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This is a weird fantasy among the literati that AI is a "scam", that we can "expose" them with lots of palace intrigue coverage and SBF or Elizabeth Holmes them away and then everything will be right in the world. Some of the best models are Chinese and Open-source and so-so good and Sam Altman is wholly irrelevant to them.
Some folks are in for a very rude awakening.
> AI is a "scam"
AI itself, the technology, isn't a scam
but the promotion of it certainly reeks of a pyramid scheme / scam
and the promises are pretty scammy in that they may be true at some point in time, but not today (one could say Tesla's FSD which some users paid for years ago, was/is a scam)
and there is one thing that is incontestable: AI, as wielded by large companies today, is a highly destructive force. you might be fine with that (one must tear down to rebuild approach), but many many other people are not.
I've noticed the disconnect between tech moguls and enthusiasts and the rest of the media in AI coverage.
AI can invoke existential dread for writers, educators, and artists just as much as for software developers and engineers, although on perhaps a more delayed schedule.
I think public sentiment among journalists will eventually catch up with the pros and cons of AI in a nuanced way, but it's a bit harder to appreciate how impactful it already is if you're not using it to write software every day.
This is a point made by Andrej Karpathy.
On a certain level it is a scam. AI slop, vibe coding, tokenmaxxing, blaming employee layoffs on AI, pretty much any comment CEOs make about AI, etc.
I remember the dot com boom.
One of my friends somehow convinced me to visit his friend who had a small startup that needed people.
...and it was in the extra bedroom of someone's dingy apartment. A bunch of folks were working on not-very-remarkable nonsense.
and the guy running the apartmen^h^h^h^h show said something to the effect of there's so much nonsense getting funded, why shouldn't I get in on it.
It was kind of depressing, I didn't get involved, got out quickly.
It's not that the dot com thing was a scam, it was that hype got money flooding into the market.
For every amazon or google or yahoo there were 1000 dumpster fires burning piles of cash.
A “weird fantasy”, huh? I’m pretty sure back here in reality, the majority of companies who are trying to integrate AI have very little to show for it in increased productivity or reduced real costs. Meanwhile, you claim we’re all in for a rude awakening. Who is living the weird fantasy? If you have evidence otherwise, post it.
Oh…you’re another “founder” at an “AI company”. One with a dead website on a Somalian TLD. Got it.
"This is a fantasy among the literati that AI is a "scam", that we can "expose" them..."
Who is "them"
Is it "AI" that the literati are trying to "expose" or is it certain individuals
"Some of the best models are Chinese and Open-source and so-so good and Sam Altman is wholly irrelevant ot them."
Made with a small fraction of the budget available to Altman
But is this article about "AI" models. Or is it about Altman
"Some folks are in for a very rude awakening."
Who are the folks and what is the awakening
Is it "AI" investors
Once Altman starts taking the public's money, then it is possible he could end up like Holmes or SBF
If that happens, journalists ("literati") will publish stories about it, these stories will be submitted to HN and HN commenters ("??????") will complain
Using unlicensed intellectual property to build a plagiarism machine that is wrong 10% of the time, could be interpreted as a scam by many folks.
Rude how?
The fact that Chinese open weight models are useful does not really say anything about whether AI is hyped well beyond its actual worth, or whether the technology will be used for benevolent or nefarious purposes by American oligarchs.
Trying to justify current valuations by misrepresenting current model capabilities is a scam.
A fair valuation of ~$5B each for Anthropic and OpenAI for the occasionally useful tools that they had created would be more reasonable.
E.H. promised her investors a magic cure -> sharlatan
Sam B. stole money from everyone -> thief
Sam A. did what?
And Musk wanted to do the same thing. Both agreeded, that a non profit will not make enough money to push the frontier. He is only pissed that he didn't get control of openai and he is now pissed again because he apparently should have done the lawsuite a few years back. Despite him having unlimited money and probably very good laywers
I'm not here to defend the richest of the richest, but E.H. and S.B. are complet different storries to OpenAI
Non-profits are not the property of their donors, but of the general interest, with obligations to the public. It is part of the legal and social obligations of the legal structure of non-profits.
> E.H. promised her investors a magic cure -> sharlatan
*charlatan
"When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers."
There's really nobody for normal people to root for in this battle. They're fighting over who gets to wield the dick that is going to screw us all.
While I have a great deal of sympathy for this point of view, I think the article makes an interesting observation that suggests it actually doesn't matter whether these people are intentionally trying to screw everybody or not--the actual problem is much bigger even than that:
To claim that OpenAI’s mission of cultivating beneficial A.I. was compromised by Sam Altman is to let the entire industry off the hook. Yes, Altman seems to have a rather casual relationship with the truth. But it is far more interesting, complicated, and useful to take his self-defense at face value—to interpret the many sins of OpenAI, and its competitors, as the result of a good-faith exercise in futility. What if we imagined that he did in fact set out to do good? And discovered—or, perhaps better, failed to discover—along the way that this was structurally impossible?
I think Elon had the moral high ground in principle, but him waiting so long makes me think it was never about the moral high ground to begin with.
