Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will know that Sam Altman is the on-again, off-again, on-again CEO of OpenAI. And, of course, OpenAI is the home of ChatGPT, an AI which was meant to be open source and a force for ‘good’. Hah… -makes the sign against the devil-
So, what do Sam and Donnie have in common?
According to this Futurism article, “…numerous tech insiders paint a picture of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as a relentless liar who wants everyone to like him while manipulating even the people closest to him to get what he wants.” Hmm…
And again:
“Some of these insiders were strikingly blunt in their diagnoses: Altman was a literal “sociopath,” one OpenAI board member alleged.”
‘Sociopath’ is a clinical label, and I hate how it’s become a buzz word to describe anyone who is ‘bad’, nevertheless it’s hard to see how people like Altman, Musk, Thiel et al can be anything but…
Or there is a another interpretation:
“Sue Yoon, a former OpenAI board member dished a slightly different, but no less unflattering, view of Altman than the “sociopath” picture. Altman was “not this Machiavellian villain,” she said, but was able to delude himself to in believing his ever-shifting sales pitches. “He’s too caught up in his own self-belief,” she told The New Yorker. “So he does things that, if you live in the real world, make no sense. But he doesn’t live in the real world.”
Whatever the true diagnosis may be, both Sam and Donnie have taken advantage of a system that rewards thieves in order to change the world, our world, in unimaginable ways. And none of them are good.
But you know the worst thing of all? The worst thing is that these barely-human people are just the tip of the iceberg. They are the ones who have made an art form out of abusing the system this time. If they were to disappear today, they would be replaced tomorrow by the baby monsters who’ve been waiting in the wings for their turn.
Until the system is changed, it will continue to spawn monsters.
I don’t know how you change the system to make it less open to abuse, but I do know that one of the underlying factors is us. Yes, you and me. Without us, these master conmen would fail long before they could reach positions of power. We have to become smarter. We have to become less gullible. And we have to stop seeing rapists, thieves, and liars as ‘strong’. They’re not… they’re aberrations who know how to game a system that rewards success as the ultimate good. It. Is. Not.
Meeks
Meeka's Mind 