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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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Violence like this is not the answer. I know people pretty reflexively downvote questioning this, but I question this. I think some people are afraid that even asking this moral question is somehow inciting violence. I think it's quite believable that the possibility of force is actually essential to keeping institutions in-line. Certainly a lot of civil rights progress was a lot less peaceful than I was taught in…

Violence is not the answer if and only if there are non-violent ways to achieve necessary goals. We seem to go through a cycle where we set up systems that provide non-violent ways of resolving issues, then people get annoyed with the outcomes and break down those systems. They hope that it means they'll always get what they want, but what it actually does is make it so that violence is the only way for others to get…

  > We seem to go through a cycle where we set up systems that provide non-violent ways of resolving issues, then people get annoyed with the outcomes
An excellent illustration of the blind spot

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#392
post #9

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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 know I should be used to people openly lying with no consequence, but it still amazes me a bit.

Well that makes two of us. Character seems to mean nothing today.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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. We have to get safety right, which is not just about aligning a model 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…

I told my GF over dinner tonight that historians in 1000 years will look back to Nov 2023 as a pivotal fork where humans lost. 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.

> I told my GF over dinner tonight that historians in 1000 years will look back to Nov 2023 as a pivotal fork where humans lost.

Yes, because no one listened to me. It was early-mid 2024, and here as well as on other places, people kept saying "oh well the cat's out of the bag now, nothing can be done, it can't be stopped". I pointed out that only 4 or so planes being made to collide with TSMC, NVIDIA and ASML would be enough to give at least a decade of breathing room while we try to figure out how to keep this technology safe. I'm almost certain there were people who read it on here as well as elsewhere who could have made it happen.

_Now_ it is indeed too late.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#394
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which one is more bad?

Trump bombing hundreds of people or someone throwing a bomb at Trump because he keeps bombing hundreds of people?

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#395

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.

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

If you can't think of a single occurrence in history that directly disproves your proposed guideline, it's time to drop whatever you're doing and study history.

If you can think of one, then you shouldn't be proposing introduction of guidelines that are blatantly false. Or would you like a "1+1 is not 2" guideline to accompany it?

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#396
In his interview with Theo Von when asked what he wants his legacy to be and how he wants to be remembered, Sam said something to the effect of: “I don’t think about how I will be remembered I just want to have impact.” I think that’s naive and leads to having, uh, negative impact.

I don’t think history will smile upon him. Always good to think about how you want people to feel about your impact on them.

https://youtu.be/aYn8VKW6vXA

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#397

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…

6 months is an incredible amount of time to control AGI or ASI by yourself. That lead is insurmountable.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do any of the open weight models from smaller labs exist if they can't distill from the SoTA models that are throwing billions of dollars of compute into pretraining?

Does it matter? The frontier models stole the whole internet, then the second-level models stole from them… It’s all theft.

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Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#399

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That’s a very dismissive point of view to the seriousness of the situation. He had a Molotov cocktail thrown at his home in the immediate aftermath of an article that painted him in a negative light. The two may not be connected but seem to be.

There have been articles depicting him in a negative light, for good reasons, for years.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#400

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If it wasn’t a good or at least workable answer, the state and corporations would be using it so much

I don’t like expanding the definitions of things like this. People have had a commonplace definition of violence for a long time. One that encompassed throwing Molotov cocktails and doesn’t include more intangible things like poverty or inequality or racism.

Academia doesn’t get to just assert that their broader definition is the real one.

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