It's never OK to physically attack someone like this. Full stop.

Separately; Sam's belief that "AI has to be democratized; power cannot be too concentrated." rings incredibly hollow. OpenAI has abandoned its open source roots. It is concentrating wealth - and thus power - into fewer hands. Not more.

If only that sentiment was reciprocal!

When the job losses hit in earnest and the vague handwaving about making it right all inevitably turns out to be hollow, those on top will be exceedingly comfortable using violence to keep the underclass in line. It has happened before and it will happen again.

Sam eagerly pursued DoD contracts to weaponize AI. And then lobbied for legislation to ensure OpenAI cannot be held accountable if people are killed due to their systems.

The thing about the rich is that they have access to sufficient levels of abstraction that they can commit terrible, disproportionate violence without it looking that way. And then fools who crave the simplistic safe comfort of moral absolutes come to their aid.

Throwing a petrol bomb at a building with children inside is about as evil as murdering 150 students at an all-girls school. I'm obviously not defending that.

> Separately; Sam's belief that "AI has to be democratized; power cannot be too concentrated." rings incredibly hollow. OpenAI has abandoned its open source roots. It is concentrating wealth - and thus power - into fewer hands. Not more.

We should call it what it really is: oligapolization of intellectual work. The capital barrier to enter this market is too high and there can be no credible open source option to prevent a handful of companies from controlling a monster share of intellectual work in the short and medium term. Yet our profession just keeps rushing head first into this one-way door.

>> 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 just afterthought. I understand its competitive market, and everyone is doing it, but its just hollow words. Industries that cares about safety often tend to slow down.

I didn't think Hacker News needed an explicit "calls for violence are bad" guideline but the comments here have shown otherwise.

Agreed. Sam's full of crap and the way we tackle that is with conversations, not violence. He deserves to grow old like anyone else, violence isn't an answer.

Is it okay to profit off of a machine that kills innocent people? Would it be immoral to attack the builder of that machine, if it stopped the operation of the machine?

Like this, for sure not. And Sam has not, even with that article, done anything to warrant violence.

> OpenAI has abandoned its open source roots.

It was only a matter of time. The font on the dollar sign kept increasing, eventually selfish humans will always crack. Keeping it open had to be instilled with it becoming a public utility. Private companies don't do altruistic things unless they benefit.

I categorically reject that assertion. Two simple examples: 1) when you see someone assaulting someone else, it's absolutely ok to attack them, and 2) the American revolution!

It's like that old joke:

A man offers a young woman $1,000,000 to sleep with him for one night.

“For a million dollars? Sure, I’ll sleep with you.”

He smiles at her, “How about $50, then?”

“How dare you! I’m not a whore!”

“Look, lady, we’ve already agreed what you are, now we’re just negotiating the price.”

Similarly in this case, you can't make up absolutes and assert the're true, while ignoring that the real world is more complicated. And once you do realize the world is complicated, you realize there aren't absolutes: everyone is a prostitute, terrorist, or whatever other bad label you want to throw at them ... it's just a matter of degree.

So no, it's not always wrong to physically attack someone like this. You can debate specifically whether Altman has committed enough violence himself to justify violence against him: that's something two people can reasonably disagree on. But you can't just say "violence bad" like its some great pearl of wisdom, while ignoring that violence has in fact been good many times throughout history.

He's saying that just so he can use if another company gets bigger than OpenAI ("you can't have all the power"). If OpenAI were the top dog by a large margin, you wouldn't hear him say a peep about this (as was demonstrated by his actions with the charter).

"Like this" is doing some serious work in that statement!

Violence is language that needs no translation. Everyone across the world, every culture, every country, every social group - from elites to homeless can converse in it using the same vocabulary.

It is useful to have some degree of mastery in this discipline. Sometimes it is the only language that can deliver the important message to an unwilling listener.

If we are going to say violence isn’t okay then it is important that we be clear about the boundaries of what we define as violence.

Theft is a nice analogy here. The default model of theft is property crime but the largest type of theft is wage theft.

If we fret about violence done against individuals but not violence against groups our attention is going to end up steered in a narrow direction.

‘Working towards prosperity for everyone’ was extremely hollow as well. If he believed this, he would be running his company as a cooperative and not as a for-profit company.

I've never understood this specific taboo against physical violence. Firing a thousand people or stealing their wages, ruining their life and their families', passing unjust laws that threaten the well-being and happiness of a million, that's ok! A punch in the nose, that's not ok!

There are far worse things than physical violence against one person, and with the end of the rule of law there isn't any other recourse. The one value that is common across all cultures is that the wicked must be punished for their wickedness; expect to see violence against oligarchs and CEOs spread like fire.

> It's never OK to physically attack someone like this.

I broadly agree. But… there are some who have lived who made the world a worse place. Who gets to decide? Trump has done a bit of this Sort of deciding and it hasn’t gone great so far and there is no sign that it’s actually helped.

If Sam disperses his power, we can believe him. So long as he's just concentrating wealth and power, he's just another tech bro.

An oligarch who promotes “democracy”. Is trying to cynically ingratiate himself, or is he really that deaf to the irony?

Well said, I condemn the violence as well. I had to stop at that point too though, it's so blatantly disingenuous and hypocritical.

Can't say I feel sorry for the guy. Anyone who actually believes his platitudes about "democratizing" AI is far too naive. If he really believed that, he'd make a torrent out of ChatGPT's weights and upload it to the pirate bay.

The fact of the matter is these AI CEOs are actively trying to economically disenfranchise 99% of the human race. The ultimate corollary of capitalism is that people who aren't economically productive need not be kept alive any longer. Unproductive people are nothing but cost, better to just let them die. A future where the richest classes can turn the underclasses into soylent is now very much within the realm of possibility.

If this doesn't radicalize people into actual violence, I simply have no idea what will. "Attacking someone is wrong" is a completely meaningless statement to make to someone who believes society as we know it today is going to be destroyed. Honestly, I can't even blame them.

> AI has to be democratized; power cannot be too concentrated

That sounds like something someone says when he understands his weak position, especially someone as ruthless, dishonest, and narcissistic as Altman.

That's not true.

As a defense contractor Altman is a legitimate target for a country that the US has attacked like Iran.

The US is engaging in military action against many countries and has threatened to annex or invade allies.

In that context Altman is 100% a legitimate target to those whose sovereignty is threatened and whose people are being killed.

AGI will be democratized when its discovered.... just right after AWS, Microsoft and Oracle finish their 6 month beta test.

> It's never OK to physically attack someone like this. Full stop.

I agree. The French Revolution was really, really mean.

So you think it would always be wrong to throw a molly at Hitler?

Was it not OK to kill King Louis?

Just saying.

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