps him there.

Are they really the ones with the best chance now though?

They're basically owned by Microsoft, they're bleeding tech/ethnical talent and credibility, and most importantly Microsoft Research itself is no slouch (especially post-Deepmind poaching) - things like Phi are breaking ground on planets that openai hasn't even touched.

At this point I'm thinking they're destined to become nothing but a premium marketing brand for Microsoft's technology.

I thought we had already established this when the previous board tried to oust him for failing to stick to OpenAI’s charter. This is just further confirmation.

> The new board should act

You mean like the last board tried? Besides the board was picked to be on Altman’s side. The independent members were forced out.

And almost every thread on HN had its top-voted comments defending and praising Altman, while shrugging off Ilya et al. It was bizarre and disheartening to see that from this community, of all places.

He has “The Vision”… It’s the modern entrepreneurship trope that lowly engineers won’t achieve anything if they weren’t rallied by a demi-god who has “The Vision” and makes it all happen.

Probably not wrong. Lots and lots of examples of that being true.

There is something to it. Someone has to identify the intersection between what the engineering can do and what the market actually wants, then articulate that to a broad enough audience. Engineers constantly undervalue this very fuzzy and very human centric part of the work.

I don't think the issue is that Vision doesn't matter. I think the issue is Sam doesn't have it. Like Gates and Jobs had clear, well defined visions for how the PC was going to change the world, then rallied engineering talent around them and turned those into reality, that's how their billions and those lasting empires were born. Maybe someone like Elon Musk is a contemporary example. Just don't see anything like that from SamA, we see him in the media, talking a lot about AI, rubbing shoulders with power brokers, being cutthroat, but where's the vision of a better future? And if he comes up with one does he really understand the engineering well enough to ground it in reality?

I don’t know enough about him or his vision. It doesn’t seem he’s as clear as say Jobs in the past. But I do look at all the amazing things openai has done in a short period of time, and that the employees overwhelmingly backed him with the whole board chaos issue. He also has fundraised a lot money for the company. It appears he’s doing more right than wrong, and openai pulled everyone else’s pants down.

I roll my eyes when somebody says that they’re “the idea person” or that they have “the vision”.

I’d wager that most senior+ engineers or product people also have equally compelling “the vision”s.

The difference is that they need to do actual work all day so they don’t get to sit around pontificating.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. The value of "idea men" isn't their ideas, it's their ability to rally people around them. It's the exact same skill that con men use for nefarious purposes.

I mean, there's already been some yellow flags with Altman already. He founded Worldcoin, whose plan is to airdrop free money in exchange for retinal scans. And the board of OpenAI fired him for (if I've got this right) lying to the board about conversations he'd had with individual board members.

WorldCoin is how I first heard of him, and it's what made me think he was a bad actor. I think of it as a red flag, not yellow.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that his sister has publicly accused him and his brother of sexually abusing her as a child.

I didn't know about that, strange:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QDczBduZorG4dxZiW/sam-altman...

"Some commenters on Hacker News claim that a post regarding Annie's claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 has been being repeatedly removed."

Whelp. Let us see if this one sticks.

He must be bringing something to the table as they tried to get rid of him and failed spectacularly. Business is not only about technical know how.

Microsoft. They are protecting their investment.

> if this account is true, Sam Altman is a deeply unethical human being.

This isn’t even close to the most unethical thing he has done. This is peanuts compared to the Worldcoin scam.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40427454

because so many people ran cover for him, from paul graham to whos-who of silicon valley.

> if this account is true, Sam Altman is a deeply unethical human being

I thought this when he didn't launch Worldcoin in the US but Africa, and consistently upped the ante to the point where he was offering people in the poorer parts of the continent amounts that equalled two months wages or more to scan their retinas.

Why was that necessary? It wasn't to share the VC windfall.

Some people might see some parallel with SBF and see how Altman would try to regulate competition without impeding OpenAI progress

I always mix up those two in my head and have to think which one is which

One is in jail, when it should be two are in jail

I dont like sam, but he moves way smarter than ppl like sbf or Elizabeth holmes. He actual has a product close to the reported specs, albeit still far away from the ultimate goal of AGI

i dont see why he should be in jail

If his sister's words about sexually abusing her are true, he should be in jail.

no, in that case he should have been in the Juvenile incarceration system, unless the argument is that he should have been charged as an adult, or that Juvenile abusers should always be charged and sentenced as adults, or that Juvenile sex offenders who were not charged as Juveniles should be charged as adults.

