OpenAI CEO's Identity Verification Company Announced Fake Bruno Mars Partnership

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BBoggleOhYeah about 5 hours ago 95 commentsRead Article on vice.com

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Discussion (95 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

Mashimo•about 4 hours ago

> Tools For Humanity is actually partnering with Thirty Seconds to Mars on their 2027 European tour. While TFH has not disclosed the actual reason for the false Bruno Mars announcement, it looks a bit like a case of mistaken identity. Pretty ironic, since the company’s whole shtick is supposedly verifying human identities.

oersted•about 3 hours ago

Quite reminiscent of the "Four Seasons Total Landscaping" debacle :)

appplication•about 2 hours ago

That was like living out and episode of Arrested Development in real time. I have a hard time recalling it without mentally casting Jeffrey Tambor as Rudy Giuliani.

EGreg•about 2 hours ago

Wow! Yes it does sound exactly like that. Reality really can be stranger than fiction

semiquaver•about 4 hours ago

How could this mixup possibly lead to the head of product announcing a Bruno Mars collaboration on stage???

I’m trying to imagine the series of events that could lead to this happening and I’m coming up woefully short.

mattas•about 4 hours ago

This really sounds like an AI voice agent transcribed "Thirty Seconds to Mars" to "30 seconds for Bruno Mars" and then no one actually proof-read the thing.

Mashimo•about 4 hours ago

Probably like the children game "Broken Telephone" or "Gossip" where after a long chain of word of mouth input does no longer match output. Sprinkle communication between different companies on top of that.

Thirty Seconds to Mars -> "The Mars band" -> ?? -> Bruno Mars

cowsandmilk•about 4 hours ago

I routinely have to correct product managers repeatedly on key details of how their products work and how their customers operate so this doesn’t surprise me at all. It is totally a mistake I could see a product management director having been corrected on a dozen times but they keep making it.

RobRivera•about 3 hours ago

I have to ask you for coaching advice here, as I may or may not be experiencing similar things. Does the correction impact your political capital? I am a firm believer in critique in private, but in key meetings where capabilities are the inputs to other discussion, it is difficult to bite my tongue

konschubert•about 4 hours ago

Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

alqpejfjfb•about 3 hours ago

It’s hard to spin it as a mixup when both acts were announced at the event.

sophacles•about 4 hours ago

It's a simple tale, one as old as time - the religious scammers started believing their lies and drank the kool-aid.

danesparza•about 3 hours ago

Actually, they are partnering with "The Martian" book tour. They're brining it back, baby!

RobRivera•about 3 hours ago

Shrimp and all

thevillagechief•about 3 hours ago

Lately I’m realizing what an absolute drain imposter syndrome is. I see things like this and I think maybe I could jump three levels up into a completely different department and be just fine, at least for a while. Then maybe fail up?

bee_rider•about 3 hours ago

You might not have the right core incompetence here. Like could you have honestly (from your point of view) reported that you had a Bruno Mars collaboration? You might have double checked.

ryandrake•about 3 hours ago

Most of us here could easily do the day-to-day work of the CEO of our companies. Somehow we have adopted this corporate mysticism that tells us that people with CxO or SVP in their titles are somehow smarter, more skilled, more qualified than the rank-and-file, but I don't think it's true. They eat and shit just like we do.

RaftPeople•about 3 hours ago

> Most of us here could easily do the day-to-day work of the CEO of our companies.

I'm not so sure about that.

When I do a thought exercise and put myself in our CEO's shoes, I think "ok, which decisions do I need to make today to keep the company thriving in the next 3 or 5 or 10 years?"

For me personally, I don't really know. You can't just do the same thing because the economy is constantly evolving, but I can't see where it's going.

_alternator_•about 3 hours ago

Here's the trick: the CEO doesn't know either, but they make decisions anyway. Knowing that they don't know is a good skill for a CEO to have, it freezing when they don't know is not.

frakt0x90•about 3 hours ago

You would also have a whole team of consultants, advisors, lawyers, and VP+ people specializing in each area telling you what the problems and possibilities are if you actually had that job. They're not operating in a vaccuum.

lucianbr•19 minutes ago

Obviously most CEOs think it's going somewhere where AI is the most important thing, and you must use a lot of it, for everything.

If you just insist on putting AI in everything, you are doing as good a job as most CEOs right now.

Was that so hard? Doesn't seem hard at all.

