unless you’re running a company into the ground and getting a bailout from your rival who is trying to delay an antitrust suit, then you’re not doing Steve Jobs correctly
sooooo many things would be
"We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson."
Is he trying to suggest the company did not try to make the voice sound like her without her permission?
The statement sounds like it's written by a lawyer to be technically true while implying something that is actually false.
These are weasel words.
He sounds sneaky, evasive and intentionally deceptive.
We should not give a sneaky, deceptive and manipulative person this much power over our future.
Edit: IMO OpenAI should just make their voice engine open source. Then we'll see if ScarJo or anyone else can stop the open-source community. I expected more from her.
Who would have guessed this would happen?
We should not give anybody this much power over our future.
Anyone who heard them both side by side would immediately realize this.
I think this will set an extremely bad precedent. People owning their own voice is clear and that is the way it should be. But people owning how their voice sounds like is weird. You can find thousands and thousands of people with similar voices. We are going to path now where a single person can have ownership of that and block the others from using their voice how they want.
Which exposes how empty this shit is, they tried to get Scarlett because even they know people care about her, a real person, and not a random voice with no cultural context.
How much influence does @sama have around here nowadays?
For the record, I was never impressed with him - I am not aware of single consequential thing he has done or built other than take the credit for the fine work of the AI scientist + engineers at OpenAI. It feels like the company is just a vehicle for how own ambition and legacy, not much else.
So what? It's one of my fav movies too.
> they repeatedly tried to get the voice actor from Her.
She didn't do it. So they went ahead and made a voice that sounds like her. It's not like she contributed to making the voice and then decided not to have it used.
Their company isn't just a business, it's a cult, and they're the Founder (notice the capital "F") and part of being in charge of this cult is asserting dominance over others. Steve knew to rarely pull this outside of tech executive circles; the new generation doesn't seem to keep it in SV. Musk is the go-to example but Altman's turning that way too.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/e913bd02-2582-4258-819f-2d5a00b...
If OpenAI loses, does this mean this voice actor cannot do their job any longer, because it happens some other actor has a similar voice?
Could Sky's voice actor sue a movie Johansson works in, because Johannson is copying her voice?
The fact that he pulled it down has me believing that he knew there was a real chance the company would get in trouble if he hadn't.
They should have just created a unique voice from the start. And they will likely do that moving forward.
Incredible, really. It would have been so easy to just… not do that.
sneaky, deceptive, and manipulative is a tag line for many billionaires. you don't get that rich without stepping on many people.
You can certainly patent it.
"In general terms, a “utility patent” protects the way an article is used and works (35 U.S.C. 101), while a “design patent” protects the way an article looks (35 U.S.C. 171)."
The people that emulate Steve Jobs poorly are usually real assholes with a long list of ethical mistakes.
> The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson's, and it was never intended to resemble hers. We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.
I'm skeptical whether this is true, but it's a pretty unambiguous and non-sneaky denial.
Never mind China, Europe seems to have had enough and even DC is having enough on some level. Not sure when this started, didn't seem to be at this level ten years ago.
I and others I know are against them, and we are like some of them were before their initial money raise - preparing for system design interviews, debugging from trace id's, studying covariance and contravariance. They really seem to be off in their own bubble of affluence. Not sure what year this started taking off - was definitely after 2014 at some point.
OpenAI tried to benefit by using "her" likeness without permission or a contract/license
Like, do you want to pay her fee, Sam? Because the general idea is to not pay the fee. Which is why you probably cast the voice actor before reaching out to Johansson.
I also think that he has bullied/twisted enough arms to get 'his way', but Scarlett doesn't give a poop about some tech-bro. He is a nothing to her.
Also, this tech-bro is stupid enough to not understand that her voice, as well as her image are of great value to her, and if she 'loses her voice', and her voice becomes a toy to everyone's whim, she will be losing money/contracts/etc. in the future. Or he does understand and he simply didn't care until the backlash.. (wuss...)
I would love to have the voice of Majel Barrett if I am to ever get an Alexa or a similar device. But Scarlett's voice would very soon be used for dirty-talk, if 'this' was to happen.
And I suggest the movie "The Congress" (2013!!!)(https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/) with Robin Wright, that sets the discussion about AI, voice/image of actors, etc.
Yeah, "the major AI product in the world" to ask to use a famous actors voice, and then when she says no, create something similar anyways, is at least a little be slimy and really a bad idea on many different levels (legally for one thing).
I think this is what this argument comes down to but just in terms of voices.
OpenAi might have done something wrong by hiring her with the intention of making a voice model they can leverage Scarlett's fame to market
Better yet, why is our multi-billion dollar AI company afraid of doing something original for once?
The most iconic superficial Steve Jobs impersonation was the Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.
Don't lump us in with the out of control tech bro culture people like Musk.
No. Just as if they hired a writer to do something that made them liable for copyright violation, or an engineer for something that made them liable for patent violation, those workers would not be banned from work.
The violation of right of personality isn't mere similarity of voice.
Well, here's Yishan Wong describing how Altman and the Reddit founders have conned Conde Nast: https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_bes... he answers at https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_bes...
Cool story bro.
Except I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot :)
Other than that, child's play for me.
Thanks for the help. I mean, thanks for your service as CEO.
He sued Universal, and reportedly settled for $760,000.
Example article on the topic - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/bac...
And that’s what happened here: OpenAI “hired a machine” that sounds like ScarJo, and then attempted to associate their product with ScarJo’s brand without her permission. You’re already not allowed to do that.
And if you want to make it as a voice actor and you sound like Morgan Freeman? Try your hardest to develop a personal brand distinct from his, and don’t take gigs where people want you to impersonate him (unless it’s a really obvious parody and you’re cool with the angle).
the same with white noise videos, they strike copyright infringement easy or at least they were. Did not check but I assume so it still is the case.
Jobs lied to Steve Wozniak. Atari gave Jobs $5000 to make Breakout for Atari. He told Wozniak he got $700 so Wozniak took home $350.
There's a meme on Twitter that OpenAI has "lost the mandate of heaven" over the past week or so, and while it makes for a funny joke, I think there really is some truth underneath it.
OpenAI's mistake was caving to SJ. They should have kept Sky and told SJ to get lost. If SJ sued, they could simply prove another voice actor was used and make the legitimate argument that SJ doesn't have a monopoly on voices similar to hers.
Sam’s statement partially contradicts this by saying they contracted the voice actor before ScarJo - but I believe there’s enough intent shown in ScarJos original tweet that Sam as a default disregarded the entire interaction as an inconvenience where he could be “naughty” and get away without consequences.
