A nonbinding letter of intent in 2018? That is a limited downside unlimited upside kind of risk you take to fund extreme moon shots. Boom Supersonic did the same approach with United airlines, to fund a still undeveloped supersonic Airplane. A 1M investment like this is a hedge that has capped downside, restricted to Altman's personal money, and an infinite upside that gives an incentive to the founders to succeed. At the time the value of the investment is paper zero for Altman, but gives the founders, who were probably the most promising he has seen in the space, large help with fundraising, hiring, and credibility with future sales. OpenAI does not have to buy the chips unless they meet the criteria, In 2018 OpenAI was one of many startups plucking at a problem that seemed insurmountable. If you are trying to push into a problem and can't afford to do what Apple did to build both the hardware and software to solve it, you focus on the one and try to help the other however you can.
In WeWork, the CEO took a trademark that costs a couple of thousand dollars, and charged himself millions for it from company money - that's personal enrichment. Incubating a thing considered highly risky and expensive 5 years is not personal enrichment, its personal risk that helps more the likelihood of it being less impossible instead of a chance at enrichment from two companies you don't even know would be viable (OpenAI) 5 years from then.
I don’t know what the LOI states of every piece of fine print and I’m not affiliated with them in any way, but what we do know is that at IN 2018, the moment of that decision, the information available at the time was:
The odds of success of that 1M investment and the chip company were closer to 0 than 100%
The odds of success of openai in a competitive environment with massive monopolies who were building AI was closer to 0 than 100%.
Trump was president. He was rattling the chains of every trade partner and China was threatening the most important chip-making places.
Sam altman was co-chairman of OpenAI, not CEO, and still led YC.
There could be plenty of other things about him to be concerned about, but this investment, with the information we have about that time, is not. Especially because you don’t get AI without chips.
Risk does not automatically remove potential conflicts of interest or vertical integration appropriateness disputes. Your argument and comparison (yes, the WeWork example is obvious self-enrichment the way you say it) makes no sense to me.
Many people have sad, angry lives and are addicted to outrage to lash out at anything other than themselves…they just can’t help it like an alcoholic can’t abstain from alcohol.
What I think it means, looking at pictures of the orb is that it is indeed made of two halves, with a well defined seam line. The bottom is flat, presumably so that it doesn't roll over, making it not a perfect sphere. And when laid down on that flat spot, the seam between the two halves is at an angle that seems to correspond to the earth axial tilt (about 23.5°).
> After a person’s iris is captured, the biometric data never leaves the orb, they explain, instead converting it into the IrisCode, which itself is only used to create a verification of a person’s uniqueness through a convoluted system of zero-knowledge proofs and proto-danksharding.
People seem to love making a big deal out of the earth not being a perfect sphere. In reality, the earth is like 3 tenths of a percent out of round (equatorial bulge is 0.003 of equatorial radius). This works out to about 21km which puts Mount Everest to shame but is really nothing compared to the 6371km mean radius of the earth.
Yeah the instant I start thinking maybe this guy is fine I remember Worldcoin, which is either utterly delusional or a scam. If it's the former then why is this guy being handed the keys to insanely important positions? If it's the latter, then... why is this guy being handed the keys to insanely important positions?
If you don't know what Worldcoin is, look it up. It doesn't really need any commentary.
The fact that this dude was basically handed YCombinator and then handed OpenAI shows how incestuous the inside-most track of Silicon Valley is. I guess it's pretty much identical to Hollywood.
> > Who can forget "the orb", altman seems like a complete clown who lucked into the holy grail that is openai
It's like that for every billionaire, humanity will make some X progress in some Y field and some lucky schnook
will find themselves in the epicenter of it all.
Just like on the other hand an Earthquake will stuck in coordinates X,Y and some poor unlucky schnook Z
will find themselves in the epicenter of it all
Thankfully, it doesn't appear that you're in the position to gate-keep this.
The American education system is no measure of a person's worth. I've already built and sold one startup somehow despite your sneering, and I dropped out after a semester and a half. I'm now working on my second. Try to avoid the urge to casually dismiss entire categories of people because you want to elevate yourself above one of them. Books are available without spending $40k per year.
I personally find the presentation of corporate missions in quasi-religious terminology extremely off-putting. The company might be doing great things, but there ought to be cultural space left for things much more important than companies.
