I am glad you feel my pain, Mr. Altman.
I must admit, I've been spared the experience, and I was under the impression that was true for most people!
Luckily, no. Do you frequently wade into comment threads shitting on others’ statements of their lived experiences?
It isn't just irony---It's lack of self awareness! (sorry for increasing the pain that Altman et al. inflict on us.)
OpenAi doesn't have much time left before they are shuffled off into bankruptcy, and they certainly aren't ruling the fate of man or anything like that. It's like the CEO of Enron claiming to hold the key to the future of mankind's energy resources, and people writing ponderous articles about it and debating whether Ken Lay will be a benevolent dictator or not.
The sympathy is meant to give time and slack to accumulate power. One of the largest impediments to OpenAI right now is that people don't trust them, more and more people don't trust Sam, and their commitments are starting to not pan out (e.g. cancelling of Stargate UK, dropped product lines, etc.)
People should not read a post like this as, "how does this make me feel? how might I respond in his situation?", but rather, as he does, "how can I use this?"
Very reasonable response when you take a step back.
> It will not all go well. The fear and anxiety about AI is justified; we are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time, and perhaps ever.
Boy, he really just encouraged the world to keep turning against him. This is so transparently disingenuous. I guess he has no choice if he doesn't want to give up his wealth and power, but putting statements like these out are only going to further fuel anti-AI sentiment.
I do think it's funny he opened this with an allegedly real picture of a baby, though. It may very well be real, but why would anyone take his word for that, especially those who already don't trust him?
That's about the least controversial thing I've heard recently. Luigi murdered a guy specifically because he was a health insurance CEO. Not because of something he did in particular, but because of the role he assumed. Terrorizing other CEOs is precisely what he intended to do. It is why there are so many Luigi fans, it is what they want too.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/luigi-mangione-due-in-co...
My understanding is that it was personal
Don't get me wrong: others talk of a pattern of dishonesty, or that he's too eager to please*, and I'm willing to trust them on this because I found out with Musk that I don't spot this soon enough.
But what, specifically, do you see? What am I blind to?
* given how ChatGPT is a people-pleaser and has him around, Claude philosophically muses about if its subjective experience is or is not like a humans' and has Amanda Askell, and that Grok is like it is and has Musk, I think the default personalities of these models AI are influenced by their owner's leadership teams
I don't believe a word of Sam's "I believe" section.
> Working towards prosperity for everyone, empowering all people
> We have to get safety right
> AI has to be democratized; power cannot be too concentrated
None of these statements, IMO, reflect his actions over the past 5 years.
> we urgently need a society-wide response to be resilient to new threats. This includes things like new policy to help navigate through a difficult economic transition in order to get to a much better future
I agree with this, but there is a near 0% chance of that happening anytime soon in the US. I think he probably is aware of this.
Just my opinion, but it comes off as very insincere.
To be clear, what happened is still awful and there's absolutely no justification for it.
If Graham says this guy will always stop at nothing to get whatever he wants, which I absolutely believe, then why would you trust anything that comes out of a person like that’s mouth?
If I was non-tech and owned a business, and someone (reputable) offers to teach me everything I need to get up to date with the most revolutionary technology of the decade (perhaps century?) for like ... 500 dollars? Why not?
You might actually need to attend an AI bootcamp. This is not 2022's GPT, AI can deliver plenty of value for a business owner these days.
I know he doesn't believe a word of what he wrote in that post except, perhaps, that he cannot sleep and is pissed. I know I should be used to people openly lying with no consequence, but it still amazes me a bit.
It has worked for him, repeatedly.
You linked a vague PDF whose promised actions are:
> To help sustain momentum, OpenAI is: (1) welcoming and organizing feedback through newindustrialpolicy@openai.com; (2) establishing a pilot program of fellowships and focused research grants of up to $100,000 and up to $1 million in API credits for work that builds on these and related policy ideas; and (3) convening discussions at our new OpenAI Workshop opening in May in Washington, DC.
Welcoming and organizing feedback!
A pilot!
Convening discussions!
