Looks like the media has chosen Sam Altman as the next Elon Musk.
This makes sense. He perfectly fits their cliche of a socially-awkward technologist, and he's trusting (foolish?) enough to make complex nuanced statements in public, which they can easily mine for out-of-context clickbait and vilification fodder.
When I compare the two Elon was (lucky?) to at least have a string of vision-fueled ventures that became a thing. What is Sam's history of visions? Loopt? Is Y Combinator considered in a new golden era after he took over? Did Worldcoin make any sense at all?
I'm honestly hoping I'm entirely ignorant of his substance and would feel better if someone here can explain there's more to him than that… I would feel better knowing that what could be history's most disruptive tech is being led by someone with some vision for it, beyond the apocalypse that he described in 2016 that he tries not to think about too much:
"The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...
I'm with you, listening to his interview with Ezra Klein gave me the impression that he doesn't actually think that deeply about the possible impact of AI. He says it worries him, but then he seems to wave those worries away with really simplistic solutions that don't seem very tenable.
What bothers me most is that the picture he paints of success itself is some handwavy crap about how it could "create value" or "solve problems" or some other type of abstract nonsense. He has displayed exactly 0 concrete, desirable vision of what succeeding with AI would look like.
That seems to be the curse of Silicon Valley, worshiping abstractions to the point of nonsense. He would probably say that with AGI, we can make people immortal, infinitely intelligent, and so on. These are just potentialities with, again, 0 concrete vision. What would we use that power for? Altman has no idea.
At least Musk has some amount of storytelling about making humanity multiplanetary you may or may not buy into. AI "visionaries" seem to have 0 narrative except rehashed, high-level summaries of sci-fi novels. Is that it?
I agree, listening to the podcast I think the answer is that “yes” that is it: faith in technological progress is the axiom and the conclusion. Joined by other key concepts like compound growth, the thinking isn’t deep and the rest is execution. Treatment of the concept of ‘a-self’ in the podcast was basically just nihilistic weak sauce.
AI is not an abstraction. It's rational to be hand wavy about future value, it's already materialized. AI is basically an applied reseaarch project, he should be more like a Dean herding researchers and we should take him as that. In a previous era, that's what it would be: a PhD from Berkley in charge of some giant AT&T government funded research Lab thing. He'd be on TV with a suit and tie, they'd be smoking and discussing abstract ideas.
The main question about OpenAI is this: can you have any better structure to create singularity
that will happen anyways (Some people don't like the word AGI, so I just definine it by machines having wastly more intellectual power than humans).
Would it be better if Google, Tesla or Microsoft / Apple / CCP or any other for profit company did it?
Are you really insinuating that Elon was simply “lucky” when it came to disrupting and transforming two gargantuan and highly complex industries at the same time?
I think my main point was more that despite what you (not you personally, anyone reading) think of Elon, at least he has this track record of visionary companies and Sam does not.
Personally my take on Elon is something like this – he found a vacuum in the industry of smart engineers who want to work on something truly ambitious, the kind of people who feel most SV startups are bullshit. And as a sci-fi nerd he came in with money and pitched several sci-fi ambitious project ideas/visions that attracted these engineers etc. to make them happen. And I think he was rewarded for this. You could tally that as another vision that he had that was onto something.
well, you're definitely correct in that one of his superpowers is attracting some of the best talent to work for him (at least that was the case when he started Tesla and SpaceX). But you're completely overlooking his ridiculous work ethic (100+ hours per week for years on end), plus his own elite engineering chops (he was the chief engineer at SpaceX), and there are interviews of rocket engineers that worked for him stating that if you weren't on top of your game, Elon would call you out on it, even citing specific sections and page numbers of rocket science books on the fly mid-conversation. It's not just money he brought to the table.
That last link, Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny, is worth the read. However the last time I posted that link HN went down for an hour right afterwards. (of course correlation is not causation :/)
I'll assume you meant Sam. IMO Sam is mostly just shy and cerebral, but to many people that will come off as awkward and robotic.
Watch his recent Lex Fridman interview. Personally I thought it was great, but I'm aware enough to realize that (sadly) many low-knowledge people will judge such demeanor harshly.
Mark my words: the media will, 10 times out of 10, exploit that misconception, not correct it. "Ye knew my nature when you let me climb upon your back..."
I don't know, it seemed to me his responses on Lex were very measured and carefully restrained in a lot of places, calculated and vague in others. He doesn't come off as genuine to me at all.
It's interesting that in the article he was described being "hyper-social", "very funny" and "big personality" as a child. I guess those don't necessarily contradict with awkward and robotic, but also wouldn't come to my mind at the same time
If you mean the one where the interviewer, Lex, was wearing a suit and Sam was in a hoodie, where Sam droned in a robotic monotone and often sat with crossed arms, staring downward . . . I think the knowledgeable people might also assume he's the next evil tech overlord. Or certainly distant and uncaring.
The only things missing were lighting from below and scenes of robots driving human slaves.
In these early days of a smear campaign (even an unintentional one that's just about chasing clicks), the game is mostly about plausibly deniable innuendo.
The headline is a great start. Contradictions are bad. Altman has contradictions. Therefore Altman is bad. They don't say it, but they also know they don't need to. They lead the audience to water and trust that enough of them will drink.
The closing paragraph is another great example. It intentionally leaves the reader hanging on the question "so why did Altman do AI if there are moral downsides," without resolving the question by giving Altman's context when he said it.
Trust me or don't, but what you see here is just the beginning. In 6 month's time Altman will be (in the public's eye) evil incarnate.
They discussed the why earlier in the article, specifically a fear of AI being primarily developed in private labs outside of public view -- the partners feeling they could help bring an alternative approach.
I feel they left it on that point not as part of some grand conspiracy theory, but because the potential for this to be good or bad is a question taking place around the world right now.
Overall this piece feels positive towards Sam, despite what you feel is a negatively loaded headline. He's walking a delicate balance between profit and nonprofit, between something that could be harmful or helpful to society -- these things are in contradiction and he's making those choices deliberately. This is an interesting subject for an article.
I find it deeply unlikely he will be viewed like Musk in 6 months. Musk is a fairly special case as he's unhinged and unstable more than evil. If someone wanted to paint Sam with an evil stick, Zuckerberg would be a more apt comparison -- playing with something dangerous that affects all of us.
I genuinely hope that you're right and I'm totally wrong, but my experience watching the media landscape says otherwise. It would seem I have less faith in our journalistic institutions than you.
The media operates on a "nearest cliché" algorithm, and the Mad/Evil Genius cliché is so emotionally appealing here that they'll find it irresistible. Even if it's not true, they'll make it true.
This makes sense. He perfectly fits their cliche of a socially-awkward technologist, and he's trusting (foolish?) enough to make complex nuanced statements in public, which they can easily mine for out-of-context clickbait and vilification fodder.