Sam Altman's pants are on fire
64 comments
·November 8, 2025nostrebored
Jedd
That wasn't my take - it was more broadly a 'given past statements and accompanying behaviour, we can't trust future statements to align with future behaviour'.
Can you more explicitly describe what the X and Y points you allude to are?
nostrebored
Every “6 months ago I said this!” added little to the article. In a real investigative report it would lay out the facts and fairly objectively state “6 months ago, Sam Altman was accused of …”
The article as a whole just seems libelous? Almost personal?
chrisco255
It's not a report, it's a blog post. Of course it's personal.
samrus
The crux of the article was altman trying to get a bailout, and when people called him on his bullshit, lying thay he never wanted a bailout. You cant trust the man
ineedasername
It looks like the actual crux was Altman's plea that the backtops be granted... Not to OpenAI? The document linkedfrom the article that had the actual ask, rather than cleanup over deliberate misatributions by others, was to... "Extend eligibility", for the AMIC money already carved out, to companies that are producers of things such as "grid components such as transformers and specialized steel".
So: Altman did not ask for OpenAI loans to be guaranteed, nor did the CFO. It was on behalf of others drawn into the needs of the industry the AMIC grant was supposed to support. Self interested by OpenAI? Sure! And also not about to make the top 10k leaderboard for "sleezy things companies do".
hiddencost
Gary Marcus has been writing a piece like this roughly every 2 months for 20 years, and he gets a lot of attention because he seems respectable (he is not), and many papers are looking for a respectable source that has this opinion.
an0malous
Why is he not respectable?
ants_everywhere
Gary Marcus has a very particular view of human psychology that was popular for a while, especially in the early 2000s. Major proponents include Steven Pinker, Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor. This view was heavily influenced by symbolic computers when symbolic computers were new and so held some mental share leading into the dotcom boom. For several reasons, one of which is the replication crisis, this view is no longer nearly as popular.
One of the major beliefs of this view is that LLMs are essentially impossible because there's not enough information in language to learn it unless you have a special purpose language-learning module built into the brain by evolution. This is Chomsky's "poverty of the stimulus" argument.
Marcus still defends this view and because of this bias is committed to trying to prove to everyone that LLMs are not possible or at least that they're some kind of illusion. There's a sense in which they threaten his fundamental concept of how the brain works.
In proposing and defending these views he appears to me and others to be having a sort of internal crisis that's playing out publicly where his need to be right about this is coloring his judgment and objectivity.
pols45
Cause he hasn't built anything or found a job since he sold his last company ages ago.
nextworddev
He’s playing the Nouriel Roubini game (another NYU adj prof).
Last time I checked Nouriel was partying up in the Hamptons so being a permabear is lucrative.
siliconc0w
That agro response to a perfectly reasonable question, "if you don't want your shares, we'll find you a buyer" instantly reminded me of that Bernie Madoff movie.
Neywiny
There was also some woman (maybe a high up exec, I don't know their full roster) in one of those live audience interviews saying they were looking towards a government backstop on the loans. They know they have no way of ponying up 1.4T. That's an insane amount of money. Honestly if more investing and startups were "we have x front-runners, if he dies he dies" I think we'd be in s better spot. Maybe don't invest in capturing-helium-in-a-colander.ai just because it ends in "AI"
mitthrowaway2
I think you must mean Sarah Friar, CFO of OpenAI.
Neywiny
Most likely. Who better to know their financial status is fried than the CFO
bpodgursky
You can criticize OpenAI for many things but this was blatantly misquoted.
They were talking about backstops for chips, to get fabs constructed in the US. If anyone else said this, it would have been considered a great idea, both republicans and democrats talked about the same thing to get TSMC production into the US, but everyone pretended that OpenAI was talking about data centers in this context. They weren't/
BluSyn
I'm confused about language, as "loans" to me do not equal "bailout". The equating of the two seems odd, as many government incentives use loans that pay back with high interest, so governments MAKE money on those kinds of deals.
Also clear that the 1.4T figure includes some accounting for spend that does not come directly from OpenAI (grid/power/data infra for example). Obviously some government involvement is needed, but more at EPA/State/Local level to fast track construction permits, more-so than financial help from Treasury.
I'm confused why this generates such sensational headlines.
octoberfranklin
This is the same kind of bullshit rationalization they used to say that the bank bailouts of 2009 weren't really bank bailouts.
They were bank bailouts.
Unsecured government loans are either bailouts, entitlements in disguise, or (usually misguided) attempts at broad economic stimulus. This definitely isn't either of the latter two.
chaosprint
OpenAI's Bailout Blunder: How a CFO's Words Ignited a Firestorm
https://entropytown.com/articles/2025-11-06-openai-cfo/
"If you want to sell your shares, I'll find you a buyer." OpenAI and Microsoft Detail Landmark Partnership, Navigate Future of AI and Compute
https://founderboat.com/interviews/2025-11-01-openai-sam-sat...
