Edit: I mean that we should continue to shun antisocial behavior even when it involves LLMs, not that we should blame the technology. The technology isn't an excuse, no technology should ever be an excuse -- that's what I mean by not "accepting" bad things. I don't mean that LLMs are not "worth it" thanks to the abuse, just that we should continue to treat abuse as such rather than giving anybody a free pass.

And society will pass laws. Europe has already begun doing so, and the US will once this goddamn corrupt administration is gone. People are already protesting against AI, especially against datacenters and surveillance like Flock. It's only a matter of time until individual actors end up in the focus of protests.

Hear me out, I know common sense says theft is bad, but just think about the hungry children I could feed if the world just agreed to let me take whatever I wanted.

...except AI won't even feed hungry children, it will only make the rich richer and flood the internet with slop.

E: typos

Until that happens, no. Sam Altman is here telling us to accept the cruelty of his actions and his company so that he can be more wealthy.

It is certainly pitched as if it is a claim we should be accepting of individual instances. Which is not the same as accepting that they occur.

There's a big difference between acknowledging that something cannot be universally beneficial and claiming that the bad aspects are inconsequential.

Every invention has positives and negatives. But no inventor or factory is at liberty to force the negatives upon society without regulation, or in Sam's case without being subject to the laws on theft and hacking.

He may as well come out and say "the ends justify the means" and the ends of course benefit Sam, and those subject to injustice, or negative externalities, should be happy that they can pay Sam for a subscription.

Or perhaps "Look, yes I stole, and yes I hacked, but now I've got this amazing tool you can use for free, and when you use it, and give me money for the full version, it will eventually replace you in the workplace and it will reduce you and your kids intellect after you outsource your thinking to it, and become dependent on it, which will be fine because you can just use the tool even more to make up for that."

Of course with a president who believes him to be above the law and American institutions, is it any wonder the people at the top of American society also believe it to be true? Not to mention their cheerleaders in the populous.

What’s the mechanism by which this happens? I feel like people making these predictions live on a different planet.

If we assume that they are right: AI is inevitable and certain significant negatives cannot be avoided, then the obvious solution is for society to put together a social safety net for those who are effected. Altman could easily decide to campaign for and donate to a party which made serious strides towards establishing such a safety net.

The fact that they ignore the obvious solution suggests to me that they aren't quite being honest about their motives.

But for the average person, I can't really think of a single net benefit except porn (even then arguable) and porn-adjacent things like roleplay. And AI companies don't even want you to have that.

Unless you are already in a privileged class, AI isn't reducing your working hours, it's not putting more money in your pocket, it's not adding anything to your life. The average person is not going to accept "bad things" when they are truly getting nothing in return.