Why? The grandparent is not saying it's coincidence. Why is it not okay to hire someone who has a voice similar to celebrity X who you intentionally want to immitate? I mean if you don't actually mislead people to believe that your immitation is actually X - which would be obviously problematic?
Microsoft argued in court that you can not and won. See Apple vs Microsoft if I recall correctly.
And before you try this rebuttal, this is different from machinery taking the jobs away from manufacturing plant workers, it's much bigger than that. With manufacturing plant workers, at least humans were still needed for recognizing a fault in the machinery and stopping the line. Humans still needed to maintain the machines. Humans needed to design and build the machines. In this scenario, a couple of central parties are creating these tools, and then nobody is needed to ensure a quality product any further down the chain than that. There either needs to be a legal consequence to this, or a 4.4 billion dollar industry is now just closing their doors. That's all well and good until all of those peoples' families need to eat their next meal or sleep in a home. But I guess their lives aren't your problem.
It won't be anytime all that soon, in my opinion. But generative AI is coming for many (most? all?) sectors of work. And if history is any indicator, millions of people will have to suffer and/or die before governments step in to do much of anything about it. Probably especially-so in the US, since we tend to lean towards "free markets" that benefit the massive companies that have already made it, and allow them to chew through human resources (the people, not the department) mostly any way they see fit. So many people are going to lose their jobs and never find work in their field again, and they will all either die or retrain for all the same laborer positions and end up with a massive surplus of workers in those fields too. And that's only until we become skilled enough in robotics and generative AI to automate the trades too.
Cat's already out of the bag: https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intel...
It's one thing to copyright a performance or own a likeness. Owning the sound of a voice is scary territory we do not want to get into, or the estate of every singer will be suing the estate of every other singer who will be suing the remaining actual living singers.
Thinking about replying to this comment? Don't make your writing style sound too much like mine, I have lawyers standing by. And all you trendy kids that type without caps and punctuation can expect a visit from the estate of e.e. comings.
It’s really a shame.
I'm sure lots of movies have tried to cast Scarlett Johanson for a role and she declined, so they went with another actress who looked similar. Should she sue them too?
I'm responding more to the idea of "legitimate" businesses just cloning people's voice to associate their identity with a product by comparing it to something slimeballs do to the elderly, including my late grandmother.
Setting a precedent that if your natural voice sounds similar to a more famous actor precludes you from work would be a terrible precedent to set.
Not your parent comenter but please allow me to enlighten you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bright
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language)
When in doubt, always double-check who you're replying to in HN. We are lucky to have many great minds around.
An example of this is Weird Al pays for the rights to things that are probably ok under fair use parody protection. Paying for the rights removes the possibily of a challenge.
However, they both sound like AIs because Scarlett is playing that role and so is OpenAI's voice app.
Eg, James Earl Jones performing Darth Vader vs Mufasa vs Terence Mann are three different things.
If there's a comic book villain tech leader out there, it's a CEO of some lifeless conglomerate that mainly buys out the competition and fires everyone aboard, or it's someone in charge of society-altering tech who is choosing to misuse it. And I'm not going to name names.
See also Midler v. Ford Motor Co. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
People really want their to be a crime here with no evidence. You all have ears, you can listen to both clips back to back and discover, unsurprisingly, that they are actually different voices. Not even an imitation.
I don't believe Sam Altman, but I am interested in the general “is it legal/ethical to immitate something uncopyrightable” argument.
The artist is not defined by their past work or other miscellaneous artifacts, but their perspective and creativity. This too is not a revelation. AI has nothing to do with this. It's just a means to an end.
The real problem is the legal stuff. Everything else is hype.
If it was just an actor, it might be a case of inspiration gone awry. But this particular actor sued Disney in 2021 after making a lot of movies and a lot of money making movies for them.
Deliberately poking a fight with a litigation happy actor is weird. Most weird is really benign. But this is the kind of weird that forces out of court settlements. It’s reckless.
Edit - mistyped the date as 2001. Changed to 2021.
Voice *actors* act. It is in the name. The voice they perform in is not their usual voice. A good voice actor can do dozens of different characters. If you hire a voice actor to impersonate someone else's voice, that is infringement. Bette Midler vs Ford, Tom Waits vs Frito Lay are the two big examples of court cases where a company hired voice actors to impersonate a celebrity for an ad, and lost big in court.
It was ranked #1 a few minutes ago, and now below 20. It's 190 points posted < 60 minutes ago; other articles with this many points even 4 hours ago are top 5.
You can watch this submission sink in realtime by refreshing; it's amazing almost.
See a live screengrab here: https://imgur.com/a/E3fOEvF everything with this submissions point / time ratio is ranked way higher.
Look, I'd have respected it if you reported the voice sounded like Her by doing your own investigative research. To now pile on just shows you were sleeping at the wheel before, so be objective, don't pretend to know that it is a done deal only now.
Have we? Certainly the people litigating haven't. And as this article notes, actors' newest contract does have protections against AI. SAG-AFTRA's press release states [0] they are pursuing legislation. That could be bluster or could go nowhere, but certainly people haven't given up.
[0]: https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-statement-regarding-scarl...
I think what’s going on here is that Scarlett is famous, and so media outlets will widely cover this. In other words, this latest incident hasn’t riled up people any more than usual — if you scan the comments, they’re not much different from how people already felt about OpenAI. But now there’s an excuse for everybody to voice their opinions simultaneously.
They’re acting like the company literally stole something.
It also didn’t help that OpenAI removed the Sky voice. Why would they do that unless they have something to hide? The answer of course is that Scarlett is famously rich, and a famously rich person can wage a famously expensive lawsuit against OpenAI, even if there’s no basis. But OpenAI should’ve paid the cost. Now it just looks like their hand was caught in some kind of cookie jar, even though no one can say precisely what kind of cookies were being stolen.
That describes nearly every statement to ever come out of a CEO's mouth. (Or anyone else who's primary job is marketing)
When they did all that and still promoted the launch by directly referring to a Scarlett Johansson role, it got even more questionable.
I’m not pulling out my pitchforks but this is reckless.
How do you know?
In the movie The Seed of Chucky, Britney Spears gets killed. You can watch the clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3kCg5o0cHA. It is very clearly Britney Spears.
Except Britney Spears was not hired for the role. They hired a Britney Spears impersonator for the scene. They did everything that they could to make it look like Britney, and think it was Britney. But it really wasn't.
Do you think that Britney should have sued the Chucky franchise for that? If so, should Elvis Presly's estate also sue all of the Elvis Presly impersonators out there? Where do you draw the line? And if not, where do you draw the line between what happened in Chucky, and what happened here?