Crazy sequences in a week...
lumost
The "I don't need to answer your simple questions on profit and loss statements" sentiment was odd. Likely odd enough to spur institutional investors to dig deeper or attract short interest.
superconduct123
I don't understand, what prompted OpenAI recently to need this 1.4T investment?
an0malous
All of Sam’s shenanigans go back to that one popular post on here many months ago about how AI has no moat. LLMs are a commodity, Chinese companies are just releasing them for free. Sam has gone all in on OpenAI and needs to secure his company, he knows it could be another decade until they discover an innovation on par with tranformers and there’s absolutely no way they can go from burning tens of billions of dollars a year to profitable by selling a rapidly commoditized technology.
sumedh
LLMs are a commodity but ChatGpt is a brand, for most people AI means ChatGpt. They are not going to use Chinese models.
ChatGpt is also building other products/brands like Sora to capture more mindshare.
Linux is free and yet people use Windows.
pinnochio
Believe it or not, that's actually a walkback from the $5 to $7 trillion he was pushing for almost two years ago.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/02/repor...
jgalt212
He was just anchoring.
https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/negotiation-skills-daily/w...
pinnochio
Absolutely. It's anchoring in the service of a massive con.
tootie
I remember and it lends some credence to the notion that Altman is just making up big numbers.
Gigachad
They are going all in, promising so many deals to so many companies that if OpenAI fails, the entire US economy will explode. Expecting the government will bail them out to prevent such a disaster.
therein
That would do nothing to prevent such a disaster. It would guarantee it.
goatlover
Billionaires and corporations too big too fail are bad for democracy. They have an oversized impact on society and the government.
hoppp
I think every company would like to have that. OpenAI is in a hyped up position that it can get it, so they go for it.
I don't buy that they can create AGI by investing trillions in training models and infrastructure.
If you ask me, this is just more money spent on pollution.
The need to replace humans to be profitable, just sounds like the end goal is to destroy the planet with datacenters and hurt people generally.
Sounds like a net negative for the planet.
JumpCrisscross
> what prompted OpenAI recently to need this 1.4T investment?
Capital denial to competitors.
Spooky23
The need to say “fuck you” to Elon and one-up him.
neuvarius
For sake of HN can we get a rundown that isn’t Gary Marcus flinging shit on people? I’d like something a bit more objective.
samrus
You could just read the primary sources. The things hes showing people to have said.
The gist is altman was trying to be slick about requiesting a government bailout, got called out on his bullshit, and then decided to lie and say he never wanted a bailout
The implication being the bubble is getting closer and closer to popping, since even altman is thinking about how to survive the pop
ungreased0675
Somehow people like him seem to survive just fine. Adam Neumann still has infinite money and Billy McFarland is still getting investors for various schemes.
this_user
Altman definitely has enough wealth of his own to survive no matter what. But if you look at how he operates, it is pretty clear that what he really wants is power, and he is usually extremely good at getting it. But OpenAI is rapidly losing their leadership in the space, and it turns out that their product has no moat. Meanwhile, new Chinese open source SOTA models just keep coming on an almost daily basis.
NBJack
Yep; it will just screw the employees, the investors (or at least those that didn't suddenly get clairvoyant and find an exit right before it hits the fan), and many, many apps relying on their APIs.
sidcool
I'm no Sam fan. But Gary Marcus is quite publicly a Sam critic. So I'd not dismiss it, but would also take it with a pinch of salt.
meander_water
Here's the juicy stuff mentioned in the article: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...
dmix
All the tweets he cited are the sort of exaggerated eye rolling stuff that makes social media very tiring. It's for people who only read the headlines (the article's short length is indicative of that). Exciting in the way reality show producers exploit interpersonal drama but not much substance if you care for something deeper.
option
This isn't a comment about Sam Altman, but given Gary's track record, why would anyone listen to him?
spiderice
Care to enlighten those of us that know nothing about Gary's track record?
hiddencost
He posts some variant of this kind of anti AI piece roughly every two months for over 20 years. He's been wrong so far. Eventually he'll get lucky, but his track record is abysmal.
null
goatlover
Has he been wrong about everything? I doubt that. It's also a logical fallacy to dismiss his current argument because he's made wrong arguments before. What he's saying about Altman lying is true or false independent of anything else he's said prior.
rhetocj23
So what? Who are you exactly? Pretty sure Gary's word means more than yours.
JumpCrisscross
“Altman, sensing that he had massively blundered…”
Altman is in bed with Trump. He isn’t all in. But Tuesday evidencing an electoral shift makes Friar’s comments exceptionally ill timed.
octoberfranklin
s/pants/hair/
Somebody please tell me how to short this. I'm going all in.
No particular love for Sam Altman, but the article reads as “I was right about X, so my interpretation of Y is correct.”
I don’t see any particular contradiction. Moving fabs onshore is absolutely in the interest of both parties.