What The Hell Is This Photo Sam Altman Posted With Panicked AI Researcher?

We wrote yesterday about AI researcher Eliezer’s Yudkowsky’s recent sobering appearance on the Bankless Podcast, the one in which he, you know, speculated that we’re all going to die — and soon — thanks to reckless advancements in AI tech.

Presumably, those leading the charge of AI advancement have varying reactions to Yudkwoski’s doomsday predictions. The guess here is such reactions range from dismissive eye rolls to pure contempt.

Despite some brief public interactions on Twitter between Yudkowski and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, we don’t quite know where the latter lands on this scale, but we can probably take an educated guess after this Thursday night Twitter post:

Here’s what we know for sure— that’s Yudkowskiy Altman, and Grimes — the mother of some Elon Musk offspring.

Here’s what else we know — this photo may not even be real.

The general absurdity of it aside, if you take this December 2022 interaction at face value, the two have never met.

Sure, more than two month have since passed following this interaction, the guess here is the two didn’t link up for some quality hangs with Grimes just a few days after Yud essentially pointed the finger at Altman and his contemporaries for the soon-to-be demise of the human race. 

In other words, Altman fired back.

Just earlier this month, he credited Eliezer for helping to create the move toward artificial general intelligence, something it seems Eliezer wanted nothing to do with:

So, to recap — despite the absence of a uniform take and the general confusion to the Tweet on Reddit and in the replies — what I think we have here is this:

• Rapidly developing AI that could or could not lead up us to the apocolypse

• A general lack of oversight, planning, and regulation regarding alignment

• A budding public pissing match between some of the game’s biggest players

Oh, oh, oh — and don’t forget the subtle swipe at Musk who has been subtly critical of Altman in recent days.

This is NFL/NBA levels of Twitter beef, and we’re here for it.

This league!