Why I wrote about Elon Musk, Sam Altman , Tesla & openAI

I try to keep my posts positive but I have ended up writing some seemingly negative posts related to some notable people. In all cases, it is not because I think they are bad people but rather because I know they are good and probably have good intentions, so I feel they could do better. Here is why I wrote each post:

Sam Altman : https://hackernoon.com/unique-feedback-for-sam-altmans-idea-for-american-equity-1a246ac76d1a

I really just had unique feedback about his post on “American Equity”, which most other people were missing. After Sam Altman wrote a subsequent post the media attacked him with posts like “Sam Altman is still Awful” , “Sam Altman Is an Idiot” , e.t.c , and these are all rubbish! I felt bad for having written an honest response which could now be misinterpreted as having been part of that mob. It is healthy to debate ideas and for people to have different ideas. But, it is not acceptable to attack a person and call them names because they do not believe the same thing as you do. If you can not win a logical argument without resorting to such low tactics, odds are that you are either wrong or should not be listened to. Sam Altman is definitely and obviously not an idiot. He actually tries and that’s more respectable than members of a mob waiting to throw tomatoes when someone fails.

OpenAI/Elon Musk post: https://hackernoon.com/elon-musks-openai-may-be-the-biggest-threat-to-u-s-national-security-and-international-security-4dd7073fa742

When openAI was announced and I found out about it in December 2015, I was so excited about it that I reached out to them asking how I could be involved and what their goals were. They seem nice and I got a reply which was more along the lines of a job/research role which was not what I was looking for.

However, that was December 2015. I only had a healthcare A.I. invention back then, and our Market Sensei financial A.I platform was just getting started. Since then, I’ve worked on many more practical A.I applications and, through our Market Sensei platform, I’ve also seen how much of a huge difference A.I. can make in a field. Extrapolating what I know to security/military applications literally keeps me up at night. So, I do hope that either I am wrong or that they take serious precautions in what they openly publish.

Elon Musk Tesla/Hooters post: https://hackernoon.com/why-is-the-u-s-black-experience-allegedly-the-same-at-elon-musks-tesla-a-hooters-be828b1faace

Elon Musk was a huge inspiration to me. Not the “Real Iron Man” version, but the scruffy looking Stanford dropout that used to take showers at the YMCA. I could relate to it because I had to trade my dorm room for my office floor to keep my startup alive in college. So, I got together every piece about him I could find to learn everything about his startup career. In fact, I’m still using his startup career as a template. That’s why I’m building my company in a way that, if it isn’t a home run, I can sell it by ~30 like Musk did with Paypal.

I had learnt about the alleged Tesla “Hotbed of Racism” lawsuit some time, and was deeply disappointed with it. But I said nothing then because I reasoned that as a smart guy Elon Musk wakes up in the morning to build a better future he believes in and he gains no value in having an unhealthy work environment so it must have been a misunderstanding. And, since I did not have any direct information about it I chose not to comment about it.

But the Hooters incident clearly showed the context as to why such a respected company & individual should not let a serious societal issue like racism be a matter of alleged concern about their company.

Summary: What I have learnt from my own startup growing is that every person makes mistakes, but as more ‘success’ is attributed to you then people tend to see you less as a real person that can make mistakes and more like a being that must be perfect. It’s true that with great power comes great responsibility, but it doesn’t mean that if a millionaire/billionaire makes a mistake they are automatically an idiot/awful. It means there must be an environment that pushes them to do better.

Why I wrote about Elon Musk, Sam Altman , Tesla & openAI was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.