InsideOutSanta•about 3 hours ago

The fact that you thought to consider the next 3, 5, or 10 years already makes you a better CEO than most CEOs that I personally know.

thevillagechief•about 2 hours ago

I do agree here. Being a CEO is in fact stressful. I think as someone pointed out, your first problem is you're thinkin 3, 5, 10 years. Unless you're a founder building your company, my observation is think in quarters. A year at most. You just need to survive long enough to move on to bigger things. The mess you leave is the next guy's problem. And I don't know how to live like that.

buttercraft•about 3 hours ago

Nah, even if you fail miserably, you'll still get a nice payout and retire comfortably. Hell, you can even commit crimes and the company will pay the fines for you!

hacker161•about 3 hours ago

> For me personally, I don't really know. You can't just do the same thing because the economy is constantly evolving, but I can't see where it's going.

Neither does your CEO

jacquesm•about 3 hours ago

You could, in good times. In bad times it is an entirely different story.

TrailingArbutus•about 2 hours ago

That might be a slightly pessimistic point of view.

M3L0NM4N•about 3 hours ago

Experience is probably (at least should be) the differentiating factor.

Foobar8568•about 3 hours ago

Network and social status is more important than your experiences.

And media loves outliers or bullshitting on the self made part.

duxup•18 minutes ago

I've certainly worked places where people pulled that stunt and then got moved into ... management.

I noped out of those places fast.

jacquesm•about 3 hours ago

Only if you're comfortable with fraud.

sergiotapia•about 3 hours ago

History belongs to the people who show up.

gensym•about 3 hours ago

Unfortunately, right now, it seems like history belongs to the people who bullshit.

z3c0•about 2 hours ago

Well, bullshit tends to be more bullish, and it's not the bears keeping money on the table.

_verandaguy•about 4 hours ago

An outstanding move for a company claiming to sell trust as a service.

2ndorderthought•about 4 hours ago

The issue I have with it is it's completely unsurprising. They just don't care and are testing the waters with the consequences or the lack thereof for these types of lies. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

3form•about 4 hours ago

Reminds me of bunch of cases of high-profile people testing the waters of the low-quality Twitter posting.

Turned out you can ride far not only despite it, but also thanks to it.

mentalgear•about 4 hours ago

Sam Altman: the CEO of companies selling 'Intelligence' and 'Trust' (... me Bro) as a service.

TrailingArbutus•about 2 hours ago

judging by everyone in the AI space, is he that different though?

abirch•about 4 hours ago

Offtopic but you've triggered my rant

What is frustrating to me is the IRS was scammed. They sent my refund to some identity thief. This from an institution that if I owed them 10 cents, they could track down all of my financial accounts but they decide to deposit in some rando's account.

2ndorderthought•about 4 hours ago

Sorry that happened to you, but these verifiers won't solve that problem. It's pretty easy to get a picture of someone's face and irises. Especially once a few more data bases inevitably leak so the government can get the data for free use.

jonhohle•about 3 hours ago

Maybe that’s not a good way to verify someone’s identity then…

ectospheno•about 4 hours ago

Owing tax each year instead of overpaying solves this problem. As long as it’s less than $1000 you won’t pay any interest or fees.

ralph84•about 4 hours ago

That doesn't solve anything when the fraudster is filing a fake return. They are under no obligation to include all of your carefully chosen income and deductions that get you to $1000 owed.

Mashimo•about 4 hours ago

> They sent my refund to some identity thief.

How does that currently work?

In DK they just send it to your "nem konto", the same bank account that also gets your wages. More or less a sym link, so even if you move bank it will follow. Makes life easy.

nemomarx•about 3 hours ago

when you file your tax paperwork each year you have to tell them which bank account to send the refund to.

if someone else can file for you they can put in whatever info they like, so.

hvb2•about 3 hours ago

I mean, the US is the country that doesn't want a national id.

So instead the defacto ID is your SSN. This was never designed with that in mind, lacks all security mechanisms/checksums and all.

And if you were born before a certain time, all digits except the last few were determined by where you were born. And those last digits are the ones they frequently ask for...

This is all just choices guys.

ghoulishly•about 3 hours ago

“OpenAI CEO's Identity Verification Company Announced Fake Bruno Mars Partnership” the english language is rapidly running out of brand new sentences.

steve1977•about 4 hours ago

Hallucinated a partnership...

renegade-otter•about 3 hours ago

That may be true. If they use LLms to write up all of their internal documents, it may have just pulled a "partnership" out of thin air, and no one bothered to check. "I guess we have one!"

