[velominati]

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.

[smallmancontrov]

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.

[roysting]

My assumption based on many factors is that it is precisely why the carpet surveillance systems like Flock are being rolled out in preparation.

There are people in control who don’t make 1, 5, or 10 year plans; they make 20, 50, 100, and 500 year plans; and they know human nature quite well, which allows them to of not predict, have an anxious understanding for what their plans will cause and what needs to be prepared for in advance.

[jhartwig80s]

The flock systems are being installed by cities not the feds. You make it seem like someone has some master plan. Does not make flock any less dangerous but its not as organized as you make it seem.

[taurath]

It doesn’t need coordination to be organized and have the same incentives. Just like the wave of consolidation in media. Dario and Sam don’t need to talk to know what is in both their interest.

The concentration of wealth is at an all time peak. The top 1% own more stocks than the other 99%. Nobody thinks about that hard enough. The callousness by which people’s livelihoods dignity and safety are threatened is tremendous

[HNisCIS]

Listen to the flock CEO talk and then tell me he isn't trying to build a counter-revolutionary dragnet. Just because cities are doing it doesn't mean it's not deliberate, that's just a step in the plan. Not everything the ultra wealthy do is a single step, they're lobbying and schmoozing their way to their goals in every way possible.

[unethical_ban]

Just because it isn't mandated from the top doesn't make it disorganized.

[yfw]

Exactly this

[tailscaler2026]

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.

[pesus]

I find it interesting that Altman's fans seem to keep skipping past this fact. I'd love to hear their defense as to why one person potentially being responsible for hundreds or thousands of deaths is acceptable, but attacking that one person isn't. If violence is never the answer, they should be condemning Altman with even more vigor.

[IMTDb]

> why one person potentially being responsible for hundreds or thousands of deaths is acceptable

I am not sure who exactly is that one person ? Is it Altman, who is according to many people not that knowledgeable in AI in the first place; the scientist who found a breakthrough (who is it ?); is it the president of the United States who is greenlighting the strikes; the general who is choosing the target (based on AI suggestions); the missile designer; the manufacturer; the pilot who flew the plane ?

I get the point of concentrating power in fewer hands, but the whole "all the problems of this world are caused by an extremely narrow set of individuals" always irks me. Going as far as saying there is just one is even mor ludicrous.

[roysting]

I’m fine with holding them all accountable to varying degrees. For example, yes, ultimately the president is responsible, but so is the person who dropped bombs instead of refusing an illegal order; just like the street dealer, gang banger, trafficker, and cartel boss are all guilty of all of their various crimes.

What do you find difficult to understand about that?

[maest]

Accountability sinks are good value and wealthy people always make sure they have enough of them

[idiotsecant]

Ah the old 'everyone is responsible so nobody is responsible' canard.

I will give you a helpful rule of thumb: when in doubt the guy with a bank account larger than the total lifetime income of hundreds of thousands of people is probably the one to blame.

[IMTDb]

Ah the old ‘in case of doubt just go after the rich guy’. That makes stuff simple doesn’t it ?

You can establish responsibilities just by counting the number of zeroes in a bank account. On top of this, it works for everything: the same dude is responsible for wars, the climate, world hunger, child cancer and your bathroom mirror being fogged this morning.

[GMoromisato]

The entire purpose of government is to have a monopoly on violence. Democracies give their government the power to decide when and against whom to deploy violence.

There is a real difference between giving a democratic government the tools to kill people vs attempting to kill people yourself. If you don’t believe this then you don’t believe in democracy.

[pesus]

I'm not sure the next batch of schoolgirls getting bombed will particularly care whether the choice was made "democratically" or not.

I also won't particularly care about the distinction when AI is inevitably used to enact violence on the US population.

[GMoromisato]

Agreed--but so what? If you believe in democracy, you work within democratic means to enact your views. If you don't believe in democracy and use violence outside the system, then you are an enemy of democracy.

