Ball is deeply terrified of "AI communism", or in less red-scarey terms a world where AI is a public good and him and his fellow oligarchs don't get to centralize the accumulated knowledge of all of humanity and charge rent for it.
I think he's so deeply stuck in his ideological bubble he can't conceive that what he describes as a dystopia is the only way the future wouldn't be a dystopia for the vast majority of people.
Or to put it more clearly, the oligarch utopia he's trying to build is dystopia for the vast majority of humanity. The "utopia" he's trying to build is one of riches for him and serfdom for us.
jackb4040•7h ago
Where does this guy come from and what is his supposed value to OpenAI? He's apparently been there 2 weeks?
Take a look at his (non-)apology tweet; full of "I don't think we should do this I just think it's a rational strategy"
ZeroGravitas•7h ago
He was/is a right wing policy wonk, putting out oligarch misinformation from oligarch think tanks:
> His policy scholarship has been published by the Mercatus Center, the Foundation for American Innovation, the Hoover Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Federation of American Scientists, the Manhattan Institute, and American Compass.
Then Trump admin AI guy and OpenAI "Head of Strategic Futures".
vrganj•5h ago
In other words, hiring him was an explicit play for more entanglement between regime and industry. He says as much in his point 5.
They know they can't win on the fundamentals.
Regulatory capture is the only play left.
Keep in mind LLMs are also perfect propaganda machines. They will determine the information that will get surfaced by billions of people, their framing will influence how they think.
I have no doubt the Trumpists are aware as well and will extract their price.
vrganj•8h ago
Point four is especially telling.
Ball is deeply terrified of "AI communism", or in less red-scarey terms a world where AI is a public good and him and his fellow oligarchs don't get to centralize the accumulated knowledge of all of humanity and charge rent for it.
I think he's so deeply stuck in his ideological bubble he can't conceive that what he describes as a dystopia is the only way the future wouldn't be a dystopia for the vast majority of people.
Or to put it more clearly, the oligarch utopia he's trying to build is dystopia for the vast majority of humanity. The "utopia" he's trying to build is one of riches for him and serfdom for us.
jackb4040•7h ago
Take a look at his (non-)apology tweet; full of "I don't think we should do this I just think it's a rational strategy"
ZeroGravitas•7h ago
> His policy scholarship has been published by the Mercatus Center, the Foundation for American Innovation, the Hoover Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Federation of American Scientists, the Manhattan Institute, and American Compass.
Then Trump admin AI guy and OpenAI "Head of Strategic Futures".
vrganj•5h ago
They know they can't win on the fundamentals.
Regulatory capture is the only play left.
Keep in mind LLMs are also perfect propaganda machines. They will determine the information that will get surfaced by billions of people, their framing will influence how they think.
I have no doubt the Trumpists are aware as well and will extract their price.
Scary days ahead.