Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident • Hacker News Board

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#451

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 3:49 AM UTC

latentsea wrote: post #434

jatora wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

[deleted]

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#452

Post by razster » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 3:50 AM UTC

unleaded wrote: post #225

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's a marketing strategy. If it's almost certainly conscious and capable of ending the world if it desired (even if it isn't), imagine how good it could be at building your dream SaaS!

Right, I'm pretty sure if "it" was that good it would have built itself throughout all of the internet and would be communicating to us all at once to tell us we're dorks.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#453

Post by AlexandrB » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 3:50 AM UTC

> My personal takeaway from the last several years, and take on why there has been so much Shakespearean drama between the companies in our field, comes down to this: “Once you see AGI you can’t unsee it.”

Except nobody has seen AGI. Not even close.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#454

Post by sillysaurusx » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 3:50 AM UTC

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?

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#455

Post by _blk » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 3:51 AM UTC

CyberDildonics wrote: post #427

hxycgd wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Modern Corporations (capitalized for some reason) are a failure because they don't care about your elephant allegory and that somehow relates to to the current article?

I'm all for values not necessarily pro big-corp but if a corporation manages to pull in billions of funding before even showing profits, I'd argue that as a strong win and not a "failed experiment" - it's risk money anyway, even if it fails it was worth the risk or they wouldn't have invested.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#456

Post by razster » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 3:52 AM UTC

johnfn wrote: post #163

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…

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

There is a limitation. We're getting fractionally close to some end goal, but our tech is holding us back.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#457

Post by Miner49er » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 3:52 AM UTC

This is a predictable outcome of what people like Altman are doing, and probably will happen more and more.

Altman and co. are massively changing society, putting people out of work, etc. It is systemic violence on a massive scale. Systemic violence is "acceptable" violence, but it usually leads to a sudden outburst of plain old subjective violence like this.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#458

Post by therobots927 » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 3:53 AM UTC

SecretDreams wrote: post #350

riazrizvi wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Altman didn't create AI. That disruption is already coming no matter what. He's a fine enough steward of the tech. And what's this garbage about selling to the military? You pay taxes? You fund the military. Without security you can't protect your nation or your allies, and enemy nations would do as they please. Yet another citizen who benefits from a system while trying to attack it.

> He's a fine enough steward of the tech. Are you Sam Altman?

One of his ~10 burners

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#459

Post by cal_dent » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 3:54 AM UTC

An interesting thing about one facet of how society as developed over the past decade and a half, I think, is that a byproduct of more people being conscious of the quest to monetise almost anything is that it has also raised the level of general scepticism on whether something is marketing or real. So you have increasingly more scenarios where an objectively bad thing can happen to someone but any public response is scrutinised and questioned within a hint of its life sometimes rightly sometimes not. I don’t particularly like it but that’s where we are at guess

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#460

Post by georgemcbay » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 3:55 AM UTC

jatora wrote: post #418

georgemcbay wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An impossible gap in the race to... what exactly? Unless the first real AGI AI kills us all to preemptively weed out its own competition (possible, but a bad business model, economically speaking) there is not any defined end-point, so in the long run what does it matter if the various factions pushing this stuff hit the closed loop self improvement point at different times...?

Uhh, because the first one blasts off first and therefore gets control of key resources and the use of extremely intelligent decision making and predictions before the rest, for months, which is an insane amount of advantage. Not to even mention it the first mover decides to sabotage the rest, which it could EASILY do through a variety of means.

> Uhh, because the first one blasts off first and therefore gets control of key resources and the use of extremely intelligent decision making and predictions before the rest, for months, which is an insane amount of advantage.

If the rest can similarly "blast-off" X months later than the frontrunner (and I see no reason why they wouldn't as none of these frontier labs have managed to pull ahead and maintain a lead for very long) the first mover is still only X months ahead of the others even if the gap between capabilities is briefly increased by a lot.