[mvc]

Did the suffragettes not believe in democracy?

[lostlogin]

> There is a real difference between giving a democratic government the tools to kill people vs attempting to kill people yourself. If you don’t believe this then you don’t believe in democracy.

Is this what we just saw with America attacking Iran?

[GMoromisato]

Yes. Whether you agree with it or not, the attack on Iran was legally ordered within the bounds of American law.

It may have been a stupid order, but it was not unconstitutional.

[shakna]

> The entire purpose of government is to have a monopoly on violence.

... Isn't that rather against the spirit of the US' constitution? I can see it being a thought with other nations, but not this particular one.

> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Which kinda follows the spirit of English Common Law:

> The ... last auxiliary right of the subject ... is that of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is ... declared by ... statute, and is indeed a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression. - Sir William Blackstone

A "monopoly on violence" is exactly the thing our laws are supposed to protect us against. Because if a state has that, then they have a monopoly against all rights, because they alone can employ violence to curb those who do not subscribe to the state's ideology.

I'm pretty much a pacifist. I _like_ Australia's gun laws. But, a government's purpose is to protect their people. They are to be representative - or to be replaced. If they leave no other choice for that, then violence is the only answer left.

[tines]

The above posts forgot the word "legitimate" before "monopoly": a state is defined as the entity that has the legitimate monopoly on violence within a defined geographic area. A state can cease to have the legitimate monopoly before they cease to have the monopoly.

[GMoromisato]

I agree with this. I should have said that.

[GMoromisato]

I don't see the contradiction. What we mean by a "monopoly on violence" is that the government decides who and under what conditions gets to commit violence. The government orders soldiers to kill enemies. Law enforcement officers are allowed to use deadly force under certain conditions. And in the US, citizens are allowed to use deadly force under certain conditions.

The key issue is that government (via courts) is the one that decides whether violence is justified or not.

You're right that a government that no longer represents its people must be replaced. But that's not the case in America. The conflict in America is between two different groups of people with different ideas about what the right thing to do is. So far, these two groups have used democracy to get their way. As long as that continues, there is no problem.

But when people use violence outside government law, just because they don't agree with the decisions of the government, then that's not justice--that's just terrorism.

[shakna]

Its the source of the right. It is not the government that permits citizens to use deadly force in certain conditions. Its an "inalienable right". Something that the government is to ensure it doesn't infringe on, rather than regulate.

It is the right of a person, rather than the government, under the way the US constitution is structured.

[mvc]

> So far, these two groups have used democracy to get their way.

Oh is that what January 6th was?

[slopinthebag]

This is a distinction without meaning. It makes no moral difference who dispenses justice, if said justice is justified.

[GMoromisato]

Except in our system of government, it is the government (via the courts) that decides what is "justified". It is literally called the "Judicial System".

You can't just decide on your own that violence is justified.

[pocksuppet]

You can, but the government really doesn't like having its authority disobeyed, and there will be consequences.

[AlexCoventry]

Yeah, it's kind of terrifying, how this incident seems to have faded from people's memories.

[stickfigure]

There's thirty-some-odd million people in Ukraine who very much would like to get AI weapons before the Russians do. They're coming whether you want them or not.

[seizethecheese]

Military power and attacks on private individuals are different things. It's perfectly consistent to be against attacks on private individuals while being in favor of building military weapons.

[deaux]

The bombed schoolgirls were "private individuals" in any reasonable meaning of "private individual".

[seizethecheese]

Maybe I shouldn’t take the bait here…

Yes, military power is evil, but it’s a necessary evil. A society that decides to stop making weapons is going to be subjugated by one that continues to make them. Full stop.

[zarzavat]

The US Department of Peace has also been outright murdering civilians aboard vessels in international waters, including double tap strikes intended to murder the wounded.

It's not the bait on HN that you need to be worried about but the propaganda from your own government.