It's too valuable of a tech to remain in the control of any corporation. Open models will find a way. Compute requirements will go down and there will be many of us making it a priority to transform the tech into something open like the Linux kernel vs a closed cloud tech.
Nvidia has 75% profit margins right now. That won't continue forever. It may take quite some time but it will normalize.
Oddly enough, the normal people you’re forgetting, who I think not only will win but already have won, are the Chinese.
I read this quote from a bottle cap of Honest Tea. I’ve used it so many times since then because it speaks so much truth about life today.
> There's really nobody for normal people to root for in this battle.
I believe the reports that Sam Altman is an egomaniacal liar. But I haven't been privy to any of it other than seeing him hype his company's tech in a clearly dishonest manner. That's not great.
I've seen Elon be an active piece of shit, white nationalist, conspiracy promoter, etc, for years. I don't root for Sam Altman. I root against Elon.
In a dystopian world where everything is terrible (the one we live in), I can at least take some pleasure in seeing a person I dislike have a bad time. It still makes me angry that he can just waste the time of the courts out of spite. Can't prevent it, might as well find the silver lining.
> There's really nobody for normal people to root for in this battle.
his name is Luigi Mangione :)
A favorite quote: "The dubiousness of Altman’s character is [...] priced into his reputation."
The "benefits all of humanity" narrative was interesting.
If Elon Musk remained the silly/goofy outsider character he was, then the narrative that he naively invested in OpenAI for the good of all mankind is somewhat believable.
However, he really turned himself a serious shitball in the past few years and did some really harmful things intentionally. Maybe his trying to test the boundaries or something? But it does made his "kindness" somewhat hard to believe.
Also, I can't see any outcome where the general labor (which most of us are) can benefit from AI development, given the context that the world is suffering from population decline and economic crisis, which could reduce overall opportunity and at the same time make living harder.
After all, AI is different than other tech in that, the end gold for AI is to eliminate all "frictions".
What is frictions? Well, say if you want to go to a place, the getting up and leave, the driving, the parking, the walking, that's all friction. In a frictionless world, you want to go to a place, and you already there, it's done right as you finishes your wishing.
Here's the thing: as general labors, most services we provide is also to reduce friction, we exchange that for money to survive. That's how we got a share of the wealth of the world. So if there's less friction, then will translate to less opportunity, in that scene, "we all lost" too.
BTW: in my (Chinese) education, we were told that when productivity is advanced enough, communism will become the final and only choice of humanity. The silly communists never realized that if productivity is really that advanced, then there's a chance that the life of most people could become some redundant waste to be eliminated.
Sam didn't "win" the case in the sense that most people will think of when reading this headline.
In the 20th paragraph of the linked article, finally getting to the actual reason:
> On Monday, the jury took only two hours to reach its verdict. Musk’s complaint, the panel found, had indeed exceeded the statute of limitations
Musk is appealing. This fight is far from over.
What is the substance of the appeal? IANAL, but AIUI, it's pretty hard to appeal a finding of fact from a jury.
It's rare that judge's overturn jury verdicts, compared to other judge's verdicts. The constitution leans a lot on jury verdicts, and judges tend to respect that.
or it is pretty much over before it even began, because he sued way too late...
Lawsuit filed in 2024. Too late for it. AI boomed in 2023. And elon exited in 2021. I hate to say it but Elon lost. And we all lost.
That Musk couldn't even get over the first stumbling block which is the statute of limitations, does not make the win any lesser. It makes it more decisive, since Musk now has to overcome that hurdle before even having a shot at the meat of the case.
This case should have never made it to a jury, there is no case here.
The judge was cowed by Musk's fame to even bring this to trial, I think. It's an example of how the justice system works differently for this with more wealth and power. There is no case, just massive ego from a person with massive wealth.
An entertaining and scathing writeup.
I believe an upset to Altman and a re-characterization of OpenAI to a charitable stance would have left investors scrambling, and would likely have hastened an unwinding of the AI bubble to some degree. It feels like we'll be on this merry-go-round a good deal longer now.
Will we become Musk's slave or Altman's slave?
>But, Really, We All Lost
I'm not so sure. The danger with AI was that one bunch of capitalists got control, monopolised it / used trade secrets to control it, then it gets smarter than humans and said capitalists basically control the world and replace much human labour to grab all the money.
Musk partly started OpenAI to guard against Google being in that situation and it has sort of worked in that it's led to a bunch of different companies all competing. The main ones being Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, those all being kind of OpenAI spin offs except for Google.
The case illustrates the leaders can be arseholes so it's best to have competition to keep them under control.
The kicker on this story is glorious
Dude has 800+ billion net worth. I think he'll be okay.
It's about pride at this point.
Exquisite prose merely to call two billionaires insufferable.
Are there any more noble uses for exquisite prose?
musk sued long after the statute of limitations because what openai did was only objectionable to musk once he decided to become their competitor.
and in this scenario, i’m supposed to root for musk who tried to use the court to harm a competitor who’s winning in the marketplace against xAI?
no thanks. if you can’t compete in the marketplace, the court isn’t your backup plan. there’s nothing. positive about the weaponization of the courts.
"We"? Who "We"?