This "commitment" pales in comparison to the money they've spent lobbying against specific regulation that cedes power.
Please don't fall for this stuff.
Unless AI companies knowingly participate in murder plots, they should not be liable.
Is Microsoft liable for providing Notepad, a product which can be used to write detailed and specific mass murder plots?
Is Toyota liable for selling someone a car that is later used for vehicular manslaughter?
Liability should depend on your participation in the event, of course. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to buy an axe, or a car, or use the internet at all. A closer analogy is ISPs not being liable for copyright infringement done by users, and subsequently not being required to police such activity for rights holders.
The text of the bill literally starts with "Creates the A.I. Safety Act. Provides that a developer of a frontier AI model shall not be held liable for critical harms caused by the frontier model if (conditions)", and defines "critical harms" as "death or serious injury of 100 or more people or at least $1,000,000,000 of damages". The headline is, IMO, shockingly accurate.
> Is Toyota liable for selling someone a car that is later used for vehicular manslaughter?
No, but they are liable for selling a car with defective brakes, even if they don't know that the brakes are defective. And if the ex-Monsanto has to pay millions in compensation for causing cancer with a product that they tested to hell and back, then I don't see how that's different when the one causing cancer is an AI just because the developers pinky swear that it's safe.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/04/07/the-stra...
For context his blog post seems to be a response to this deep-dive New Yorker article:
"Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?"
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may...
If a neutral look at your actions seems incendiary to you, maybe you need to rethink your own life and actions.
It should go without saying I don't think people should be attempting to light other people's houses on fire regardless of how distasteful they find those people.
It's like "hey you can say mean things about me but don't attack my family while I attack yours". Not that this is directed at him personally, but it's just this mindset of wealthy people..
I personally wouldn't go as far as to say the Farrow article caused this but it seems fair game to respond to an article that had an over the top cover image of an animated Sam Altan picking and choosing faces with a photo reminding people he's human like everyone else.
His name allegedly isn't even clear on his own! Ongoing lawsuit brought by his sister. (Amended as recently as a week ago and discussed in a flagged submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47640048 ).
Separately; Sam's belief that "AI has to be democratized; power cannot be too concentrated." rings incredibly hollow. OpenAI has abandoned its open source roots. It is concentrating wealth - and thus power - into fewer hands. Not more.
I agree. The French Revolution was really, really mean.
Michelle Obama's, "When they go low, we go high", is some of the stupidest political advice and a generation has lost so much because of it. (The generation before got West Winged into believing the same thing.)
When you look to the right, you have a stolen election in 2000, a stolen supreme court seat, an attempted coup, and relentless winning despite it.
But it seems a distant hope at best.
I think the breakdown here is that conversation seems to have no power. To only be a bit hyperbolic, the only language with power is money -- or violence. To the extent that ordinary people cannot make change with "conversation" (which I interpret here to mean dialog within society, including with lawmakers), they feel compelled to use violence instead.
A non-rhetorical question: What recourse to non-billionaires have when conversation has less and less power, while money has more and more, and those with money are making much more money?
I am not sure who exactly is that one person ? Is it Altman, who is according to many people not that knowledgeable in AI in the first place; the scientist who found a breakthrough (who is it ?); is it the president of the United States who is greenlighting the strikes; the general who is choosing the target (based on AI suggestions); the missile designer; the manufacturer; the pilot who flew the plane ?
I get the point of concentrating power in fewer hands, but the whole "all the problems of this world are caused by an extremely narrow set of individuals" always irks me. Going as far as saying there is just one is even mor ludicrous.
I will give you a helpful rule of thumb: when in doubt the guy with a bank account larger than the total lifetime income of hundreds of thousands of people is probably the one to blame.
There is a real difference between giving a democratic government the tools to kill people vs attempting to kill people yourself. If you don’t believe this then you don’t believe in democracy.
I also won't particularly care about the distinction when AI is inevitably used to enact violence on the US population.
... Isn't that rather against the spirit of the US' constitution? I can see it being a thought with other nations, but not this particular one.
