Microsoft and OpenAI's close partnership shows signs of fraying

I'm betting against OpenAI. Sam Altman has proven himself and his company untrustworthy. In long running games, untrustworthy players lose out.

If you disagree, I would argue you have a very sad view of the world, where truth and cooperation are inferior to lies and manipulation.

A telling quote about Sam, besides the "island of cannibals" one. Is actually one Sam published himself:

"Successful people create companies. More successful people create countries. The most successful people create religions"

This definition of success is founded on power and control. It's one of the worst definitions you could choose.

There are nobler definitions, like "Successful people have many friends and family" or "Successful people are useful to their compatriots"

Sam's published definition (to be clear, he was quoting someone else and then published it) tells you everything you need to know about his priorities.

As you said, Sam didn’t write that. He was quoting someone else and wasn’t even explicitly endorsing it. He was making a comment about financially successful founders approach making a business as more of a vision and mission that they drive to build buy-in for, which makes sense as a successful tactic in the VC world since you want to impress and convince the very human investors

This is the full post:

""Successful people create companies. More successful people create countries. The most successful people create religions."

I heard this from Qi Lu; I'm not sure what the source is. It got me thinking, though--the most successful founders do not set out to create companies. They are on a mission to create something closer to a religion, and at some point it turns out that forming a company is the easiest way to do so.

In general, the big companies don't come from pivots, and I think this is most of the reason why."

Sounds like an explicit endorsement lol

Well, it’s an observation, intelectual people like to make connections, to me observing something or sharing a connection you made in your mind it’s not necessarily endorsing the statement about power.

He’s dissecting it and connecting with the idea that if you a have a bigger vision and the ability to convince people, making a company is just an “implementation detail” … oh well .. you might be right after all … but I suspect is more nuanced, and is not endorsing religions as a means of obtaining success, I want to believe that he meant the visionary, bigger than yourself well intended view of it.