Of all the things that could potentially change the world in the new AI era, there’s one thing that’s certainly outdated: talent recruitment.
“Unique talent” is someone who contributes to a team with soft skills such as a charming personality. There is a perception that unique talent is not actually good at their jobs and is just fun to have in the office. However, they play a very important role in the health of an organization.
In the AI space, we might broaden the definition of “unique talent” a bit to include people who are really good at selling themselves or their products, or just idea AI is an all-powerful entity that will completely change everything about life as we know it, for better or for worse (hopefully for the better, if we listen to their advice).
You might say they’re hype men (or women), which is why so much of what’s happening with AI right now is The hype.
The man behind ChatGPT knows how to get things done
Of course, the greatest of them all is Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT. This week, Bloomberg Businessweek reported on Altman’s Silicon Valley success, from founding a mediocre social networking app at age 19 to heading one of the most exciting companies in tech.
Altman founded Loopt, a pre-smartphone social location app, in 2007. He attracted and networked with some of the biggest names in tech and venture capital, and was personally appointed to succeed Paul Graham at Y Combinator at age 29. A skilled and successful investor (he still has personal investments in more than 400 companies, according to The Wall Street Journal, some of which have done business with OpenAI, raising some questions about conflicts of interest), Altman persuaded his deep-pocketed friends Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk (who are now close friends) to found OpenAI as a nonprofit.
Sam Altman (third from left) with the late DJ Kay Slay, Craig Thor (then of Boost Mobile), and Fabolous in 2006, when Sam was promoting the social app Loopt. Jason Kempin/Getty Images
Many say Altman is charismatic, good with people, and even better at getting his way. “His greatest strength is knowing who can help him the most, and then charming them,” one person who has worked with Altman told Bloomberg’s Founding podcast.
Altman was perhaps the most successful Personality recruitment The best ever.
This isn’t groundbreaking at all (or even an insult to him). It takes a certain personality type to be a successful CEO or tech founder. This doesn’t necessarily mean being fun at cocktail parties. Mark Zuckerberg is a ruthless businessman who, until recently, seemed to have the charisma of a shingles epidemic. Saying with a straight face that you need to raise $7 trillion (yes, trillions) requires the energy to hire a big personality.
Altman’s managerial talents almost cost him his job: He was temporarily fired by OpenAI’s board last November after some directors distrusted him, feeling he was too tactful. That Altman has returned as CEO with a new board, although there are still challenges ahead internally, speaks to his ability to rally together powerful allies like Microsoft’s Satya Nadella.
Sam Altman isn’t the only AI “personality hire”
And then there’s the new AI doomsayer, Leopold Aschenbrenner. A former OpenAI employee who was reportedly fired for leaking a memo he wrote to the board about safety concerns, Aschenbrenner published a 165-page manifesto warning of the dangers of unchecked AI, complete with questionable graphs, comparisons to building an atomic bomb, and links to Minecraft videos on YouTube.
I don’t know if AI will lead to the extinction of humanity or if he’s way off the mark (I really hope it’s not the end of humanity!). Aschenbrenner’s warnings are met with both credulity and skepticism, and I can’t fathom how likely it is that we’ll get into a nuclear war with China over data centers, as he suggests. But there’s something about his wordy declarations that sounds like hyperbole.
Substack’s Max Read offers a very astute assessment of the manifesto, stating that hyperbole of AI pessimism may, in some cases, amount to self-serving hype.
All I know is that the Silicon Valley investor class has grown pretty disdainful of effective altruism (the school of thought that drove the Future Fund) and is very skeptical and suspicious of existential risk and the related focus on “X-risk” that seems to thwart their ambitions. Meanwhile, that same investor class is pretty tough on China and bullish on the national security business and the military-industrial complex. If I were a young, ambitious person whose career thus far has been mostly in “AI safety” and other EA-related fields, I might try to reframe my experience and interests to be more national security-oriented. And if I was really trying to kowtow to reactionary venture capitalists, I might also insinuate that I was unfairly fired by a shady HR person on unjust charges of racism. The specifics of this resume lend Aschenbrenner credibility among his target audience (investors and founders of companies he wants to invest in, and the gullible people on Twitter who promote his profile), but just as importantly, he fits the picture: young, genius, confident, fast-talking, and fluent on a wide range of subjects from geopolitics to epidemiology to chip design. If Aschenbrenner wasn’t a Zoomer, I’d call him a millennial ambitious psychopath. Indeed, he has the same kind of sweet, maniacal self-confidence as my generation of Ivy League sociopaths, which somehow makes him seem “genius” to credulous powers and literally “very annoying shit” to everyone else.
And then, sadly, there’s the sad story of the Humane AI Pin. Humane’s founders were ex-Apple employees, very stylishly dressed, and made a really cool demo video that made their product look amazing. They raised $240 million from investors including Sam Altman.
When preorders first opened, I wrote that I thought the AI Pin was awesome and I wanted it, even if I knew it might be a little impractical: It was futuristic, it was fun, and it was made by some really cool, cutting-edge people — the ultimate AI hypesters.
Despite great expectations, AI Ping was a flop
Humane’s AI Pin has received mostly awful reviews. Courtesy of Humane
Of course, the AI Pin has been a flop so far. Early reviews have been awful, sales have been much lower than expected, and the company has been criticized for launching a half-baked product. This week, the company issued a recall for its chargers because they could catch fire. I don’t want to laugh (and I’m not saying we should just squeeze the AI out of it like we did with Juicero). I think it’s a real flop. I want ambitious new kinds of hardware devices to succeed, and I love a cool new gadget, so I root for it to happen in the world. But this one clearly wasn’t a success.
As of June 2024, everyone knows AI is a “big thing,” but most people don’t know exactly what it will actually bring. average or It seemsThis creates room for propagandists to sell people on its magic and powers, or to stoke their worst fears.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Just like hiring unique people in the workplace, advertising can be helpful. And the best part of all of this? Hiring unique people is the best way to human Something that AI can never replace.