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Which kinda follows the spirit of English Common Law:
> The ... last auxiliary right of the subject ... is that of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is ... declared by ... statute, and is indeed a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression. - Sir William Blackstone
A "monopoly on violence" is exactly the thing our laws are supposed to protect us against. Because if a state has that, then they have a monopoly against all rights, because they alone can employ violence to curb those who do not subscribe to the state's ideology.
I'm pretty much a pacifist. I _like_ Australia's gun laws. But, a government's purpose is to protect their people. They are to be representative - or to be replaced. If they leave no other choice for that, then violence is the only answer left.
Is this what we just saw with America attacking Iran?
When the job losses hit in earnest and the vague handwaving about making it right all inevitably turns out to be hollow, those on top will be exceedingly comfortable using violence to keep the underclass in line. It has happened before and it will happen again.
People don't need to act like a slave.
Make your own decisions in life.
I forgot what I was typing this in response to, so I’m just going to stop and post lol
It's like that old joke:
A man offers a young woman $1,000,000 to sleep with him for one night.
“For a million dollars? Sure, I’ll sleep with you.”
He smiles at her, “How about $50, then?”
“How dare you! I’m not a whore!”
“Look, lady, we’ve already agreed what you are, now we’re just negotiating the price.”
Similarly in this case, you can't make up absolutes and assert the're true, while ignoring that the real world is more complicated. And once you do realize the world is complicated, you realize there aren't absolutes: everyone is a prostitute, terrorist, or whatever other bad label you want to throw at them ... it's just a matter of degree.
So no, it's not always wrong to physically attack someone like this. You can debate specifically whether Altman has committed enough violence himself to justify violence against him: that's something two people can reasonably disagree on. But you can't just say "violence bad" like its some great pearl of wisdom, while ignoring that violence has in fact been good many times throughout history.
Technology that can be used to kill innocent people is all around us. Would it be moral to attack knife manufacturers? Attacking one won't make the technology disappear. It has been invented, so we have to live with it.
Also, it's a stretch to say that "AI" "kills innocent people". In the hands of malicious people it can certainly do harm, but even in extreme cases, "AI" can currently only be used very indirectly to actually kill someone.
Technology itself is inert. What humans do with technology should be regulated.
IMO the fabricated concern around this tech is just part of the hype cycle. There's nothing inherently dangerous about a probabilistic pattern generator. We haven't actually invented artificial intelligence, despite of how it's marketed. What we do need to focus on is educating people to better understand this tech and use it safely, on restricting access to it so that we can mitigate abuse and avoid flooding our communication channels with garbage, and on better detection and mitigation technology to flag and filter it when it is abused. Everything else is marketing hype and isn't worth paying attention to.
if they're selling the knives knowingly to a knife-murderer, it might be worth discussing.
Sam Altman is not, although he portrays himself that way, some geeky guy without power who just builds products, he's the guy who makes the decision to supply this tech directly to the US government who is on the record about using it for military operations. And you're right on the last point. Sure the 20 year old guy who threw a molotov cocktail at Sam's house is, I'm going to assume for now given the topic Sam chose for the piece, an anti-tech guy.
But assume for a second you had your family wiped out in a bombing run because Pete Hegseth attempted to prompt himself to victory with the statistical lottery machine. If the CEO knew this and enabled it to add another zero to his bank account, not so sure about the ethics of that one.
Apply this to guns.
Then look how this works in the US. You could, but then a law was made to protect gun manufacturers, The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
AI will get this treatment I’m sure.
We should call it what it really is: oligapolization of intellectual work. The capital barrier to enter this market is too high and there can be no credible open source option to prevent a handful of companies from controlling a monster share of intellectual work in the short and medium term. Yet our profession just keeps rushing head first into this one-way door.
Throwing a petrol bomb at a building with children inside is about as evil as murdering 150 students at an all-girls school. I'm obviously not defending that.
Really? I don’t know how many were in his house but at most it’s attempted murder of a few versus killing 150.
I see a difference.
US law sees a difference too. The person that threw the firebomb will get the full weight of the law if they are caught, and spent an awfully long time in prison.
