I don't know, but I also think people are easy to jump into popular rhetorics about internet personalities in the tech space without due diligence. It used to not be such a problem on hn but it seems like its bled here too. Sam Altman might be a bad guy, might be good, but after everyone misrepresented the military contract argument its tough for me to buy into the hate.
The funny thing is that a lot of Altman's reputation has come from other VCs and Valley-types taking about him in a way they consider positive. Every quote about Altman from another VC is like, "Altman, what a great leader. He's absolutely ruthless, he'll do anything to win: lie, cheat, steal, kill. He has what it takes to succeed in this business."
They say this because in their circles it's a compliment, and nobody ever stopped to consider how the general public might react to it, especially if you claim you'll shortly be the one in charge of world-reshaping technology.
That he’s a liability to OpenAI, which is slowly coming around to the realization that it would be worth more without him.
To be clear, I don’t think OpenAI could have raised what it raised as quickly as it did without him. But with the benefit of hindsight, Microsoft should have let the safety board fire him.
> That he’s a liability to OpenAI, which is slowly coming around to the realization that it would be worth more without him.
I'm curious what you're basing this on. Are you aware of any grumblings on the inside? From the outside it appears no different than before largely because it seems everybody knew he was a slippery dude anyways, but they tolerated it because he was slippery in ways that were profitable.
I also think he was prescient in his unquenching thirst for compute. Despite Anthropic possibly having a better product I think OpenAI will prevail simply because he's gone to extreme (sometimes diabolical, cf that DRAM deal) extents in ensuring they have enough compute.
Like, it's pretty likely that Claude's recent problems are due to insufficient compute. With 9's (and resultant loss in goodwill) comparable to GitHub, I actually have doubts they will be able to hit their projected ARR. OpenAI could win simply by dint of having capacity, which can be attributed to Altman's shenanigans.
I don't know, but I also think people are easy to jump into popular rhetorics about internet personalities in the tech space without due diligence. It used to not be such a problem on hn but it seems like its bled here too. Sam Altman might be a bad guy, might be good, but after everyone misrepresented the military contract argument its tough for me to buy into the hate.
The funny thing is that a lot of Altman's reputation has come from other VCs and Valley-types taking about him in a way they consider positive. Every quote about Altman from another VC is like, "Altman, what a great leader. He's absolutely ruthless, he'll do anything to win: lie, cheat, steal, kill. He has what it takes to succeed in this business."
They say this because in their circles it's a compliment, and nobody ever stopped to consider how the general public might react to it, especially if you claim you'll shortly be the one in charge of world-reshaping technology.
I wonder what that says about Altman.
That he’s a liability to OpenAI, which is slowly coming around to the realization that it would be worth more without him.
To be clear, I don’t think OpenAI could have raised what it raised as quickly as it did without him. But with the benefit of hindsight, Microsoft should have let the safety board fire him.
> That he’s a liability to OpenAI, which is slowly coming around to the realization that it would be worth more without him.
I'm curious what you're basing this on. Are you aware of any grumblings on the inside? From the outside it appears no different than before largely because it seems everybody knew he was a slippery dude anyways, but they tolerated it because he was slippery in ways that were profitable.
I also think he was prescient in his unquenching thirst for compute. Despite Anthropic possibly having a better product I think OpenAI will prevail simply because he's gone to extreme (sometimes diabolical, cf that DRAM deal) extents in ensuring they have enough compute.
Like, it's pretty likely that Claude's recent problems are due to insufficient compute. With 9's (and resultant loss in goodwill) comparable to GitHub, I actually have doubts they will be able to hit their projected ARR. OpenAI could win simply by dint of having capacity, which can be attributed to Altman's shenanigans.
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Slowly? They realised that and ousted him in 2023. I'm not sure if you didn't know or just forgot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_of_Sam_Altman_from_Ope...
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Altman's early public class at YC is worth watching, though I can't speak to his character.