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Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

blog.samaltman.com

181–190 of 1001 posts

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#181
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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this is the mentality of the modern age, as shaped by america and all empires before her, e.g. supreme leader khomeini no longer exists because the man americans voted for as head of the armed forces decided it would be better this way.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#182
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam eagerly pursued DoD contracts to weaponize AI. And then lobbied for legislation to ensure OpenAI cannot be held accountable if people are killed due to their systems.

I find it interesting that Altman's fans seem to keep skipping past this fact. I'd love to hear their defense as to why one person potentially being responsible for hundreds or thousands of deaths is acceptable, but attacking that one person isn't. If violence is never the answer, they should be condemning Altman with even more vigor.

> why one person potentially being responsible for hundreds or thousands of deaths is acceptable

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.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#183

> There was an incendiary article about me a few days ago. Someone said to me yesterday they thought it was coming at a time of great anxiety about AI and that it made things more dangerous for me. 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... https://news.yco…

Turns out the article was not in fact incendiary.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#184
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity... why do you think this? 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…

How about the economic impact of all the over investments in AI? It’ll all be dumped on us all Im afraid.

Thats a separate issue. lets stick to the issue re. labour

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#186
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think Hacker News needed an explicit "calls for violence are bad" guideline but the comments here have shown otherwise.

Do you feel the same way about comments that support the US military action in Iran? Why or why not?

It is unnecessary, and it was an obvious offense, not defense. Of course it is "bad". We (Trump) need(s) to stop creating wars and fucking up the economy, while killing others. It is bad all the way down.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#187
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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That sounds suspiciously like a "ends justify the means" argument.

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.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#188
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam eagerly pursued DoD contracts to weaponize AI. And then lobbied for legislation to ensure OpenAI cannot be held accountable if people are killed due to their systems.

I find it interesting that Altman's fans seem to keep skipping past this fact. I'd love to hear their defense as to why one person potentially being responsible for hundreds or thousands of deaths is acceptable, but attacking that one person isn't. If violence is never the answer, they should be condemning Altman with even more vigor.

The entire purpose of government is to have a monopoly on violence. Democracies give their government the power to decide when and against whom to deploy violence.

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.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#189

Can someone help me to understand why OpenAI and Anthropic talks as if the future of humanity controlled by them? We have very strong open (weight) Chinese models possibly only 6 months behind of them, gene is out of the bottle, is 6 months of difference really that important? And they don’t have good reasons for that 6 months to stay that way. Am I missing something or are these just their usual marketing? I’m not a…

The Chinese models are distilled from GPT and Claude, so it's not like China would pull ahead if those companies went away for six months. They really are at the forefront of innovation right now, as much as I hate to think of the consequences of this (a single company owning a superintelligence is basically a nightmare scenario for me).

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#190

> There was an incendiary article about me a few days ago. Someone said to me yesterday they thought it was coming at a time of great anxiety about AI and that it made things more dangerous for me. 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... https://news.yco…

He has to be talking about the New Yorker article, which wasn't incendiary at all. If anything, it seemed fully neutral to me, reporting what they could justify as facts but going out of their way to not specifically paint him or anyone else in a negative light beyond a listing of events that they presumably have solid sourcing on (if not, sue them; if so, stfu).

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.

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