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Sam Altman's bad week continues, as a car stopped and appears to have fired a gun at the Russian Hill home of OpenAI’s CEO.
It appears that, if measured by deed, Mr. Altman may be in contention for the title of most hated business executive in the country.
Unless I am profoundly misinformed about the base rate of assassination attempts on tech CEOs, it appears AI anxiety has apparently reached a precipitation point among American youth, to the point where discontent is crystalizing into direct action. I've seen this in my personal life. My youngest brother is a bright kid - top of his class, eagle scout, 1400+ on his SATs as a junior, the whole shebang. He's completely given up on his original goal of going to college for something software-related, and he's not only adrift about what he's going to do with his future, but he's angry about it. I hope he has a support network sufficient to keep him on the right track, but I don't like what I see.
I'm not exactly old, but I'm sure as hell not young either. For those of you who are 25 or under, what does it feel like on the ground right now?
I'm going to bring this up just because its in the back of my mind and I'm going to reserve some small amount of probability for it.
But I can imagine the scenario where Sam himself arranges for these (pretty ineffective, obviously) attacks against his home as a counter to the bad press and to make sure he keeps his grasp on power, as he's already been ousted once.
Yes, it's implausible that he'd pull a Jussie Smollet, it is VASTLY more likely to be actual random violence. But I have enough distrust for Altman that I think he'd be willing to do something like this, especially if it carried minimal risk of personal harm.
Holy cow.
I guess the high achievers are technically the MOST likely to feel this anxiety, because they can directly perceive their competition is no longer just other high achievers... but this machine that can outperform them on every single metric that matters for success.
And as a former High School Valedictorian myself... I don't have a good answer here.
Its patently absurd to say he should toss out his academic achievement and instead divert into blue collar/physical work.
But to continue in academics would be a doomed play.
Uhhh get him in a gym and possibly doing some martial arts STAT, if only for the mental health benefits.
At this point he's considering law, because lawyers decide what's allowed or not in this country. His opinion is that it'll be one of the last safe fields left.
Okay.
As a lawyer, I am going to say no, don't do that.
His logic is not unsound, since we do in fact have control over how our profession is practiced and can use our guild authority to keep AI sidelined (for now). Here's a take I had three years ago that I still stand by. I've reiterated it. (holy crap GPT-3 was almost 6 years ago?)
Yes we can throw up barriers to AI adoption, and make the laws that protect us from AI competition. That's not as strong a moat as it seems. Even if lawyers are protected from AI competition... guess what your clients are doing.
And:
A) A bunch of other people are going to get a similar idea, so it'll be saturated, most likely. Already happening to an extent.
B) Most lawyers are miserable in their area of law. I am not, but I still had a long period of suck to get through, kept alive by my long-term goal of getting where I am now.
C) He will probably not become fabulously wealthy in this field even if AI doesn't supplant most entry-level legal jobs. MAKE HIM AWARE OF THE BIMODAL SALARY DISTRIBUTION FOR NEW GRADS. This was my big mistake early on.
There is now some evidence of downward pressure on new grad salaries.
I truly wish I had a more positive prescription to give out, but I am vehement about this negative one.
I've personally suggested he join the military. That idea did not go over well with the family.
That is a belittling suggestion. Similar to the discourse on X among right wingers where one camp says bright young men should get into trades. Much has been said on why this is belittling and dis-empowering for bright young men.
You can easily do your four years in the service, make up your mind as to what to use the free college for, and then take advantage of preferential hiring.
There's also nothing wrong with the trades; we stand to benefit strongly from AI, after all. Not everyone is going to be a CEO or have a cushy sinecure, and that's OK.
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