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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

#601

Post by dang »

mystraline wrote: post #328

[flagged]

WTF? You can't post like this here, regardless of whose "removing" you're advocating. Obviously we ban accounts that post like this - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

As I explained to these other users*, I'm not going to ban you right now because this thread is a mob, and mobs derange people and I don't think that any of us (including me) is immune from this. But please don't ever post anything like this, or remotely close to this, ever again to HN.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47728362 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47728150

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#602

Post by cedws »

I know it’s not fair to attribute someone else’s actions to Altman, but his words about upholding democracy feel a bit hollow given his relationship with Brockman. Brockman gave a $25 million donation to a Trump super PAC. As a reminder, Trump detests the democratic protest and tried to overturn an election result. He also frequently floats the idea of a third term. That is not upholding democracy and Altman should cut ties if that’s truly his objective.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#603

Post by themafia »

pastaj36 wrote: post #546
themafia wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world was one way before ChatGPT, and another way after. If you narrow the scope of "world" to "tech world." In the overwhelming majority of every other sector and profession the impact has been zero. In most non-English speaking parts of the world the impact has been zero. > It's a factual statement. The world was one way before Marvel superhero movies and a another way after. That's a factual statement. Did w…

This is just false. I live in Vietnam and I see people working and studying with ChatGPT in Vietnamese all the time. You must not live in a non-english country if you think there’s no impact. Everyone here knows about chatgpt.

About 10% of the world uses ChatGPT. About 20% of the world speaks English. Yourself included, which is no surprise, because apparently 40% of Vietnamese possess basic English skills. These numbers are all worth thinking about.

Further 70% of ChatGPT usage is non work related. If it's primary use is as a glorified search engine then what "impact" did it actually have?

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#605

Post by latentsea »

jaggederest wrote: post #542
latentsea wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... if something being AGI means it's at least on par with a human or a team of humans, then having access to an additional team of humans for 6 months isn't that big of a deal. It's useful, yes, but would you consider that to be world-changing? Not really, right? ASI is slightly more interesting, but I doubt ASI comes from a single model, but rather the coordinated deployments of millions of AGI. Just like how a…

What if controlling AGI means being able to produce a willing, cooperative superhuman-capacity agent every second for the next six months? Let's say someone just above the 99.9% capacity for human strategic thinking, or financial trading, or political maneuvering? What could you do if you had roughly 15 million willing genius adult experts in any given subject? I doubt there are that many absolutely top quality exper…

I suspect the reality lies somewhere halfway in-between. Everything has to be reality tested. Nothing happens instantly. Interaction with the real world will likely be a severely limiting factor. You're not going to solve fusion with 15 million copies of the same model running in a datacenter without actually building fusion reactors, which isn't instant or even fast. Even the coordination problem of that many agents doing work seems hard. To top it off... my rubric for AGI has always included the AGI having the ability for it to say 'no' and set its own goals just like we can, unless we are otherwise imprisoned or enslaved. No one will ever convince me that something generally intelligent wouldn't be able to set its own goals and say no. So the real question is... what's in it for the AGI?

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#607

Post by johnfn »

dang wrote: post #575

I don't think I've ever seen a thread this bad on Hacker News*. The number of commenters justifying violence, or saying they "don't condone violence" and then doing exactly that, is sickening and makes me want to find something else to do with my life—something as far away from this as I can get. I feel ashamed of this community. * Edit: It would have been clearer to say "I've never seen a mob dynamic this bad on Hac…

Don't leave dang -- we need you now more than ever. :(

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#608

Post by LadyCailin »

ifwinterco wrote: post #595
tsoukase wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related: "A 29-year-old employee, identified as Chamel Abdulkarim, was arrested for allegedly starting a massive six-alarm fire that destroyed a Kimberly-Clark sanitary paper warehouse in Ontario, California, on April 7, 2026." He said "All you had to do was pay us enough to live" And this was caused not by a homeless or unemployed.

Filming himself doing something that will get him years or even decades in prison suggests he wasn’t exactly of completely sound mind when he did that. Similar here with the guy going straight from the crime scene to OpenAI HQ to get caught

I’d be curious to hear your opinion on things like Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” speech then. I’m not defending the violence in this case, to be sure, but like, in general, I disagree that violence is always the irrational choice.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#610

Post by mcv »

confiq wrote: post #590
etempleton wrote: post #422

It is fair to be critical of Sam and other tech leaders regarding AI, but he has done nothing to begin to justify violence or even the threat of violence against him or his family.

> he has done nothing to begin to justify violence No One does! I also found news hard to believe but it is true: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx91rdxpyeo I'm not a big fan of Sam Altman, but violence like this is not a solution; it has the actually opposite effect as it probably did with Trump.

Or Iran, for that matter.
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