Which one?

on edit: this being based on American legal system, you may come from a legal system with different rules.

Should be in jail for Worldcoin which has pilfered people of their biological identity. I guess you could literally delete Worldcoin and in theory make people whole, but that company treats humans like vegetables that have no rights.

Maybe they were the rogue AGI escapes we found along the way

sama gets to farm out much of the lobbying to Microsoft’s already very powerful team, which spends a mere $10m but that money gets magnified by MS’s gov and DoD contracts. That’s a huge safety net for him, he gets to steal and lie (as demonstrated w/ Scarlett) and yet the MS lobbying machine will continue unphased.

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...

Most likely it was an unforced error, as there’ve been a lot of chaos with cofounders and the board revolt, easy to loose track of something really minor.

Like some intern’s idea to train the voice on their favorite movie.

And then they’ve decided that this is acceptable risk/reward and not a big liability, so worth it.

This could be a well-planned opening move of a regulation gambit. But unlikely.

This is an unforced error, but it isn’t minor. It’s quite large and public.

The general public doesn’t understand the details and nuances of training an LLM, the various data sources required, and how to get them.

But the public does understand stealing someone’s voice. If you want to keep the public on your side, it’s best to not train a voice with a celebrity who hasn’t agreed to it.

I had a conversation with someone responsible for introducing LLMs into the process that involves personal information. That person rejected my concern over one person's data appearing in the report on another person. He told me that it will be possible to train AI to avoid that. The rest of the conversation convinced me that AI is seen as magic that can do anything. It seems to me that we are seeing a split between those who don't understand it and fear it and those who don't understand it, but want to align themselves with it. Those latter are those I fear the most.

The "AI is magic and we should simply believe" is even being actively promoted because all these VC hucksters need it.

Any criticism of AI is being met with "but if we all just hype AI harder, it will get so good that your criticisms won't matter" or flat out denied. You've got tech that's deeply flawed with no obvious way to get unflawed, and the current AI 'leaders' run companies with no clear way to turn a profit other than being relentlessly hyped on proposed future growth.

It's becoming an extremely apparent bubble.

On the plus side, lots of cheap nVida cards heading for eBay once it bursts.

I don't think this makes any sense, at all, quite honestly. Why would an "intern" be training one of ChatGPT's voices for a major release?

If in fact, that was the case, then OpenAI is not aligned with the statement they just put out about having utmost focus on rigor and careful considerations, in particular this line: "We know we can't imagine every possible future scenario. So we need to have a very tight feedback loop, rigorous testing, careful consideration at every step, world-class security, and harmony of safety and capabilities." [0]

[0] https://x.com/gdb/status/1791869138132218351

> easy to loose track of something really minor. Like some intern’s idea

Yes, because we all know the high profile launch for a major new product is entirely run by the interns. Stop being an apologist.

It makes a lot more sense that he was caught red-handed, likely hiring a similar voice actress and not realizing how strong identity protections are for celebs.

At first I thought there may be a /s coming...

> Like some intern’s idea to train the voice on their favorite movie.

Ah, the famous rogue engineer.

The thing is, even if it were the case, this intern would have been supervised by someone, who themselves would have been managed by someone, all the way to the top. The moment Altman makes a demo using it, he owns the problem. Such a public fuckup is embarrassing.

> And then they’ve decided that this is acceptable risk/reward and not a big liability, so worth it.

You mean, they were reckless and tried to wing it? Yes, that’s exactly what’s wrong with them.

> This could be a well-planned opening move of a regulation gambit. But unlikely.

LOL. ROFL, even. This was a gambit all right. They just expected her to cave and not ask questions. Altman has a common thing with Musk: he does not play 3D chess.

the whole technology is based on fucking over artists, who didn't expect this exact thing?

It's not just the artists, anything you do in the digital realm and anything that can be digitised is fair game. In the UK NHS GP practices refuse to register you to see a doctor even when it's urgent and tell you to use a third-party app to book an appointment. You have use your phone to take photos of the affected area and provide a personal info. I fully expect that data to be fed into some AI and sold without me knowing and without a process for removal of data should the company go bust. It is preying on the vulnerable when they need help.