I really don't see a line between now having someone who sounded like the actress, and then tweeting the name of one of her movies, and what happened 20 years ago with Chucky killing someone who looked like Britney, then showing a license plate saying "BRITNEY1", and THEN saying, "Whoops I did it again." (The title of her most famous song at the time.) If anything, the movie was more egregious.
Midler v Ford: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/849...
Waits v Frito-Lay: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/90...
One interesting thing is that these cases are really deep in common law. They are quite far removed from statues, and statues are cited in the opinion only to argue how they don't apply.
In these cases, the voice was "distinct", and they intentionally copied it. It's possible these don't apply to ScarJo, although the fact that they negotiated with her is a bad sign, since that was also a common fact in the prior cases.
The new voice2voice from OpenAI allows for a conversational dialect, most prominently demonstrated in pop culture by the movie Her. Sam's tweet makes perfect sense in that context.
Sky's voice has been the default voice in voice2voice for almost a year now, and no one has made a connection to the Her voice until it started acting more conversational. It seems pretty obvious that OpenAI was looking for a more conversational assistant, likely inspired by the movie Her, and it would have been cool if the actress had helped make that happen, but she didn't, and here we are.
Also Juniper has always been the superior voice model. I just now realized that one of my custom GPTs kept having this annoying bug where the voice kept switching from Juniper to Sky, and that seems to be resolved now that Sky got removed.
But does he pay for rights? I’ve never seen that before and I’d love to read more.
40 minutes after posting: #17 with 171 points and 120 comments
50 minutes after posting: no longer on the front page with 207 points and 169 comments
"Amazing" isn't the word for it.
Was it an ethical mistake? Sure. He should have at least disclosed that he was receiving the bonus money, even if he didn't want to share it.
But claiming it was a "major ethical mistake" seems fairly out of touch with reality.
And of course, taken in the context of all of the good things they did together, it was completely insignificant and Woz has said as much.
Staying relevant is all that matters these days.
The movie producers didn't produce a simulation of Britney's voice and attempt to sell access to it.
However you feel about an probably-unapproved celebrity cameo in a movie, it's not the same thing as selling the ability to impersonate that celebrity's voice to anyone willing to pay, in perpetuity.
2. Ford explicitly hired an impersonator. OpenAI hired someone that sounded like her, and it’s her natural voice. Should movies be held to the same standard when casting their actors? This is about as absurd as saying that you’re not allowed to hire an actor to play a role.
1. The plot of "Her" (guy falls in love with synthesized voice, played by Johansson)
2. Altman's affinity for the film (the article says he's called it his "favorite movie")
Reaching out to Johansson about cloning her voice, then doing so without permission feels like Altman is creeping on her.
The sooner this bubble pops, the better.
As a rule, Apple gave stock to employees prior to the IPO, many of whom got rich. But some employees weren't eligible according to the criteria Steve (really, the board) came up with, and so they did not receive stock. Their criteria were typical for the time.
Woz and a few others felt bad about this and shared some of their stock.
Whether those ineligible people "deserved" stock is a matter of judgement...
This isn't some college kid with an idea and too much passion.
You are assuming that who came up with knowledge is important. I think Walter was saying that he would rather the knowledge not be forgotten, not that he was the one who provided it.
I'm glad for you. Enjoy your "journalism".
This is a great question and I hope someone here with requisite knowledge can help.
The biggest difference that I see is that technology has made the simulation cheaper and easier.
I think what confuses me is if you have made a business decision like this did nobody think about the downside case? Clearly not because they backed out so quickly.
OpenAI should’ve owned their actions. "Yes, we wanted to get a voice that sounded like the one from Her." There’s nothing wrong with that.
Weird Al also gets permission to do a parody even though it is not legally required.
This whole thing is reminiscent of Valve threatening to sue S2 for allegedly making a similar character. Unsurprisingly, the threats went nowhere.
Yes, but literally no one anywhere is suggesting that the voice actress used would be banned from work because of any similarity between her voice and Johansson's; that’s an irrelevant strawman.
Some people are arguing that there is considerable reason to believe that the totality of the circumstances of OpenAI’s particular use of her voice would make OpenAI liable under existing right of personality precedent, which, again, does not create liability for mere similarity of voice.
I think though that Sky's performance is similar to ScarJo's performance in Her. They're both playing AI voices.
Oops, that sounds like a match with Rashida Jones. Here’s one one of Scarlett J.:
https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cx24sy/vocal_...
I have a suspicion that most people with strong opinions on this haven’t actually compared Sky and Scarlett Johansson directly.
For the “her” reference(s?), was there anything beyond the single tweet?
Could they be trying to avert possible negative public perception even if they believe all they did was 100% legal? If you have ample funds and are willing to pay someone to make X easier for you does your offer to pay them imply that X is against the law? If your voice sounds like someone famous now you are prevented from getting any voice acting work? Because that famous person owns the rights to your voice? Tell me which law says this?
No.[1]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/177v8wz/i_have_a_r...
Based off his words and actions, Sam Altman is not a bastion of ethics or good morals.
The voice sounds remarkably like Scarlett Johansson's.
If anything OpenAI tried to mimic the AI from the film Her and owners of that film may try to seek compensation. I hope that fails but they can try.
Look at it this way: if the community didn’t flag it, it would be the mods’ duty to get this one off the front page. So whether it was the community or the mods is incidental.
From a moral perspective, I can’t believe that people are trying to argue that someone’s voice should be protected under law. But that’s a personal opinion.
Sam Altman tried something. ScarJo filed a lawsuit. ChatGPT took down the voice. That's it guys. The system worked like it should. But to suggest that he's a terrible person because of it is just beyond me. This is hardly a #MeToo type situation. She's a rich and famous Hollywood actor. She's OK.
> This scene was included in promotional spots for the film, most specifically Seed of Chucky's trailer, but the distributing company associated with the film, Focus Features, made the decision to significantly cut the scene down and add a disclaimer. The disclaimer that ran with the promotional spot, which was altered to only show a brief glimpse of Ariqat as Spears, stated: "Britney Spears does not appear in this film."
https://screenrant.com/seed-of-chucky-movie-promos-britney-s...
He refused to recognize his daughter even after a paternity test, and despite being a multi millionaire 1000 times over only paid child support when forced to by the courts.
Does that sound like the behavior of a good and ethical person?
