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.
Regardless of what the naysayers believe about human interaction and social media, the data show us that the abundance of technology is actually increasing the abundance of happiness all over the world.
If we really wanted to have a reorientation of the tech industry toward what's best for people, then we would ask the second question, which is, what would be the most time well spent for the thing that people are trying to get out of that situation?
It is important to distinguish between the power of the internet to make the great change it can, and the limits and vulnerabilities of that change without real-time political mobilization deployed globally to protect those who venture out, especially in closed societies, into the heady new vistas it offers.
There's a difference between being able to make long distance phone calls cheaper on the Internet and walking around Riyadh with a PDA where you can have all of Google in your pocket. It's a difference in degree that's so enormous it becomes a difference in kind.
More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services - from movies to agriculture to national defense.
I understood the importance in principle of public key cryptography but it's all moved much faster than I expected. I did not expect it to be a mainstay of advanced communications technology
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