What are you talking about? Please quote the law you refer to, so we can evaluate what it really does, because I don't believe you. There is no law that forces all companies to always pick the most profitable action. Especially not for non-profit corporations.
For-profit LLCs' purpose by law is to make profit for its shareholders. In common law systems it may be to pinpoint to a specific law, but from judgements its clear[1]. In e.g. Finland it's plain and clear in the law too.
There are a lot of misconceptions about maximizing shareholder value, even among economists. But talk to a legal scholar or a corporate lawyer: a CEO or board is not legally obliged to maximize shareholder value. They need to maximize the value of the corporation and act in its best interest. Only when there is a change in legal control, such as a merger or imminent hostile takeover, do they have to maximize shareholder value.
Just to be very clear: modern corporate law does not require profits at the expense of everything else, and maximizing profits or shareholder value is not the same thing as serving shareholders’ best interest.
The company is supposed to serve the best interests of the shareholders, but that does not require an unwavering commitment to profit. What it does require is defined in the company's investment prospectus. The CEO and board must act as good fiduciaries but they are given broad discretion to decide what that entails.
If you disagree with what the officers think is the best way to carry out these duties, the courts say your option is not to sue them, it is to invest in a different company.
You don't have to take every profit opportunity if you believe it would jeopardize the long-term value of the company. If the shareholders don't agree and want you to maximize their short term interests instead, their recourse is to invest in a different company. It seems hard for some people to understand that as well. Within the bounds of the prospectus, reasonable people can disagree on how to maximize the value of a corporation, and the shareholders don't get to decide how to do that. They only get to decide how to allocate their funds. It is the job of corporate management to decide what risks are worth taking.
Yes, there's a lot of leeway on how to maximize the shareholder profit and on what timescale. But in any case the decisions can't be justified by e.g. morals, especially if it means monetary loss (unless no shareholder complains of course).
It's just a matter of how you frame it. The view to take is that alienating customers and employees by violating e.g. morality, is not in the best interests of shareholders. Saying that the long term value of the company is best served by avoiding banditry is not only within management's discretion, it happens to be true.
You can't even point to successful companies that treat consequences from violating laws or morality as just a cost of doing business and say that forces everyone else to follow suit. What might be good for one company isn't necessarily good for another.
The fact that companies advertising on twitter don't want their products appearing next to far right diatribe is proof enough that considering morality and ethics is important to maximizing value.
That's still profit maximizing. If they can't argue the "moral" decision on profit rationale it's illegal.
LLCs are amoral by design. It can be argued that this amorality can result in good outcomes when e.g. regulated proprerly. But that doesn't make the LLCs themselves moral actors.
Mistaking companies for moral actors results in folly like letting them regulate themselves.
You are arguing against a strawman. No one ever said that corporations are moral actors. You said that companies are not allowed to have a mission other than chasing profits. As has already been pointed out, OpenAI is not a for-profit corporation. These are a thing that really exists, and as the name implies, they are not obligated to show any profits. You are also conflating 3 things: Profits, The Best Interests Of Shareholders, and The Value of the Corporation. These are all distinct things, not synonyms. The thing that the corporation will consider to be the value it maximizes is something you will find in its prospectus. The prospectus is what lays out the promises the corporation makes to its shareholders. Nonprofit corporations specify their mission, and while their officers are still expected to act as good fiduciaries, this does not mean maximizing profit.
OpenAI is neither a for-profit nor an LLC. It’s a non-profit that (confusingly) owns a for-profit arm which very specifically disclaims any obligation to produce a profit.
If there are no special clauses in OpenAI Global LLC charter, Microsoft can sue if OpenAI Inc if they decline to do something profitable for e.g. moral reasons.
51% ownership doesn't mean you can do anything you want with the company. It's sort of a main point of a LLC.
It's a law more like Conway's Law than U.S. Law. Call it "The law of diffused corporate responsibilities".
And it doesn't mean the most profitable option will be picked, but it does ensure that easy money is not left on the table, while lots of other money is set on fire in pursuit of the personal interests of director level managers.
If you notice, quite a few top executives go to Zen retreats... these are the same people who have no qualms with 5, 10, 20, 30% cuts.
It seems anathema, but it isn't, Zen, arguably, was instrumental in the Imperial Army running roughshod over its enemies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War , so too with Executives -they simply become instruments of fate itself, it's not they themselves doing it.