Waits v. Frito Lay, Inc was '92, and cited it. They used a Tom Waits-sounding voice on an original song, and Waits successfully sued:
> Discussing the right of publicity, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the jury’s verdict that the defendants had committed the “Midler tort” by misappropriating Tom Waits’ voice for commercial purposes. The Midler tort is a species of violation of the right of publicity that protects against the unauthorized imitation of a celibrity’s voice which is distinctive and widely known, for commercial purposes.
https://tiplj.org/wp-content/uploads/Volumes/v1/v1p109.pdf
Of course, who knows what a court will find at the end of this. There is precedent, however.
The biggest difference here is obviously one of scale. I don't think ScarJo would be threatening to sue you, the individual, if you did a voice impression of her for a talent show or a friends wedding.
How do you know?
That may not be how it should work, but it is very much how the law currently works.
It's not. The original comment in this chain was drawing parallel to a lawsuit in which someone intentionally took steps to impersonate an actor.
This situation is a voice actor using their "natural voice" as a source of work.
If a lawsuit barring OpenAI from using this voice actor is successful, due to similarities to a more famous actor, that puts this voice actor's future potential at risk for companies actively wanting to avoid potential for litigation.
Suggesting a calming female persona as a real time always present life assistant draws parallel to a movie about a calming female persona that is a real time always present life assistant is not a smoking gun of impropriety.
Pursuing a more famous name to attach to marketing is certainly worth paying a premium over a lesser known voice actor and again is not a smoking gun.
Sky voice has been around for a very long time in the OpenAI app dating back to early 2023. No one was drawing similarities or crying foul and decrying how it "sounds just like Scarlett" ..
My understanding of western law is that things are ok unless law forbids it. So they are operating in an area that under _current_ laws is ok but because of what may be at stake many wish the current laws were different and are willing to use litigation and lobby efforts to that end.
This is NOT IN REPLY TO YOU but a general observation: Imagine the litigation that will happen when brain implants enable brain to brain sharing sensations and thoughts. Imagine the horrible copyright abuse! How will the publishing industry and sports industry and Hollywood control the rampart piracy?!?
sci-fi author: I wrote about the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
tech bros: Finally we have built the Torment Nexus from beloved sci fi story “Do not build the Torment Nexus”
Enjoying a story is not justification for recreating any artifact that occurs within the story. Her is quite clearly a cautionary tale, not meant to be instructive. https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/why-is-sam-altman-so-obs...
so yes I do think it’s very relevant that when you say “he liked the film”, the contents of the film is an admissible area of inquiry.
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/20/1252495087/openai-pulls-ai-vo...
Generally the "Right to Publicity" laws are clear about expiring at death. It's not like copyright.
Yeah, big business needs to be held to higher standard since they have so much power and affect so many people (and this higher standard is especially important since AI is uncharted territory and also since OpenAI already had a failed coup)
Believe it or not, these issues have been around for decades, and have been well settled for nearly as long.
Yes, they should have not reached out again, but now they are screwed. In no way will they want a trial and associated discovery. SJ can write her own ticket here.
That’s annoying, but we live in a country with lots of annoying laws that we nonetheless abide by. In this case I guess OpenAI just didn’t want to risk losing a court battle.
I still think legal = moral is mistaken in general, and from a moral standpoint it’s bogus that OpenAI couldn’t replicate the movie Her. It would’ve been cool. But, people can feel however they want to feel about it, and my personal opinion is worth about two milkshakes. But it’s still strange to me that anyone has a problem with what they did.
That's assuming they did, right now they're asking us to pretty please trust them that their girlfriend from Canada is really real! She's real, you guys! No I can't show her to you.
Voice impersonation has been a settled matter for decades. It doesn't matter that they used another actress. What matters is that they tried to pass the voice off as SJ's voice several times.
Unfortunately a commenter pointed out that there’s legal precedent for protecting people’s voices from commercial usage specifically (thanks to a court case from four decades ago), so I probably wouldn’t have tried this. The cost of battling it out in the legal system is outweighed by the coolness factor of replicating Her. I personally feel it’s a battle worth winning, since it’s bogus that they have to worry about some annoyed celebrity, and your personal freedoms aren’t being trodden on in this case. But I can see why OpenAI would back down.
Now, if some company was e.g. trying to commercialize everybody’s voices at scale, this would be a different conversation. That should obviously not be allowed. But replicating a culturally significant voice is one of the coolest aspects of AI (have you seen those recreations of historical voices from other languages translated into English? If not, you’re missing out) but that’s not what OpenAI did here.
> Sky voice has been around for a very long time in the OpenAI app dating back to early 2023. No one was drawing similarities or crying foul and decrying how it "sounds just like Scarlett" ..
No.[1]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/177v8wz/i_have_a_r...
OpenAI has been plastered across the news cycles for the last year, most of that time with Sky as the default voice. There was no discernable upheaval or ire in the public space suggesting the similarities of the voice in any meaningful public manner until this complaint was made.
The hiring of the voice actor could be complete misdirection for all we know.
Or Altman could reveal the identity of the voice actress OpenAI did use. I'm sure that will happen, and remove all doubt...
I’d love to find out if he directly pays artists for rights. That would be really interesting and would add a whole dimension to his problems with Prince.
Instead, I’ll repeat my earlier claim - this was reckless. If they were trying to avoid a strong negative perception, they failed. And they failed with an actor who sued Disney shortly after they paid her $20 million to make a movie.
This could be kinda like the dot com bubble -- the Internet went on to become BIG, but the companies just went bust... (and the ones that strive are probably not well known)
Users flagged it and it also set off the flamewar detector. I don't think we'd turn the penalties off on this one because because this article is derivative of the threads HN has already had on the recent things - threads like these:
Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice - >>40421225 - May 2024 (970 comments)
Jan Leike Resigns from OpenAI - >>40363273 - May 2024 (391 comments)
Ilya Sutskever to leave OpenAI - >>40361128 - May 2024 (780 comments)
Edit: also OpenAI departures: Why can’t former employees talk? - >>40393121 - May 2024 (961 comments)
Those were huge threads!
Sometimes media articles are driven by the topic getting discussed on Hacker News in the first place. That is: major HN thread -> journalist takes notice -> article about topic -> HN user submits article -> another HN thread—but now it's a repetitive one. We don't need that feedback loop, especially because the mind tends to resort to indignation to make up for the lack of amusement in repetitive content (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), and the earlier threads have been indignant (and repetitive) enough already.
> How much influence does @sama have around here nowadays?
Zero. He never asked for any change about anything HN-related even while he was running YC, and certainly not since then. Btw Sam was the person who posted https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/two-hn-announcements/.
