Multiple people have attested that Sam Altman is extremely charming (especially in more casual, intimate settings) and talks very nobly about his goals, but his actual work is just…all kinds of awful. And I think that charm only goes so far as it seems clear that people are starting to demand that OpenAI actually match its words with work it cannot produce.

I think his board fight within OpenAI where essentially lied to the board, his obsession with retinal scanning everyone for his biometric cryptocurrency (Worldcoin), how he left Y Combinator are just evidence that he’s not very heroic. Most cringe to me is that he and many others seem aware that what their are doing is corrosive and harmful to society on some level as Altman has admitted to having a bunker somewhere around Big Sur [0]. Which…WTF.

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...

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morpheuskafka 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

> how he left Y Combinator

Not too familiar with that history, but he still is listed as a courtesy credit/reviewer at the end of PG's blog entries, so I assume he didn't have too much of a bad exit?

	▲	Eufrat 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		We’ll never know exactly what exactly transpired, but I think the existing evidence is clear that as President of Y Combinator he should not have been also as involved in OpenAI as he was. This is a conflict of interest and I think one a very obvious one. He tried to have it both ways and was forced to choose in the end. I think putting himself in that situation rather than resigning up front to pursue OpenAI ambitions says a lot about his character.