Sam Altman’s attitude problem
What happened to the man who once told the US Senate “creators deserve control over how their creations are used”?
As I have argued here before, Sam Altman is, despite outward appearances, not a nice fellow. This came apparent in a new way on Friday, when TED’s leader, Chris Anderson, usually quite friendly to AI, pushed Sam on copyright issues. An OpenAI system had synthesized what appeared to be (a presumably) unlicensed Peanuts cartoon, and Anderson gave him to the opportunity to explain (e.g., perhaps the source materials were licensed?).
What transpired is summarized nicely in this tweet.
You can judge the full clip for yourself here .
Many were taken aback with the harshness of Sam’s (non)response. It certainly took zero responsibility for what appears to be an obvious infringement.
That nonresponse is a very far cry from what Altman told the US Senate in our May 2023 appearance there (“We think that creators deserve control over how their creations are used & what happens sort of beyond the point of them releasing it into the world”).
The actress Justine Bateman was particularly blunt in her take, and in this brief post, I will give her last words:
if you check the rest of the interview (see the TED yt channel), Sam follows that up w/ a dodge answer where he frames IP theft as "democratizing" access to creativity, which I guess is the SV euphemism for theft now. Maybe artists can at least "democratize" access to OpenAI's money in turn.
He appears to be a psychopath -- zero empathy for the artists and writers he's stealing from. In fact he seems to have contempt for them.