“On Sam Altman”, 2023-11-24 (; backlinks):
[GS; original; cf. Kara Swisher’s defense] …Regarding claims about Sam’s integrity and honesty: I am not privy to all of Sam’s conversations. But I can tell you what I’ve seen from our many personal conversations over the years. I feel confident that Sam has been fully candid with me.
I can also see, from Sam’s communication style, how misunderstandings and disputes can form. He really hears people—he understands their positions and can talk about them fluidly. People sometimes interpret this understanding as commitment to specific actions.
Sam uses words fairly precisely in my experience. If he tells you what he plans to do, that’s what he plans to do. If he tells you he agrees with you in principle, he does. These are different things from each other. Not everyone groks this.
In my experience I’ve found “words from Sam” to have pretty strong predictive power about the future. I try to be epistemically careful, so I will not give a blanket endorsement to everything Sam says. But the record I’ve observed up close is pretty d—n good.
Critique is healthy and no one powerful should be immune to critique. A cult of blind loyalty is foolish and I don’t think any of us should trust or follow Sam uncritically. But sane critique requires credit where credit is due. Sam is due real credit on safety.
Last Friday when the board shared the news of Sam’s firing, I took seriously the possibility that they had a real issue that I simply wasn’t aware of. I didn’t jump ship immediately to support Sam; I am constitutionally incapable of rushing to that kind of judgement.
Since then the situation has become clearer. It looks like this was about long-standing philosophical, personal, and political issues. There doesn’t seem to have been a proximate cause. The board did not make a case, at all, for their decision.
This is why I felt confident signing the letter and supporting Sam’s return.
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