Altman and Amodei do not make a living out of that. They make a living out of being CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic. Whether they are doing well in this position is a different question, but that has little to do with their public predictions.
Nah they do, Sam does nothing but lie in an effort to keep up share price. Selling people an impossible future is the job of OpenAI CEO. If tokens were profitable it'd be selling tokens, but they aren't so the only other option is selling ridiculous predictions to investors
What? The only reason their companies make so much money is BECAUSE they make their predictions about AI replacing every job soon.
A couple months ago it seemed is was their ONLY job.
Neither company is remotely close to making a profit yet. To the extent people at those companies make money, it is unrealized capital appreciation driven by successively higher valuations during successive funding rounds.
In short, financially they are still running on hype. Quite a lot of operations are being paid out of capital, not revenues. So they have to keep selling a dream to keep raising capital. Next stop: IPO.
People who "make predictions" are like psychics. Unless those predications are uncannily good – in which case we call that person an analyst – we can assume that the person is either wilfully lying, or that they're stupid.
Ed's predictions have so far failed to come true. I don't think he's stupid (but I might be wrong). That leaves me feeling like he's the psychic who knows exactly what they're doing. They're telling a gullible audience a story they want to hear because it's a nice way to earn a living.
Comparing him to the CEOs of companies who produce incredibly useful products used by millions is facile nonsense.
The difference is that Altman and Amodei are doing something else besides making predictions that turn out to be wrong. Most obviously, they're running tech companies that are changing the way entire industries operate. We put a lot of weight on that in evaluating them.
What else is Zitron doing that he could be evaluated on, besides making predictions that turn out to be wrong?
Ok, but it also means we shouldn’t immediately discredit people who make incorrect short-term predictions, because those are really hard and no individual person consistently gets them right. You can worship at the altar of short-term prediction if you really want, but if you want to be logically consistent, that entails never taking anybody seriously ever.
And we're used to insulting and making fun of the prominent members of those circles too, see: "Scam Altman", the large variety of jokes about Musk's timelines, comments about Dario waking up in a cold sweat whenever a powerful new open weight model drops, the "AGI achieved" meme etc.
Hyperbolic as those descriptions are, it’s not like they’re not sourced from reality. Sam Altman’s reputation in SV is well-established; Musk promised the roadster what, a decade ago? These guys preach a promised land of milk and honey and so many hear lap it up like dogs.
I ask again, have you ever heard Zitron speak? The way he presents himself has absolutely nothing in common with any tech CEO or AI enthusiast I have ever seen.
