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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

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

GPT is the product-ified version of text transformers, which OpenAI didn't invent or really even contribute to the discovery of. The world changed with Attention is All You Need , and OpenAI was just an early adopter. The biggest thing OpenAI contributed to the broader industry was their API schema.

The researcher in me appreciates you pointing that out. Still, the people who invented a technology often aren't the ones to make it widespread. The people who make it widespread deserve at least some of the credit, just like Apple got with Xerox's UI. https://blog.prototypr.io/how-xerox-invented-ux-ui-design-ap...

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#492

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…

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Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#493

In all seriousness, what is the game plan for society moving forward as AI takes more jobs? The government doesn't seem to care. The AI labs don't seem to care. What happens when more and more people can't afford housing, kids, food, health insurance, etc.? Nothing more dangerous than a man who has no reason to live... I don't advocate for violence, but I do foresee more headlines like this as things get worse.

There is no plan, besides the government using police to keep people in line.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Google has a lot of data that the others don't have.

Data for AI training is increasingly synthesized.

I was more thinking about data to augment inference. Google already "knows" its users.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But every "intangible" thing you mentioned was in fact maintained by very tangible violence that those in power decide legitimate. What happens if a poor man decides to squat a rich man's vacation home? What happens if a black woman living under segregation refuses to give up her bus seat for a white person? In both cases the police will be called, and i'm damn sure that the cops don't shy away from using violence if it gets the thing done.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My assumption based on many factors is that it is precisely why the carpet surveillance systems like Flock are being rolled out in preparation. There are people in control who don’t make 1, 5, or 10 year plans; they make 20, 50, 100, and 500 year plans; and they know human nature quite well, which allows them to of not predict, have an anxious understanding for what their plans will cause and what needs to be prepare…

The flock systems are being installed by cities not the feds. You make it seem like someone has some master plan. Does not make flock any less dangerous but its not as organized as you make it seem.

Listen to the flock CEO talk and then tell me he isn't trying to build a counter-revolutionary dragnet. Just because cities are doing it doesn't mean it's not deliberate, that's just a step in the plan. Not everything the ultra wealthy do is a single step, they're lobbying and schmoozing their way to their goals in every way possible.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#500

In all seriousness, what is the game plan for society moving forward as AI takes more jobs? The government doesn't seem to care. The AI labs don't seem to care. What happens when more and more people can't afford housing, kids, food, health insurance, etc.? Nothing more dangerous than a man who has no reason to live... I don't advocate for violence, but I do foresee more headlines like this as things get worse.

Nobody has one. If labor stops having value the economy will stop working and society will break down far in advance of building the infrastructure necessary for the promised AI abundance. I like the idea of being ”post-scarcity” as much as the next guy, but I don’t understand how we get there. It’s a project in itself, it doesn’t just happen by magic, and nobody is actively trying to make it happen or has any logist…

It made me kind of angry when I saw Dario repeatedly claiming that AI would be taking all the programming jobs any minute now. His company supposedly is working for a better future, but he's giddily talking about something that could cause millions of people to lose their homes if it were true.

Our governments have a habit of being reactive rather than proactive. People have floated the idea of UBI, but if UBI happens, it will probably mean it's the only way to avert a crisis, and the amount that people will get might only be enough to rent a bedroom and eat processed food.

I think in the medium term, the reaction is overblown. Even though LLMs can make software engineers more productive, you still have a competitive advantage in having more software engineers. Medium to long term though, the goal is obviously to replace human jobs.

I'm not a communist, but Karl Marx understood that the labor force gets its bargaining power because they are necessary to produce value. What do people imagine happens when the human labor force becomes essentially completely replaceable? They imagine the government will be forced to take care of the population to prevent an uprising, but they forget that the police and the army can be replaced by machines too.

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