Yes, it is like when you are going to the interviews to get a better paying job you need to come with socially acceptable bulshit answer to the question: why do you want to leave your current position?
What is incredible is that this sort of double dealing is what he got fired from YC for doing - it is almost like nobody actually cares about AI safety or ethics and only about making money.
What is "this kind of stuff"? I am confused as to what the accusation is. I understand that you should be looked at closely and scrutinised when there is a possible conflict of interest, but why would it be okay to vaguely assume foul play when it could just be someone who is committed to making something work? Better/more infrastructure is needed, as is evident every time I send a query to openai/ms. What is bad about trying to make it happen yourself, if you think you can, specially if your other businesses capabilities depend on it?
Where is founding for the accusation that this wasn’t already known to the board? Despite including a quote you made up, this line of argument relies on a false premise.
Yes, “IF” you can’t inform people of possible conflicts of interest, that is bad. But it’s also irrelevant as of yet.
We don't know if they had a rigorous internal debate where they evaluated all of the options or if it was a decision made from above. We don't know how the chips perform, if there are alternatives, and if there are alternatives, how the price compares.
The firing was about "Altman not being honest with the board."
Since then, journalists have talked to both sides on and off the record and confirmed that the only reason for firing was distrust for Altman's honesty.
>Four years ago, one of Altman’s mentors, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, flew from the United Kingdom to San Francisco to give his protégé the boot, according to three people familiar with the incident, which has not been previously reported. .... he flew across the Atlantic with concerns that the company’s president put his own interests ahead of the organization — worries that would be echoed by OpenAI’s board.
>A separate concern, unrelated to his initial firing, was that Altman personally invested in start-ups he discovered through the incubator using a fund he created with his brother Jack — a kind of double-dipping for personal enrichment that was practiced by other founders and later limited by the organization.
“It was the school of loose management that is all about prioritizing what’s in it for me,”
There has also been at least one former OpenAI employee stating that Altman lied to him multiple times [1]. By itself this wouldn't be worth much, but it adds to the claims of Altman not being an honest guy.
Ironically you're making an assumption, speculating, and maybe they do know that for a fact - but we just don't simply know why they'd know, or if it's true. The best you can say is we don't know for sure.
But considering the board initially fired him for being dishonest/lying in an ongoing fashion, and the board wouldn't do the firing without evidence they could back it up with, it's not so hard to extrapolate that a return would be conditional on a deeper investigation and "full" cooperation.
It seems clear to me that a conflict of interest exists here. It’s also perfectly normal for a billionaire tech investor with some non-zero expertise in AI to be investing in AI chip makers. (It might seem more strange if he wasn’t.)
The existence of such a conflict is not itself inherently a problem; these situations come up all the time, become disclosed, and extra scrutiny is placed on decisions where the conflict is likely to surface.
I don’t find it at all obvious that a billionaire CEO would improperly influence the company he’s running to buy from a company he’s invested in over a few million in chips. It’s a topic ripe for speculation and insinuation and hopefully the conflict of interest was properly disclosed and someone other than Altman made the final decision to commit to this purchase.
Good call out. I definitely used the wrong terminology here. A conflict of interest does exist, weather it was improper, hidden or otherwise improper for his role at OpenAI is something we don’t know and is not clear from this article alone.
A company with billions of dollars of investment investing a relatively small sum as an early commitment -- which is likely is the sort of thing that gets you preferential access -- into a AI chip company seems ... just smart?
AI chips are expensive and hard to get; nvidia can't produce enough; nvidia's chips are very expensive; building / seeding alternate supply for a crucial input is just competent business.
1. Many people would still scream bloody murder because they do not like Elon
2. When it comes to Tesla it is a public company so Elon has a duty of care to the public shareholders
3. even for the Private companies, Elon is not the SOLE owner, not even of twitter, so he still has a duty to the other minor shareholders, being a majority shareholder gives you lots of authority, but not unlimited authority. If he was the Sole shareholder it would be different.
But since he owns them, he can do whatever he wants with them? Unless you're arguing he's forming a trust / cartel, which I don't think is the issue being debated here
Sure - but this holds for public companies, too, especially those with different classes of share. For instance, Drew Houston has >50% voting power for Dropbox, despite it being a public company in which he nominally owns <50% of shares.
