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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   25973 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

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Sam Altman just loves to be a sociopath and then brag about it. His latest?

https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666

"Her".

In case you've been living under a rock, this is in reference to the 2013 movie in which Scarlett Johansson plays the voice of an AI girlfriend. And it's also a reference to Open AI's new product, Chat GPT 4o, whose voice sounds just like... you guessed it, Scarlett Johansson.

This is no mistake. Open AI actually approached Ms. Johansson and asked her permission to use her voice. When she said no, they said fuck it and did it anyway.

https://x.com/BobbyAllyn/status/1792679435701014908

If Elon Musk is chaotic neutral, Sam Altman is increasingly proving himself to be lawful evil. It's not a good look.

How does using a voice that sounds like Scarlett Johansson's harm anyone? Perhaps it was illegal, but you shouldn't claim it was evil unless you can identify the harm done.

No one thing Sam Altman has done sticks out as evil. You have to have followed events for some time in order to get a feel for the pattern. I get SBF vibes from him. He does seem cleverer and more well-adjusted than SBF, but fundamentally he is making the same kind of gamble. Sam Altman thinks that there is a non-negligible probability that AGI will destroy the world, but he is building it anyway.

No one thing Sam Altman has done sticks out as evil.

His advocacy for regulatory capture in his company’s favor is a pretty clear cut example of it.

No one thing Sam Altman has done sticks out as evil

The non-disparagement agreements tied to an NDA on the topic of said non-disparagement agreement, tied to retaining your equity weird not-quite-equity compensation, with no mention of said clause at hiring time, seems surprisingly pretty clear-cut

I would have a much easier time believing his, “Aw shucks, I had no idea we were signing that. Must have been those silly lawyers,” routine if there wasn’t a long history detailing Altman’s penchant for plausibly-deniable power grabs.

He does seem cleverer and more well-adjusted than SBF, but fundamentally he is making the same kind of gamble. Sam Altman thinks that there is a non-negligible probability that AGI will destroy the world, but he is building it anyway.

In what universe is this the same kind of gamble as placing double-or-nothing bets with other people's money until you inevitably bust?

SBF also affirmed that he would take the hypothetical bet that had something like a 51% chance of doubling world happiness and a 49% chance of destroying the earth.

He would sacrifice all of us on the altar of expected value.

https://bestinterest.blog/sbfs-stupid-bet/

Yes. When has Sam Altman suggested that he'd St. Petersburg Paradox us into oblivion?

I feel like this is an embedded interest rate bet. And you need to heavily discount very long term outcomes to agree with him.

A 51% chance of doubling human happiness with a 49% chance of going to zero doesn’t work because compound interest exists. His path may get us their faster but as long as civilization is moving forward we should have other bets to make in the future or just compound growth.

Any gambler who has an edge wouldn’t take the bet because going to 0 is 0, but he would rightly think he has an edge and can take those other bets too.

I don’t think I’ve seen this argument before. SBF 51%-49% bet sounds ok I get the reasoning but are instincts are it’s stupid to take a 0% possible outcome. And it’s because all our experience is that Humanity continues to grow so the 0% option is far worse.

I'm actually very interested in how SBF's personality and views will change after he's been off all of the stimulants for a while. I know that when he was in jail they knocked his Adderall dose from 40mg/day to 10mg/day and he went to court to demand more while he was on trial.

His legendary lack of empathy was probably at least partly a "too many amphetamines" problem.

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