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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

#561

Post by negura »

woeirua wrote: post #444

Sounds like this was just a crazy guy upset at OpenAI. Not great but an isolated incident. That said… is anyone going to be surprised when the laid off masses torch a data center or worse? IMO, it’s only a matter of time before we see organized anti-AI terrorism too. When you have people out there saying “AI will kill us all” then it’s easy to justify using violence to stop that outcome.

I'd also call it isolated, but I mean it in a different way. I can't recall similar attacks against a tech bilionnaire. Which I guess makes it notable?

> organized anti-AI terrorism too

There were already memes about that

> When you have people out there saying “AI will kill us all”

It's the "clickbait" mechanism becoming more cancerous

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#562

Post by ctolsen »

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…

Having worked with both proprietary and open weight SOTA models lately, my view is it's definitely not 6 months, it's less -- and shrinking.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#563

Post by ctolsen »

WarmWash wrote: post #352
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…

GLM 5.1, widely held up as the model at the heals, perhaps ever surpassing western models.... Gets 5% on ARC-AGI2 private set. Chinese models are suspiciously good a benchmarks.

I mean, I could say the same about Gemini. 3.1 Pro tops a bunch of benchmarks out there but any practical use I've put it to it's underperforming both other proprietary and open weight models. Benchmarks are suspicious in general.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#564

Post by ctolsen »

stavros wrote: post #228
isodev wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's well established that the companies who own the proprietary frontier models complain loudly that open models are distilled from theirs.

There's surely some truth to it (and it's well deserved), but it's happening in every direction.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#565

Post by grishka »

copypaper wrote: post #73

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.

AI will not take anyone's jobs. I, for one, don't consider AI something serious, it's still a toy, a curious tech demo, and will always remain one, outside of niche applications like NLP (there's no denying that LLMs are really good at this). The idea that anyone at all treats it seriously is just appalling to me.

Mass-production and other optimizations that use economies of scale to their benefit do take jobs. There's a serious problem in the world's economy that there simply isn't as many jobs as there are people; the world simply doesn't need this much work because the need for work doesn't scale linearly with the population. AI has nothing to do with this. It's a fundamental problem we'll have to deal with either way as our society develops, AI or not. It started ages before the current tech hype cycle.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#568

Post by customguy »

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.

> Wouldn't it be more correct to call the article "critical" and not "incendiary"?

Sure, but not useful for the overarching aim of equating criticism of the powerful with (stochastic) terrorism.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#569

Post by [deleted] »

gorpy7 wrote: post #405
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…

i’ve often thought that less than one second is all you need.One of my fun super powers when someone asks what i’d like to have is 1 second ahead of everyone else- that’s all i need. i honest don’t know where the distillation conversation is at. is it real, is it ongoing? i think that aspect would big one. Your point is valid if it’s valid. i’m not a great global citizen, you know, lots going on out and about.

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#570

Post by dang »

richardlblair wrote: post #231
kbelder wrote: post #78

Sure, he's sleazy. Doesn't matter. It's not ok to firebomb jerks or saints. Rich or poor. It's both a criminal and an immoral act.

Why did I need to scroll halfway down the page before finding a comment that says it was wrong to firebomb his house and nothing else?

Because mob behavior overwhelms everything else.
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