> For the record, I was never impressed with him
(I'll add a personal bit even though that's usually a bad idea... I remember hearing this kind of comment about Sam going back to the Loopt days. My theory is that it had to do with pg praising him so publicly—I think it evoked a "why him and not me?" feeling in readers. The weird-ironic thing is that the complaint has only grown as Sam has achieved more. Running OpenAI through the biggest tech boom since the iPhone is...rather obviously massive. I think if Sam unifies gravity into quantum theory, brokers peace in the middle east, and cures cancer, we'll still be hearing these complaints—because they're not really grounded either in objective achievement or lack of it. It's some kind of second-order phenomenon, and actually rather interesting. At least if you aren't Sam!)
If you read that and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Most people don't use ChatGPT. Many people who use ChatGPT don't use voice generation. OpenAI's September update didn't have a demo watched by millions unless I missed something. Altman hyped the May update with references to Her. Some people thought the recent voice generation changes made the Sky voice sound more like Johansson. Some people gave OpenAI the benefit of the doubt before Johansson revealed they asked her twice. And what do you believe it would prove otherwise?
This story is not. This story is boring drama. HN is not an advocacy platform.
> Agreed, I mean "incredible" and not in the good way. Someone needs to take this to Twitter / X or another platform that isn't insider controlled.
Please do. We don't want these kinds of stories (or comments) here.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Unlike most software projects that came before, Big AI Projects require a level of funding and coordination that can't be overcome with "more volunteers". It requires coordination and deep pockets - not for writing the code but for training it.
How about if the production company that made "Her" wants to make "Her 2". SJ declines the voice work. Are they not allowed to hire A to do the voice work? They ask SJ again but she still declines. They make the movie with A. Was it bad form?
Just trying to figure out where people would draw the line.
Who are you to decide what "we" want?
You don't speak for me.
The evidence of whether this community wants to see a story and to talk about it consists of upvotes minus downvotes, comments, and flags.
Scarlett should sue, discovery phase would be hilarious and very illuminating.
Are you sure about that? Want to bet it wont ever reach discovery?
If so, I have a bridge you might be interested in buying
You mean this?
"Each of the personas has a different tone and accent. “Sky” sounds somewhat similar to Scarlett Johansson, the actor who voiced the AI that Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with in the movie “Her.” Deng, the OpenAI executive, said the voice personas were not meant to sound like any specific person."
As I stated prior, and thank you for making my point, despite being publicly available for near a year, there was minor mention of similarities with no general public sentiment.
>Altman hyped the May update with references to Her
If by "hype" you mean throwaway comments on social media that general population was unaware.
Drawing a parallel to a calming persona of an always on life assistant from pop culture in a few throwaway social media posts from personal accounts such as "Hope Everyone's Ready" isn't hyping it as Her any more than Anthropic is selling their offerings as a Star Trek communicator despite a few comments they've made on social media.
Ambiguous "some people" overstates any perceived concern and "most people don't use ChatGPT" understates how present they've been on the news.
Mobile app, which heavily emphasized voice and has "Sky" as it's default voice The ChatGPT mobile application had over 110+ million downloads across iOS and Android platforms before the May announcement.
In regards to the November announcement, yes, voice was very prominent in it with Sky as the default language. (https://youtu.be/pq34V_V5j18?si=66lEWxgteBbtKifl)
Presumably, the production company and Scarlet Johansson would have it in their contract what to do in case she doesn’t want to act in a sequel.
No contract exists between OpenAI and Scarlet Johansson.
Two, it’s bogus that conceptually this isn’t allowed. I’m already anti-IP — I think that IP is a tool that corporations wield to prevent us from using "their" ideas, not to protect us from being exploited as workers. And now this is yet another thing we’re Not Allowed To Do. Great, that sounds like a wonderful world, just peachy. Next time maybe we’ll stop people from monetizing the act of having fun at all, and then the circle of restrictions will be complete.
Or, another way of putting it: poor Scarlett, whatever will she do? Her voice is being actively exploited by a corporation. Oh no.
In reality, she’s rich, powerful, and will be absolutely fine. She’d get over it. The sole reason that she’s being allowed to act like a bully is because the law allows her to (just barely, in this case, but there is one legal precedent) and everyone happens to hate or fear OpenAI, so people love rooting for their downfall and calling Sam an evil sociopath.
Someone, please, make me a moral, ethical argument why what they did here was wrong. I’m happy to change my mind on this. Name one good reason that they shouldn’t be allowed to replicate Her. It would’ve been cool as fuck, and sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who thinks so, other than OpenAI.
Or... hear me out... maybe they couldn't prove that, which is why they caved. Caved within a day or so of her lawyers asking "So if it's not SJ's voice, whose is it?"
But it’s not looking good now the board can’t even fire him.
I've used AI in my programming work. After you get used to it, you see its limitations. It's not that clever, it's mostly mush. It's better than stackoverflow, though :-/
I've seen AI written articles, and they're pretty much drivel. Of course, most articles are drivel anyway, but the AI ones seem to have a peculiar drivelness about them that I recognize but cannot really describe.
I view it as simply removing some of the drudgery of my work, just like textile machines removed much of the drudgery of making cloth.
What I fear about AI is not their economic uses, but their use in warfare. Do you want a terminator drone hunting you? I sure don't.
What would you prefer? Would you want people to remember your name? Your face? Your voice? Which people? How often should they have to remember you? For how many thousands of years?
They say so, yes. Seems like they didn't want to go through discovery in order to prove it.
Actors don't work in films without detailed contracts, so the normal rules don't necessarily apply in that situation. The producers of Her might have the right to use SJ's likeness in related material. In any case, if they made another movie with a soundalike, the soundalike would be credited and not just called "A", so there would be no confusion about whose voice it was.
FWIW, I think he did understand some very fundamental truths about how to sell technology to the masses, but he definitely diverged from Alan Kay's philosophy outlined in "Dynabook".
IMO, he's less of a "savior" and more of a "god-tier salesperson".
Edit: I mentioned the "Dynabook", because Jobs often used the "bicycle for the mind" line, in interviews and newspaper ads.
Correct, while Midler presents a similar fact pattern and is a frequently taught and cited foundational case in this area, the case law has evolved since Midler, to an even stronger protection of celebrity publicity rights, that is even more explicitly not concerned with with the mechanism by which the identity is appropriated. Waits v. Frito Lay (!992), another case where voice sound-alike was a specific issue, has been mentioned in the thread, but White v. Samsung Electronics America (1993) [0], while its fact pattern wasn't centered on sound-alike voice appropriation, may be more important in that it underlines that the mechanism of appropriation is immaterial so long as the appropriation can be shown:
—quote—
In Midler, this court held that, even though the defendants had not used Midler's name or likeness, Midler had stated a claim for violation of her California common law right of publicity because "the defendants … for their own profit in selling their product did appropriate part of her identity" by using a Midler sound-alike. Id. at 463-64.
