“As with Musk, what is striking about {Sam} Altman is not that he is a rich guy who is concerned with increasing the wealth of rich guys. That is to be expected. What leaps out to me is the extent to which these men who fancy themselves visionaries are actually sunk neck-deep in the dreary task of protecting the status quo.”
Well of course. You don’t go into business because you have a lot of ideas and imagination. Businesses do the same thing over and over in order to make money. They like everything to stay the same so their moneymaking routine doesn’t need to change. Change costs money, and might take ideas, which are not in the routine and not wanted.
The people who want to explore new things, have new ideas, avoid the same thing every day don’t go into business, they’ more likely to go into the arts and sciences. So why anybody expects a businessman, especially an exceptionally wealthy one like Musk or Altman, to express new or even interesting ideas is a bit of a mystery.
