From time to time I have been accused of being an apologist for Sam Altman, but I have always tried to assess information based upon what it says instead of whether it matches an existing narrative. You list a number of distortions in your article which show the problem. If you are a good person, bad stories about you may be fake. If you are a bad person, bad stories about you may still be fake.
My prima facie view on Altman has been that he presents as sincere. In interviews I have never seen him make a statement that I considered to be a deliberate untruth. I also recognise that people make claims about him go in all directions, and that I am not in a position to evaluate most of those claims. About the only truly agreed upon aspect has been how persuasive he is.
I can definitely see a possibility of people feeling like they have been lied to if they experienced a degree of persuasion that they are unaccustomed to. If you agree to something that you feel like you didn't really feel like you would have, I can see people concluding that they have been lied to rather than accept that they had been intellectually beaten.
In all such cases where an issue is contentious, you should ask yourself, what information would significantly change your views. If nothing could change your view, then it's a matter beyond reason.
I think you will agree that there is no smoking gun in this article, and it is just an outlay of the allegations. Evaluating allegations becomes tricky because I think it becomes a character judgement of those making the claims.
I have not heard a single person in all of this criticise Ilya Sutskever's character. If he were to make a statement to say that this article is an accurate representation of what he has experienced, it would go a long way.
I think Paul Graham should make a statement, The things he has publicly claimed are at odds with what the article says he has privately claimed. I have no opinion if one or the other is true or if they can be reconciled but there seem to be contradictions that need to be addressed.
While I do not have sources to hand (so I will not assert this as true but just claim it is my memory) I recall Sam Altman himself saying that he himself did not think he should have control over our future, and the board was supposed to protect against that, but since the 'blip' it was evident that another mechanism is required. I also recall hearing an interview where Helen Toner suggested that they effectively ambushed Altman because if he had time to respond to allegations he could have provided a reasonable explanation. It did not reflect well on her.
I am a little put off by some of the language used in the article. Things like "Altman conveyed to Mira Murati" followed by "Altman does not recall the exchange" Why use a term such as 'conveyed' which might imply no exchange to recall? If a third party explained what they thought Altman thought. Mira Murati could reasonbly feel like the information has been conveyed while at the same time Altman has no experience of it to recall. Nevertheless it results in an impression of Altman being evasive. If the text contained "Altman told Mira Murati" then no such ambiguity would exist.
"Later, the board was alarmed to learn that its C.E.O. had essentially appointed his own shadow board" Is this still talking about Brockman and Sutskever? I just can't see this as anything other than a claim he took advice from people he trusted. I assume those board members who were alarmed were not the ones he was trusting, because presumably the others didn't need to find out. The people he disagreed with still had votes so any claim of a 'shadow board' with power is nonsense, and if it is a condemnable offence, is the same not true of the alignment of board members who removed him.
Josh Kushner apparently made a veiled threat to Muratti, the claim "Altman claims he was unaware of the call" casts him as evasive by stacking denial upon denial, but without any other indication that was undisclosed in the article, it would have been more surprising if he did know of the call. I also didn't know of the call because I am not those two people.
The claim of sexual abuse says via Karen Hao "Annie suggested that memories of abuse were recovered during flashbacks in adulthood." To leave it at that without some discussion about the scientific opinion on previously unremembered events being recalled during a flashback seems to be journalistically irresponsible.
I have experience in dealing with Sam Altman-like behavior. I hope to explain how their tactics unfold.
> I can see people concluding that they have been lied to rather than accept that they had been intellectually beaten.
There are two angles to this: from an individual perspective and from a collective one.
One's interaction with such a manipulator isn't a single shot. There is not a single event that they are “beaten”. First, one gets persuaded --- you might argue that there's nothing wrong with a skillful persuasion. At some point they realize that the reality is not in line with their expectations. They bring the point up to the manipulator and ask for a change, this time in more concrete terms. The manipulator agrees with the change, negotiates compromises, and the relationship continues. After some time the manipulated party realizes that things are not going in the direction they desire. This time they ask for more concrete terms, without accepting any compromises. The manipulator accepts, yet continues to act against the terms. The manipulated party is now angry and directly confronts the manipulator. The manipulator apologizes and tells that none of it was intentional, and asks for another chance. However, at that point, the manipulator has run out of “politically correct” “persuasion tactics”, and tells blatant lies to make the other party behave.
