> Sam Altman said yesterday "we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology"

To steelman this position: yes, obviously. Everything is defined by a set of tradeoffs. Would you rather horses or cars? Wooden sailing ships or commercial aviation? Free speech, even of speech you don’t like or censorship? Atomic bombs of a brutal Japanese empire?

Many people seem to want to compare reality to a utopia that has never and can never exist.

We cannot have new technology and a reality where that technology cannot be used in detrimental ways.

We can pretend reality doesn’t exist, yet that will come with tradeoffs. Quite possibly that those who would do ill will front-run us.

Sure, you can have technology that an be used in detrimental ways. Doesnt be we have to accept and allow its use in detrimental ways. We can say "this technology can be used for these reasons, but not those reasons"

We do this with everything else. You can own a gun for hunting and defense, but not armed robbery and murder. You can own a car for transport, but not to drive through a crowded parade over dozens of people. You can own a computer for work and entertainment, but not to facilitate computer fraud and abuse. And you should be able to own and use AI for its many productivity gains, but not to facilitate computer fraud and abuse, defamation, blackmail, copywrite and trademark infringment, etc.

Just because a technology has benefits, doesnt mean we have to give the negative aspects of that technology a free pass.

You gotta do better than compare an apple and orange to "steelman".

The risk of free speech and data centers are not comparable.

Aviation too is far more damaging to our environment than ships.

More ships and trains, less aviation is a possible trade off. A simple aviation or sailing argument lacks investigation of all possible tradeoffs for familiarity and personal preference; flying is faster.

Altman needs to accept the trade off we don't need OpenAI. That exists due to financial engineering not technical reasons. All AI work be done actually openly at america.gov

You say steel. I dunno. If it is it is inferior brittle steel.

> To steelman this position

For the love of god, stop with this shit. Either support it or don't, this isn't the medieval catholic church and you don't need some special fucking blessing to make an argument.