[pooper]

> Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process?

I will take a wild guess and say a qualified no in the sense that nobody who report directly to these people said anything against it and my conspiracy theory is that they were not idiots who didn't have their own misgivings but they prized their own personal gain / "professional growth" by being yes men over doing what they had a professional responsibility.

My favorite example is the Amazon Fire Phone

> Jeff Bezos reportedly "...envisioned a list of whiz-bang features... NFC for contactless payments, hands-free interactions to allow users to navigate the interface through mid-air gestures and a force-sensitive grip that could respond in different ways to various degrees of physical pressure", most of which ultimately did not end up in the final product. He also "obsessively monitored the product", requiring "even the smallest decisions needed to go by him".

Did nobody think that an expensive phone would make sense with a value conscious audience of Amazon.com? If nobody (who directly reports to the CEO) dares question even a relatively minor thing like this, how can we expect them to say anything about major/existential issues in a company such as "Open" AI?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Phone

[takinola]

There is a steelman argument for not pushing back on plans that don't make sense. You have to remember that folks like this are not just random mad men spouting crazy ideas. This is someone that has had crazy ideas in the past AND made them happen. In some cases, more than once. If you had a front row seat to watching someone deliver stuff that you thought couldn't be done, what you do when they came up with the next crazy idea? It is not unreasonable to subjugate your own judgement and just see where it goes.