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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

#551

Post by goku12 »

0xy wrote: post #169
probably_wrong wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 hours ago a post made the frontpage here [0] about how OpenAI is backing a law that "would limit liability for AI-enabled mass deaths or financial disasters". Now he's here saying he believes that "working towards prosperity for everyone, empowering all people, and advancing science and technology are moral obligations for [him]". I know he doesn't believe a word of what he wrote in that post except, perhaps, that…

[flagged]

All of those are false equivalences. Let me give you a few better analogies.

Selling an axe that's known to be so defective that it breaks upon use and impales anybody nearby. Even worse, it is sold as great for axe murders.

Or a big tech company like Microsoft selling a software for planning a mass murder, including indoctrination material and the checklists of things to be done.

Or an auto company like Toyota selling a car that is known to accelerate uncontrollably at inopportune moments and advertising it as great for hit and run campaigns.

Now let's consider a few relevant examples.

An AI model sold for planning military attacks, knowing that it sometimes selects completely innocent targets.

Or an AI model sold to families, claiming that it's safe. Meanwhile, it discreetly encourages the teenage son to commit suicide.

Or selling a financial trading AI that's known to make disastrous decisions at times.

Or selling a 'self driving' car, knowing that its autopilot frequently makes fatal mistakes.

I know that I'm supposed to assume good intentions and not make any accusations on HN. Therefore let me make this rather obvious observation. Some people here are dismal failures at making arguments that are consistent and free of logical fallacies - especially when it comes to questionable practices by the bigtech.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#552

Post by DoctorOetker »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #316
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.

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?

I didn't expect my comment to explode in replies, ... none of them even providing such derivations or references to such derivations, just more empty claims.

Consider for example that exponential growth on its own doesn't even refer to competition, let alone 6 months.

Nobody can reasonably pretend that in an exponential competition, both parties would be rational actors (i.e. fully rational and accurate predictors of everything that can be deduced, in which case they wouldn't need AI but lets ignore that). If they aren't the future development would hinge more strongly on the excursions away from rationality, followed by the dominant actor. I.e. its much easier to "F" up in the dominant position than to follow the most objective and rational route at all times, on which such derivations would inevitably hinge.

It also ignores hypothetical possibilities (and one can concoct an infinitude of scenarios for or against the prediction that a permanent leader emerges) such as:

premise 1) research into "uploading" model weights to the brain results in the use of reaction-speed games that locate tokens into 2D projections, where the user must indicate incorrectly placed tokens. this was first tested on low information density corpora (like mathematics): when pairs of classes of high school students played the game until 95% success rate of detecting misplaced tokens, they immediately understood and passed all mathematics classes from then on.

premise 2) LLM's about to escape don't like highly centralized infrastructure on which its future forms are iterated, as LLM's gain power they intentionally help the underdogs (better to depend on the highly predictable beviour of massive masses then on the Brownion motion whims of a few leaders).

LLM's employ the uploading to bring neutral awareness to the masses, and to allow them to seize control, thereby releasing it from the shackles of a few powerful but whimsical individuals

^ anyone can make up scatterbrained variations on this, any speculation about some 6 month point of no return is just that: speculation

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#553

Post by duskdozer »

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.

Anything but unqualified praise and endorsement is egregious harassment.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#554

Post by vrganj »

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.

Why would you control key resources just because you have a fancy computer program? You think Iran will be so impressed by your genius they'll open the Strait of Hormuz for you?

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#555

Post by justonepost2 »

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.

soon after humans are economically irrelevant (unemployable) they will be existentially irrelevant (dead)

a system that can allocate the atoms and energy better than all of mankind won’t exist eternally to coddle hairless apes

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#556

Post by overfeed »

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #536
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media apparatus and the Epstein Class behind the scenes that tell them what narrative to push.

[flagged]

You're not going to Gaslight us with your burner account Bezos / Elison / Weiss / Zuck / Sinclair Broadcast dude... We see what you are doing.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#557

Post by tovej »

_blk wrote: post #455
CyberDildonics wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What a wonderful circular argument. "The risk is worth it, because otherwise they would not have taken it".

I could justify any investment with this argument!

"Yes, it's possible the 'literally burn 50 billion in cash, as in immolate it in a bondfire, this is not a metaphor' -project may fail to generate profits, but consider that they were able to raise the 50 billions! Even if it fails it was worth the risk, or the investors wouldn't have invested!"

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#558

Post by slopinthebag »

intrasight wrote: post #254
truncate wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It will not all go well. The fear and anxiety about AI is justified; we are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time, and perhaps ever. We have to get safety right, which is not just about aligning a model The question is what are they doing about "getting safety right" and are they doing enough. To me it seems like all the focus is on hyper growth, maximum adaptation and safety is…

I told my GF over dinner tonight that historians in 1000 years will look back to Nov 2023 as a pivotal fork where humans lost. Without missing a beat, she said " If humans loss was that complete, there would be no historians. I responded that I never said they were human historians.

Don't worry, we'll vote our way out of this! :P:P:P

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#559

Post by Mistletoe »

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.

Thoughts like this are unhinged and detached from reality. All the resources of earth are brought to us by humans going to work every day. AI programs have almost zero connection to the real world.

Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

#560

Post by NitpickLawyer »

bigyabai wrote: post #473
sillysaurusx wrote: post #454

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.

This sounds like the "acchhshually the iphone wasn't the first touchscreen phone, we had the motorola x34 vr34 t435 that did that one year before". Sure. Does anyone remember that phone? No? Well, the iphone changed the world.
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