In Carson v. Here's Johnny Portable Toilets, Inc., 698 F.2d 831 (6th Cir. 1983), the defendant had marketed portable toilets under the brand name "Here's Johnny"--Johnny Carson's signature "Tonight Show" introduction–without Carson's permission. The district court had dismissed Carson's Michigan common law right of publicity claim because the defendants had not used Carson's "name or likeness." Id. at 835. In reversing the district court, the sixth circuit found "the district court's conception of the right of publicity … too narrow" and held that the right was implicated because the defendant had appropriated Carson's identity by using, inter alia, the phrase "Here's Johnny." Id. at 835-37.
These cases teach not only that the common law right of publicity reaches means of appropriation other than name or likeness, but that the specific means of appropriation are relevant only for determining whether the defendant has in fact appropriated the plaintiff's identity. The right of publicity does not require that appropriations of identity be accomplished through particular means to be actionable. It is noteworthy that the Midler and Carson defendants not only avoided using the plaintiff's name or likeness, but they also avoided appropriating the celebrity's voice, signature, and photograph. The photograph in Motschenbacher did include the plaintiff, but because the plaintiff was not visible the driver could have been an actor or dummy and the analysis in the case would have been the same.
Although the defendants in these cases avoided the most obvious means of appropriating the plaintiffs' identities, each of their actions directly implicated the commercial interests which the right of publicity is designed to protect.
–end quote–
> Ford explicitly hired an impersonator. OpenAI hired someone that sounded like her, and it’s her natural voice.
Hiring a natural sound-alike voice vs. an impersonator as a mechanism is not the legal issue, the issue is the intent of the defendant in so doing (Ford in the Midler case, OpenAI in a hypothetical Johansson lawsuit) and the commercial effect of them doing so.
[0] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/971...
I went to ask the Internet "best AI tools", and there's no clear consensus:
Various Redditors go on to suggest "here's 100 you might like to try".
So there's clearly a bubble, thousands of startups all trying for similar things.
I am personally looking forward to try Wolfram GPT:
Who the HELL has time to seriously care if ONE OF THE voices sounds like some famous actress ?
At least when people mentionned DoD AI contracts or some privacy issues there was some merit...
Actually, you probably can.[0]
[0] https://casetext.com/case/waits-v-frito-lay-inc
Edit: Added the context for the reply
Sure. This doesn’t seem like a direct response to anything I said, but it’s a valid point to why our government will be too slow to react in the situation I’m describing.
I’ve used it too. I think you’re still thinking on a much shorter timespan than I’m talking about. This is going to continue to advance. And I purposefully used the word “substitute” to describe its exact level of capability to replace human creativity.
Sure, same response as above.
Sure, same response as above.
Sure, that’s a much more reasonable short term fear for AI usage.
Frito Lay wanted to use a Tom Waits song for an ad.
Since Waits is violently opposed to the use of his music in ads he declined.
So they hired an impersinator for the soundtrack.
Waits sued Frito Lay for voice misappropriation and false endorsement and they had to cough up to the tune of 2.6 million for violating his rights.
This was upheld on appeal[0].
So, you absolutely have precedent and in my opinion it's galling that the tech bro'ship just doesn't give a shit about the rights of others.
[0]
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cx24sy/vocal_...
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/vocal_comp...
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cx9t8b/vocal_comp...
It won't work, but that won't stop them trying to destroy everything anyway.
If you read the parent comments, you'd see that them, and many others, are complaining about the thread getting flagged off the front page. Those flaggers are the "we". I am talking about "The evidence of whether this community wants to see a story".
Also, the guidelines literally say that these kinds of stories and comments are off-topic.
That is one incredibly dense dystopian sentence right there. Damn.
Rashida Jones is indeed a closer match, and might well be the person they went to once Scarlett declined and showed no interest.
So the overall argument isn't strange, you just disagree without having articulated exactly what biases you to disagree. It is moral disagreement ultimately.
Voices…are usually not so distinctive. However, certain voices are very distinct—Tom Waits, Miley Cyrus, James Earl Jones, Matt Berry. Those voices are pretty distinctively those people and simulating their voices it would be obvious who you are simulating. Other celebrity voices are much more generic. Scarlett fits into this with a pretty generic female voice with a faint NY/NJ accent.
Open AI screwed up by taking a generic voice and making it specific to the celebrity by reference and by actually pursuing the actor for the use of their voice.
as already outlined, this is a standard practice in other context for any "fast-moving" tech company. the only reason we are discussing it is due to a pop culture reference.
this is a lot of energy wasted which can be better spent on the bigger picture.
Actually, there's a similar court case from 1988 that creates legal precedent for her to sue.
"That's just one case! And it's from 1988! That's 36 years ago: rounded up, that's 4 decades!"
Actually, there's a court case from 1992 that built on that judgement and expanded it to define a specific kind of tort.
"That's bad law! Forget the law! I demand a moral justification."
Anyway, asking a person if you can make money off their identity, them saying no, and you going ahead and doing that anyway seems challenging to justify on moral grounds. I don't think you're willing to change your mind, your claim notwithstanding.
Unrelated, but as someone who came along into this world after Carson's Tonight Show, I had no idea that that moment from The Shining was a play on that. Today's lucky 10,000.
Given the fact that many, many people make their software MIT licensed (or rather, do whatever, I don't care license), I think most of us will be ok with that :)
Without having any context about who the voice was, or the "Drama" between OpenAI and actress in question, or even really being aware of Scarlett Johansson's body of work, I immediately went "Oh that's Scarlett Johansson or whatever, cool"
To read all of this after the fact is almost comical. It's as if the powers that be realized the issues with the "one-man-in-charge-of-ai" platform and created this almost unbelievable story to decredit him.
Which is a shame, since you had a decent argument.
Except it isn’t. Again, you’re acting like OpenAI tried to profit off of Scarlett. They tried to profit off of the portrayal she did in the movie Her. These are not the same thing, and treating them as interchangeable is some next level moral rationalization. One is taking advantage of someone. The other is what the movie industry is for.
Now, where’s this case from 1992 that expended and defined the scope of this?
-the creator of a new widget takes tha widget to another widget manufacturer and says "Would you like to put your stamp on this? It's similar to yours, yet derivative enough and we would both benefit."
- other widget manufacturer says "no"
-Creator of widget then puts the badge on the widget anyway, gets called out/faces legal action
-Creator of widget says "Well, we planned to put the badge on there anyway before even considering the other widget manufacturer. It's just coincidence.