Last time I booked a blood test it was via the official NHS app , not a third party.

Important to note the "The NHS" is not a single entity and the GP practice is likely a private entity owned in partnership by the doctors. There are a number of reasons why individual practices can refuse to register.

Take your point about LLMs though.

I went to see my GP and the lady at the reception told me they no longer book visits at the reception and I had to use the app. Here's the privacy policy https://support.patientaccess.com/privacy-policy They reserve the right to pass your data to third party contractors and to use it for marketing purposes. There is the obligatory clause on regarding the right to be forgotten, but the AI companies claim it is impossible to implement.

I didn't read that as reserving the right - looks like a standard dpia that is opt-in and limited.

However, GP practices are essentially privatised - so you do have the right to register at another practice.

App? What's an app?

It's a thing you put on your phone

I don't have a phone

Well, we can't register you

You don't accept people who don't have phones? Could I have that in writing please, ..., oh, your signature on that please ...

Altman doesn’t want to be part of regulation. sama wants to be the next tk. he wants to be above regulation, and he wants to spend Microsoft’s money getting there.

E.g. flying Congress to Lake Cuomo for an off-the-record “discussion” https://freebeacon.com/politics/how-the-aspen-institute-help...

Altman wants to be a part of AI regulation in the same way Bankman Fried wanted to be a part of cryptocurrency regulation.

Whats really interesting about our timeline is when you look at the history of market capture in Big Oil, Telco, Pharma, Real Estate, Banks, Tobacco etc all the lobbying, bribing, competition killing used to be done behind the scenes within elite circles.

The public hardly heard from or saw the mgmt of these firm in media until shit hit the fan.

Today it feels like managment is in the media every 3 hours trying to capture attention of prospective customers, investors, employees etc or they loose out to whoever is out there capturing more attention.

So false and condradictory signalling is easy to see. Hopefully out of all this chaos we get a better class of leaders not a better class of panderers.

So great to have twitter so the narcissistic psychopaths can't resist revealing themselves for clout.

I mean, to whatever extent it matters. All these outrageously rich morons still have tons of economic and social clout. They still have pages upon pages of fans foaming at the mouth for the opportunity to harass people asking basic questions. They still carry undue influence in our society and in our industry no matter how many times they are "outed."

What does being outed even mean anymore? It's just free advertising from all the outlets that feel they can derive revenue off your name being in their headlines. Nothing happens to them. SBF and Holmes being the notable exceptions, but that's because they stole from rich people.

This happened once the US broadcasters were no longer required to treat news as a civic responsibility.

I always had trouble telling apart those two Sams. Turns out they're the same person.

(AI)tman tries to be, (Bank)man fried to be, who is letting Kojima name all these villians?

You had me thinking we were in some type of simulation for a second.

Bernie Madoff is another funny name we should throw in there.

I'm glad I'm not the only one drawing SBF personality comparisons here. I'd throw Martin Shkreli into the mix too for good measure. Awful.

Less poacher turned gamekeeper and more poachers infiltrating the gamekeeper council.

This whole exchange from 1:04:53 to 1:10:22 takes a whole different meaning....

https://youtu.be/P_ACcQxJIsg?t=3891

What is so special about her voice? They could’ve found a college student with a sweet voice and offered to pay her tuition in exchange for using her voice, no? Or a voice actor?

Why be cartoonishly stupid and cartoonishly arsehole and steal a celebrity’s voice? Did he think Scarlett won’t find out? Or object?

I don’t understand these rich people. Is it their hobby to be a dick to as many people as they can, for no reason other than their amusement? Just plain weirdos

Scarlett voiced Samantha, an AI in the movie "Her"

Considering the movie's 11 years old, it's surprisingly on-point with depictions of AI/human interactions, relations, and societal acceptance. It does get a bit speculative and imaginative at the end though...

But I imagine that movie did/does spark the imagination of many people, and I guess Sam just couldn't let it go.

It's not just that. Originally the AI voice in Her was played by someone else, but Spike Jonze felt strongly that the movie wasn't working and recast the part to Johansson. The movie immediately worked much better and became a sleeper hit. Johansson just has a much better fitting voice and higher skill in voice acting for this kind of role, to the extent that it maybe was a make/break choice for the movie. It isn't a surprise that after having created the exact tech from the movie, OpenAI wanted it to have the same success that Jonze had with his character.