[seizethecheese]

My comment here is about the ethics of military weapons vs assassinations of private individuals. I have no idea what you’re talking about.

[deaux]

Nothing about the US Department of War's actions over the last 2 years, whose contracts Sam eagerly pursued to weaponize AI, has had to do with "preventing being subjugated". What they did do was bomb 150 or so private individual school girls.

You're saying the above is bait, when your own comment is nothing but it.

[hax0ron3]

>Nothing about the US Department of War's actions over the last 2 years

Questionable and violent US foreign policy is much much older than the current Trump administration.

[seizethecheese]

Pasting the same reply as you sibling comment:

My comment here is about the ethics of military weapons vs assassinations of private individuals. I have no idea what you’re talking about.

[slopinthebag]

No such thing as a "necessary evil", a pure oxymoron.

[seizethecheese]

Why would that be the case?

[selfsigned]

In what world is this kind of things a necessary evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état , I'm not convinced that any of the large scale interventionist conflict the US got involved into after WWII had a positive outcome. Senseless foreign inference and cruelty didn't just come about with the Trump admin.

So should we really applaud selling shiny new toys that will enable more baseless cruelty? Probably not. Just like we shouldn't support political terrorism.

[Waterluvian]

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.

[lostlogin]

> 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.

Really? I don’t know how many were in his house but at most it’s attempted murder of a few versus killing 150.

I see a difference.

US law sees a difference too. The person that threw the firebomb will get the full weight of the law if they are caught, and spent an awfully long time in prison.

Those that killed the school girls will never face punishment.

[chipsrafferty]

And it's versus 150 innocent people vs. a few very guilty people.

[rootusrootus]

If you want to draw that distinction, then don't you need to account for intent? I don't think the USG intended to bomb a school. The guy throwing a Molotov cocktail has even less claim to it being an accident.

[lostlogin]

It would be manslaughter where I am, 150 counts.

But the idea that the US cares is laughable.

[Waterluvian]

The people barely care. The government certainly doesn’t.

[Planktonne]

The US has advanced targeting systems the molotov thrower didn't have access to; it's more reasonable to account for intent in the other direction.

[gnuvince]

> 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.

[truncate]

>> 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.

[intrasight]

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.

[deaux]

> 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.

Yes, because no one listened to me. It was early-mid 2024, and here as well as on other places, people kept saying "oh well the cat's out of the bag now, nothing can be done, it can't be stopped". I pointed out that only 4 or so planes being made to collide with TSMC, NVIDIA and ASML would be enough to give at least a decade of breathing room while we try to figure out how to keep this technology safe. I'm almost certain there were people who read it on here as well as elsewhere who could have made it happen.

_Now_ it is indeed too late.

[slopinthebag]

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

[zinodaur]

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?

[bartread]

Oh, come on, be serious: if that’s the argument then why start with Sam Altman?

If you want to hold the leader of a contemporary tech giant responsible for causing excess deaths then Meta and Zuckerberg would be a lot higher up the list - maybe even at the very top.

Now I despise Mark Zuckerberg, but I don’t want to firebomb his house: I want his company neutered and/or broken up, I want him stripped of his ill-gotten wealth, and ideally I want him to face criminal prosecution and incarceration.

But the point is this: whoever firebombed Sam Altman’s house didn’t do it out of a principled stance - in fact I suspect they barely expended any thought on the matter - because if they were really acting out of principle they’d have chosen a different target, they’d have done some research into who is trying to expose and bring down that target, and they’d have figured out how they could help rather than just randomly engage in violence. Whereas this was just a dangerous stunt.

[pocksuppet]

They could have chosen the target that was most available to them. Or they could feel particularly wronged by Sam Altman. Maybe they have Iranian friends.

[zinodaur]

> why start with Sam Altman?

Well Zuck has that big scary hedge, and I’m sure people have been going after him for ages.