This shouldn't even go to court. Laughable that the face of modern tech is cheesing this much.
ChatGPT is currently king of the mountain. That could change, but right now that's how it is.
Google's Gemini and Facebook's Llama 3 are clearly in a tier below. The 100s of tools you are seeing are various mixed and matched technologies that also belong in this tier.
Claude (massive context) and Mistral/Mixtral (decent with no censoring/guard rails) are interesting for special cases. And if you're determined and want to put in the effort, you can experiment or self-host and perhaps come up with some capabilities that do something special that suits a use case or something you want to optimize for (although not everyone has time for that).
So I wouldn't say it's just all this one big swirl of confusion and therefore a bubble and due to come crashing down. There's wheat, there's chaff, there's rhyme and reason.
I think this should be applied to our government. In my opinion, it is a failing in the structure of our government that those running the country control the police and appear to rarely be investigated unless by the request of a political opponent. They are seemingly outside of the law. It would be better if they were under perpetual investigation; forever kept in check. We should have assurance that those leading our country are not villainous traitors.
You can have an opinion on it, but they are going to get sued. Just like I can't take Moana and throw her in an ad where it says "I like [insert cereal here]", they can't take a character and use it without expecting Disney/whoever to come sue them.
I can see a civil judge or jury being given evidence showing very few listeners think the voices match in _blind voice tests_.
Here for example you can listen to the voices side by side:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/comment/l4...
And here is voice of another actress ( Rashida Jones ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385414AVZcA
This test is not blind but YOU tell me which you think is similar to the openAI sky voice? And what does that tell you about likely court result for Johansson? And having reached this conclusion yourself would you now think the other actress Rashida Jones is entitled to compensation based on this similarly test? Because there are no other women with similar voices?
AI has been used in warfare in the form of computer vision for like 20 years now. That's the scariest application of AI you will ever have to worry about; putting ChatGPT in a GBU-12 isn't going to make it any more dangeorus.
You're right, posting this was a bad idea. It reads like a "neener neener you're just jealous" defense of someone you happen to like.
You can listen to the voices side by side:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/comment/l4...
And here is voice of another actress ( Rashida Jones ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385414AVZcA
This test is not blind but YOU tell me which you think is similar to the openAI sky voice? And what does that tell you about likely court result for Johansson? And having reached this conclusion yourself would you now think the other actress Rashida Jones is entitled to compensation based on this similarly test? Because there are no other women with similar voices? What might support from friends and family of Rashida Jones be an indication of?
There is, however, a more dominant rule, which is never to contradict an angry crowd, because doing so only produces more of the same. I break that rule sometimes but not often.
(Edit: s/mob/crowd. I realized on my bike ride hours later that 'mob' was too harsh.)
You can listen to the voices side by side:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/comment/l4...
And here is voice of another actress ( Rashida Jones ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385414AVZcA
This test is not blind but YOU tell me which you think is similar to the openAI sky voice?
> And they failed with an actor who sued Disney shortly after they paid her $20 million to make a movie.
OpenAI did not fail. They suspended the sky voice and backed down not to further anger a segment of the public who views much of what OpenAI does in a negative light. Given the voice test above do you seriously think OpenAI would lose in court? Would that matter to the segment of population that is already outraged by AI? How are journalists and news companies affected by AI? How might their reporting be biased?
Altman should have said, "Yes, we made the voice similar to this washed-up actress, but her voice is not much different from anyone else with similar regional upbringing, year of birth, habits, and ethnic background, so we invite anyone else born in the mid-eighties, raised in Greenwich, and with Danish heritage, to sue us too. We'll see how well you do in court. Otherwise, get fucked."
This whole thing with anybody giving a shit about your voice, which isn't even yours, as it's a product of your environment and genes, and will be strikingly similar to anyone with similarities thereof, is insane.
Altman shouldn't have used weasel words, I agree. He should have owned it, because it's a total non-issue, and the people upset about it need to be shamed as the Luddite assholes that they are.
This is completely false. Claude Opus is significantly better than GPT 4.
> Mistral/Mixtral (decent with no censoring/guard rails)
These models have been heavily censored, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Community efforts like Dolphin to fine-tune Mixtral have some success, but no, Karen is definitely still hard at work in France, ensuring that Mistral AI's models don't offend anyone's precious fee-fees.
Nuclear fusion start-up Helion scores $375 million investment from Open AI CEO Sam Altman
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/sam-altman-puts-375-million-...
Ahhh... so you admit OpenAI has been shady, but you argue they're actually ripping of Spike Jones not Scarlett Johansson?
HEH. The people who say Sam is shady aren't really interested in this distinction.
(And you're wrong, both ScarJo and the film own aspects of the character they created together.)
Snowflake's Arctic comes to mind. Great model - it will answer any dark question I through at it. No safety rails. I liked that it didn't treat me like a baby!
Llama/Phi is pretty chill too. Can ask it about bombs, viruses, chemicals and it won't refuse.
From her statement:
> I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and Al. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people.
So, they wanted to profit off of her voice, as her voice is comforting. She said no, and they did it anyway. Nothing about, "come in and do that song and dance from your old movie."
> where’s this case from 1992
I suspect in such a case people may say that Sam's just using the work of other people or his employees. But then again I know nothing much of him personally and hence wouldn't really want to pick a "side".
Interestingly one of the things that came out of 2020 was that nobody appears willing to control the police. Unless by police you mean FBI, which would both make sense for investigating a national politician and be directly under the control of the executive.
It's nevertheless true that there is a coherent landscape of better and worse models, and Chat GPT really does have separation from the other models as I mentioned above. I even mentioned that ChatGPTs position would be subject to change. My understanding is that this most recent version of Claude has been out and about in the wild for perhaps 2 months.
I feel like with even a little bit of charitable interpretation you could read my comment in a way that accounts for the emergence of such a thing as a new and improved model of Claude. So I appreciate your correction but it's hard to see how it amounts to anything more than a drive-by cheap shot that's unrelated to the point I'm making.
I made this myself. They do not sound the same to me. Am I living in a bizarro world?
In fact I think Rashida Jones would be a closer (but still not identical) match vs Scarjo
IN FACT, I bet any young woman's voice spoken clearly would sound as similar
Rashida Jones, as your link indicates, might be a closer match.
Or literally any young woman who enunciates clearly.
https://soundcloud.com/peter-marreck-fb/sky-voice-and-scarjo...
I'm sorry but either you are tone-deaf or these are not remotely the same voice. I made this myself after getting fed up with this bullshit.
