This is an odd choice of a thread for a laundry list of complaints about AI and about a person that, say what you will, is nowhere near the list of planetary "really bad guys". Even if we limit it to tech, the list starts with someone way richer, then goes through four or five way-shadier people. If you're OK with victim-shaming here, doesn't it say more about you than Altman? What does it say about your viewpoint?
You really don't need to go that high up the ladder to find members of the 'list of planetary really bad guys'. Sam Altman is single-handedly responsible for starting the current DRAM crunch - that too based on an untenable economic framework. He's also an enthusiastic participant in the AI bubble that threatens to cause a massive global economic depression when it pops. He's also involved in the cabal that wrecks the labor market (wages) by hyping up the 'AI will replace labor' narrative. On top of all that, he and his ilk are on a building spree of data centers that will guzzle huge amount of energy and dump tonnes of extra CO2 into the atmosphere, as if there's no tomorrow. This wrecks all the hard efforts of millions of others before him to rein in the damages caused by the climate change. Needless to say, all of these have pretty deleterious effects on the economy, biosphere and the welfare of ordinary people, including loss of innumerable lives.
But does he care? He is one of those people who simply ignore the trail of serious damage and enormous suffering they leave in their wake, because they don't see anything beyond money - more money than they can spend in a hundred lifetimes! Nobody needs a justification to see him as one of those 'planetary bad guys'.
> What does it say about your viewpoint?
As someone else here said, it goes without saying that lobbing Molotov cocktail at anyone is a no-no. I don't support physical violence in any form. Having said that,...
> If you're OK with victim-shaming here
It's sad that the aristocratic society didn't learn anything from the murder of Brian Thompson. The 'victim' had caused thousands of preventable deaths per year, and his death saved thousands by forcing the industry to deal with the problem. Suddenly, even the pacifists (like me) are left wondering if the death was unethical. If true justice existed, the state would have stopped them from their crimes (aka professions), if not outright execute them for the lives lost. Whom will you choose when they pitch their own lives against thousands of innocent lives? You can't claim victimhood after putting yourself in that position.
I read the New Yorker article like most people here. I didn't find anything incendiary enough in it to provoke a Molotov attack. I wouldn't put it past him to have arranged it himself, given how much he lies and what he stands to gain from it. But let's assume that the attack is real and is connected to the report. The reply seems overly dramatic and self-righteous, given that the attack was against his iron gate! He's milking the situation to indulge in virtue signaling, sympathy farming and gaslighting the critics. This is one hell of a victim posing! But I have no sympathies to spare if it distressed him so much. He shouldn't be able to sleep anyway, if only he had a conscience. Advocating sympathy for the unsympathetic super-privileged is a bit tone deaf under such circumstances. Evidently, nobody is in a mood to oblige to such manipulations.