I’m old enough to remember that Sam Altman’s claim to fame before OpenAI, before running YC, was running a failed also-ran location-based whatever Web 2.0 scam startup thing that accomplished nothing and that no one remembers. His entire “career” is based on persuading people with money to give him more of it.
The incentive structures are such that everyone sucks up to people in a position to give you a lot of money, so all these people with no real skills, talent or track record get regarded as “geniuses”, but like, even when you understand why this happens, it doesn’t make it any less rage-inducing.
What would have to change in this society for people who actually do shit to have a higher profile than people who just have a lot of money?
This is a good example of Goodhart's Law: "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Money is supposed to be a measure of value exchanged; the idea is that if you aren't receiving something actually useful in exchange for your money, you don't spend it. This assumption breaks down as the economy grows in complexity and it becomes harder to judge what you're actually receiving. It becomes increasingly easy to game the process of convincing people to give you money. People who get good at this outcompete people who don't, and there is a lot of money floating around out there without much accountability.
This also suggests ways to reverse this: 1) reduce the complexity of the economy 2) have more repeated interactions, where you cannot simply stiff someone and go away to do it to someone else 3) have more information about who has stiffed people and gone away to do it to someone else 4) reduce the costs involved in the sale process, so that this can become a part-time job of someone actually providing the service, rather than having people whose dedicated role is to make the money change hands managing people whose dedicated role is to actually do the job.
The problem is not that society is too complexity but extremely unequal distribution of money. Those few that have most of it usually did not earn it by providing a useful service to society and for them it becomes a random investment game without consequences which creates additional winners that also never produced something useful.
> What would have to change in this society for people who actually do shit to have a higher profile than people who just have a lot of money?
A wealth tax. Higher capital gains taxes. Closing tax loopholes.
But wealth is interchangeable with power so the wealthy will just undo any fixes we create to the structural inequalities of capital. The problem might just be intrinsic to human nature.
We need to start talking about people like this truthfully: they are sick. Fucked up. Broken. They do not deserve fame or fortune, they deserve a padded cell, close observation by psychologists and neurologists and try and figure out how we can stop it happening.
Horribly manipulative Smaug-likes who only care for themselves, why must the rest of us be beholden to them? To be victims to the havoc they wreak? Why do we put up with it?
In my experience, all wealth comes down to either (1) producing and using something yourself, or (2) convincing somebody else to give it to you. Most of us trade labor or goods for wealth, convincing others that our stuff is worth the wealth they give.
If you want more wealth for your work, you need the other side to value it more. Better goods and labor are the obvious choice, but that's difficult. Better schmoozing is less effort and good payoff. Epstein was a paragon of this skill. Also companies that spend tons on advertising, like Coca Cola. Everyone knows their soda exists, but the ads are meant to convince you that you need one right now. No need to improve their product or innovate cheaper production. They just lean on the persuasion.
I can't think of a way to avoid this. If you want more money, it has to come from somebody. How could there be an unbiased and impersonal way of redistributing it?
Reminds me of Elon Musk. Grifting off of techno-futuro-optimism. Hyperloop, Boring tunnel, going to mars, self-driving cars, etc. Perhaps it's common to CEOs, lying/manipulating to people to create hype in order to convince them to give you money.
Sure, but Elon Musk had known engineering roles at various companies, and built a space company nobody, not even himself thought would succeed, into the most viable and affordable way to get things into space.
Idk if I had to be stranded on an island with either Elon or Sam, I think I'd rather be stuck with Elon.
> I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff
What's with all the hit pieces on Sam Altman lately? He's a CEO, his job is to grow the business, not to code. That part is handled by the engineers that he hired. How many CEOs out there are also great programmers? Sure, I would prefer Sam Altman to have more technical depth given the business he is leading, but lack of technical depth doesn't make him a Bernie Madoff.
My tinfoil hat is that Elon Musk is suing Sam Altman for control of OpenAI, and when you are the richest man on earth, you can afford a lot of money on hit pieces.
