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Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#91
post #19

So there's one photo. Of one family. Now what about millions of photos of all the other families possibly affected by him? That doesn't have power? 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 think he's just trying to remind people that someone can both be a CEO of a powerful company you might disagree with/hate as well as a real human with a husband and child and that trying to set fire to his house could kill those 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.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#92
post #77
post #56

[flagged]

>This is simply not how the economy works, if everyone is poor who do you think is paying for products/services leveraging AI? Well, this is already the economy right now: the very upper class is owning more than the vast majority, and consuming more than the vast majority. "The top 20% of earners now make up over half of consumer spending" https://www.axios.com/2025/08/08/stock-market-us-economy-ric... >also means y…

Top 1% and top 20% are entirely different numbers, and majority does not mean all. If the bottom 99% or even 80% of people were unable to meaningfully engage in the economy it would collapse. We already know this model does not work due to several centuries of feudalism.

It's also insane that we have come to the point that you can say something like this and publish an Axios link when anybody could just go outside and see most people are employed, participating in the economy, not homeless, have food, buy things and enjoy luxuries.

Am I to believe that Jeff Bezos is the primary driving force behind Labubus? Is the Chipotle down the street waiting for Elon to come to town so they finally have a customer?

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#93
*Working towards prosperity for everyone, empowering all people, and advancing science and technology are moral obligations for me."

"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!

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#94
post #56

[flagged]

> AI? If everyone is broke because all the jobs got automated, who is buying the products to supply revenue to the companies

Does it matter if you're already a rich oligarch with generational wealth? All these ceos have enough money to last several decades beyond their life span, it doesn't matter to them is the slave class croaks

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#95
post #46

It's never OK to physically attack someone like this. Full stop. 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.

Agreed. Sam's full of crap and the way we tackle that is with conversations, not violence. He deserves to grow old like anyone else, violence isn't an answer.

He isn't going to suddenly grow a conscience from a riveting, intellectually stimulating conversation.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 hours ago a post made the frontpage here [0] about how OpenAI is backing a law that "would limit liability for AI-enabled mass deaths or financial disasters". Now he's here saying he believes that "working towards prosperity for everyone, empowering all people, and advancing science and technology are moral obligations for [him]". I know he doesn't believe a word of what he wrote in that post except, perhaps, that…

I think it's good for CEOs of powerful companies to make statements about how they don't want too much personal power and it's important to ensure everyone does well, even and perhaps especially if there's reason to suspect they don't believe it. Saying it doesn't solve the problem, but it helps create a permission structure for the rest of us to get it to actually happen.

The reason he's saying that is because he doesn't want you to create that structure. He wants you to not create the laws or checks & balances on him because you "trust that he doesn't really want the power".

It has worked for him, repeatedly.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#97

It's never OK to physically attack someone like this. Full stop. 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.

The thing about the rich is that they have access to sufficient levels of abstraction that they can commit terrible, disproportionate violence without it looking that way. And then fools who crave the simplistic safe comfort of moral absolutes come to their aid.

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.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#98

It's never OK to physically attack someone like this. Full stop. 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.

Violence is language that needs no translation. Everyone across the world, every culture, every country, every social group - from elites to homeless can converse in it using the same vocabulary.

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.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#99
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Sam's full of crap and the way we tackle that is with conversations, not violence. He deserves to grow old like anyone else, violence isn't an answer.

> the way we tackle that is with conversations, not violence 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 n…

There's still a meaningful difference between violence wielded by a single individual who feels angry or unheard, and violence wielded by a large representative group who has invested genuine effort in conversation before collectively deciding violence is required.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unpopular opinion but i think it's written quite well

Yes, clearly not written with his own product.

If that's the case, why doesn't he trust his own product enough to write this?
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