From a collective perspective, even those “politically correct” “persuasion tactics” are discovered to be lies, because what the manipulator told different parties are in direct opposition to each other, i.e., they cannot all be truths.
> Helen Toner suggested that they effectively ambushed Altman because if he had time to respond to allegations he could have provided a reasonable explanation. It did not reflect well on her.
I understand how her behavior may raise a flag for the unsuspecting, but it was exactly the right one. Manipulators prey on the benefit of the doubt. If Toner were to bring Altman's behavior into attention of others, no doubt that Altman would manipulate them successfully.
It's unfortunate that many people are unaware of these tactics and assume the best of intentions, when such assumptions fuel the manipulation that they would better avoid.
I love how the investigators got taken for a ride too. I heard them on NPR talking about how Altman was genuinely grappling with his "desire to please everyone" and etc etc after having just described him as someone who tells people what he thinks they want to hear..
I want to add something about the idea of persuasion. Not that I think you are not doing the word justice or that you are for or against using the tactic.
Here is the etymological definition of the word:
persuasion(n.)
late 14c., persuasioun, "action of inducing (someone) to believe (something) by appeals to reason (not by authority, force, or fear); an argument to persuade, inducement," from Old French persuasion (14c.) and directly from Latin persuasionem (nominative persuasio) "a convincing, persuading," noun of action from past-participle stem of persuadere "persuade, convince," from per "thoroughly, strongly" (see per) + suadere "to urge, persuade," from PIE root *swād- "sweet, pleasant" (see sweet (adj.)).
Meaning "state of being convinced" is from 1530s; that of "religious belief, creed" is from 1620s. Colloquial or humorous sense of "kind, sort, nationality" is by 1864.
IMHO if you aim to convince people of something you are on the side of trying to control people's freedom to chose. That in itself is a form of being unethical to the idea of truth.
If you can't let people come to their own conclusions, you got problems and you shouldn't be in a position of power.
In my experience the people who spend the most time convincing are people with narcissistic personality disorders. I stay far away from those people because I know they dont really value truth and justice like I do.
FWIW, this comment should be immortalized, somehow. I am replying, so that I can find this in the future. This describes, to an eerie degree of detail, some of my own interactions with people in the industry, as well as interactions that my friends have had.
The industry seems to attract people who can only be described as smooth opportunists, always a shy step away from becoming confidence artists. People with big dreams of material success, but with next to no ability or talent, and with a tragic lack of self knowledge (and often a lack of domain knowledge). Pure entitlement and greed, and a desire to use other people as a bridge to the stars[0].
I will say this, however: they do have a keen sense of what the incentives are. They will keep doing this, for as long as society keeps rewarding them, and refuses to punish them. And unhooking those incentives is not difficult: do not let them externalize blame, do not let small dishonesties pass, do not let them internalize praise that belongs to someone else, and, most importantly, do not look the other way, when they decide to cannibalize the career of someone else, in order to nourish their own.
Silicon Valley, since at least the Web-2.0 days, has been about nerds making frat-bros rich, in exchange for a livable wage (salaries tend to be only slightly in excess of cost-of-living, unless you are willing to live either far away from your workplace, or in a small moldy-smelling box of a studio). This is a bad deal. Silicon Valley idolizes Steve Jobs (even when he was alive), but gives little thought to Steve Wozniak (upon whose work, Apple and the PC industry were built). When I was in college, both Jobs and Dennis Ritchie died within a short time of each other. Silicon Valley mourned Jobs, but only a few of us nerds mourned Ritchie.
Silicon Valley chose to name the most innovative car company in the country "Tesla", but it attracts and cultivates legions of future Edisons and Morgans[1]. And that is perhaps the perfect allegory for Silicon Valley: a car company named after someone like Tesla, but owned and operated by someone like Elon Musk[2].
[0]: Maybe this is an ancient human affliction. Did the pharaohs not do the same in their day?
[1]: Funny parallel, that since 2009, SV has been trying to rent out compute and storage, instead of just selling it outright.
[2]: Another pretender, seduced more by the warm glow of gold, than the cool blue crackling lightning of a Tesla Coil.
I'm sorry that it wasn't clear. I didn't mean to imply that I was going to connect to Sam Altman. I specifically wanted to address why it wasn't the case that people were “intellectually beaten” by Sam Altman.