Interestingly, the charge of "can barely code and frequently misunderstands technical concepts" is one that is often leveled at Elon Musk.
Well there's the whole issue that Open AI wasn't a "business" when it started, it was in fact a non-profit focused on safe AGI for humanity. That said the whole "He's a CEO thing" is a convenient escape hatch now that it's a for-profit business (just ignore the whole way it got there).
Just because you're a successful CEO doesn't mean you're not a shitty person or immune from so-called "hit pieces".
exactly. frankly its just a bunch of pissy holier than thou engineer thing. He seems to be pretty good at raising capital and selling dreams which his predominantly what Openai seemingly wants to be right now.
New Yorker article less so because its just a standard ceo profile piece that digs out pretty pertinent things for a ceo role
Apart from your last paragraph which is a little contentious, I agree with what you say.
I dont understand why people here require that every tech ceo to be some professional programmer or engineer. I don't think you _need_ to be that deep in it as the CEO. There are plenty of leaders at OpenAI that already fit the bill.
Sam is good at getting funding, seeing the bigger picture, and rallying towards a cause. That is the job of a CEO. It doesn't matter (imo) that he doesn't know how many parameters the next release will have. All that matters is he knows the impact of the new release and knows who to defer to for actual technical decisions.
I bet he is a menace but so are probably 90% of c-suite tech execs. Like with Elon and Zuck it's the insecurities which make it at least funny to watch from the sidelines.
Im going to get into trouble for saying this but many of these CEOs seem to be a mix of vertically challenged, challenged in terms of looks/social aura/charasima and so on. Perhaps these are necessary characteristics to have drive.. the problem is they end up taking out that energy on the rest of society. E.g. Zuck with "dumb fucks" and we've already seen Musk unmasked.
You never saw this kind of stuff with Steve Jobs who admittedly wasnt perfect - but he wasn't challenged physically / social standing. Perhaps that's why he wasn't a weirdo like the rest of them.
I feel like this is largely just what Musk/Zuck/Jeff's generation of rich fucks is like. Kind of like how the ones before them (Gates, Jobs etc) were more hated for being dirty/ruthless businessmen, but weren't known for being so openly and pathetically insecure.
On the other hand, I'm probably just finding a generational distinction where there is none.
Edit: And anyway, SBF, Altman etc are not the same generation as Musk etc IIRC
Gates is weapons-grade awkward and just plain weird. 56K internet was slow to notice. But the poor schmuck had to hire Russians to boink him, and he got a VD from it per the Epsein files.
I think it's a very small chance. Look at how many absolutely technically useless CEOs, such as Elon Musk, are still perceived by many in the industry and outside of it. The WeWork guy got funding for a new startup immediately post collapse. It takes a lot to reach SBF/Madoff levels.
Sbf built a pyramid scheme that collapsed. Sam altman has built a pyramid scheme that will soon collapse. The collapse is the point. This way insurance companies, advertisers, etc can buy the company and its assets, the customer data, that gives them a level of access to people laws and anti-trusts would otherwise prevent.
You know the saying, "when you owe the bank a million dollars, that's your problem, but when you owe the bank a billion dollars, that's the bank's problem"?
I suspect the theory behind OpenAI is to grow to be "too big to fail" as fast as they can, because once they cross that threshold, their liquidity/solvency problems will cease to be theirs, and become everyone else's.
I’m old enough to remember that Sam Altman’s claim to fame before OpenAI, before running YC, was running a failed also-ran location-based whatever Web 2.0 scam startup thing that accomplished nothing and that no one remembers. His entire “career” is based on persuading people with money to give him more of it.
The incentive structures are such that everyone sucks up to people in a position to give you a lot of money, so all these people with no real skills, talent or track record get regarded as “geniuses”, but like, even when you understand why this happens, it doesn’t make it any less rage-inducing.
