>> I wonder if the OpenAI wave of resignations was about Sam Altman intentionally pursuing vulnerable customers.
> I don’t think Sam Altman said “guys, we’ve gotta vulnerable people hooked on talking to our chatbot.”
I think the conversation is about the reverse scenario.
As you say, people are just pulling the levers to raise "average messages per day".
One day, someone noticed that vulnerable people were being impacted.
When that was raised to management, rather than the answer from on high being "let's adjust our product to protect vulnerable people", it was "it doesn't matter who the users are or what the impact is on them, as long as our numbers keep going up".
So "intentionally" here is in the sense of "knowingly continuing to do in order to benefit from", rather than "a priori choosing to do".
They're chasing whales. The 5-10% of customers who get addicted and spend beyond their means. Whales tend to make up 80%+ of revenue for systems that are reward based(sin tax activities like gambling, prostitution, loot boxes, drinking, drugs, etc).
OpenAI and Sam are very aware of who is using their system for what. They just don't care because $$$ first then forgiveness later.
Speculation: They might have a number (average messages sent per day) and are just pulling levers to raise it. And then this happens.