Having investors, even if you own a controlling interest, still has implications on company decisions and possible legal action.
An ad hominem is typically based on past actions and character. I know nothing of yours. It's just your argument itself that was shallow and insubstantive. You can take that personally, but it's not.
Is there another reason you were joking instead of just making your point?
OpenAI isn't a government agency or entity. They're free to no-bid or to use and purchase resources that someone within the company has ties to. The replies here are loaded with accusations of fraud; A typical HN rush to judgement.
It started off as a not-for-profit and $100+ million from Elon, and then somehow transitioned into having a for-profit wing. Do you see any ethical issues with that?
I'm as skeptical of OpenAI's dealings as anyone, but a $1m investment in a chip startup doesn't sound like he's a material owner. They've raised $33 million so far, minus the whole Prosperity7 divestiture kerfluffle (national security made a saudi-backed fund sell), so I'd be surprised if he owned in excess of 5%.
It looks to me like exactly the kind of investment I would expect a wealthy angel to make in startups related to their interests, not undue bias.
Not exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that it doesn't look like he has undue influence over the deal, rather than that he's not trying to make a buck. No claim about his honesty or lack thereof, but it doesn't look like a puppet constructed solely to enrich himself.
I definitely don't. I just read the article and went "Whoah is he just openly cutting himself a check?" and it does not seem that way. If I were him, I would recuse myself from the whole process due to my investment, but we have no insider knowledge of how it went down. I've really been unhappy with the transition from nonprofit to for-profit subsidiary, so obviously I disagree pretty thoroughly, but fundamentally this deal isn't immediately disqualifying.
I do wonder if this kind of thing was related to his ouster-and-return, but it happened in 2019 so it would need to be a pattern of behavior beyond what we see in the article.
If someone could explain the dishonest part to a simpleton like me it would be sincerely appreciated.
So he has an incentive to do business with a chip maker that he invested in. But that's allowed right? Or is the argument more that it's like insider trading (investing?) because he knew he might announce business with it in the future? Since it's not publicly traded, I don't even know if that's unethical.
He is not the owner of OpenAI so it can be considered harmful to the company if there was a better chip maker or deal available but he chose the one he has a personal take in.
It would be very hard to prove that choosing company A over company B was a knowingly worse choice for OpenAI though.
I tried to find estimates of Sam's net worth and found estimates from 250-700 million usd. However, it seems that most of his net worth is bound up in equity in private companies and startups[1]. 1 million usd could be a very substantial part of his liquid net worth.
For anyone who’s been in the high level SF tech scene for >15 years, $1M is not a substantial part of their liquid net worth. Certainly not for anyone who was in PGs inner circle 15 years ago.
Sam Altman claimed to have written a $375 million check from his own money to invest in Helion Energy. Maybe when all the lawsuits happen we will know more about his investments.
I'm not finding the quote, but he has claimed it in front of an audience. I should point out that he is Executive Chair of Helion so I assume he still has some control over how the money is spent.
One of those bets is on the fusion power startup Helion Energy, into which he’s poured more than $375 million, he told CNBC in 2021. The other is Retro, to which Altman cut checks totaling $180 million the same year.
“It’s a lot. I basically just took all my liquid net worth and put it into these two companies,” Altman says.
Unfortunate but unsurprising, given all the discussions and suspicions that the [recent] power struggle at OpenAI was about conflict of interests. This deal goes back to 2019, so it can only throw more oil on the fire about what's been happening since.
It's called a conflict of interest. A smart or well advised CEO would seek approval from the board before such a deal. And maybe it was, when this specific CEO went looking for the approval or communicated it to the board, that soap opera got triggered.
We called it 'tunneling' during 90s in my Eastern-European homeland. Like digging secret tunnel in one company where you have influence and transfer it's wealth into other company that you own.
In defense of a point I wasn't making, I have to ask if you actually read the article you shared. It describes claims of people saying the Eskimos have 9, 48, 100, or 200 words for snow, and points out these are all in conflict. It then goes on to remar that even if it were true, it's understandable since snow is a huge part of their culture, which reinforces the point that I _was_ making. Hardly a debunking!