What would have to change in this society for people who actually do shit to have a higher profile than people who just have a lot of money?
This is a good example of Goodhart's Law: "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Money is supposed to be a measure of value exchanged; the idea is that if you aren't receiving something actually useful in exchange for your money, you don't spend it. This assumption breaks down as the economy grows in complexity and it becomes harder to judge what you're actually receiving. It becomes increasingly easy to game the process of convincing people to give you money. People who get good at this outcompete people who don't, and there is a lot of money floating around out there without much accountability.
This also suggests ways to reverse this: 1) reduce the complexity of the economy 2) have more repeated interactions, where you cannot simply stiff someone and go away to do it to someone else 3) have more information about who has stiffed people and gone away to do it to someone else 4) reduce the costs involved in the sale process, so that this can become a part-time job of someone actually providing the service, rather than having people whose dedicated role is to make the money change hands managing people whose dedicated role is to actually do the job.
The problem is not that society is too complexity but extremely unequal distribution of money. Those few that have most of it usually did not earn it by providing a useful service to society and for them it becomes a random investment game without consequences which creates additional winners that also never produced something useful.
> What would have to change in this society for people who actually do shit to have a higher profile than people who just have a lot of money?
A wealth tax. Higher capital gains taxes. Closing tax loopholes.
But wealth is interchangeable with power so the wealthy will just undo any fixes we create to the structural inequalities of capital. The problem might just be intrinsic to human nature.
We need to start talking about people like this truthfully: they are sick. Fucked up. Broken. They do not deserve fame or fortune, they deserve a padded cell, close observation by psychologists and neurologists and try and figure out how we can stop it happening.
Horribly manipulative Smaug-likes who only care for themselves, why must the rest of us be beholden to them? To be victims to the havoc they wreak? Why do we put up with it?
In my experience, all wealth comes down to either (1) producing and using something yourself, or (2) convincing somebody else to give it to you. Most of us trade labor or goods for wealth, convincing others that our stuff is worth the wealth they give.
If you want more wealth for your work, you need the other side to value it more. Better goods and labor are the obvious choice, but that's difficult. Better schmoozing is less effort and good payoff. Epstein was a paragon of this skill. Also companies that spend tons on advertising, like Coca Cola. Everyone knows their soda exists, but the ads are meant to convince you that you need one right now. No need to improve their product or innovate cheaper production. They just lean on the persuasion.
I can't think of a way to avoid this. If you want more money, it has to come from somebody. How could there be an unbiased and impersonal way of redistributing it?
> persuading people with money to give him more of it
A key skill nevertheless.
Reminds me of Elon Musk. Grifting off of techno-futuro-optimism. Hyperloop, Boring tunnel, going to mars, self-driving cars, etc. Perhaps it's common to CEOs, lying/manipulating to people to create hype in order to convince them to give you money.
Sure, but Elon Musk had known engineering roles at various companies, and built a space company nobody, not even himself thought would succeed, into the most viable and affordable way to get things into space.
Idk if I had to be stranded on an island with either Elon or Sam, I think I'd rather be stuck with Elon.
> I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff
What's with all the hit pieces on Sam Altman lately? He's a CEO, his job is to grow the business, not to code. That part is handled by the engineers that he hired. How many CEOs out there are also great programmers? Sure, I would prefer Sam Altman to have more technical depth given the business he is leading, but lack of technical depth doesn't make him a Bernie Madoff.
My tinfoil hat is that Elon Musk is suing Sam Altman for control of OpenAI, and when you are the richest man on earth, you can afford a lot of money on hit pieces.
Interestingly, the charge of "can barely code and frequently misunderstands technical concepts" is one that is often leveled at Elon Musk.
Well there's the whole issue that Open AI wasn't a "business" when it started, it was in fact a non-profit focused on safe AGI for humanity. That said the whole "He's a CEO thing" is a convenient escape hatch now that it's a for-profit business (just ignore the whole way it got there).
