https://mastodon.social/@MattHodges/111456744670095882
me, at the thanksgiving table tomorrow
So where’s all the folks coming out of the woodwork to tell us this isn’t Technology news, then? They sure want to shit all over the comments whenever Musk is the subject, but here, in this nearly identical situation? Crickets, naturally. I’ve heard no other single piece of news out of this instance for five days other than the personal schedule of Sam Altman. It was good to hear about what happened once. Now we’re on post 63 of the same news.
Don’t get me wrong, I dislike Elongated Muskrat as much as the next guy. But there’s an extremely vocal minority here that love to invade the comments on every post of anything he’s done to cry about how that isn’t technology news. I generally like to argue that yes, it is technology news that Twitter has refactored how their verification mark works, or that advertisers are pulling out due to offensively alt-right content being promoted by Muskrat. I also think this situation with Altman is legitimate technology news, I just like to point out hypocrisy when I see it.
News articles about Elon’s constant political clown shows aren’t technology-related just because he’s in charge of a few tech companies.
News articles about a CEO being fired from a tech company and then almost immediately rehired are tech-related, because they’re about the tech company itself and the relevant actions of the people involved.
If this were a story about the opinions of Sam Altman, who happens to be a CEO of a tech company, about world hunger or something, that would be comparable. But it’s an article about how a CEO, who happens to be Sam Altman, was fired and rehired from a tech company over the course of 3 days.
There are still obviously personalities and opinions involved, but they’re in the context of technology, rather than technology being tangentially related to the context of someone’s opinions.
A wild Elon Musk rant has appeared, complaining about how people are complaining about how Elon Musk is irrelevant, in a thread that has nothing to do with Elon Musk.
I really have no idea how to take this.
I see your point but this is completely different. Altman is not on the front page of every news site every day like Elon is, so I’m not sick of looking at his face like I am with Elon.
Also, being fired as CEO of one of the fastest growing (and according to many) one of the most important companies in the world, and then being hired back 3 days later is a pretty big deal and is worthy of my attention. If there are a handful of articles about it, I’m okay with that, at least for now.
I hate everything about this: the lack of transparency, the lack of communication, the chaotic back and forth. We don’t know now if the company is now in a better position or worse.
I know it leaves me feeling pretty sick and untrusting about it considering the importance and potential disruptiveness (perhaps extreme) of AI in the coming years.
Given the rumors he was fired based on undisclosed usage of some foreign data scraping company’s data, it ain’t looking good.
Now that there’s big money involved, screw ethics. We don’t care how the training data was acquired.
Now that there’s big money involved, screw ethics. We don’t care how the training data was acquired.
I dont care about ethics here, if the money would be excluded as well.
IF they would live up to their goals they settled for its fine.
But its similar to google, back in the days, with “dont be evil”.
I’ve tried to find it but I can’t seem to find it. There’s been a thread on Lemmy somewhere about it that linked to a thread on Blind where someone claiming to be working at OpenAI having heard that from the board.
But, it’s ultimately just rumors, we don’t know for sure. But it was at least pretty plausible and what I would expect the board of a very successful AI company to fire the CEO for, since the company is obviously doing really well right now.
I actually like the chaoticness, because I don’t like having one small group of people as the self-appointed and de-facto gatekeepers of AI for everyone else. This makes it clear to everyone why it’s important to control your own AI resources.
Accelerationism is human sacrifice. It only works if it does damage… and most of the time, it only does damage.
Not wanting a small group of self-appointed gatekeepers is not the same as accelerationism.
I’m with you there, I just hope the general public come to that realization.
I maintain that this had something to do with a disagreement over which commercial applications are permissible for GPT-4, and that Sam Altman somewhere along the line negotiated a deal that allowed some actor to participate in one of the “forbidden applications” by proxy via a seemingly unrelated agreement. I’m talking Financial Forecasting (High Frequency Trading), Military, and Policing/Surveillance. Now that Sam’s back and unfettered, I’m guessing we are going to see some of those applications come out into the light.