I've never trusted him, mostly because I find that — in all walks of life — the people sitting atop a pile of billions of other people most likely had to cheat in pretty heinous ways in order to get there.
You can succeed at that level while staying a moral person, but it’s a much tighter rope to walk. The ones wise enough to be able to walk such a tight line are also wise enough to recognize that the reward for all the effort is sour grapes.
This is common rhetoric that feels overly reductionist and makes me sad. Sam got fired and his response was to manipulate and pressure his employees into a shameful, cult-like letter, and play the media to character assassinate Toner as being underqualified and stupid.
His biggest competitor asks people in the interview process if they’d be willing to give up their Anthropic stock for the good of society.
Surely you cannot just close your eyes and say they’re the same. Don’t allow evil to roam free under the guise of merely “imperfection”.
Brother we are speaking on a forum that operates as the furnace of evil. It is not possible to become wealthy by creating value—this is the same logic that made people think alchemy might produce gold from lead.
If you posit that Altman suffers from main character syndrome (as many CEOs do), then he likely believes that he alone can lead OpenAI to success. In this case, doing whatever it takes to get himself back into the job is by definition justified. It's obviously worth stepping on a few toes if the success of the company is at stake.
Anthropic asking hypothetical questions in an interview doesn't seem like a very good signal. Everybody knows what they're supposed to say. If they want an unfakeable signal they should make offers with no equity component.