Something I think about from time to time is sacking during war, where soldiers are allowed to do as they please with a conquered civilian population. If I applied your same reasoning, I'd have to conclude that on average there's a great number of people who are not committing atrocities just because of the fear of repercussions. What I think happens is that getting desensitized to violence and being constantly made to make violent decisions makes anymore more likely to commit a violent act that they never would have otherwise. It doesn't need a special kind of brain, it just needs special circumstances.
Same for anyone in a position of power, except it's shamelessly lying and making decisions that affect hundreds or thousands of people, instead of direct violence.
There are, in fact, a substantial proportion of us that aren't doing horrible things because they are comfortable enough that risking that comfort is worse than what they would gain.
Sure, but you don't get stuff like the rape of Nanking from just a few handfuls of lunatics. It can't be simply explained as "oh, armies are just manned by 80% psychopaths, even after drafts". There's something about the extremeness of the situation that pushes an otherwise normal person towards abnormal behavior, even while some of his comrades refrain from engaging in such acts.
>There are, in fact, a substantial proportion of us that aren't doing horrible things because they are comfortable enough that risking that comfort is worse than what they would gain.
It's easy to say that without having gone through those experiences (either as a soldier or as a CEO).
I'm not sure what part of what I said is even remotely controversial. We see it literally every time the guardrails of society are relaxed and the typical social contract breaks down.
We are, as a species, riding the ragged edge of shit-slinging simian collapse. Humans were designed to exist in tribes of between 7 and 100 or so people. Any more than that relies of abstractions and heirarchy. The further up that heirarchy you go the less your world looks like the only expected human experience that our brains were designed for.
>There are, in fact, a substantial proportion of us that aren't doing horrible things because they are comfortable enough that risking that comfort is worse than what they would gain.
That sounds like you're saying that most people don't "do horrible things" out of a utilitarian calculus (which, to some extent, I would agree with, depending what we include on that "horrible things" set), which would mean CEOs are acting just like normal people, except put in an unusual situation. But how do you reconcile that with your earlier statement that CEOs are sociopaths who are more dissimilar from normal folk than giant squids? Or did I change your mind already?
As we see many people will do or say just about anything to get more money, prestige or power.
People have always used lies as tools to maintain their power whether it is the Roman Empire or 21st century AI companies. It is just human nature.
Why is it not possible to lay out your arguments honestly and let people decide on the merits?
On the other: I have to agree with you, there is too much of a pattern of bewildering behaviour not to.
I think what irks me is this idea that deceiving people to push them towards a specific outcome is a reliable and sound strategy, when we've seen many instances of it having the opposite effect.
It takes so much work, so much criminal energy, so much money and campaigns, to divide people. Whereas the opposite, people getting to know each other and working together, happens "by itself" all the time, for the most banal of reasons. Just give them some time and space together; no lobbying required, no bribes or blackmail, no psy-ops; just our innate desire to live and let live.
Humans who prey on humans are sick, it's as simple as that. Humans who don't want to stand up to humans who prey on humans may not be sick, but they're not our best, that's for sure, and they must not be our gatekeepers or our compass.
The problem with your idea is that you see "humans" as some kind of abstract unified whole. People care about their peers far more than they do about "humans" in the abstract. When you're a powerful venture capitalist, these peers are other venture capitalists for example. Some call this "class consciousness".
No, I don't, which greatly goes together with that not following from anything I said. I simply care about humans that are not predators way more than predators.
https://archive.ph/20260414023627/https://www.newyorker.com/...
That's thinking like a normal honest human :-) My point is that it was likely not a statement about reality (true or false) at all, but rather a phrase designed to elicit some response in the listener, such as the idea: 'Sam Altman isn't the kind of CEO who would put ads in his products unless he really had to'.
He's not describing how things are, but how he wants you to think about them.
That is what a lie is. The fact that some people think he exists in a different plane of existence from normal humans does not change the meaning of “lie”.
Sam Altman wants you to believe he doesn’t like ads. Sam Altman wants you to believe ads are a last resort for him. Sam is losing money. Sam reached his last resort option.
(PS - just quoted from https://sfstandard.com/pacific-standard-time/2026/04/15/sam-... in another comment)
So he is allegedly reported to be very dishonest but I wonder if the ad claim is a good example.
I don't think that is, because, at the time, he probably haven't decided one way or another. I think about it like the Schrodinger's cat. If Schrodinger's said "I think the cat is dead" and you went ahead and opened the box and found the cat alive, would Schrodinger have lied?
> He's not describing how things are, but how he wants you to think about them.
is just a fancy way to describe lies. I'm not even sure if it specifies some interesting subset of lies, I think it's just the plain definition.
'Lying', to me, implies some relationship with reality - I'm lying if I know there's no orange in my bag but I tell you that there is. What we're talking about is someone who might not know or care whether the orange or even the bag exists at all, and is just saying things to get some specific response out of the audience. The deception or not is irrelevant really.
In the case of the orange in the bag, both Altman and his interlocutor can see the bag and the truth can be exposed by rummaging.
In the case of ads in the oAI chat feed, at the time Altman made the comment he was probably planning to puts ads in the feed. But there might not even be emails about this, just conversation. And the engineers might not solve the "how" for a while... so there's nothing to rummage for.
However, in both cases Altman wants you to think something other than what's on his mind. There's an orange in his bag, but he wants you to think there is not. There's going to be ads because he owes the investors a tonne of money but he wants you to think it wont happen, or wont happen soon, or will be "nice" ads...
The distinction is in the nature of the underlying truth, not in Altmans words or actions in the moment. In the moment, in both cases, he's lying.
(Maybe consumers and businesses are fine having their slop tainted. Or mostly.)
This also kinda fits the profile of Altman that I'm getting from what I have seen - admittedly without looking in-depth. A person who is on surface a pathological liar, but in fact in a closer look he just says things. They just _happen_ to be complete lies, because that's what you need to do to achieve the goal in the set of circumstances. It's just that because it's as morally objectionable as outright lying, some people would pause and think before doing it, while he seems to just have no qualms at all.
I wouldn't put Sam on some kind of pedestal, everyone seems to talk this way nowadays.
Or Trump. Same profile.
There is something to be admired in this kind of people. They are not bound by their own words. It simply doesn't matter to them what they said a month ago, or a minute ago.
Their words are attached to the instant they are pronounced; they don't concern the future, or the past. They die immediately after they have been said. It's amazing to watch.
“I can’t change my personality.”
Remember when Sam said he needed $7 trillion? https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-seeks-trillions-of-do...
I don't think so. Resorting to ads is an obvious step but one that profoundly degrades the credibility of the whole service. It's a pyrrhic monetization strategy, and one that's pulled when all other options failed. It's a kin to scraping the bottom of the barrel to extract the remaining bits of value left.
The reason why the statement was "I kind of think of ads as a last resort" is clearly because they were a last resort move. And here they are.