> except the one you imagine is true
I'm not sure what you mean. I told about an example of manipulation that I witnessed. I later learned that these were common tactics employed by con-artists, scammers, etc.
> Don’t project them on people you don’t know and seemingly have no actual first-hand experience with.
I don't need first-hand experience with someone to understand that they are a manipulator. I am comfortable forming my opinion based on reports.
I think sometimes you have to look at the patterns rather than at the single claim. If a large amount of people, that are completely unrelated, tell you very similar experiences they had with Altman, you can take that as a good indicator of his general character.
And if this tendency to misunderstand/be misunderstood always results it Altman gaining more power, even if we give him the reason of the doubt and say that doesn't do it on purpose, it's still a big problem, given the responsibility he has.
The article also mentions many moments where apparently Altman straight out lied, as opposed to being "very persuasive, if you believe those sources then I don't think it's also possible to think he's sincere.
I cannot open the article again to get the exact quotes, but the few I remember were:
- one time he was claiming he didn't send a message, while people were literally showing him the message he sent, with the confirmation of another OpenAI employee
- another time when he accused people of organising a coup, and that someone from the board informed him, and after the person from the board was called in the meeting Altman claimed he never said those words and never accused anyone
These cases can't be put to persuasion, that Altman changed their view, or that someone misremembered, they either happened or they didn't
>I think sometimes you have to look at the patterns rather than at the single claim. If a large amount of people, that are completely unrelated, tell you very similar experiences they had with Altman, you can take that as a good indicator of his general character.
Yes, but that doesn't work if you look for patterns selectively. There are large amount of people who will tell you vastly different experiences that they had with Altman. If you pick the right grouping, within it, you can find universal praise or condemnation. The article itself acknowledges that.
>The article also mentions many moments where apparently Altman straight out lied.
Does it? It has people saying he lied, and a few things he disputes that he said. If the lies were clearly apparent, I think his position would not be tenable. Which points in the article do they show statements that it clear that he has said them, that they were false, and that he knew they were false when he said them?
The points you list are not clearly apparent lies. At most they are allegations of lies. They might just be different interpretations of the same events. I have seen instances in my own life where someone has said "You said X" the other person says "No I didn't", The first then pulls up the minutes, and says "See you said X", the other responds with "That's not what that says". You see rage bait posts about terms and conditions that take that form all the time. Someone misreads a legal term as meaning something different to what it means in a legal sense and then refuses to acknowledge the commonly accepted definition.
Please respond to this, because I really am interested in the answer, but I did read the article and I didn't see what you appear to have seen.
I have made no claim to the merits of Sam Altman, I just don't like the idea of condemning someone on hearsay and insinuations. There are videos on YouTube claiming he's had people killed. At some point you have to point at something that everyone can agree on is an actual thing that happened and that it actually matters. At most what I have seen is people being able to provide one of those two points on any particular allegation.
I don't feel this should be that contentious. If it were clear there would be demands from all around saying "You did this bad thing, you must resign". Do you think that everyone dealing with OpenAI acknowledges some dark truth and is complicit?
Sorry I didn't mean that the artice has proofs he lied, just that some of the situations presented cannot be simple misunderstandings.
The pieces in the article I was referring to are:
> Amodei’s notes describe escalating tense encounters, including one, months later, in which Altman summoned him and his sister, Daniela, who worked in safety and policy at the company, to tell them that he had it on “good authority” from a senior executive that they had been plotting a coup. Daniela, the notes continue, “lost it,” and brought in that executive, who denied having said anything. As one person briefed on the exchange recalled, Altman then denied having made the claim. “I didn’t even say that,” he said. “You just said that,” Daniela replied. (Altman said that this was not quite his recollection, and that he had accused the Amodeis only of “political behavior.”)
> Amodei discovered that a provision granting Microsoft the power to block OpenAI from any mergers had been added. “Eighty per cent of the charter was just betrayed,” Amodei recalled. He confronted Altman, who denied that the provision existed. Amodei read it aloud, pointing to the text, and ultimately forced another colleague to confirm its existence to Altman directly. (Altman doesn’t remember this.)
