• Flying Squid
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    11611 months ago

    Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman for those who don’t want to click through.

    And I have no idea which I would choose to face off from those four, let alone who would win.

    • @[email protected]
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      11111 months ago

      You could put them in a sack and hit the sack with a stick. You’d never hit the wrong guy.

      • Flying Squid
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        3211 months ago

        I like this idea much better than picking one of them as the worst person in tech for 2023. Can we do the stick beating instead?

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      Theil wants a techno libertarian oligarchy with no regulations ala Blade Runner.

      Musk wants the rich to escape to Mars while destroying earth and dooming the poor’s.

      Bezos wants to send the poor’s into space along with heavy industry and turn earth into a rich person paradise ala Black Mirror “Fifteen Million Merits”.

      Altman is just a shitty rich person in tech wasting precious resources to teach a computer to create porn. Becaue we all know that’s what 99% of people do and will use AI for. He’s also a prepper which means he’s a selfish cunt.

      If I had to pick just one it would be Theil. I think the man is insidious while the rest are more in your face.

      Ranked choice would be Theil, Musk, Bezos then Altman.

      • @[email protected]
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        411 months ago

        I love your descriptions for all of them. If you have some free time would you mind writing it for everyone in the brackets?

        • @[email protected]
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          211 months ago

          Sam Bankman-Fried is definitely bad for what he did and his belief in effective altruism, which is just another smoke screen to not properly tax rich people because they “donate to charities”. You could argue his getting into crypto also makes him bad because crypto mining is bad but he’s not on the same level as Sam Altman. Not even close.

          • @[email protected]
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            111 months ago

            I’d rather pick someone who did something deserving of life in prison than someone who didn’t, but maybe that’s just me.

            Also, Sam Altman has no equity in, and was only paid $73k by OpenAI last year. You can dislike him for the rumors surrounding his managerial style and whatnot, but it’s pretty clear he isn’t exploiting people to get shit rich like everyone else on this list.

            • @[email protected]
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              111 months ago

              I don’t.

              Altman is just a shitty rich person in tech wasting precious resources to teach a computer to create porn. Becaue we all know that’s what 99% of people do and will use AI for. He’s also a prepper which means he’s a selfish cunt.

              If he wasn’t promoting AI and trying to sell it as the next best thing to sliced bread he’d just be a shitty rich prepper. Instead he is wasting time and resources on AI.

              And my personal bias against crypto really lowers my “give a fuck” bar so while, again, what he did is bad I don’t care if he defrauded a bunch of crypto cunts. Same as I don’t care about people “loosing” their NFT’s.

              • @[email protected]
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                111 months ago

                Instead he is wasting time and resources on AI.

                Under what circumstances would AI research and training not be considered a waste of time and resources, in your mind?

                I don’t care if he defrauded a bunch of crypto cunts

                Well, his whole ballgame was selling crypto to normal people, not cryptobros. Do you really think the FTX Super Bowl commercial was targeted at people who can articulate the differences in technology between Bitcoin and Ethereum?

                • @[email protected]
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                  111 months ago

                  Under what circumstances would AI research and training not be considered a waste of time and resources, in your mind?

                  Right now? None.

                  Well, his whole ballgame was selling crypto to normal people, not cryptobros.

                  All the same crypto cunts to me. Doesn’t matter if you mine, trade, marry or fuck crypto they are all the same cunts to me.

                  Do you really think the FTX Super Bowl commercial was targeted at people who can articulate the differences in technology between Bitcoin and Ethereum?

                  I don’t watch any sports and few to no ads so I have no idea what you are talking about.

    • Magnor
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      2111 months ago

      No matter who wins we all lose. That’s kind of the point whenever these guys turn up.

    • @[email protected]
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      1711 months ago

      To make things slightly easier it’s Musk v Thiel and Bezos v Altman.

      In the first matchup, I would pick Musk over Thiel for being a bigger POS in general.

      In the second matchup I would pick Bezos for the larger impact he has had on the world.