> I despise Mark Zuckerberg, but I don’t want to firebomb his house: I want his company neutered and/or broken up, I want him stripped of his ill-gotten wealth, and ideally I want him to face criminal prosecution and incarceration.

Great! Is the plan to wait until after the billionaires have their AI controlled military drone swarms to have this revolution? Because they already control your government - I don’t think you will achieve anything like this through legal means

[bartread]

> Because they already control your government

Whose government?

[TurdF3rguson]

This has already been a movie called Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Sarah Connor is out to kill Dyson to stop Skynet from becoming a thing and the audience watched it thinking she was probably justified but was uncomfortable anyway. Spoiler alert: she ended up shooting but not killing him.

My point is, we've seen this movie and killing Sam Altman is uncomfortable but justified.

[imiric]

I'm on the skeptic side of "AI" and find this entire industry obnoxious, but your argument doesn't hold any water.

Technology that can be used to kill innocent people is all around us. Would it be moral to attack knife manufacturers? Attacking one won't make the technology disappear. It has been invented, so we have to live with it.

Also, it's a stretch to say that "AI" "kills innocent people". In the hands of malicious people it can certainly do harm, but even in extreme cases, "AI" can currently only be used very indirectly to actually kill someone.

Technology itself is inert. What humans do with technology should be regulated.

IMO the fabricated concern around this tech is just part of the hype cycle. There's nothing inherently dangerous about a probabilistic pattern generator. We haven't actually invented artificial intelligence, despite of how it's marketed. What we do need to focus on is educating people to better understand this tech and use it safely, on restricting access to it so that we can mitigate abuse and avoid flooding our communication channels with garbage, and on better detection and mitigation technology to flag and filter it when it is abused. Everything else is marketing hype and isn't worth paying attention to.

[lostlogin]

> Would it be moral to attack knife manufacturers?

Apply this to guns.

Then look how this works in the US. You could, but then a law was made to protect gun manufacturers, The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

AI will get this treatment I’m sure.

[Barrin92]

>Would it be moral to attack knife manufacturers?

if they're selling the knives knowingly to a knife-murderer, it might be worth discussing.

Sam Altman is not, although he portrays himself that way, some geeky guy without power who just builds products, he's the guy who makes the decision to supply this tech directly to the US government who is on the record about using it for military operations. And you're right on the last point. Sure the 20 year old guy who threw a molotov cocktail at Sam's house is, I'm going to assume for now given the topic Sam chose for the piece, an anti-tech guy.

But assume for a second you had your family wiped out in a bombing run because Pete Hegseth attempted to prompt himself to victory with the statistical lottery machine. If the CEO knew this and enabled it to add another zero to his bank account, not so sure about the ethics of that one.

[zinodaur]

Sibling comment already said it, but yes I was specifically alluding to Altman's decision to allow the US government to use their AI to choose bombing targets without a human in the loop - perhaps this is why the US government double-tapped[1] a school killing 160 girls, all younger than 12, when the school was clearly marked on google maps.

I also vigorously dislike the industry, but your stance 'I'm on the skeptic side of "AI"' is something you need to address - saying this in the friendliest way possible, you are wrong.

AI needs to be opposed, because the billionaires are going to use it to turn the world into shit, but if the best the AI opposition can muster is "AI isn't useful", we are fucked. It's extremely powerful and can do bizzaro things when you rig it up with tools - the kinds of things we need to prevent companies like Google from doing with it, no one is paying attention to.

[1] double-tapped: a phrase referring to the practice of firing a second missile after the first to kill any rescuers or surviving schoolgirls

[imiric]

Regardless, "AI" is not doing the killing in that case. Rather, humans have deployed it to control weapons that kill people. There are several layers of indirection there before you can claim "AI kills people". This is the same indirection as when a human chooses to press a button that fires a missile, or stab someone, just with more steps involved.

So you can also be outraged at weapon manufacturers, which is one step closer. Or, you can skip the indirection, and be outraged specifically at people in charge of using this technology, which is my point.