I agree it's very easy for 2 different people to understand or to remember something differently, and that meeting minutes are not always a reliable source, but for me in the 2 scenarios above is almost impossible for 2 people in good faith to disagree:
In the first case, if you say something, and a big deal is made of it, and 5 minutes later the other person claims that you said some specific words and you deny it, then someone is lying, either you or the other person.
In the second case, if there is something written in a contract, and someone presents that contract to you, reads it out loud, and asks a collegue to confirm, either that person made up the provision, or you are lying, there is little room for misunderstanding.
Given there are no proofs, I can't say he's 100% culprit, and I appreciate your rigor on this because we don't want to result judging everyone by a sort of "trial by public opinion".
However, outside of trials, the judjment can be more nuanced than a boolean "culprit/innocent", and to me the reasons below(*) are enough to distrust Altman and to prefer he wasn't the person at the head of a revolutionary technology that could have huge negative consequences on the society, or on human kind as a whole.
(*) the reasons being:
- amount of people interviewed and their very similar experiences
- the author and the type of journalism he does
- the professionalism he shown in calling out in his article the not-backed allegations other rivals made(for example of murder and sexual assault)
- the power dynamic that is usually in place between someone with enormous power and whealth, and a journalist that could be intimidated by being sued multiple times
Of course the amount/type of reasons needed to distrust someone is very personal, so we might need to "agree to disagree" on this
That's interesting, I'm sure when I read the article it didn't specifically attribute those claims to Amodei.
To be frank, While I tend to think that Dario has good intentions, I'm not so sure about his judgement. He's made a lot of claims that haven't panned out. I haven't felt that it was due to dishonesty, but more because of hyperbole.
The phrasing "Altman then denied having made the claim. “I didn’t even say that,” he said. “You just said that,” Daniela replied." is very close to the pattern I described above where someone interprets a claim as something different from what was actually said and refuses to back down. Furthermore this was prefaced with "As one person briefed on the exchange recalled" so it isn't even a first hand account. We don't know who the person doing the briefing was, but if it was one of the participants of the exchange, they would have been afforded the opportunity to reframe it to put themselves in a better light.
The second claim is potentially even more of a match for the example I gave regarding people misreading legal documentation. Was this a denial about the existence of words in a document, or was it a denial that the words represented the provision that was claimed. I have seen people do this, they take the existence of the words as proof of their interpretation and take dismissal of the interpretation as a claim that the words do not exist. I don't rightly know why people do this, but I have seen it happen. I suspect you could find an abundant supply of cases like this from the records of the worlds town council meetings.
It is difficult to assess the reliability of claims made by the current administration (understating it somewhat), but one of the things that was said about the Government negotiations with Anthropic was that he wanted a gate to some AI abilities in national security circumstance by requiring a personal phone call to Amodei to clear it. No sane government on earth would agree to something like that. It would be an invitation to providing a corporate interest a massive point of leverage in a time of crisis.
But again I am in a similar position with Amodei. I don't have any direct knowledge of the person so I will reserve judgement. I generally like the approach Anthropic is taking but the exposure I have had to the statements made by Amodei himself has given me pause. I would not condemn him either, but I also wouldn't place a lot of stock in what he says unless I see more to create a more complete view of his character.
You note amount of people interviewed and their very similar experiences but it's the nature of how those claims are similar that concerns me. So many of the claims seem to fall into the pattern that requires the person reporting the claim to judge the sole meaning of what was said. How many confirmed direct quotes have been confirmed to be untrue? I'm open to the evidence, perhaps this article will draw some out, but right now I see people convincing themselves of a pattern and then interpreting their own experiences in terms of that pattern.
The thing is, if you were to ask, I think Altman would agree that he shouldn't be in charge of the world's AI. I don't think any one person should, and I would treat anyone who claimed that they were the right person for that job with massive suspicion. To say that's where he sits is to buy into the premise that whoever is the head of OpenAI controls our future. OpenAI is but one of many enterprises working on this, there are a lot of people claiming they already have lost too much ground, but then there have been many predicting their imminent collapse, like a doomsday cult rolling forward the calendar whenever it doesn't happen.
> That's interesting, I'm sure when I read the article it didn't specifically attribute those claims to Amodei.
Apologies, I didn't mean to highlight Amodei in those quotes, I just selected the sentence to have enough context but not be too long, it was a coincidence that they both started with Amodei. I'm not sure if those claims came from Amodei or not, nor I have any specific feeling about him.