(Can't for the life of me recall if she sounds anything like Johansson; just putting her forward to tease her relative here. (Who is in the wrong in his arguments above.))
> This situation is a voice actor using their "natural voice" as a source of work.
Work which was then marketed with heavy implications referring to another actor. Which is what makes this situation so similar to the earlier one.
It's not "from pop culture", it's from a specific film. Starring Scarlett Johansson.
Makes sense if you read "California" as "Hollywood", which has movie stars where the rest of the world has intellectual property.
Altman sure af was trying to invoke a character played by (and widely associated with) Johansson. So...
> Obviously not.
...[citation needed]
Swedish, I would have guessed? Danes much more frequently use "Johanssen" with an 'e', AFAIK.
With Johansson voicing the AI. And now they're marketing their AI sounding like Johansson, referencing the movie that had Johansson voicing the AI.
Yeah, no similarities at all there.
Seems you mut have reason to want to believe them.
Otherwise you'd have noticed all the reasons not to.
Yeah, so stop doing that then.
So I guess you wouldn't mind if someone killed you, since laws against murder are much older than that? Shit, outmoded old boomer thinking, amirite?
Wow, when you realise how you're coming off here...
Yeah, creating massive hype about regurgitating others' thoughts is kind of similar to becoming the warden of the world's largest digital pris...eh, walled garden.
They're both massive somethings, all right.
But you just cannot see how it perhaps reads that way because it actually is precisely that way?
Well, "moon visits" are well on their way to being SF again. Or old fairy tales. :-(
I don't think anyone is suggesting that he's a terrible person just because of this.
This just confirms it.
While I don't agree with that statement, I will clarify that I was using the term "police" to encompass all agencies in both USA and Canada capable of legally conducting an investigation at the federal level and carrying out an arrest. As far as I am aware, these agencies are all funded by our federal governments. Even though in my mind I was thinking of only the USA and Canada, the structural flaw probably applies to most governments, if not all governments ( speculating ). The flaw being that the leaders of our nations conduct national affairs as though they are shielded from the law policing its citizens. They are getting away with using our national resources ( financial, material, human etc ) in ways that may benefit their own agendas, but are observably harmful to our economy and therefore the citizens at large. If an investigation could prove that my speculation is true, then it would be in both our nation's best interest to deal with the problem both swiftly and legally. My hope would be that such an outcome would instigate reform to address the root cause. Without an investigation, we are at the mercy of waiting for the next election, but if our leaders are egregiously harming the interests our nations' citizens as a whole, we should not have to wait until their term is complete. I will add one more thing, the problem is not limited to economics. but also the abuse of the press and education to influence how we as a nation are able to learn about and understand both national and global politics.
I think ISWYDT.
If the job is being the first person you reached out to, then you accept that you can't get the job done...
Legally. He took the other option.
I'm not saying he did not achieve anything significant, but its not clear what those things are, other then having the backing of PG and others.
I'm older and have played the game of corporate game of thrones. I have seen far too many selfish sycophants rise to leadership, only to eventually make things worse than better by using their positions as a platform for their own self interest. It's a big reason why companies like Boeing and GE become hollow shells dependent on government assistance, while companies like Costco and Alcoa last for a long time.
So I want to know what exactly sama has done to deserve prestige and recognition the he has. Bc right now, it looks like cult of personality.
2. If someone dedicated their life's work to building the Bioelectric Battery from The Matrix, I am going to call them evil. It's not because I hate The Matrix, it's because I consider the net worth of such a tool to be negative and object to it's creation entirely. If someone's vision is based on the wrong moral takeaways from a piece of media, then people will rightfully demonize them for it. That's society.
"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it." - Frank Herbert
#2 Is begging the question. It starts with with the premise that AI is evil and therefore Sam Altman is committing evil by promoting it.
Unless you are privy to the last 10 months of OpenAI's closed-door meeting notes, I don't think you have the authority to explicitly deny this. Time will tell what comes of it, but the obsession with namedropping Her among OpenAI employees feels like the final nail in the coffin. If OpenAI fully complies with the discovery process I don't have faith that Sam Altman was as sneaky as he's made-out to be.
> but the obsession with namedropping Her among OpenAI employees feels like the final nail in the coffin.
I don't see why this the nail in the coffin. Why is this about the voice and not the technology involved in creating a natural voiced AI assistant just like was demonstrated popular movie?
Plenty of technologies have been inspired by science fiction including, most obviously, the cell phone. And comparing those technologies to the science fiction version is equally common.
This is subjective. I, personally, don't hear it, at all: >>40435695
> > > I think if Sam unifies gravity into quantum theory, brokers peace in the middle east, and cures cancer, we'll still be hearing these complaints—because they're not really grounded either in objective achievement or lack of it.
...certainly reads as if you thought that just because he might do a few good things, that would make all his (presumed) prior evil acts go away / be the figments of jealous imaginations. Would you say the same about, say, Hitler[1] -- if he unified gravity into quantum theory, brokered peace in the middle east, and cured cancer, should we all agree he's a great guy? Would those of us who said "That was great, thanks, but he's still an evil asshole" just be "jealous"?
If not, why should it be any different with Altman?
[1]: And no(, as I'm sure you know), that's not how Godwin's law works.
___
Side note: And I still find it rather sus that the other article, the one that came closest to exonerating him / them, was on the front page for at least twelve hours while this one (apparently, according to other commenters who had followed it) was for max two. "A coincidence that looks aforethought", as the old Swedish saying goes; it certainly didn't look less flamewarry than this, judging from the contents. But if it really was just due to the algorithm, a manual override (either way, bumping this or stomping that) might have improved at least the optics.
Standards are important. So is perspective.
But people that know what it takes to build great products almost universally respect his world-class design and leadership, and even his deep technical knowledge.
The difference with >>40448045 is that the latter story contained Significant New Information (SNI) relative to other recent threads. That's the criterion we apply when deciding whether or not to override penalties (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). It doesn't have to do with who an article is for or against; it has to do with not having the same discussions over and over.
> a manual override [...] might have improved at least the optics
Sure, and we often do that (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), but in this case it didn't cross my mind because the current thread was so obviously derivative of previous discussions that had been on HN's front page for 18+ hours in recent days.
And in any case the next day it flipped back and this story spent 16 hours on the front page:
Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees - >>40447431 - May 2024 (515 comments)
... so I think we're good on "optics". The important point is that the last link (the vox.com article) contained SNI, whereas the slate.com article was a copycat piece piggybacking on other reporting . In the case of a Major Ongoing Topic (MOT) like this one, that's the key distinction: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...