If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.
Sam AltmanRead
Technology magnifies differences, and it's been replacing or obviating jobs for a long time. But what happens as that case accelerates? I'm not one of these doomsayers who says, 'There will be no jobs.'
Interpretation
Technology enhances disparities while eliminating certain jobs, leading to uncertain future job landscapes.
In this quote, Sam Altman acknowledges the dual nature of technology as both a force that highlights differences among people and a catalyst for job displacement. He emphasizes that while technology can replace jobs, he does not believe in a future devoid of employment opportunities, suggesting that adaptation and evolution in the job market will continue alongside technological advancements.
In practice
In a conference on future employment trends, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of adapting to technological changes.
If a company is profitable, the founder is in control. If it's not, investors are in control.
It's so important for startups to get their culture right at the start. They need to feel unique and that they are on their own important mission in the world.
If you have the opportunity to go be an early employee at a company that's just going crazy, and you believe it's the next Facebook or Google, you should go join that company.
Seed investing is the status symbol of Silicon Valley. Most people don't want Ferraris, they want a winning seed investment.
People always make the mistake of calling an idea small or stupid because they don't understand how it's going to evolve.
All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people.
If I had taken a proprietary control of the Web, then it would never have taken off. People only committed their time to it because they knew it was open, shared: that they could help decide what would happen to it next.. and I wouldn't be raking off 10%!
The invisibility of work and workers in the digital age is as consequential as the rise of the assembly line and, later, the service economy.
The feeling that 'no one is listening to me' make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.
Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.
More and more Americans feel threatened by runaway technology, by large-scale organization, by overcrowding. More and more Americans are appalled by the ravages of industrial progress, by the defacement of nature, by man-made ugliness. If our society continues at its present rate to become less livable as it becomes more affluent, we promise all to end up in sumptuous misery.
Because of cyberattacks and fake news, we can already imagine the problem all democratic societies will face in future elections: how to limit lies when they threaten democracy?
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