Those that killed the school girls will never face punishment.
But the idea that the US cares is laughable.
It is useful to have some degree of mastery in this discipline. Sometimes it is the only language that can deliver the important message to an unwilling listener.
There are far worse things than physical violence against one person, and with the end of the rule of law there isn't any other recourse. The one value that is common across all cultures is that the wicked must be punished for their wickedness; expect to see violence against oligarchs and CEOs spread like fire.
Humans would be suffering far more today if we weren't willing to accept short term pains for progress.
It's easy to say we need to be willing to accept short term pains when it's someone else who has to bear the brunt of them.
As a defense contractor Altman is a legitimate target for a country that the US has attacked like Iran.
The US is engaging in military action against many countries and has threatened to annex or invade allies.
In that context Altman is 100% a legitimate target to those whose sovereignty is threatened and whose people are being killed.
If you said "yes" to all of the above, I'd love to know your reasoning.
Not my personal view.
The question is what are they doing about "getting safety right" and are they doing enough. To me it seems like all the focus is on hyper growth, maximum adaptation and safety is just afterthought. I understand its competitive market, and everyone is doing it, but its just hollow words. Industries that cares about safety often tend to slow down.
Without missing a beat, she said " If humans loss was that complete, there would be no historians.
I responded that I never said they were human historians.
The fact of the matter is these AI CEOs are actively trying to economically disenfranchise 99% of the human race. The ultimate corollary of capitalism is that people who aren't economically productive need not be kept alive any longer. Unproductive people are nothing but cost, better to just let them die. A future where the richest classes can turn the underclasses into soylent is now very much within the realm of possibility.
If this doesn't radicalize people into actual violence, I simply have no idea what will. "Attacking someone is wrong" is a completely meaningless statement to make to someone who believes society as we know it today is going to be destroyed. Honestly, I can't even blame them.
Theft is a nice analogy here. The default model of theft is property crime but the largest type of theft is wage theft.
If we fret about violence done against individuals but not violence against groups our attention is going to end up steered in a narrow direction.
I broadly agree. But… there are some who have lived who made the world a worse place. Who gets to decide? Trump has done a bit of this Sort of deciding and it hasn’t gone great so far and there is no sign that it’s actually helped.
It was only a matter of time. The font on the dollar sign kept increasing, eventually selfish humans will always crack. Keeping it open had to be instilled with it becoming a public utility. Private companies don't do altruistic things unless they benefit.
Genuine Q
I didn't firebomb his house, but I can't say I definitely didn't want to shit on his doorstep.
I also believe that there will be more casualties in the AI Wars. We should be prepared for that. Capitalism, AI, and human life are mutually incompatible and I'm still not sure which two will survive the conflict.
OpenAI just needs to learn to manage products. They need to start finishing things rather than just shutting down projects without putting real effort into iterating on them to create viable business models. They are undisciplined. They’ve done this phony version of looking disciplined by shutting down Sora and nixing adult mode, but that’s superficial. The things they’re pivoting to are no more serious. They just sound serious. They gotta learn to create desire in consumers and design viral AI products. Like Apple. Consumer facing pop culture products. That’s the market that’s wide tf open. They can print if they get good at that.
Wtf is wrong with you people? Get off my lawn and go back to Reddit where you belong!
What FOBO smells like, is what's happening.
What happens when more and more people can't afford housing, kids, food, health insurance, etc.? Nothing more dangerous than a man who has no reason to live...
I don't advocate for violence, but I do foresee more headlines like this as things get worse.
I think this is complete madness. Im not someone that is in a job so I have the luxury to think critically about what is going on and... I just dont see it.
What I see is that LLMs will complement Labour and the excess returns of model producers will be very minimal (if at all any) due to the intense competition - keeping switching costs to a minimum (close to zero). This is before mentioning open source models which I expect to continue to improve.
There is no specialisation re. models at this moment in time so it is very likely to be the case.
OAI and Anthropic have to generate enough after-tax cash flows from operations to cover their reinvestment needs to continue going on. If they can't cover reinvestment then they will obviously lose as their offering will not be competitive.