> Furthermore this was prefaced with "As one person briefed on the exchange recalled" so it isn't even a first hand account
I'll admit I somehow missed that part, but we don't know how much of this event was in "Amodei's notes" and how much was from the "person briefed on the exchange"
> The phrasing "..." is very close to the pattern I described above where someone interprets a claim as something different
> The second claim is potentially even more of a match for the example I gave regarding people misreading legal documentation
I think our difference in point of view here lies on how much trust we put in the author, with what I seen so far I feel I have enough trust in the author to think he investigated these claims properly and made sure they weren't just misunderstandings, and that many of those checks he did weren't included in the article for any technical/legal reasons. Much more so reading some of his comments:
> As is always the case with incredibly precise and rigorously fact-checked reporting like this, where every word is chosen carefully (the initial closing meeting for this one was nearly eight hours long, with full deliberation about each sentence), there is more out there on that subject than is explicitly on the page.
> You try to reach a critical mass of detailed, rounded understanding of a central question, integrating the most meaningful perspectives, interrogating the weak points and blind spots, and backing up the assertions with documentary evidence or strong sourcing. Eventually, you reach a point where enough sources and materials are reliably triangulating toward the same truths.
> The fact-checking process at the New Yorker is exhaustive, and can span weeks. Every sentence, assertion, and piece of underlying sourcing get scrubbed by multiple independent pairs of eyes. This story had four fact-checkers working on it for the better part of a two week period, pulling very long hours.
As I said I'm happy to agree to disagree on this point.
> So many of the claims seem to fall into the pattern that requires the person reporting the claim to judge the sole meaning of what was said
I guess that's the nature of communications between humans. Even examples of written discussions seem contentious. The only type of claims I can think about that could be outside this category are the ones about written contracts, but it's understandable we don't have access to the actual contracts, and even if we did we couldn't really prove what was verbally agreed to be put in the contracts.
> To say that's where he sits is to buy into the premise that whoever is the head of OpenAI controls our future. OpenAI is but one of many enterprises working on this
This might start a whole new discussion, but I think being the CEO of one of the companies that produce state of the are models is enough to have a high concern. My worry is that he(or any other company) won't say "stop" if a new AI is found to be more powerful but have considerable negative impacts on society. As an example it doesn't matter who has the "strongest" atomic bomb, any country that has one is a potential treat to humanity and should have rigid controls in place.
I commented specifically on Altman because the article seems to suggest he's more power-greedy, persuasive, possibly deceptive, and with strong-leverages/contacts than the average person, or even the average CEO.
There is a ton of evidence out there that points to guilt. No one implied the appearance of innocence was evidence of guilt (as much as I admire the creativity in your interpretation, Mr. Self-Described Altman Apologist).
> what information would significantly change your views
Quite simple: show me any single action took by Sam Altman which can not be construed as an attempt to get him more power/money/influence. You can't find it.
The difference between what he claims to believe and what he actually does is a textbook example of sociopathy.
When people are described as sociopathic it’s not about any particular lie, but the relationship that the person has with the truth, which is that they will lie when it suits them and tell the truth when it suits them and they don’t seem to distinguish morally between them. And more than that, they treat people the same way, and will use them while it suits them and then dispose of them when they are inconvenient.
Perhaps that is some of the problem. That is not what a sociopath is. There are specific criteria, and while it may come as a shock to some, there are ethical sociopaths out there. They do the right thing not because they feel it to be the right thing to do, but because they think it is a rational way to live their lives.
What you are thinking of are people who do bad things. Most of those people are not sociopaths. Often they are hurting in some way, sometimes they are just living the only life they know. Most of them feel they are doing the best they can. It is extremely comforting to pathologize these people because then it's not something we could have prevented by providing a better society. It rules out the hard options of empathising with them, or reasoning with them to find common ground.
The term othering has come into use in recent years. The concept has existed through the ages, but that's the latest label for it.
I cannot find a single action of anyone that cannot be construed as an attempt to get them power/money/influence. I can believe that a persons intentions are good, but I can't make everyone in the world do that, and that is what you are asking.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him"
To play your game, he got married, had a child, and joined an AI research organisation at a time when everybody thought the big advances were much further away than they turned out to be.
You could still construe those actions as evil if you choose to see them as evil.
