I just want to be clear, most CEOs aren’t smart. They have a slightly higher median intelligence than the wider population, but by and large CEOs are no more talented than your average used car salesman. While there’s certainly outliers (on both sides), most intelligent people don’t start careers in a field with an 80%+ chance of failure in the first 5 years. Altman’s success in particular is 50% luck, 50% being a very convincing liar. These people aren’t geniuses, they pay people to think for them, which is why having a machine think for them sounds like a great idea.
I mean no disrespect to Carl, but he has a very generous take on how we got here. I’m sure it’s happened that way somewhere, but how common is it really? I’m more inclined to believe people are more easily suckered by confident incompetence than they like to believe.
In 2003-2005 (when I first read those sentiments from Carl) I was working at a 1000 employee corporation valued at $1B market cap which functioned EXACTLY like that. I don’t see it much in smaller companies, but in the large ones - yeah, I see it a lot. Come to think of it, the first small company I worked at had a guy who worked like that, but it only showed up around layoff time. He’d hire smart people, but keep the “safely dumb” ones and try to get rid of those who might be a threat to him. Luckily he was 3rd tier, VP, beneath a President and CEO who vetoed most of his targeted dismissals. He eventually was invited to leave and chose to continue his career as a college professor, rated worst on campus for terrorizing his students.
I just want to be clear, most CEOs aren’t smart. They have a slightly higher median intelligence than the wider population, but by and large CEOs are no more talented than your average used car salesman. While there’s certainly outliers (on both sides), most intelligent people don’t start careers in a field with an 80%+ chance of failure in the first 5 years. Altman’s success in particular is 50% luck, 50% being a very convincing liar. These people aren’t geniuses, they pay people to think for them, which is why having a machine think for them sounds like a great idea.
Carl Icahn disagrees: https://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/16/icahn-too-many-companies-run-by-morons.html https://dealbreaker.com/2007/10/icahn-explains-why-are-there-so-many-idiots-running-shit
I mean no disrespect to Carl, but he has a very generous take on how we got here. I’m sure it’s happened that way somewhere, but how common is it really? I’m more inclined to believe people are more easily suckered by confident incompetence than they like to believe.
In 2003-2005 (when I first read those sentiments from Carl) I was working at a 1000 employee corporation valued at $1B market cap which functioned EXACTLY like that. I don’t see it much in smaller companies, but in the large ones - yeah, I see it a lot. Come to think of it, the first small company I worked at had a guy who worked like that, but it only showed up around layoff time. He’d hire smart people, but keep the “safely dumb” ones and try to get rid of those who might be a threat to him. Luckily he was 3rd tier, VP, beneath a President and CEO who vetoed most of his targeted dismissals. He eventually was invited to leave and chose to continue his career as a college professor, rated worst on campus for terrorizing his students.