"...The prevalence of the
great Eskimo snow hoax is testimony to falling standards in academia,
but also to a wider tendency (particularly in the United States, I'm
afraid) toward fundamentally anti-intellectual "gee-whiz" modes of
discourse and increasing ignorance of scientific thought..."
"...Some time in the future, and
it may be soon, you will be told by someone that the Eskimos have
many or dozens or scores or hundreds of words for snow. You, gentle
reader, must decide here and now whether you are going to let them get
away with it, or whether you are going to be true to your position as an
Expert On Language by calling them on it..."
He yammers on for pages about the poor quality of sources that make the claim, and then utterly fails to provide any sources that dispute it. He also says that it would make so much sense as to be "mundane and unremarkable".
> Among the many depressing things about this credulous transmission
and elaboration of a false claim is that even if there were a large
number of roots for different snow types in some Arctic language, this
would not, objectively, be intellectually interesting; it would be a most
mundane and unremarkable fact.
If so, the burden of proof falls on him to prove it's not the case. The whole thing comes off as a fun rant about how it's not such a big deal even if true, while never actually addressing its truthfulness.
> Krupnik and others charted the vocabulary of about 10 Inuit and Yupik dialects and concluded that they indeed have many more words for snow than English does. Central Siberian Yupik has 40 terms. Inuit dialect spoken in Canada's Nunavik region has at least 53, including matsaaruti, for wet snow that can be used to ice a sleigh's runners, and pukak, for crystalline powder snow that looks like salt. Within these dialects, the vocabulary associated with sea ice is even richer. In the Inupiaq dialect of Wales, Alaska, Krupnik documented 70 terms for ice including: utuqaq, ice that lasts year after year; siguliaksraq, a patchwork layer of crystals that form as the sea begins to freeze; and auniq, ice that is filled with holes. Similarly, the Sami people, who live in the northern tips of Scandinavia and Russia, use at least 180 words related to snow and ice, according to Ole Henrik Magga, a linguist in Norway.
I find it annoying that anyone would imply it's unintellectual to consider this possibility based on such an intellectually vacuous article as the one you shared.
I have to ask once again if you know what apocryphal means. Your comment added nothing, since it appeared it was informing 'darkerside' that the fact he mentioned isn't true, but he already knew that given his use of the word 'apocryphal'. If you just wanted to add the link you didn't need to say "Apparently a hoax" — that had already been mentioned in the conversation thus far.
We the Slavs have more than that for drinking and hangover. Far fewer for corruption, though it was rampant in the 90s in my home country (Poland) and reportedly still is in some other places.
I think it comes down to, is this good for this company. If not and you are directing sales to another company that benefits you, that would be bad, but if buying from the other company you invest in is good for OpenAI, then it's ok.
You are allow to have other investments, it comes down to disclosure, and not making a bad deal for reasons that personally profit you.
Yeah and it's more or less a self-fulfilling prophecy that any company that gets a deal with OpenAI would also make for a good investment. The only way to avoid this kind of thing would be to say that leadership of a company isn't allowed to make investments in companies that are either in the same industry or have dealings with their employer.
You could certainly make an argument for that, but it's not at all the standard practice currently, so I wouldn't say it's fair to single out Sam in this case unless there's other evidence of self-dealing.
You're directly or indirectly making sure the company you've invested in will get boosted if you as CEO owns a stake. Therefore it's a conflict of interest - what if that particular company is only the second best to deal with? Either you as CEO or any middle-manager under you will probably give it some bonus points and it will end up getting the deal, news outlets will write about it, etc etc.
At the very least you should let the board handle any potential dealings with the company and have 100% disclosure at all times (as you say)
If you are on the board of directors, and also invest in the local power company, is it a conflict of interest if the company pays for power from the local utility?
Again, not a lawyer, but I think there is a legal difference between the appearance of conflict of interest, and an actual conflict.
The completely anomalous board that specifically doesn't have a profit mission and therefore doesn't hold the company's well being as the first priority? That board is supposed to make decisions on purchasing?
What this comes down to is:
a. Is it legal?
b. Is any grey area worth challenging in court, if possible at all?
c. OAI is operating under a weird form of public scrutiny that other companies largely aren't, for normal if questionable phenomena like this issue, because the public is suffering under the illusion that they have a company stake (and that somehow decisions like this are indicative of a moral hazard that jeapordizes that stake).