I'm not going to claim that Sam Altman is not a sociopath, I lack the information and knowledge of psychology to make that determination. On the other hand I have not detected those attributes in anyone who has claimed he is a sociopath.
It seems odd that people seem to take offense at the notion that arbitrary people do not reach a conclusion that requires specialised expert knowledge and a decent amount of irrefutable evidence.
> I cannot find a single action of anyone that cannot be construed as an attempt to get them power/money/influence
Try the other way around, via negativa. We definitely can find plenty of examples of people stepping out of positions of power, deciding not to do something because of moral conflict, etc. Is there any case of such action from Sam?
Fuck, anyone with any semblance of moral fortitude would refuse to take money from the Saudis. But he had no problem to do it.
> joined an AI research organisation at a time when everybody thought the big advances were much further away than they turned out to be.
No, this is selection bias. What he did was to put himself in a position where he could have his fingers on any and every possible pie, and then when of these things turned out to be something believed to be valuable by people with money, then he manouvered himself to be in the driver seat.
>No, this is selection bias. What he did was to put himself in a position where he could have his fingers on any and every possible pie, and then when of these things turned out to be something believed to be valuable by people with money, then he manouvered himself to be in the driver seat.
My prima facie view on Altman has been that he presents as sincere. In interviews I have never seen him make a statement that I considered to be a deliberate untruth. I also recognise that people make claims about him go in all directions, and that I am not in a position to evaluate most of those claims. About the only truly agreed upon aspect has been how persuasive he is.
I can definitely see a possibility of people feeling like they have been lied to if they experienced a degree of persuasion that they are unaccustomed to. If you agree to something that you feel like you didn't really feel like you would have, I can see people concluding that they have been lied to rather than accept that they had been intellectually beaten.
In all such cases where an issue is contentious, you should ask yourself, what information would significantly change your views. If nothing could change your view, then it's a matter beyond reason.
I think you will agree that there is no smoking gun in this article, and it is just an outlay of the allegations. Evaluating allegations becomes tricky because I think it becomes a character judgement of those making the claims.
I have not heard a single person in all of this criticise Ilya Sutskever's character. If he were to make a statement to say that this article is an accurate representation of what he has experienced, it would go a long way.
I think Paul Graham should make a statement, The things he has publicly claimed are at odds with what the article says he has privately claimed. I have no opinion if one or the other is true or if they can be reconciled but there seem to be contradictions that need to be addressed.
While I do not have sources to hand (so I will not assert this as true but just claim it is my memory) I recall Sam Altman himself saying that he himself did not think he should have control over our future, and the board was supposed to protect against that, but since the 'blip' it was evident that another mechanism is required. I also recall hearing an interview where Helen Toner suggested that they effectively ambushed Altman because if he had time to respond to allegations he could have provided a reasonable explanation. It did not reflect well on her.
I am a little put off by some of the language used in the article. Things like "Altman conveyed to Mira Murati" followed by "Altman does not recall the exchange" Why use a term such as 'conveyed' which might imply no exchange to recall? If a third party explained what they thought Altman thought. Mira Murati could reasonbly feel like the information has been conveyed while at the same time Altman has no experience of it to recall. Nevertheless it results in an impression of Altman being evasive. If the text contained "Altman told Mira Murati" then no such ambiguity would exist.
"Later, the board was alarmed to learn that its C.E.O. had essentially appointed his own shadow board" Is this still talking about Brockman and Sutskever? I just can't see this as anything other than a claim he took advice from people he trusted. I assume those board members who were alarmed were not the ones he was trusting, because presumably the others didn't need to find out. The people he disagreed with still had votes so any claim of a 'shadow board' with power is nonsense, and if it is a condemnable offence, is the same not true of the alignment of board members who removed him.
Josh Kushner apparently made a veiled threat to Muratti, the claim "Altman claims he was unaware of the call" casts him as evasive by stacking denial upon denial, but without any other indication that was undisclosed in the article, it would have been more surprising if he did know of the call. I also didn't know of the call because I am not those two people.
The claim of sexual abuse says via Karen Hao "Annie suggested that memories of abuse were recovered during flashbacks in adulthood." To leave it at that without some discussion about the scientific opinion on previously unremembered events being recalled during a flashback seems to be journalistically irresponsible.