The CEO of Krafton used ChatGPT to push out the head of the studio developing Subnautica 2 against the advice of his own legal team and failed miserably.
Exactly, the fact this dude at Krafton can sign 250 million dollars deals but is also dumb enough to think a ChatGPT lawyer knows better than his own lawyers… It goes to show that many powerful people were just lucky or inherited their wealth but are definitely not successful because they are smart.
Yep. And I’d go further. Class mobility in the West is dead. No matter how smart and skilled and competent you are, you will never be one of the ultra-rich - and no matter how ignorant and incompetent one of the ultra-rich is, they’ll never lose enough money to become “merely” well off. The entire broken system, one that’s designed to funnel money from the working class to a handful of ultra-rich families, will keep making the rich richer no matter what they do.
We have a billionaire caste, not a billionaire class, and this story makes it painfully obvious.
Throughout pretty much all of human history it’s been apparent that the “nobles” class has been, at best, more trouble than they’re worth; and at worst, the instigating spark that creates a nation-destroying blaze.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read a history book that the American nobleman is equally as useless and destructive as his counterpart anywhere else.
I mean, “smart” is a relative term. They were smart enough to find the money hose and latch onto it. But the skills necessary to schmooze $250M out of a creditor are fundamentally different than the skills necessary to manage a workforce or meet the terms of the contract.
You can call it the Peter Principle or the Principle-Agent Problem or any number of other business short-hands for “skills mismatch”. The bottom line is that “meritocracy” in a capitalist system boils down to rent-seeking effectiveness. That’s the skill set that is rewarded. And it produces legions of people who train and compete for the opportunity to maximize rent-seeking returns.
This guy fumbled the ball in a spectacular fashion. But I have no doubt he’ll get back on his horse and find another pool of labor to extract wealth from. Because, if he’s a CEO, he’s honed the skills needed to do exactly that.
What we get to mock him for is his failure, not his decision. If he’d retrieved a useful answer from the ChatGPT answer lottery, or the courts had been stacked with his friends such that any answer he pulled was considered the right one, he’d be hailed as a business genius on the front page of the WSJ rather than scoffed at in the back pages of 404media.
Exactly “being smart” and “acting smart” are two different things. Usain Bolt is the “fastest” man on Earth, but if he’s just chilling on the couch watching TV, I can run right past him.
Same with these ivy league CEOs, they probably (not necessarily) were smart when taking their tests in school, but if they just leave the fate of their company to chatgpt responses, they’re acting as dumb as possible at the current moment.
This is why the LLMs are so popular with execs, they are the ultimate yes men. They will feed ego and purport to give a strategy that will support any dumbass idea without challenging them.
That’s half of it. The other half is that these execs think that everybody under them is some kind of replaceable cog in the machine with no special skills. They don’t think their job could be replaced by AI. But, they think everyone under them is so unimportant that their job can be done by AI. They’re managers. They don’t know how to do the work of the people they’re managing. They can’t tell the difference between an accurate result given to them by someone with knowledge and expertise vs. one created by a slop machine that generates plausibly realistic text.
If their $1000/hour lawyers tell them one thing, but the bullshit machine tells them something different, they trust whichever one gives them the answer they prefer.
Luck is a factor, but the differentiator is that they have the. Isplaced confidence and drive to just do what they want first. Then the luck let’s them get away with it. It’s kind of like if you get a million people to flip a coin 50 times. Some of them will get all 50 to be heads. So with billions of people in the world. Some have this drive to be on top, misplaced confidence, luck, and situational oportunities (also a good part luck) to end up able to sign 250 million dollar contract. None of that actually requires they have a clue. Sometimes they do, but it isn’t required.
if you get a million people to flip a coin 50 times. Some of them will get all 50 to be heads.
Flipping a coin 50 times has 1.1 quadrillion possible outcomes, only 2 of which are all heads or all tails. I think you’d need more than a few billion to reliably see those results.
Now here is a bonus question for you. If I give you a coin and ask you to flip it 20 times, and they all come up heads. What are the odds that if you flip it again it will come up heads?