I'm disgusted by this industry as much as you are, believe me. But blaming the companies that produce "AI" for people dying is misplaced. They're certainly part of the problem, but not the root cause.

> AI needs to be opposed

AI doesn't exist. It is a marketing term used by grifters to sell their snake oil.

But even if it did, it's silly to claim that any technology needs to be opposed. This one is potentially more problematic than others because it raises some difficult existential and social questions which we might not be ready to answer, but it's still ultimately on us to control how it's used. We've somehow been able to do this for nuclear weapons which can literally obliterate civilization at the press of a button, so a probabilistic pattern generator seems trivial in comparison. It's going to be bumpy, but I think we'll manage.

[pocksuppet]

> Regardless, "AI" is not doing the killing in that case. Rather, humans have deployed it to control weapons that kill people.

One of those humans is Sam Altman, which makes him a valid military target.

He's not somebody that released a product and doesn't know what it's being used for. He's selling it specifically to be used as part of killing people.

[imiric]

Right. Let's extrapolate that to Jensen Huang as well, and maybe TSMC, and also ASML engineers, why not.

Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?

[zinodaur]

> AI doesn't exist. It is a marketing term used by grifters to sell their snake oil.

They've claimed the term, this is not a useful objection to make at this point. And everyone was fine with calling our shitty little computer vision handwriting parsers "AI algorithms" before LLMs.

> We've somehow been able to do this for nuclear weapons which can literally obliterate civilization at the press of a button

Knowing what you know about nuclear weapons, if you ran into the Manhattan Project scientists, would you still be cheering them on? "Thanks guys, our democracies are so stable these will literally never be used for a nuclear holocaust, and they might have useful mining applications!"

Can you not think of any exceptionally nasty things the US government could do with the "machines that act as if they can think for most practical purposes"? Do you think maybe it might be a good idea to develop that technology after you have made sure that the government serves the peoples interest?

[imiric]

> They've claimed the term, this is not a useful objection to make at this point.

Sure it is. Someone saying that the sky is purple will never be true, no matter how many times they say it. Pushing against this is how we avoid the fabricated mystique around this tech, precisely so that people don't see it as a threat.

> Knowing what you know about nuclear weapons, if you ran into the Manhattan Project scientists, would you still be cheering them on?

You're twisting my words. I never said that I support what "AI" companies are doing. I said that your claim that "AI is killing people" is hyperbolic, and that you're barking up the wrong tree.

Besides, the scientific research invested in nuclear technology has produced far more benefits for humanity than drawbacks. It's very likely that the conversation we're having now wouldn't have been possible without this research. There's an argument to be made that even nuclear weapons and their deployment in WW2 had a more positive outcome than any alternative would've had.

Similarly, the same can be said about the current generation of "AI". For all its potential dangers and harms, whether direct or indirect, it has and will continue to have many positive use cases, some of which we haven't discovered yet. Ignoring this and opposing the tech altogether is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The solution isn't banning the tech. It's strongly regulating it, as we've done with many others. Unfortunately, governments move at glacial speeds, and some are deeply entrenched with corporations, so there's conflicts of interest galore, but that's still the most sensible approach to manage it safely.

> Can you not think of any exceptionally nasty things the US government could do with the "machines that act as if they can think for most practical purposes"?

Sure I can. Any government, organization, or individual can abuse any technology. But you haven't made the case why opposing technology itself would prevent that, versus holding those individuals accountable directly. Until then your comments come across as misplaced fear mongering.

> Do you think maybe it might be a good idea to develop that technology after you have made sure that the government serves the peoples interest?

So what do you suggest? We stop all tech R&D because governments can't be trusted? That's pure fantasy. No single government would even agree to it since technology is universal. If the US doesn't invent it, another country will. Advancing within this messy geopolitical framework is the only path forward, for better or worse.