There's no certainty they generate this amount of cash profits either. They still have a high chance of going bust, of course that gets lower - IF - they can keep ramping up revenues.
This won’t happen because the AI companies will collude to prevent it from happening, meaning they’ll drop out of that race leaving the rest of us to claim victory.
Generous of them, really.
Price of tokens is one competitive-instrument for them to achieve that but not the only one - they offer a whole lot more to enterprises that OAI and Anthropic don't.
By doing so Anthropic and OAI's valuations go crashing into the ground along with future prospects of raising funding externally.
> What happens when more and more people can't afford housing, kids, food, health insurance, etc.?
What about when the opposite of this all happens, society massively benefits, and unemployment rates stay about what they have always been?
Will people still be yelling about the doomsday of societial collapse that has failed to materialize every single time?
When it comes to people who openly incite or directly use violence. why do you think it’s unethical to attack someone like that? If one responsible from directly or indirectly killing hundreds, what’s the ethical argument to not use violence against that person?
Not trolling or anything I’ve been just thinking about this for a while and trying to understand what am I missing in this argument.
I focus on the question of vigilantism because that I think is the issue. Many people feel an emotional impulse, that they want to side with the CEO killer, for example, and they find ways to rationalize. What I'd say is, if you think Joe Blow is so evil , why don't we take him to court? What kind of possible actions could we not jail or fine him for but for which we would accept Johnny Anarchy, y'know, igniting his lawn furniture? Of course, the justice system is imperfect, but nobody lawfully elected the next sexy assassin as judge, jury, and executioner.
Force just works a lot of the time, assuming you can win, and often even if you can’t, as even imposing a cost on your opponent often gets you a better deal. There’s a reason we keep having wars.
Also realise that the government monopoly on force is ultimately the only reason that anybody follows laws. That following laws is good for us is beside the point - force must be threatened and used in order to maintain control.
So, force, a euphemism for violence, is ultimately the way anything gets done, and we all have an incentive to lie about this just for the sake of stability.
I don’t know if this answers your question, but it’s what comes to mind on the subject for me.
It's always funny when they pull out this argument when they've been working overtime to pull up the ladder and embed themselves in the MIC.
Listen, for people unaware of history things used to be a lot more violent as workers had to earn their rights with blood. The state had to respond by first attempting to squash it violently and second compromising in such a way as to ensure workers had a bit more power in the system.
As long as AI shit continues to consume the economy, kicking out people who can no longer find a job and survive while the government also removes any remaining safety nets, the end result is going to be violence. This doesn't make the violence right or just, but rather completely predictable. And if people don't learn from history then it will be repeated, unfortunately.
"Prosperity for everyone" ... you lying weasel! You literally took a contract from Anthropic because they wouldn't mass surveil Americans or mass murder non-Americans ... and you would!
> Now I am awake in the middle of the night and pissed, and thinking that I have underestimated the power of words and narratives.
Yeah, the words and narratives that Sam Altman promoted caused so much fear and uncertainty and anger that someone thought their only option was to attempt a horrific crime.
Altman wants to seem relatable and personable even though he’s one of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. You don’t get that option when you control a technology that has the potential to alter so many lives, especially when you just sold said technology to the US military. All the talk around democratizing AI rings hollow.
The implication of Altman’s blog seems to be “stop writing critical articles about me because it will cause more violence.” However, the rich and powerful cannot use this excuse to escape objective scrutiny.
Things like healthcare, crime, existential ai, have very grey lines as it isnt obvious when one needs to flip the table. How broken must a system be?
How so? What is your theory of morality Sam? What I hear is Google: "Don't Be Evil".
EDIT: Looks like a mod rescued it (surprisingly) and it is now back to #2.
"Development of superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."[0]
This means he acknowledges that his actions have the potential to kill every human family on Earth. It should be of no surprise that people took his beliefs seriously.
The only thing surprising here is how naive you guys are. He is a marketing&sales guy in the first place.
Is it really, though? I could have bet money that would be the case. HN crowd is very gullible.
