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CEO Asks ChatGPT How to Void $250 Million Contract, Ignores His Lawyers, Loses Terribly in Court (www.404media.co)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 181 points 6 months ago (22 children)

This is the kind of successful entrepreneur we're supposed to be looking up to, people.

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  • [–] 117 points 6 months ago (21 children)

    Exactly, the fact this dude at Krafton can sign 250 million dollars deals but is also dumb enough to think a ChatGPT lawyer knows better than his own lawyers... It goes to show that many powerful people were just lucky or inherited their wealth but are definitely not successful because they are smart.

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  • [+] 70 points 6 months ago* (4 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 31 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Throughout pretty much all of human history it's been apparent that the "nobles" class has been, at best, more trouble than they're worth; and at worst, the instigating spark that creates a nation-destroying blaze.

    It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read a history book that the American nobleman is equally as useless and destructive as his counterpart anywhere else.

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  • [–] 19 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    While undoubtedly true, this story is about a South Korean CEO of a South Korean company.

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  • [–] 30 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    This is why the LLMs are so popular with execs, they are the ultimate yes men. They will feed ego and purport to give a strategy that will support any dumbass idea without challenging them.

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago

    That's half of it. The other half is that these execs think that everybody under them is some kind of replaceable cog in the machine with no special skills. They don't think their job could be replaced by AI. But, they think everyone under them is so unimportant that their job can be done by AI. They're managers. They don't know how to do the work of the people they're managing. They can't tell the difference between an accurate result given to them by someone with knowledge and expertise vs. one created by a slop machine that generates plausibly realistic text.

    If their $1000/hour lawyers tell them one thing, but the bullshit machine tells them something different, they trust whichever one gives them the answer they prefer.

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  • [–] 16 points 6 months ago* (4 children)

    definitely not successful because they are smart.

    I mean, "smart" is a relative term. They were smart enough to find the money hose and latch onto it. But the skills necessary to schmooze $250M out of a creditor are fundamentally different than the skills necessary to manage a workforce or meet the terms of the contract.

    You can call it the Peter Principle or the Principle-Agent Problem or any number of other business short-hands for "skills mismatch". The bottom line is that "meritocracy" in a capitalist system boils down to rent-seeking effectiveness. That's the skill set that is rewarded. And it produces legions of people who train and compete for the opportunity to maximize rent-seeking returns.

    This guy fumbled the ball in a spectacular fashion. But I have no doubt he'll get back on his horse and find another pool of labor to extract wealth from. Because, if he's a CEO, he's honed the skills needed to do exactly that.

    What we get to mock him for is his failure, not his decision. If he'd retrieved a useful answer from the ChatGPT answer lottery, or the courts had been stacked with his friends such that any answer he pulled was considered the right one, he'd be hailed as a business genius on the front page of the WSJ rather than scoffed at in the back pages of 404media.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago*

    Exactly "being smart" and "acting smart" are two different things. Usain Bolt is the "fastest" man on Earth, but if he's just chilling on the couch watching TV, I can run right past him.

    Same with these ivy league CEOs, they probably (not necessarily) were smart when taking their tests in school, but if they just leave the fate of their company to chatgpt responses, they're acting as dumb as possible at the current moment.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (7 children)

    Luck is a factor, but the differentiator is that they have the. Isplaced confidence and drive to just do what they want first. Then the luck let's them get away with it. It's kind of like if you get a million people to flip a coin 50 times. Some of them will get all 50 to be heads. So with billions of people in the world. Some have this drive to be on top, misplaced confidence, luck, and situational oportunities (also a good part luck) to end up able to sign 250 million dollar contract. None of that actually requires they have a clue. Sometimes they do, but it isn't required.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    And no one remembers the failures, except maybe their family with that wacky Uncle that had some crazy get rich quick scheme. In some other timeline, some kids think of their crazy uncle Mark Zuckerberg who dropped out of college because he thought he could do better than MySpace, and now he bounces around chasing various hustles that keep failing.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    if you get a million people to flip a coin 50 times. Some of them will get all 50 to be heads.

    Flipping a coin 50 times has 1.1 quadrillion possible outcomes, only 2 of which are all heads or all tails. I think you'd need more than a few billion to reliably see those results.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    I think though, you get the point.

    Now here is a bonus question for you. If I give you a coin and ask you to flip it 20 times, and they all come up heads. What are the odds that if you flip it again it will come up heads?

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    I think it’s higher than a 50% chance of heads, because you have evidence for it being an unfair coin.

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