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Comment by ocodo

2 years ago

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.

37 comments

ocodo

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lawn  2 years ago

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

  • Intralexical  2 years ago

    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.

  • ben_w  2 years ago

    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).

    • lawn  2 years ago

      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.)

      10 replies →

wraptile  2 years ago

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.

  • svachalek  2 years ago

    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.

  • kristiandupont  2 years ago

    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.

    • wraptile  2 years ago

      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.

      1 reply →

    • gdilla  2 years ago

      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).

  • JohnFen  2 years ago

    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.

mlindner  2 years ago

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.

  • renegade-otter  2 years ago

    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.