[phillryu]

When I compare the two Elon was (lucky?) to at least have a string of vision-fueled ventures that became a thing. What is Sam's history of visions? Loopt? Is Y Combinator considered in a new golden era after he took over? Did Worldcoin make any sense at all?

I'm honestly hoping I'm entirely ignorant of his substance and would feel better if someone here can explain there's more to him than that… I would feel better knowing that what could be history's most disruptive tech is being led by someone with some vision for it, beyond the apocalypse that he described in 2016 that he tries not to think about too much:

"The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...

[wetmore]

I'm with you, listening to his interview with Ezra Klein gave me the impression that he doesn't actually think that deeply about the possible impact of AI. He says it worries him, but then he seems to wave those worries away with really simplistic solutions that don't seem very tenable.

[davidivadavid]

What bothers me most is that the picture he paints of success itself is some handwavy crap about how it could "create value" or "solve problems" or some other type of abstract nonsense. He has displayed exactly 0 concrete, desirable vision of what succeeding with AI would look like.

That seems to be the curse of Silicon Valley, worshiping abstractions to the point of nonsense. He would probably say that with AGI, we can make people immortal, infinitely intelligent, and so on. These are just potentialities with, again, 0 concrete vision. What would we use that power for? Altman has no idea.

At least Musk has some amount of storytelling about making humanity multiplanetary you may or may not buy into. AI "visionaries" seem to have 0 narrative except rehashed, high-level summaries of sci-fi novels. Is that it?

[xiphias2]

The main question about OpenAI is this: can you have any better structure to create singularity that will happen anyways (Some people don't like the word AGI, so I just definine it by machines having wastly more intellectual power than humans).

Would it be better if Google, Tesla or Microsoft / Apple / CCP or any other for profit company did it?

[sixQuarks]

Are you really insinuating that Elon was simply “lucky” when it came to disrupting and transforming two gargantuan and highly complex industries at the same time?

[phillryu]

I think my main point was more that despite what you (not you personally, anyone reading) think of Elon, at least he has this track record of visionary companies and Sam does not.

Personally my take on Elon is something like this – he found a vacuum in the industry of smart engineers who want to work on something truly ambitious, the kind of people who feel most SV startups are bullshit. And as a sci-fi nerd he came in with money and pitched several sci-fi ambitious project ideas/visions that attracted these engineers etc. to make them happen. And I think he was rewarded for this. You could tally that as another vision that he had that was onto something.

[schiffern]

I'm not talking about the reality of Sam and Elon. I'm putting my ear to the ground and observing the way the media is (and will) portray them.

I wish that "actual reality" was all that mattered and not such low-knowledge "optics", but sadly we don't live in that world.