Nothing is going to stop LLM ("AI") re-modeling of the communal world. OAI will be far from the only player in that process. If anything, all of this nonsense attention on Altman's minutia will just serve to distract from anything actually helpful that could be done.
I thought about what you wrote, indeed it is probably difficult to prove either way (unless some other facts are known, like - were there any other companies supplying similar service)
I was helping to implement ISO through small orgs (most likely overkill...) and remember one of important bits was that each purchase had to go through a process of selecting supplier. I wonder if this is also the case in OpenAI (I'd guess it is?). But I also can imagine, if there is only one supplier who provides given goods then the process is not very helpful.
It could be an example of Sam Altman making incredible investment choices. Or, yes, it could be corruption. Have to investigate to know one way or the other.
A cryptocurrency is supposed to be decentralized, but how do you verify that the biometrics that are registered in Worldcoin are genuine in a decentralized manner?
The answer is that you don't, and Worldcoin is just another giant ball of shit.
The Black-Scholes equation won the Nobel Prize in economics, it was still a major contributor to the bad decisions which cumulated in to the global financial crisis 15 years ago.
Passing audits is necessary, but nowhere near sufficient.
World ID is great. I like logging into stuff without verifying my email, linking my GitHub/Twitter/whatever, or solving a bunch of CAPTCHAs when I’m on a VPN.
He has been accused on Twitter of "climbing in her bed non-consensually" when he was 13 (and she 4). She has also explicitly said she doesn't actually want legal action for "experiences between a baby child and a tween child", again suggesting that anything that happened only happened when he was a child. She also has a history of mental illness.
Between downplaying the significance of what he did and discrediting the victim i cant tell whether his followers have a similar past or simply bend over to anyone that projects power. I can understand this coming from people in countries where the cult of personality is still alive but not in the western world.
We don't know if he did anything. And what he is accused of doing is actually quite vague, and at any rate it dates since he was a child. Not a young man, not an adolescent, but a pre-pubescent child. How much can you hold against someone who possibly didn't even understand what he was doing, even assuming she is completely right that this happened (her whole family denies it).
Was this diagnosed before he climbed into her bed when she was 4 y.o.? I'm no psychologist and I don't know what her own diagnosis involves but it seems that this diagnosis could be identifying a condition that resulted from abuse dealt by someone that she normally would trust.
Overall from what I have read the last few weeks Altman seems to be an unethical sleeze who decides how to proceed on everything based on an analysis of what he can get for himself - the perfect type of person who would abuse someone who he saw as being in a weaker position, like his little sister with no thought to how that would affect her later in life.
The point is that we don't know if what she is saying is true. I believe that she believes what she is saying, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. Per all that she has said, this is a memory from when she was 4 - it could be extremely distorted by now. Even if it is entirely true (her family denies it), he was a small child when doing it - it is very much believable that at 13 he wouldn't even fully understand what that means.
I don't know where you're from but when I was 13 I had a paying job throwing newspapers before sunrise. I did all my payment collections door to door though my Mom had to drive me to the route every morning. It was my first job and was a great introduction to job-related responsibilities.
At 13 years old, he should've been mature enough to understand when he would be crossing a line but instead he was not taught clear boundary issues. Was it because of bad parenting where they set no boundaries because he was the oldest son or something cultural? I don't know but at any rate in my view there is no universe where he didn't know that he was doing something wrong. He went for personal satisfaction over everything else just like he does in his dealings today.
Pretty funny seeing all the downvotes I get on this thread. I am pretty sure in real life that I would not want to hang out or socialize with any of the enabling cowards who support someone who could do this to his little sister and who could walk through life with so few restraints on his own behavior. Pretty pathetic.
I don’t think it matters if he understands, imo if this is actually true (which we will never know) that’s definitely messed up. Most 13 year olds know that this is wrong.
Annie accused Sam of sexual abuse in those words. And even the tweet about him climbing into her bed implied sexual acts followed. She didn't say rape as far as I know. But she didn't say only climbed into bed either.
1 billion people have a history of mental illness. And post traumatic stress disorder is a common consequence of sexual abuse. Does she have a history of delusion?
You are being dishonest. She’s accused him of far more than that! But being that HN is ran by PG zealots, actually discussion of these allegations will be muzzled before it hurts anyone’s bottom line…
She has said "I have been sexually, physically, and financially abused by members of my family, especially Sam Altman and sometimes Jack as well". This, plus the other two quotes in my previous comment, are the most she has actually said, from what I've seen.
