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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

#461

Post by MaxPock »

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #155

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…

Your(American)future will be controlled by them. Very soon,they will get the government to ban bad Chinese open source models and your choice will only be these good democratic closed source AIs.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#462

Post by voidhorse »

davesque wrote: post #217
surround wrote: post #16

> 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…

Wouldn't it be more correct to call the article "critical" and not "incendiary"? I looked it over and I don't remember seeing any calls to violence. Altman needs to remember that he holds an incredible amount of power in this moment. He and other current AI tech leaders are effectively sitting on the equivalent of a technological nuclear bomb. Anyone in their right mind would find that threatening.

[flagged]

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#463

Post by johnfn »

username223 wrote: post #369
johnfn wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people think there will be an exponential takeoff, which means that a 6 month lead effectively rounds up to infinity.

Those are the people betting on a business model of “create Robot God and ask him for money.” Why pay attention to them?

There are many people who have been saying this far there was any sort of business model in place.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#464

Post by avazhi »

Why are you talking about how it feels once you’ve seen AGI when you’ve never seen AGI, Sam?

In all seriousness, we’ve got glorified autocorrect right now. Even suggesting any of these LLMs is actual AGI is laughable. I’m not saying they can’t do some interesting things, but unless Sam has access to models that are equivalent to what would be GPT-50 he should avoid throwing in buzzword acronyms for no reason.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#465

Post by d--b »

Was the New Yorker article that incendiary? It didn’t paint a good picture for most but I recall someone posting here that they had a better view of Altman after reading it. And the whole thing was quite nuanced IMO.

Plus I doubt that someone who would read a 30min New Yorker article is the kind of person who would throw a molotov cocktail at someone’s home.

It’s a shitty move to try and make a causal connection between the New Yorker article and this act of terrorism. He’s trying to blame the author and discredit the article.

It’s a “I’m trying to be the good guy but they’re trying to stop me” situation. This is not a message addressed to us, it’s a message addressed to his employees and his followers. This is the kind of tactics people use when they want to establish a cult. Sam Altman again is showing how manipulative he is. And as any good guru he probably believes everything he says.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#466

Post by rdl »

My theory is a lot of the anti-AI sentiment is specifically US geopolitical adversaries (pick one or more: China, Russia, Iran, ...) who want a bad outcome for the US (AI as potential AGI; AI as one of the few successful economic sectors of the US; general desire to cause societal disruption or collapse and AI as convenient target). Probably >95% of the really bad stuff (the micron fab disruption, attacks on AI datacenters, ...) is probably root-cause that, possibly executed by useful idiots, people paid by organizations, etc. 5% is normal NIMBY stuff. Approximately measure 0 is Zizian death cultists.

I don't any of these will be dissuaded by cute family photos. Fortunately the frontier model companies and major infrastructure providers are able to pay for top-tier corporate security (although tech people generally have been unwilling to do this at home for lifestyle reasons), but I'd be afraid for people elsewhere in the supply chain.

(And destructive attack is all on top of the normal corporate espionage, infiltration, subversion, etc.)

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#467

Post by sillysaurusx »

davesque wrote: post #217
surround wrote: post #16

> 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…

Wouldn't it be more correct to call the article "critical" and not "incendiary"? I looked it over and I don't remember seeing any calls to violence. Altman needs to remember that he holds an incredible amount of power in this moment. He and other current AI tech leaders are effectively sitting on the equivalent of a technological nuclear bomb. Anyone in their right mind would find that threatening.

Sam posted a tweet saying "incendiary" was the wrong word choice. https://x.com/sama/status/2042789312400363702

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#468

Post by sbarre »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #454
taurath wrote: post #276

[flagged]

Huh? They literally did change the world. The world was one way before ChatGPT, and another way after. It's not even a question of whether we "believe" him. It's a factual statement. Did you quote the wrong thing?

You must sure live in a bubble.. Do you think ChatGPT has changed things for the majority of people who live on this planet? It has not.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#469

Post by johnfn »

Jtsummers wrote: post #333
DoctorOetker wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this belief grounded on some kind of derivation, or just a prima facie belief? If it is grounded on a logical derivation, where can one find such a derivation, and inspect its premises?

It's an old idea, "the singularity". The machines become smart enough to improve themselves, and each improvement results in shorter (or more significant) improvement cycles. This leads to an exponential growth rate. It's been promised to be around the corner for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

To be fair, Ray Kurzweil has been the loudest voice in this space, and he's been pretty consistent on 2045 since the publication of his book almost 20 years ago[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#470

Post by vi_sextus_vi »

hxycgd wrote: post #300
BloondAndDoom wrote: post #155

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 is not about the US or the Chinese. Its about the "Elephant Rider" mind everyone has. Once the Elephant has been injured or scared what it does next is not easy to control, and what story the Rider makes up to maintain coherence becomes another layer of the deeper problem. If the story resonates more elephants get triggered. Social media/attention economy make it even more complex to calm things down. Modern Corpo…

USG understands better.

There was a heated thread here about why nursing was defunded as a pro degree while divinity was not..

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46000015

Turns out the USG recognize that chaplains are great at managing the fear and anxiety that you worry about

Addendum: Taylor whom you often cite, is wrong that "we have never been, and we will never be, at one with ourselves" (according to Larmore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secular_Age#:~:text=should%2... )

So... to the Protestant Weber and the Catholic Taylor should we also consider non-Christian chaplains?

>You cannot just separate people and say some are violent and some are not.

https://archive.ph/2024.06.28-101143/https://tricycle.org/ma...

https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/can-a-buddhist-monk-become-...

Final note: few of us ride elephants but many of us make omelettes-- it'd be great to be absolved of mass egg breakings

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717587

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