Except, Altman almost certainly knows he’s bullshitting. It’s politics: you say what you think people will believe, to achieve some desired result.

The only connection it has to what Altman himself believes is what he believes will make his company, and by extension him, more money.

In this case, getting people to accept that it’s ok for AI to shape people’s perception of reality is very obviously in his interest.

▲

ozgrakkurt a day ago | parent | next [-]

The frustration comes from seeing someone, that seemingly has no idea about the subject, spill lies about the subject and people arguing based on the said lies.

	▲	scrubs a day ago \| parent [-]
		Agree. We want the engineering equivalent to what the doj was doing pre-trump: if we have something important to say it'll be done in court with evidence in a formal process. In engineering we want a paper, data, and code. The rest is mostly noise.

▲

timcambrant a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

He most certainly wants to make more money, but at this point I bet he first and foremost wants his company to survive long enough to join the big five arena, which doesn't seem likely.

He knows that OpenAI's has a first-mover advantage and that it won't last forever. They will spend everything they earn on salaries and Microsoft's cloud. As their competitors catch up, OpenAI's biggest asset will be Altman's reputation as international AI guru unless someone challenges that.

	▲	antonvs a day ago \| parent [-]
		> OpenAI's biggest asset will be Altman's reputation as international AI guru unless someone challenges that. Let’s nip that in the bud and challenge it right here. Altman has no credentials in the AI space other than as an executive. There’s no evidence to support the idea that he’s a “guru”. He dropped out of a CS program to found a social networking app. It’s a bad idea to confuse successful executives with people that have real technical expertise in some discipline.

▲

bradleyjg a day ago | parent | prev [-]

You object, but is there any practical difference between:

Sam Altman can’t say anything meaningful or interesting on almost all subjects.

and

Sam Altman will refuse to say anything meaningful or interesting on almost all subjects?

	▲	antonvs a day ago \| parent [-]
		My point is that what he’s saying most likely doesn’t come from an incorrect, STEM-education based belief, as the article proposes. That distinction is important if you want to understand what’s happening. The difference between essentially lying and stating one’s legitimate beliefs is pretty important.