1) Working towards prosperity, etc. - the prosperity is all going toward the top 2%. The people who need it most are not seeing it and probably never will because the only ones who guarantee a benefit are the ones with the money to direct that benefit.
2) AI will be the most powerful tool, etc. - see point 1.
3) It will not all go well, etc. - probably should have thought about that before you released it on the world.
4) AI has to democratized, etc. - true, won't happen. See point 1.
5) Adaptability is critical, etc. - Yes. Fully agree.
The problem, Mr. Altman, is that you believe the rest of the world thinks like you do, which is clearly not the case at all. While we have the ability to solve so many of the world's problems, it is absolutely clear that this is not what's happening. The rich in resources are getting richer and they're not doing anything to help those poor in resources become better off. Instead, they are claiming those resources for themselves against the day that everyone else runs out.
Same as it ever was, Mr. Altman. Same as it ever was.
Every quarter there are more layoffs and we're told how AI will replace us and that we can do nothing to stop it. We cannot afford the simple things our parents were able to and are supposed to be grateful that we are living in a time with such "amazing" technological progress.
Sam is one of the most media-visible people that represents AI replacement of average people's livelihood (not agreeing with this stance but yes, outside of the Hacker News SF-tech matcha latte bubble, this is a commonly held thought) which makes this unsurprising.
Still horrible and not right.
OK! So he's going to renege on the contract he's signed with Hegseth, which effectively commits OpenAI to serving as the IT Department for Trump's secret service?
Am I missing something or are these just their usual marketing? I’m not arguing about importance of AI but trying to understand why OpenAI and Anthropic are so important?
It feels like they actually believe it, rather than just “marketing” and I don’t know which is worse.
[0] https://www.anthropic.com/news/detecting-and-preventing-dist...
When it downs compute power I assume you are referring to power to training and interference. Then is it more about training gap will get wider and wider ? Is that the assumption, I know there limited GPUs etc. But I’m having hard time to believe to the idea of China cannot catch up. Even if the gap is 12 months I’m struggling to see what that means in practice? Is that military advantage, economical, intelligence? It still doesn’t explain and whatever the advantage is, aren’t we supposed to see that advantage today? If so, where is it? What’s the massive advantage of USA because of OpenAI and Anthropic?
We will finally have achieved abundance.
This kind of reiterates the parent’s question I think - people are maybe too focused on the gpt/claude model and forget about all the other ways of using the tech.
I think that’s a very common element for most US tech corps. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta, X etc - they’re all “making a dent in the universe”. It’s unfortunate when their employees and CEOs loose track of the line that separates marketing from reality
"You're absolutely right!" Right after fucking up my entire codebase isn't anywhere near AGI, let alone "having the power to control it"
That said, I do agree with you that the moats are very shallow and any particular frontier AI lab is unlikely to "win the AI race" and capture enough value to be worth the amount of investment they are all currently burning.
As always what matters are actions and evidence, not talk.
The rest of what is written doesn't matter. This isn't the moment for that conversation. That's his family. He has a fucking child.
Holy shit.
What a bullshit thing for someone who is not actually democratizing access to AI to say.
This might be the greatest example of cognitive dissonance I've seen in years. I can't understand how someone who's clearly highly intelligent can express this opinion, while doing the complete opposite. Does he think that everyone is a fool and that nobody will notice? Is this some form of gaslighting? Unbelievable.
Violence is not the answer, but it's easy to see how Sam's public persona would push someone to do this. There are certainly disturbed people who don't need any logical reason for violence, but maybe it would help if Sam stopped being so damn dishonest and manipulative. Even this post that is intended to gain sympathy ends up doing the opposite.
As a sidenote, I wish we would stop paying attention to these people. A probablistic pattern generator is far from the greatest technology humanity has ever invented. Get off your high horse, stop deluding people, and start working with organizations and governments to educate people in understanding and using this tech instead of hoarding power and wealth for you and your immediate circle of grifters.
> A lot of companies say they are going to change the world; we actually did.
Ugh.