[minimaxir]

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

[hax0ron3]

It would be extremely difficult to have politics discussion without condoning violence. Deciding what sorts of violence is ok is an inherent part of politics. In practice, there's no way to ban calls for violence without banning the discussion of wide swaths of political topics.

[Teever]

Do you feel the same way about comments that support the US military action in Iran? Why or why not?

[johnisgood]

It is unnecessary, and it was an obvious offense, not defense. Of course it is "bad". We (Trump) need(s) to stop creating wars and fucking up the economy, while killing others. It is bad all the way down.

[chipsrafferty]

Which one is more bad?

Trump bombing hundreds of people or someone throwing a bomb at Trump because he keeps bombing hundreds of people?

[vizzier]

People think the trolley problem is easy.

[lovich]

If you grind people into a paste long enough, eventually some of them may object in one manner or another.

[twoodfin]

I’m sorry, which specific people were “ground into paste” and when?

[lovich]

Everyone too poor to thrive.

[sneak]

I agree with the idea that calls for violence are bad; however most people in the world are more than happy to support both violence and calls for same against people and organizations they believe to be sufficiently significant threats.

Are calls for violence against Hitler during WW2 bad? How about the Japanese imperial navy?

How about calls for violence against Putin during his war of aggression?

This isn’t rhetoric; I’m just pointing out that it isn’t as black and white as people seem to make it. (It is black and white for me, as I’m with Asimov on the matter, but it isn’t for most humans.)

[deaux]

If you can't think of a single occurrence in history that directly disproves your proposed guideline, it's time to drop whatever you're doing and study history.

If you can think of one, then you shouldn't be proposing introduction of guidelines that are blatantly false. Or would you like a "1+1 is not 2" guideline to accompany it?

[stavros]

Are calls for violence bad when you're calling for throwing a molotov cocktail at a child? At an adult? At a serial killer? At someone who's about to shoot you unprovoked? At someone who murdered your family? At someone who's about to?

If you said "yes" to all of the above, I'd love to know your reasoning.

[empthought]

Yes.

If you want a molotov cocktail thrown so badly, throw it yourself. Don't put it on other people to do it for you.

[stavros]

Are the two choices "accept that violence is unconditionally bad" and "throw a molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's house"? Because that dichotomy seems a bit... false?

[empthought]

Your question was about calling for violence.

[lostlogin]

The general tone here is that freedom of speech is absolute and nothing should curtail that.

Not my personal view.

[what]

I’d like to know your reasoning for answering “no” to all of the above.

[stavros]

I guess we'll just have to find someone who answers no to all of that and ask them!

[what]

I think my point was obvious. What is your justification for answering no to any of them?

[stavros]

Alright, I'll explain. I don't think violence is bad against someone who's about to kill my family, because:

* I care about my family more than I care about a stranger.

* I care about people who don't kill people unprovoked more than I care about people who kill people unprovoked.

* My family are more than one person, versus the one killer.

That's why I answer no to that one.

[avs733]

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.

[what]

> wage theft

Like when you poop on the clock?

[Teever]

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.

[hungryhobbit]

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.

[d_silin]

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.

[notyourwork]

> 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.

[ambicapter]

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).

[dakolli]

Knowing Sam, this entire event was fabricated or done at his behest.

[Noaidi]

‘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.

[burnte]

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.

[AlexCoventry]

I don't condone violence, but the contract he's signed with the US military is a credible threat to everyone in the US. OpenAI will now certainly be called on to assist in domestic mass surveillance, under threat of the kind of severe penalties Anthropic has faced. So why did he agree to that contract, unless he's will to provide that assistance? So it's gone well beyond conversation, though not to a point where violence is appropriate. Boycotts and hostility are definitely appropriate at this point IMO, though.

[pesus]

He isn't going to suddenly grow a conscience from a riveting, intellectually stimulating conversation.