Exactly, the fact this dude at Krafton can sign 250 million dollars deals but is also dumb enough to think a ChatGPT lawyer knows better than his own lawyers… It goes to show that many powerful people were just lucky or inherited their wealth but are definitely not successful because they are smart.
Yep. And I’d go further. Class mobility in the West is dead. No matter how smart and skilled and competent you are, you will never be one of the ultra-rich - and no matter how ignorant and incompetent one of the ultra-rich is, they’ll never lose enough money to become “merely” well off. The entire broken system, one that’s designed to funnel money from the working class to a handful of ultra-rich families, will keep making the rich richer no matter what they do.
We have a billionaire caste, not a billionaire class, and this story makes it painfully obvious.
Throughout pretty much all of human history it’s been apparent that the “nobles” class has been, at best, more trouble than they’re worth; and at worst, the instigating spark that creates a nation-destroying blaze.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read a history book that the American nobleman is equally as useless and destructive as his counterpart anywhere else.
While undoubtedly true, this story is about a South Korean CEO of a South Korean company.
Sure. This comment thread is about class mobility in the West though.
But, fact is, it seems it’s the same everywhere.
You just further proved his point
I mean, “smart” is a relative term. They were smart enough to find the money hose and latch onto it. But the skills necessary to schmooze $250M out of a creditor are fundamentally different than the skills necessary to manage a workforce or meet the terms of the contract.
You can call it the Peter Principle or the Principle-Agent Problem or any number of other business short-hands for “skills mismatch”. The bottom line is that “meritocracy” in a capitalist system boils down to rent-seeking effectiveness. That’s the skill set that is rewarded. And it produces legions of people who train and compete for the opportunity to maximize rent-seeking returns.
This guy fumbled the ball in a spectacular fashion. But I have no doubt he’ll get back on his horse and find another pool of labor to extract wealth from. Because, if he’s a CEO, he’s honed the skills needed to do exactly that.
What we get to mock him for is his failure, not his decision. If he’d retrieved a useful answer from the ChatGPT answer lottery, or the courts had been stacked with his friends such that any answer he pulled was considered the right one, he’d be hailed as a business genius on the front page of the WSJ rather than scoffed at in the back pages of 404media.
Exactly “being smart” and “acting smart” are two different things. Usain Bolt is the “fastest” man on Earth, but if he’s just chilling on the couch watching TV, I can run right past him.
Same with these ivy league CEOs, they probably (not necessarily) were smart when taking their tests in school, but if they just leave the fate of their company to chatgpt responses, they’re acting as dumb as possible at the current moment.
You have no idea how ceos work do you…
This is why the LLMs are so popular with execs, they are the ultimate yes men. They will feed ego and purport to give a strategy that will support any dumbass idea without challenging them.
That’s half of it. The other half is that these execs think that everybody under them is some kind of replaceable cog in the machine with no special skills. They don’t think their job could be replaced by AI. But, they think everyone under them is so unimportant that their job can be done by AI. They’re managers. They don’t know how to do the work of the people they’re managing. They can’t tell the difference between an accurate result given to them by someone with knowledge and expertise vs. one created by a slop machine that generates plausibly realistic text.
If their $1000/hour lawyers tell them one thing, but the bullshit machine tells them something different, they trust whichever one gives them the answer they prefer.
Luck is a factor, but the differentiator is that they have the. Isplaced confidence and drive to just do what they want first. Then the luck let’s them get away with it. It’s kind of like if you get a million people to flip a coin 50 times. Some of them will get all 50 to be heads. So with billions of people in the world. Some have this drive to be on top, misplaced confidence, luck, and situational oportunities (also a good part luck) to end up able to sign 250 million dollar contract. None of that actually requires they have a clue. Sometimes they do, but it isn’t required.
Flipping a coin 50 times has 1.1 quadrillion possible outcomes, only 2 of which are all heads or all tails. I think you’d need more than a few billion to reliably see those results.
I think though, you get the point.
Now here is a bonus question for you. If I give you a coin and ask you to flip it 20 times, and they all come up heads. What are the odds that if you flip it again it will come up heads?
I think it’s higher than a 50% chance of heads, because you have evidence for it being an unfair coin.
yeah that’s over a one in a billion chance to get all heads in just a million tries.