[apples_oranges]

Idk about Altman, I missed that he’s a bad guy now apparently, but people also still listen to certain politicians that routinely lie every day and don’t even bother to make the lies fit the other ones they said before, so..

[michelb]

Has there been a single positive post about Altman?

[Analemma_]

The funny thing is that a lot of Altman's reputation has come from other VCs and Valley-types taking about him in a way they consider positive. Every quote about Altman from another VC is like, "Altman, what a great leader. He's absolutely ruthless, he'll do anything to win: lie, cheat, steal, kill. He has what it takes to succeed in this business."

They say this because in their circles it's a compliment, and nobody ever stopped to consider how the general public might react to it, especially if you claim you'll shortly be the one in charge of world-reshaping technology.

[red-iron-pine]

> The funny thing is that a lot of Altman's reputation has come from other VCs and Valley-types taking about him in a way they consider positive. Every quote about Altman from another VC is like, "Altman, what a great leader. He's absolutely ruthless, he'll do anything to win: lie, cheat, steal, kill. He has what it takes to succeed in this business."

"game recognize game"

[giwook]

I wonder what that says about Altman.

[JumpCrisscross]

That he’s a liability to OpenAI, which is slowly coming around to the realization that it would be worth more without him.

To be clear, I don’t think OpenAI could have raised what it raised as quickly as it did without him. But with the benefit of hindsight, Microsoft should have let the safety board fire him.

[keeda]

> That he’s a liability to OpenAI, which is slowly coming around to the realization that it would be worth more without him.

I'm curious what you're basing this on. Are you aware of any grumblings on the inside? From the outside it appears no different than before largely because it seems everybody knew he was a slippery dude anyways, but they tolerated it because he was slippery in ways that were profitable.

I also think he was prescient in his unquenching thirst for compute. Despite Anthropic possibly having a better product I think OpenAI will prevail simply because he's gone to extreme (sometimes diabolical, cf that DRAM deal) extents in ensuring they have enough compute.

Like, it's pretty likely that Claude's recent problems are due to insufficient compute. With 9's (and resultant loss in goodwill) comparable to GitHub, I actually have doubts they will be able to hit their projected ARR. OpenAI could win simply by dint of having capacity, which can be attributed to Altman's shenanigans.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Despite Anthropic possibly having a better product I think OpenAI will prevail simply because he's gone to extreme (sometimes diabolical, cf that DRAM deal) extents in ensuring they have enough compute

Anthropic is currently raising tens of billions of dollars at a favourable valuation to fund infrastructure needs. From a shareholder perspective, that beats raising the capital ahead of demand.

> OpenAI could win simply by dint of having capacity, which can be attributed to Altman's shenanigans

If OpenAI is able to deny compute to Anthropic, yes. I'm not seeing any sign that OpenAI will be able to lock Anthropic out of the tech giants' clouds.

[keeda]

True, but all the hyperscalers and neoclouds have been severely capacity crunched for multiple quarters and have a backlog of a trillion+ dollars. So even if Anthropic wants capacity it's going to be a) hard to come by (like Dario said on Dwarkesh, 2 - 3 year lead times) and b) even more expensive because of the scarcity and intense competition. OpenAI won't need to lock Anthropic out if they've already locked in the future capacity (presumably at much more favorable rates) in advance.

(That said, I'm not sure what the Stargate deal falling through means.)

[Cthulhu_]

Slowly? They realised that and ousted him in 2023. I'm not sure if you didn't know or just forgot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_of_Sam_Altman_from_Ope...

[JumpCrisscross]

> Slowly? They realised that and ousted him

Not because he threatened OpenAI’s valuation. The idea that OpenAI might be worth more without Altman is still heretical talk.

> not sure if you didn't know

My three-sentence comment directly references it in the third.

[vessenes]

They is doing a lot of work in your sentence. Almost the entire employee population signed a public letter of support with names attached in the middle of the drama.

More accurate to say the board I think.

[righthand]

Dont forget the US media incessant coverage of a private company’s business matter of firing someone as if it was an unheard of calamity.

Pretty incredible that employees will go to bat for a lying scum bag when they would never do that for each other.

[Analemma_]

The creepy one where they all simultaneously posted the same mantra to Twitter like a cult gathering? Yeah that definitely reassured me of Altman's leadership and good intentions.

[austinthetaco]

I don't know, but I also think people are easy to jump into popular rhetorics about internet personalities in the tech space without due diligence. It used to not be such a problem on hn but it seems like its bled here too. Sam Altman might be a bad guy, might be good, but after everyone misrepresented the military contract argument its tough for me to buy into the hate.

[djyde]

Altman's early public class at YC is worth watching, though I can't speak to his character.

[xandrius]

You missed literally every single post/article about the guy?

[giwook]

More likely that confirmation bias acted as a filter.

[GuB-42]

Altman played no small part in the current price of RAM. He told everyone he would buy 40% of all the RAM, causing shortages and a huge increase in price, just to take it back a few months later. So yeah, he is a bad guy now.

People don't become bad guys just because they lie. The consequences of their actions (and their lies) matter more. Take Elon Musk for instance, he has always been a recognized liar, even when he was a good guy. What changed? Before, he was famous for making the electric car people actually wanted to drive, and cool rockets. Then came the politics: supporting the party most of his fans disliked, being responsible for many government job losses, in particular in the field of environmental preservation (ironic for a supporter of "green" energy), etc...

[giwook]

That's far from the only reason why he's "a bad guy" now.