[teachrdan]

> the way we tackle that is with conversations, not violence

I think the breakdown here is that conversation seems to have no power. To only be a bit hyperbolic, the only language with power is money -- or violence. To the extent that ordinary people cannot make change with "conversation" (which I interpret here to mean dialog within society, including with lawmakers), they feel compelled to use violence instead.

A non-rhetorical question: What recourse to non-billionaires have when conversation has less and less power, while money has more and more, and those with money are making much more money?

[burnte]

Then we move to regulation and law, that's still talking. Bombing his house isn't cool.

[pocksuppet]

What if that doesn't happen?

[m4x]

There's still a meaningful difference between violence wielded by a single individual who feels angry or unheard, and violence wielded by a large representative group who has invested genuine effort in conversation before collectively deciding violence is required.

[happytoexplain]

They aren't mutually exclusive. Often the former and latter, in that order, are two parts of the same historical event.

[m4x]

Yes, fully agree. Nonetheless, I suspect violence can be used more effectively and more minimally if it's considered and performed by a group rather than haphazardly by individuals. I recognise that's a very simplistic view.

[llbbdd]

I think it's as realistic as it is simplistic. The State gets a monopoly on violence so that you can sue someone who wrongs you instead of killing them. When conversation and cash fail, violence is all that's left, and we concentrate that power in groups of people tasked with deciding when the alternatives have failed. It doesn't always work but it's a better alternative than the individualized bloodlust disappointingly endorsed elsewhere in this thread.

[Arodex]

Everyone else deserves to grow old, too...

[tyre]

It's pretty amazing to observe people experience the past ten years in American history and continue to think that we can out-talk the bad people in the world.

Michelle Obama's, "When they go low, we go high", is some of the stupidest political advice and a generation has lost so much because of it. (The generation before got West Winged into believing the same thing.)

When you look to the right, you have a stolen election in 2000, a stolen supreme court seat, an attempted coup, and relentless winning despite it.

[burnte]

I don't think street violence solves anything. I don't think Michelle was right, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, but you don't fight words with literal firebombs.

[lostlogin]

This may come right when Americans see themselves backsliding relative to other power blocks, and allies turning away. It’s started.

But it seems a distant hope at best.

[snoman]

That sentiment always comes from people who are better at fighting with communication.

[HeavyStorm]

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

[pocksuppet]

He killed a few tens of thousands of people, doesn't that count?

[quantified]

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.

[dakolli]

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

[nslsm]

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

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

[tempestn]

Are you familiar with the details of the French Revolution? Some of the eventual outcomes were indeed positive, but a lot of what actually went on was pretty horrific.

[mjamesaustin]

It was horrific. Revolutions tend to be. Yet our institutions continue consolidating money and power in fewer and fewer hands. If that doesn't stop, we'll be headed there again. It will probably be even worse this time.

[happytoexplain]

A lot of what happened during the French revolution was horrific... This is such a bewildering sentence in this context. Yes, killing the rulers is horrific. Revolutions are horrific. Wars are horrific. It seems irrelevant to what the parent is (sarcastically) saying.

[tempestn]

Their point was that violence is sometimes justified, using the French Revolution as an example. I'm pointing out that the FR wasn't just a matter of "killing the rulers". Many, many people were killed. It wasn't such an unambiguous good as they seemed to be implying. Also, other countries have transitioned to democracy without such bloodshed.

[hackable_sand]

It's just not helpful to the conversation

"If we don't put the brakes on this car it's going to go off the cliff!"

"Historically, cars falling off cliffs was horrible for all the passengers involved."

[kelseyfrog]

At the same time considering the people participating, there wasn't a way out of the problems that didn't involve violence. Different outcomes would require different choices that require different people.

[GeoAtreides]

what are you arguing? that people should not violently overthrow their corrupt leaders? that the french should've let the Ancient Regime entrench and continue? That the serfs (slaves) in tsarist Russia should've stayed put and not revolt against the corrupt and incompetent Nicholas II? Or that the Hungarians and Czechoslovaks not revolt against the totalitarian regimes propped by the Russians? Should've the Romanians in 1989 stayed at home, in cold and hunger, and let Ceausescu regime continue to cruelly oppress them?

