Hi @ronanfarrow — I have only had one interaction with Sam Altman in person, and I was advised to keep it to myself. I know this crowd may not care, but Altman is absolutely terrified of Black people — not in any contextual sense, but in a visceral, instinctive way. For someone who, as you put it, "controls our future," this should matter.

FYI: I am by far not the only one to have experienced this and it 100% impacts hiring and other decisions at OpenAI.

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edbaskerville 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Can you give more details?

It wouldn't particularly surprise me if Sam Altman were racist, but I'm curious what the specific incident you observed was.

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arionhardison 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, but first I want to be very clear on some things.

1. I could have hidden my identify behind a throwaway. I did not feel that would be appropriate when making this calim.

2. I am not looking for anything, literally at all. Any follow ups for blogs; anything that would benefit I will not answer.

3. This is NOT a new account, I am very easy to find; I am 6'1 140lbs

I was working for a company called NationBuilder and I had the opportunity to go on a work trip. Outside of a talk he had just given I was waiting for my ride and I looked over like...damn thats the speaker. I wanted to say Hi; he damn near flagged down the police. I apologized and just decided to move on.

Note: It was in Reno, and no I don't want to go into details; the others are not hard to find because I happened upon them via blog posts so i'm sure if someone with the accumen of RF wants to know, he will find.

I have heard similar stores from several people in the years since. I AM NOT CALLING THIS PERSON RACIST. I am saying; he is observably scared of black people and that is not someone I want making descions about how the world moves foward.

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arionhardison 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Note: To all the downvotes; I did this publicly and not anon for a reason, if you will do the same I am more than willing to provide evidence for all of these claims as long as its done publicly and in the open.

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arionhardison 4 hours ago | parent [-]

PG said something along the lines of: "There should be no truth that is increasingly unpopular to speak."

If you don't believe what I shared is true, address that directly. But seeing my post sitting at 1 point and [flagged] after 2 hours is not OK. Just as DJT can't flag away his issues, you shouldn't be able to do so on HN.

One of the things I've loved most about HN is that it was real — grounded in observability, empirical evidence, not bias or feelings. I really hope that what happened to my post is not the beginning or a continuance of the end for that ethos.

	▲	tastyface an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Unfortunately, HN is full of racists these days. They really came out of the woodwork after Trump came to power. Just try saying anything about Musk's virulently white supremacist Twitter posting: "it doesn't look like anything to me," insta-flagged. I appreciate your anecdote.