      • Flying Squid
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        4111 months ago

        I’m with you on the second, but I would have a really hard time with the first because Musk is more overtly a piece of shit, but Thiel has had so much influence over the years, including elevating Elon Musk to the position where he is today. I guess if it’s the worst of 2023 and we’re restricting it solely to what we know they’ve said and done in 2023, it would be Musk. But I think overall, it is probably Thiel just because there wouldn’t be an Elon Musk anyone had heard about without Peter Thiel.

      • TWeaK
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        1711 months ago

        In the first matchup, I would pick Musk over Thiel for being a bigger POS in general.

        But Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is in itself subservient to Theil’s overarching political goals. One has been in the limelight more, but the other has caused more harm overall.

      • Overzeetop
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        511 months ago

        This is the 2023 matchup. You don’t consider Jordan’s performance at UNC when determining their championship status this year. Heck, despite the past damage done, i don’t think. Bezos, for his 2023 tech fuckery, should have made it out of the first round.

        By the same metric, Musk easily tops Thiel first 2023 and is the clear shoo-in as champion of the worst.

      • Flying Squid
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        1611 months ago

        He’s not really as bad as the other three, but he did take a nonprofit company and turn it into a multibillion dollar profit machine which has a massive carbon and fresh water footprint.

          • @[email protected]
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            411 months ago

            AI or not, plagiarism appears to happen a lot. AI just makes it a little easier than it was before.

      • squiblet
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        111 months ago

        His world coin project is one of the sketchiest. Paying people in poor countries to get scanned by this creepy orb thing? Odd.

        His sister has also vociferously accused him of molesting her for a period of time when she was 4 and he was 13.

  • Pyramid8058
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    4911 months ago

    I think I’d say Thiel is worse than Musk. He supports anti-gay politicians while being gay himself. Tax cuts are more important than having the law treat people as human beings.

    It’s possible that Musk might fail to understand exactly how shitty he’s being due to his autism, I’m pretty sure Thiel knows he’s fucking people over and doesn’t care. Also the whole bloodboy thing.

    • Dr. Dabbles
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      3611 months ago

      He isn’t autistic. He simply said he is. Which makes him a giant piece of shit.

    • @[email protected]
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      1111 months ago

      At least Musk is so loud and obnoxious that it’s easy to avoid him. Lex Luthor sits over there at Amazon quietly taking over the world and almost nobody gives him a second thought.

  • @[email protected]
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    3111 months ago

    …How is Bezos in the running?

    Jassy is the CEO of Amazon. Outside of space cuntery and being on the chair, he’s not really in tech.

    With that being said, it’s still hilarious to me that Jassy has been CEO for two years, and most people still assume Bezos is boss.

    • @[email protected]
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      1611 months ago

      I think if you made billions in tech, you always qualify. To some degree even more after you stop working and still can’t find time to do anything beneficial for the world.

    • @[email protected]
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      1211 months ago

      Amazon is one of the biggest tech companies in the world.

      There is a good chance the instance you are browsing lemmy on is using Amazon hardware.

      They are one of the premier IaaS and PaaS companies, as well as the owners of tons of platforms including websites like twitch.

      • @[email protected]
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        2411 months ago

        I think you need to read the comment you replied to. It seems like you commented before reading anything past the first sentence.

        • @[email protected]
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          311 months ago

          Bold of you to assume voters even know that Jassy is running Amazon. Most people in polls like this vote based on which name they recognize and dislike the most. The only legit competition in name recognition Jeff had on the right side bracket was Steve Jobs.

            • @[email protected]
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              211 months ago

              Oh, I’m not faulting you or the original comment about Jassy, just a general lament about how bad the voting is on polls like this. This thread is full of other brain-dead takes that have nothing to do with tech.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        Information is cached on servers in the fediverse through connections. You can’t just make an empty server and harvest all of the data. Now if you unleash millions of accounts on the Fediverse like threads is doing, then you have access to everything.

    • @[email protected]
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      1211 months ago

      Peter Thiel is also abysmal. Elon is more visibly terrible today but Thiel has been bankrolling regressives from the shadows for 20 years. He published his first screed about diversity in academia in 1995. So he is an all-time shitstain, for sure.