My guess is that he's protected by microsoft and affiliated media. But once he's served his purpose and the lid raised the accusations will resurface. But until then he'd have done loads of damage.
First I'd heard of this. But apparently true! But even publications treating the sister very sympathetically and hating on "cis white men" [0] make it clear that she seems to be mentally ill.
I am not surprised people havent heard about this. Altman’s being protected by the affiliated media until he does a final handover of openai to the right people. Naturally i havent been there, i dont know the facts. But people have went under for less than this, yet somehow altman’s being swept under the carpet.
Possibly due to her being 4 y.o. and being assaulted by someone in a position of trust, someone like her brother who clearly demonstrates the willingness to violate other people's trust as an adult. His actions today are probably a result of the absence of consequences for bad behavior earlier in life. He learned that he can do these things and get away with it so now he manipulates as a normal course of action.
While Adam Neumann did something fishy it's much different from Altman conflict of interest. OpenAI is a non-profit and Altman is hired CEO not the owner of the company.
As a VC, isn't "Somebody wants to buy our stuff, we just need money to deliver on it" the ideal pitch?
The alternative was that OpenAI prepaid for these chips, and took on a lot of risk. From Altman's position, he's personally taking on risk instead of having OpenAI (and its investors) take it on.
Years out from an expected production run, I would be surprised to see any binding agreement. A letter of intent to buy is plenty for the chip manufacturer to be able to shop that around for funding if needed.
In the past, some semiconductor manufacturers themselves were happy to finance part of the cost of the run if you had a letter of intent, also. It used to frequently be a 50/50 split - half upfront, half after you have the money your customer(s) promised.
Conflicts of interest happen all the time. You recuse yourself from voting or decisions where applicable. Someone on the board of OpenAI is literally leading a direct competitor.
Come on. A guy mentions Sam's sister in his post and it's immediately flagged and hidden xD this site sometimes, seriously, the techbro team picking and worshipping is something else haha
Also, I don't think the employees would also "Listen and believe" those claims given the offer that Sam is giving to them on a golden plate.
I mean, one can just say, I don't know and don't care about this and that is their personal problem to deal with while I receive millions of dollars in shares.
The whole point is stay away and don't play the "MeToo" game.
Regardless if you like or dislike Altman, it is just a constant distraction to bring up his sister. I think most/all have heard it 10x by now. It’s very old, there has never been more evidence and his sister is mentally unwell. It serves no purpose to a a thread about OpenAI buying chips from a company he is invested in.
Does anyone get tired by the tech bros label always being thrown out when people disagree. Can we not all grow up and if we are to have disagreements, actually discuss it constructively?
Potentially as a result of or exacerbated by abuse, or tolerance thereof? Or made her an easier target?
> it serves no purpose to a a thread about OpenAI buying chips from a company he is invested in.
Certainly it does. Self-interest, conflict of interest etc., raises valid concerns about a person's sense of morality and ethics. Much like alleged assault or abuse of a vulnerable family member.
What a weird world we live in. Abuse of any type is not condonable but at the same time proof of some type is necessary. Provide proof and there can be discussion around it. I am concerned you feel the need stretch so far to attack someone.
Edit: Don't even bother replying, this person is a Elon/Altman hater. The majority of comments are just negative spam against any kind of thread related to OpenAI or Tesla.
> Abuse of any type is not condonable but at the same time proof of some type is necessary
You're right, in a criminal court. I don't know what the evidence is or isn't. Neither do you. I just posited a theory. The very vast majority of abuse has no "proof" and often boils down to he said, she said.
> Don't even bother replying, this person is a Elon/Altman hater. The majority of comments are just negative spam against any kind of thread related to OpenAI or Tesla.
Let's see, 9,114 comments on HN, 100 or so which relate to Musk/Tesla, and approximately 20 of which reference the OpenAI drama.
Revisit the site guidelines:
* Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
* Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Yes. I don’t like Elon but I get tired of the way discussions devolve into tech bros are bad.
Maybe life has always been like this but I find it harder and harder to have meaningful discourse. If you disagree with someone then all of a sudden you get put into a generalized bucket.