[matheusmoreira]

You think the cyberpunk dystopia we're headed towards isn't going to be horrific? The one where 99% of the human race has no economic value? Where the 1% helm megagigaultracorporations with fully autonomous AI powered kill bots? Where they think it's no big loss if they genocide an entire human population because all those people were doing nothing but costing them money anyway?

This is our only chance to transition to a post-scarcity society. We won't have another. Allowing them to monopolize access to AI is a fatal mistake.

[alex_suzuki]

99% of humanity is too busy scrolling on their phones, consuming “content”, to even notice.

[duskdozer]

It looks like I'm a bit slow in noticing this, but I see more and more young people today getting dumbphones. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a backlash among them

[Imustaskforhelp]

17 year old guy who had rocked a dumb phone for an year or two and I still don't use a phone (I have a tablet that lies around but yeah)

I feel heard from this statement, thanks!

> I wouldn't be surprised if there's a backlash among them

The backlash is more than what people might imagine. We are a generation that most of us would have nothing to gain and thus nothing to lose as colleges are diluted more and more and job security becomes a question as we are still connected more than ever seeing all the darkness taking place live time while our consciousness has just sprung out in this chaotic unpredecented world.

Thinking about it, We as a generation are more lonely than ever, more hopeless than ever, more angry than ever. I feel like my generation might be watching phones not out of enjoyment but out of desperation for the day to end if meaning of life can't be derived from a normal place.

[matheusmoreira]

They won't be for long.

[bitcurious]

The French Revolution brought on Napoleon, wars that brought about the deaths of many millions of people, and then another emperor. The subsequent events are where they found liberty.

[mememememememo]

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

[lostlogin]

> 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.

[grafmax]

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

[nothinkjustai]

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

[matheusmoreira]

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.

[roysting]

> 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.

[popalchemist]

Was it not OK to kill King Louis?

Just saying.

[lores]

[flagged]

[SpicyLemonZest]

The idea that firing you or stealing your wages is the worst a CEO can do to you is itself a product of the taboo against physical violence. There are a number of famous incidents from the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the taboo was weaker, of CEOs sending private armies to shoot inconvenient labor movements. It's not an equilibrium you should defect from lightly.

[lores]

A CEO can choose physical, mental, legal or financial violence against the common man. The common man only has the choice of physical violence. Without it he is impotent.

[xvector]

This mindset trivializes the immense achievements of "the common man" over the course of millennia.

[pocksuppet]

Many of those achievements were achieved through physical violence. The 5-day work week, for example. We don't work 7 days because people kept shooting bosses until the bosses agreed to compromise on 5 days.

[xvector]

[flagged]

[tomhow]

> We'd have never progressed as a species with your mentality.

Please avoid swipes like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[lores]

Change and progress like the people of France deciding they had enough of injustice and nobles' impunity, then? A little short-term pain for social progress? We agree.

[xvector]

Look where France is now. Can't afford their own retirement.

[pesus]

If that's the worst problem they have, that still sounds like things worked out pretty well compared to most places.

[kelnos]

That sounds suspiciously like a "ends justify the means" argument.

It's easy to say we need to be willing to accept short term pains when it's someone else who has to bear the brunt of them.

[pesus]

Are you willing to stand by this argument and give up your career?

[an0malous]

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

[toofy]

it isn’t ok to attack people.

whether this way or in slow motion mass attacks on people.

an attack on a society that lasts years is still an attack and i wish the collective we would realize this.

“it’s ok if millions suffer now for me to realize my dream” is just wrong.

i’ll never understand how these guys fail to realize: they actively push for people not to care about the destruction they cause. that’s obviously going to bite them in the ass whenever they’re on the receiving end.