      • Gravitywell
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        411 months ago

        Zuck is bad sure, but he’s not a jackass, at least not publicly, he might not have made the best decision for meta but the company is by no means failing, Elon is just so much worse on every level.

        • KairuByte
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          711 months ago

          Not failing, but actively ignoring Metas own research that shows Facebook is directly harmful to children and teens.

          I’d say actively continuing to harm children should outrank being a jackass and/or incompetence.

    • @[email protected]
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      311 months ago

      At this point it’s like choosing cancer over Alzheimer’s. Die from excruciating inner torment or infuriate everyone else until you die.

  • @[email protected]
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    1911 months ago

    Musk shouldn’t have won against Ellison. Musk is an uncontrolled trainwreck, sure, but Ellison is a highly controlled and effective lawnmower. He’s just better at not being known.

    • Neato
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      2411 months ago

      He’s small time. He’s ruining one big-ish social platform. While people like Zuck are ruining many!

      • @[email protected]
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        211 months ago

        Can’t argue with that. But I have to admit that I miss reddit, mate. Hence my question.

    • @[email protected]
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      1511 months ago

      SBF’s peak was a few years ago. This year all he’s done is show during his trial how deluded these techbros/EAs can actually be. At least SBF had the common courtesy to remove himself from public life within 5 years. Style points for the life-in-prison ending, while simultaneously killing mainstream crypto.

      We’re stuck with Altman for the foreseeable future, and now with a recently purged OpenAI board that will let him continue the industry-wide commercialization of copyright infringement (but only of the laypersons’ IP. Better not ask it to draw Mickey Mouse, though).

      It’s also really unclear where OpenAI lies on the EA/Longtermist/E Acc pipeline. Altman is likely letting whackos have some pretty serious power.

  • Margot Robbie
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    1311 months ago

    Should David Zaslav really be considered in tech? If WB Discovery is considered a tech company, then the Barbie movie is now (technically) a tech product…

    How do you do, fellow tech workers?

    • @[email protected]
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      211 months ago

      All modern movies are kinda tech products. At least in a sense that there’s crazy amount of cutting edge tech involved in making them as well as during the consumption of that media

    • @[email protected]
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      611 months ago

      It’ll be a popularity contest, but Musk isn’t the worst. He’s just the most well known.

      Musk is more of a misguided idiot than evil.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        But Musk arguably does more harm to the society. If there’s evil billionaires, they can be exposed, sued and punished according to the law. But what Musk does is spreading division and hate among the general public. The same thing Trump does. This ruins a generation, a country or even the whole world if the world doesn’t restore balance. Division and hate among the general public throws a society back in ways that’s very hard to recover from.

        • @[email protected]
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          111 months ago

          Thiel has spent his entire life with that as his goal. Thiel has caused more harm and is more evil.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 months ago

    How did Nadella lose to Altman? Nadella is the reason Altman is what it is now. The reason open ai is not anymore an independent no profit research team to push open AI solutions.

    He’s the king maker of evil tech. Nadella vs Musk is the only possible final. Whoever voted is insulting one of 2 main contenders. Like CEO of BP losing to a gas pump owner

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      It’s almost as if this is the most popular worst tech person. It’s like that year all of Reddit voted EA the worst company in the world. There are companies out there costing people their lives by intentional malfeasance but a company is doing video games dirty is the worst…

  • @[email protected]
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    811 months ago

    Of the four I’ll take Bezos. Elon says controversial stuff but most of his businesses are legit. He owns Twitter now but he didn’t create that monster. Altman opened up a can of worms with AI but I do believe he initially had some good intentions with it. I don’t even know who Peter Thiel is. Bezos is just an evil corporate suit and Amazon will do anything for money.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      Thiel is associated with musk, and a pretty awful guy in his own right. The short version is he’s a billionaire techno-fascist that funds political campaigns for people like Trump. Here’s a video for more stuff about him if you’re curious.

      • @[email protected]B
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        411 months ago

        Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

        Here’s

        Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

        I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

        • @[email protected]
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          411 months ago

          Jassy is the one steering the boat now, and it’s been rechristened as the SS No More Innovation