Brought to you by - Looks Good To Me(tm).

throwatdem12311•about 4 hours ago

lol a mixup with Jared Lego’s band “30 Seconds to Mars”

> “You’re right, I got these two artists mixed up because of the name. I’m really sorry” — ChatGPT

prepend•about 3 hours ago

I wish it was Jared Lego’s band.

dylan604•about 3 hours ago

Damn, I guess I've always been confused. I didn't realize the toy building blocks company was called Letos.

benwad•about 3 hours ago

Seconds later:

> OpenAI CEO's company announces partnership with The Mars Volta

figassis•about 2 hours ago

I shared this here before, I think we're trying to over engineer identity. How about decentralized verification?

https://humanidentity.io, https://protocol.humanidentity.io

Disclaimer: I am the author, feedback appreciated

Habgdnv•about 2 hours ago

"the company’s whole shtick is supposedly verifying human identities" - that as PR means that from the next year forward you can expect official government services to require you to use that company. This is just observation from how the tech world works.

tartoran•about 2 hours ago

All it took was for someone to just read the generated output but not just vibe read it

rvnx•about 3 hours ago

Something I don’t understand, how does that verify identity? Couldn’t a third-party person simply save the pictures taken by the Orb (especially by modifying the firmware)?

What’s with this crypto-coins that goes with it ? That doesn’t make sense, seems like a pretext

mrcartmeneses•about 2 hours ago

If any Americans here need a definition of irony this is it

Lionga•about 4 hours ago

You are right to call that out. Do you want me to remove all the press releases over the internet of our fake partnership with Bruno Mars?

jacquesm•about 4 hours ago

Perfect - I have removed all of them. Once again, I apologize I should have been more careful. I've also erased the database and the email server on the off chance that any trace of this remained there. And no need to worry about the backups, I got those too.

I can modify the script to make this sort of thing easier to do in the future. The change is minor and it can be quite revealing. Would you like me to do that?

danans•about 4 hours ago

As funny as this is, there is a serious side. This is a case of an unintentional hallucination propagating and amplifying through human social and incentive structures. This is also how probably how religious miracle stories work.

tw04•about 2 hours ago

Bruno Mars seemed really weird. On the flip side, it is rather fitting that OpenAI is partnering with a guy that's running a weird cult.

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13865555/thirty-seconds-to-mars-ja...

chaostheory•about 4 hours ago

They didn’t get scammed. The CEO just didn’t know the difference between 30 seconds to Mars and Bruno Mars.

hansmayer•about 4 hours ago

Is anyone even surprised at this point? Probably a long chain of AI-"summarised" emails flowing back and forth.

allears•about 3 hours ago

Not a problem! Move fast and break things! Disruption, baby, disruption!

camillomiller•about 4 hours ago

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Sam Altman’s unfettered attention to quality and details. This one is up there with Palantir in the list of companies that I hope will soon fail miserably and painfully.

sumeno•about 4 hours ago

Hopefully Sam follows in the tradition of other transformational tech figures, like Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes

blitzar•about 4 hours ago

Palantir are a lot of things, incompetent they are not.

tyre•about 4 hours ago

People I’ve spoken to in DoD strongly disagree with you there.

GolfPopper•about 2 hours ago

Competent at doing the things the DoD ought to do? Or competent at getting paid to do things for the DoD?

amuradbegovic•about 4 hours ago

What are their complaints?

jlarocco•about 3 hours ago

Perhaps. But they made $1.6 billion in net income in 2025, which, from a business perspective, makes them about $10.6 billion more competent than OpenAI.

sjsdaiuasgdia•about 4 hours ago

Yes, they're fascist. Or at least Alex Karp is.

jLaForest•about 3 hours ago

tell that to those Iranian school girls, oh wait you cant cause palantir is incompetent and those kids are dead

blitzar•about 1 hour ago

Bombing a school is the sort of "accident" that happened a lot before Ai and Palantir. Its as believeable an excuse as Ai is for the latest round of layoffs.

hmokiguess•about 3 hours ago

Next up, correction post announces partnership with NASA and the Mars Rover!

Lionga•about 4 hours ago

Scam Altman doing Scam Altman things

sigmoid10•about 4 hours ago

TL;DR: Some random marketing writers confused Bruno Mars with Thirty Seconds to Mars (with whom they actually have a deal).

Still hilarious given the company's mission, but the comments here make fun of the wrong technological aspect.

villgax•about 2 hours ago

GRIFTONOMICS

Fokamul•about 4 hours ago

OpenAI should partner with Kanye West.

Fitting partnership. They should call it Hitler Brotherhood, or something like that.

Maybe even Thiel would join and others.

therobots927•about 3 hours ago

And we trusted Sam Altman with the economy.

Sheeeeesh

rvz•about 4 hours ago

You all just got rage-baited here. One side of this story is not telling the truth.

Don't fall for it.

gblargg•about 3 hours ago

And the article doesn't even say it was fake, just a likely error.

cryptonym•about 3 hours ago

rage-baited? I think it's pretty clear to everyone they did a mistake due to lexical proximity with their actual partnership.