It's funny that just seven days ago I was speculating that they deliberately picked someone whose voice is very close to Scarlett's and was told right here on HN, by someone who works in AI, that the Sky voice doesn't sound anything like Scarlett and it is just a generic female voice:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40343950#40345807

Apparently .... not.

Also, I understand that sama considers "Her" his favorite movie. Perhaps, for him, it just had to be ScarJo's voice.

> Is it their hobby to be a dick to as many people as they can, for no reason other than their amusement? Just plain weirdos

They seem to love "testing" how much they can bully someone.

I remember a few experiences where someone responded by being an even bigger dick, and they disappeared fast.

> The thing about the situation is that Altman is willing to lie and steal a celebrity's voice for use in ChatGPT. What he did, the timeline, everything - is sleazy if, in fact, that's the story.

Correcting, the thing about this whole situation with OpenAI is they are willing to steal everything for use in ChatGPT. They trained their model with copyrighted data and for some reason they won't delete the millions of protected data they used to train the AI model.

Using other people data for training without their permission is the "original sin" of LLMs[1]. That will, at best, be a shadow over the entire field for an extremely long time.

[1] Just to head off people saying that such a use is not a copyright violation -- I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying that it's extremely sketchy and, in my view, ethically unsupportable.

Altman is a known conman. Surely you are aware of Yishan Wong describing how Sam Altman and the Reddit founders conned Conde Nast https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_bes...

Wow, Altman in the replies there:

> Cool story bro.

> Except I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot :)

> Other than that, child's play for me.

>Thanks for the help. I mean, thanks for your service as CEO.

> The thing about the situation is that Altman is willing to lie and steal a celebrity's voice for use in ChatGPT.

He lies and steals much more than that. He’s the scammer behind Worldcoin.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-...

> Altman is, and wants to be, a large part of AI regulation. Quite the public contradiction.

That’s as much of a contradiction as a thief wanting to be a large part of lock regulation. What better way to ensure your sleazy plans benefit you, and preferably only you but not the competition, than being an active participant in the inevitable regulation while it’s being written?

> That’s as much of a contradiction as a thief wanting to be a large part of lock regulation.

Based on what I see in the videos from The Lockpocking Lawyer, that would be a massive improvement.

Now, the NSA and crypto standards, that would have worked as a metaphor for your point.

(I don't think it's correct, but that's an independent claim, and I am not only willing to discover that I'm wrong about their sincerity, I think everyone writing that legislation should actively assume the worst while they do so).

> > That’s as much of a contradiction as a thief wanting to be a large part of lock regulation.

> Based on what I see in the videos from The Lockpocking Lawyer, that would be a massive improvement.

A thief is not a lock picker and they don't have the same incentive. A thief in a position to dictate lock regulation would try to have a legal backdoor on every lock in the world. One that only he has the master key for. Something something NSA & cryptography :)

Indeed, but locks are so bad (as demonstrated by LPL) that even a thief would make them better.

> Something something NSA & cryptography :)

Indeed, as I said :)

> Based on what I see in the videos from The Lockpocking Lawyer, that would be a massive improvement.

If you've watched his videos then surely you should know that lockpicking isn't even on the radar for thieves as there are much easier and faster methods such as breaking the door or breaking a window.

Surely that just makes the thief/locks metaphor even worse? Or have I missed something?

> Based on what I see in the videos from The Lockpocking Lawyer

The Lockpicking Lawyer is not a thief, so I don’t get your desire to incorrectly nitpick. Especially when you clearly understood the point.

You noticed your confusion but still went on the aggressive, huh. Ah well.

"A is demonstrating a proof of B" does not require "A is a clause in B".

A being TLPL, B being that the entire lock industry is bad, so bad that anyone with experience would be a massive improvement, for example a thief.

I’m not confused and my reply was not aggressive. I don’t think it will be a good use of time to continue this conversation because discussions should get more substantive as they go on and this was an irrelevant tangent to which I have no desire to get sucked in to.

Other people have commented to further explain the point in other words. I recommend you read those, perhaps it’ll make you understand.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40428005

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40428280

"Not consistently candid", the last board said.

Like many people who try to oppose psychopaths though, they don't seem to be around much anymore.