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Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

blog.samaltman.com

221–230 of 1001 posts

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#221
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Labor looks like it’s going to become more and more commoditized and AI will turbocharge all that.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#222
post #182
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Accountability sinks are good value and wealthy people always make sure they have enough of them

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#224

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…

When you are raising many billions of dollars to build up your infrastructure, you don't have much choice but to project a belief that the eventual outcome will result in a situation where there will be a return on that money.

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.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#225

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…

It's a marketing strategy. If it's almost certainly conscious and capable of ending the world if it desired (even if it isn't), imagine how good it could be at building your dream SaaS!

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#226
> Words have power too. 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. I brushed it aside.

> 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

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#227

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.

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

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.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#228
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I think that’s the realm of conspiracy theories. There are also not only Chinese alternatives- Mistral in Europe is doing pretty good in several categories they’ve opted to focus on. 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.

Is it? I thought it was pretty well established that open models were distilled from the proprietary, frontier ones. Maybe I'm wrong.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Don't worry, if someone truly achieves superintelligence it won't be controlled by anyone for long.

That's my other nightmare scenario :P

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#230
post #169

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…

[flagged]

> Incendiary and false headline aside

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.

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