The author, trying to warn people where Altman was headed, October 2024
It’s finally happening. Altman’s bad behavior is catching up to him.
The board fired Altman, once AI’s golden boy, in November 2023 not because AGI had been achieved (that still hasn’t happened) but because he was “not consistently candid,” just like they said.
And, now at long last, the world sees what the board saw, and what I saw (and what Karen Hao saw): having someone running a company with that much power to affect the world who is not consistently candid is not a good idea.
As I warned in August of 2024, questionable character in a man this powerful is dangerous:
Altman’s two-faced “I support Dario” but am also negotiating behind his back and open to surveillance two-step was, for many people, the last straw. Millions of people, literally, are angry; many feel betrayed. Nobody wishes to be surveilled.
In reality, Altman was never really all that interested in AI for the “benefit of humanity.” Mostly he was interested in Sam. And money, and deals. A whole lot of people have finally put that all together.
Here’s OpenAI’s head of robotics, just now:
Zoe Hitzig had resigned just a few weeks earlier, over a different set of issues that also reflected poorly on Altman’s character:
The public anger on social media is growing fast. A major boycott is afoot:
And all this was entirely predictable. Altman is bad news. It was always just a matter of time before people started realizing how serious the consequences might be.
History will judge those who stay at his company. Anyone who wants to work on LLMs can work elsewhere. Anyone who wants to use LLMs should go elsewhere.
#deleteChatGPT
#donttrustSam