Edit: I don’t like how Elon always handles himself in public and I don’t always agree with everything Altman does but we as humans are very different and that’s ok. The moment Tesla comes up all the Elon hate comes out of their holes.
In this case if the article was about some kind of misconduct or worse towards another person ok great let’s talk about his sister.
He’s much better at giving it away when he thinks he is investing. Stuff like shorting Tesla. Hence, some traders have started to follow something called the Inverse Gates Index.
He does, it's literally what the Gates Foundation is for. It isn't easy to just give away $100,000,000,000 and trust that even half of that will get meaningfully spend and that it won't actually wind up getting abused by assholes in powerful positions and making things worse. That's $14 million per day for twenty years.
That's a great strategy if you don't care where it goes. You'd probably be surprised how quickly money can disappear when you have people motivated to spend it.
I think he said that he has equity in OpenAI but he also said that he is not motivated by money but by advancement of the AI and helping the humanity. If he was hardcore motivated by money he would spin off from the OpenAI and pull with him some of the developers and the investors and make his own LLM company.
Now key question is not is it corruption but on the Elon scale what this might be as Elon himself has done worse self-interest dealings but in Elon's defense he does ask his corporate boards to weigh in...
The difference is that Meta's chips are not developed by a separate company that just happens to be owned by Zuckerberg and charges Meta a ton of money for the R&D work.
That would leave Meta's other shareholders paying the bill while missing out on the gains if the project becomes a success. In other words, the risk is shared but the potential rewards are reaped by just one shareholder.
Elon is richer and used NASA money at SpaceX to buy bad SolarCity bonds, then used Tesla to bail out SpaceX and SolarCity when SolarCity were going to default on them.
But, Zuckerberg has done some stuff maybe somewhat similar to the WeWork trademark thing: the "Meta" trademark came from his quasi-charity's investment into some kind of meta-study medical research company. I'm not sure there was any conflict there though as I think Chan-Zuckerberg initiative fully owned it and didn't have other shareholders.
This news is not about vertical integration or competitive advantage but of potential conflicts of interest. Meta/Amazon/Alphabet chips are made in house or from acquisitions (presumably with the CEO having no financial stake in the acquired companies)
This is instead a question of whether Sama preferentially made a contract with Rain, perhaps despite better alternatives. (Which would benefit him but might not be in the best interests of stake holders).
It’s possible it was the correct decision though, and his stake is just a fortunate side-effect, after all Sam is also invested in other chip companies (Cerebras I believe?).
I find it interesting that so many people here are quick to defend a person’s right to moonlight on whatever they want, and the right of a person not to have their IP stolen by the company they work for. But when it’s a public figure suddenly we are on the side of the plantation owners..
Good for Sam, I say. Money aside he should be allowed to keep his interests separate. Just because this other company is AI related doesn’t mean it’s working in an area OpenAI was even interested in pursuing.
People keep saying this is true, but I haven’t seen it well-explained. So what? Maybe they have a good reason to go with this company he’s got a tiny stake in. Actually, having an inside track on how that other company operates could be a compelling reason _to_ buy its product.
The guy doesn't even hold personal shares at OpenAI, which could've been worth billions if he did (he's a cofounder and CEO to remind you, so it's unheard of), and you're blaming him for buying chips from a startup he made a small investment in? Seriously. Maybe go after the CEOs who rob their employees and take all the money to themselves.
Just to be clear, I never met the guy and have no affiliation with OpenAI.
I don't understand your argument. So corruption is OK because he isn't getting paid as much as he could be? That's like saying embezzlement is OK if you're underpaid.
And quite commonly in white collar crime, this is used as a defense. Volunteer associations, HOAs, where someone decided they were entitled to use the association credit card, or self-deal, etc., as some form of compensation for their efforts being (in their eyes) insufficiently rewarded.
All I'm saying is that he doesn't seem like a corrupt person given all the money he gave up on. Maybe that startup gave the best deal to OpenAI and was the right move regardless of his investment in them.
In WeWork, the CEO took a trademark that costs a couple of thousand dollars, and charged himself millions for it from company money - that's personal enrichment. Incubating a thing considered highly risky and expensive 5 years is not personal enrichment, its personal risk that helps more the likelihood of it being less impossible instead of a chance at enrichment from two companies you don't even know would be viable (OpenAI) 5 years from then.