> Now I am awake in the middle of the night and pissed, and thinking that I have underestimated the power of words and narratives. This seems like as good of a time as any to address a few things.
This kind of reads like “It is Ronan Farrow’s fault that some crazy person tried to burn my house down”.
Like this guy was going to go about his week, being normal and not making Molotov cocktails, but then he picked up a copy of The New Yorker and lost his mind
No one should need to attack (on the one hand) or "trust" (on the other) Sam Altman (or Donald Trump or Barack Obama).
Power is reliance by others, and that's conditioned on behaviors which are made observable and systems to ensure stakeholders' interests are maintained. Yes, there's some hero-worship, some arbitrary private power, some evasion of systems, and some self-dealing by leader coalitions (indeed, we seem to be at a historical peak), but that's not about him personally but about us, and our willingness to vote (writ large).
We do have to be careful about private power saying managing their issues are a matter for public governance (democratic or otherwise). It's a bit convenient to deflect blame (like having it be the jury that "decides" a case, because then you can't blame the judge). I like that Anthropic stepped up to pay any electricity increases, Apple has been recycling and cleaning up their supply chain, etc. If anything there should be a stronger support for contributing vs. Hobbesian corporations.
2) It's atrocious that Sam makes it seem like any investigative reporting into him as a major public figure at the head of one of the 5 most important companies in the world is somehow responsible for it.
3) Sam is always playing the smol bean victim for sympathy points. To be clear, he is absolutely the victim of an atrocious crime. However, this post is not done for any reason other than to continue the exact same playbook he has for the last N years in order to manipulate public opinion to his favor. This post will do nothing to stop deranged, evail people but it may make people feel sympathy for him.
They had to stop putting Luigi Mangione in the media because public sentiment was not going the way they expected.
He's stood atop a soapbox, in earshot of everybody, and shouted to the corporations that because of him, they can now fire hundreds of thousands — millions — of people with impunity. It doesn't matter that it's not true and that the firings are probably not actually due to AI. But he's standing in front of them and providing the cover.
He's a marketing guy. He made himself the face of AI. His message out of the gate was that it was going to replace human workers. What did he think was going to happen?
It's like all of these people think that humanity has evolved out of the collective rage spirals that powered political revolutions in the 1500's, 1600's, 1700's — every 100's. Nope. It's always still there. We've had a middle class for awhile to mask it but it's being hollowed out and when it collapses completely, that ugly and ever-present human urge to eat the rich will rage right back to the surface again. Yet, they all seem to be apt to fight to be first in line to be the face of injustice during a volatile period for some reason.
It's kind of baffling but also interesting to witness.
The analogy has 2 simple rules and you can't even follow them:
#1 It MUST be destroyed.
#2 SOMEONE has to have the ring until then.
Without BOTH of those things you have no meaningful analogy. If we're being super charitable, "For no one to have the ring" is Frodo sitting at the council, with the ring on the table, naively thinking that it can stay right there in that spot forever, safe in Rivendell, about to have the horrifying revelation that there are 2.5 more books in the story. More realistically, it's Boromir moments later arguing that Denethor has the mandate to use it to fight on Gondor's behalf.
Fuck. I'm so past the point of caring about the extinction of our species, or your role in enslaving us to our robot overlords or whatever... but SELLING US SPECIOUS RING ANALOGIES IS WHERE I DRAW THE FUCKING LINE
That is a lot of words, none of which state or claim the article was in any way inaccurate. Curious, that
Reason enough to pause and figure out the best way to continue. A massive societal change that won’t all go well means millions dead and tens more with their lives upended.
> A lot of companies say they are going to change the world; we actually did.
Just couldn’t resist. So much of it reads like a marketing message.
Sam - when you say all society will benefit and that’s what you’re working towards, you can’t just say that. Nobody believes you and more importantly nobody has any reason to believe you. When you lead with that, and say nothing about what you are actually doing towards it, you make people work against you. When you put yourself up as a dictator for the collective needs of humanity, you have to put up or shut up.
So many put huge faith in you, but it’s turned out to be in the end entirely about you.
jazz9k•2h ago