Since COVID, this has been the norm for any industry that requires chips.

Operation handbook now dictates that you should have 3-4 years of all the ICs you'll need for production so you don't end up like the car manufacturers.

I doubt this is to create artificial scarcity. Especially when OpenAI is the biggest player thought to be able to build AGI first and that it is now backed by the US & the Saudis.

But OpenAI legitimately needs HBM. Amazon in this instance doesn't need food and is doing purely to create artificial scarcity. If OpenAI were to actually not use the HBM then it could mean something.

"As always, it's the intent that matters."

That's certainly not a universal Legal Standard. If I'm harmed, but you didn't "intend" to harm me, does that nullify my Claim?

Hardly.

> I know people can simply grow their own food

Small thing, but this is not simple or realistic at all. How does someone in an apartment grow enough food for their family?

Then if AI were the only consumer of wafers they would fall short of declaring themselves an illegal monopoly.

Simple: they create value for the right people. Namely, politicians who get their donations, and a generation that, despite not having enough children to grow the economy organically, doesn't want to work any... er... wants to retire.

Thus, they invest in retirement and pension funds, who in turn invest the money in businesses to earn a return. Since that return must increase constantly, and organic growth is no longer possible, you have to pull shenanigans as a businessman to meet the requirements of the shareholders, lest they kick you out of the plane with a golden parachute.

So we let them do those shenanigans and the politicians don't do anything about it.

I find it fascinating that he's had the benefit of the doubt for soooo long.

This is the shitcoin-for-your-eyeball-scans guy; the guy who didn't tell the board of his own company that he controlled their startup fund through an alias.

> Frankly, much worse things than jail should happen to Altman for this kind of torching of the commons, and jail is the watered-down compromise position.

Some days I think the devastating crash of the economy that will come if the bubble bursts is the least worst outcome. Do people not feel like the tensions around AI will not soon become internationally geopolitical?

(It's already nationally geopolitical in the USA: Trump is trying to assert federal control over the states' rights to set their own legislation)

went to prison.

In the USA, nobody need ever go to prison for market manipulation anymore; they simply have to be able to pay the price necessary for a pardon. No logical consistency applies to the process.