Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

Altman’s character and leadership

• Many commenters see the incident as fitting a pattern: Altman is described as evasive, lawyerly, and willing to use “weasel words” and opt‑out consent to get what he wants.
• Some frame him as a classic “move fast and break things” / “ask forgiveness, not permission” SV operator, even “psychopathic,” with too much power over a critical technology.
• Others argue this is being blown out of proportion: he tried something, met legal pushback, backed down, and the system worked. For them this doesn’t by itself make him uniquely bad.
• A few note that OpenAI’s trajectory (celebrity courting, flashy demos, dissolved safety teams) shows a shift from nonprofit research ideals to commercial empire‑building.

Johansson, the “Sky” voice, and legality

• Core dispute: did OpenAI intentionally imitate Scarlett Johansson’s “Her” voice without consent, and does that matter legally/ethically?
• Some say the voice is clearly reminiscent of Johansson; others who did side‑by‑side comparisons insist it sounds materially different or closer to other actresses.
• Several posts reference U.S. “right of publicity” cases (Midler v. Ford, Waits v. Frito‑Lay, White v. Samsung): courts have held that intentionally using a sound‑alike to evoke a famous performer’s voice in ads can be actionable even if technically a different actor. Intent and implied endorsement matter more than the exact mechanism.
• Counter‑arguments: voices aren’t unique; many people sound alike; banning “similar” voices would unfairly limit other actors’ work. Distinction is drawn between natural voices vs paid impersonation and between private parody vs commercial exploitation.
• Altman’s “Her” tweet, prior outreach to Johansson, and rapid removal of Sky are seen by many as strong circumstantial evidence of intent; others say these facts are compatible with mere pop‑culture allusion and risk‑averse PR.

Broader AI, power, and labor concerns

• Commenters worry about a “silicon aristocracy”: models that require enormous capital, compute, and data centralize power in a few firms and weaken democratic control.
• Open source is viewed by some as the only (likely losing) counterweight; others note that data, GPUs, and RLHF teams, not code, are the real bottlenecks.
• Strong anxiety around generative AI’s impact on voice actors and creative labor: tools may let companies cheaply simulate famous styles and displace human work, echoing but potentially exceeding prior automation waves.

Meta: HN moderation and discourse

• Users noticed the thread being quickly demoted despite high points; mods explained this as flamewar detection plus the article’s lack of “significant new information” relative to earlier OpenAI threads, denying any YC/Altman influence.
• Some accept this as normal anti‑drama moderation; others feel it looks like suppression of legitimate criticism.