Just because you're a successful CEO doesn't mean you're not a shitty person or immune from so-called "hit pieces".
exactly. frankly its just a bunch of pissy holier than thou engineer thing. He seems to be pretty good at raising capital and selling dreams which his predominantly what Openai seemingly wants to be right now.
New Yorker article less so because its just a standard ceo profile piece that digs out pretty pertinent things for a ceo role
I am amused at how pissy he can get in interviews. Who thought it was a great idea to have this guy doing PR?
even if this were true, PG (who can code, and can tell if someone else can) didn't think it was an issue when handing over YC to Altman.
The hard part for some of us: Can we learn anything from this to help our own careers?
People like to gatekeep coding as if it was some sort of mythical skills that only extremely smart people could do.
Tons of people can code. Coding is not some sort of mythical skill. Millions of people can code.
For some reason, this narrative is almost always applying on people who are politically incompatible with the left like Elon and Sam.
Apart from your last paragraph which is a little contentious, I agree with what you say.
I dont understand why people here require that every tech ceo to be some professional programmer or engineer. I don't think you _need_ to be that deep in it as the CEO. There are plenty of leaders at OpenAI that already fit the bill.
Sam is good at getting funding, seeing the bigger picture, and rallying towards a cause. That is the job of a CEO. It doesn't matter (imo) that he doesn't know how many parameters the next release will have. All that matters is he knows the impact of the new release and knows who to defer to for actual technical decisions.
Neither did Steve Jobs and no one cared.
This is probably the least important bad thing you could say about Altman.
Also why is a low effort commentary piece of the NYT article on the HN front page?
I bet he is a menace but so are probably 90% of c-suite tech execs. Like with Elon and Zuck it's the insecurities which make it at least funny to watch from the sidelines.
Im going to get into trouble for saying this but many of these CEOs seem to be a mix of vertically challenged, challenged in terms of looks/social aura/charasima and so on. Perhaps these are necessary characteristics to have drive.. the problem is they end up taking out that energy on the rest of society. E.g. Zuck with "dumb fucks" and we've already seen Musk unmasked.
You never saw this kind of stuff with Steve Jobs who admittedly wasnt perfect - but he wasn't challenged physically / social standing. Perhaps that's why he wasn't a weirdo like the rest of them.
Didn’t Jobs have nutty beliefs about food and healthcare?
I feel like this is largely just what Musk/Zuck/Jeff's generation of rich fucks is like. Kind of like how the ones before them (Gates, Jobs etc) were more hated for being dirty/ruthless businessmen, but weren't known for being so openly and pathetically insecure.
On the other hand, I'm probably just finding a generational distinction where there is none.
Edit: And anyway, SBF, Altman etc are not the same generation as Musk etc IIRC
Gates is weapons-grade awkward and just plain weird. 56K internet was slow to notice. But the poor schmuck had to hire Russians to boink him, and he got a VD from it per the Epsein files.
Oh right, I forgot about that...
"I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer."
It's not a small chance, it's close to 100%. If your bullshit detector is not going off, you have a serious problem.
I think it's a very small chance. Look at how many absolutely technically useless CEOs, such as Elon Musk, are still perceived by many in the industry and outside of it. The WeWork guy got funding for a new startup immediately post collapse. It takes a lot to reach SBF/Madoff levels.
Sbf built a pyramid scheme that collapsed. Sam altman has built a pyramid scheme that will soon collapse. The collapse is the point. This way insurance companies, advertisers, etc can buy the company and its assets, the customer data, that gives them a level of access to people laws and anti-trusts would otherwise prevent.
the entire thing is built to collapse.
You know the saying, "when you owe the bank a million dollars, that's your problem, but when you owe the bank a billion dollars, that's the bank's problem"?
I suspect the theory behind OpenAI is to grow to be "too big to fail" as fast as they can, because once they cross that threshold, their liquidity/solvency problems will cease to be theirs, and become everyone else's.
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