[H8crilA]

As far as Brockman account of the past goes, there's also his personal diary which was made public as a part of that lawsuit by Musk. Includes for example the line: "Financially what will take me to $1B?". BTW, if you don't know, Musk lost it because he filed too late, lol.

[nba456_]

If his entire personal diary got exposed and that's the worst that's in it, good for him.

[tcp_handshaker]

What about stealing 12 million books of copyrighted human culture, at massive scale, and then enclosing the value created inside proprietary, investor-backed systems? Something wrong with that?

What happens if you go tomorrow, downtown San Francisco, and leave a bookstore with one book without paying?

   "Behind every great fortune there is a crime"
         - Honoré de Balzac

[tasuki]

> What about stealing 12 million books

Who's missing the books? 12 million books is a rather large warehouse!

I thought HN was in the "information wants to be free" camp...

[giantfrog]

I think there might be a difference between “I’m violating copyright law to enjoy a work of art” and “I’m violating copyright law on a global, species-wide scale to create a trillion dollar company and enrich myself.” Maybe you can argue the former is wrong but there’s no way it’s equivalent to the latter.

[watwut]

Those books are not free for us, aren't they? This argument would meant one iota sense if the outcome was free information or free access to books.

Instead, overall outcome is more centralization, formerly accessible resources of information hard to find and starved.

[tasuki]

> Those books are not free for us, aren't they?

The library card is really cheap tho.

[estearum]

HN isn't a person and "information" doesn't have anything resembling desires

[jappgar]

LLM weights deserve to be free

[singleshot_]

I thought information wanted to be expensive because the right information at the right time can change your life...

[globalnode]

haha, thanks for my daily.

[ralph84]

> enclosing the value created inside proprietary, investor-backed systems

What do you think copyright does. Human culture is owned by humanity, not Disney or the New York Times.

[estearum]

It creates an incentive to create new things and share it with the world, duh.

Do you ask the same question about why we patent drugs?

[ralph84]

Walt Disney died 60 years ago. We don't need to incentivize him to do anything.

[estearum]

Are you arguing that copyright lasts too long or that copyright shouldn't exist?

Your prior comment, "human culture is owned by humanity", sure sounds like the latter.

[temp8830]

Even though the founders of OpenAI are not exactly someone you'd root for, comparisons to theft are silly.

By that token it would be illegal to go into a library, read a book, and actually remember what was in it. Except in this case the reader is a robot.

LLMs are such a fundamentally different thing that existing laws don't really make sense. Wait! Put the pitchfork down! I know, I know, stealing is stealing, and OpenAI founders are slimy. But what about derivative works? Why is a human making a hip-hop track allowed to sample, and a robot is not? Again, LLMs are such a fundamentally different thing that existing laws don't really make sense.

It's actually surprising in retrospect that nobody did this sooner. Even back in the 80s books about computers would gush about how a computer has enough memory to store an entire library's worth of books. It's just that someone finally figured out how to put an index on it.

Where I agree: given that this is basically the sum of all humanity's knowledge, the company should have been a non-profit. It was a non-profit. And then greed won.

[jcheng]

I think you make a good point but the use of samples in hip hop doesn’t support it; those samples need to be licensed.

[temp8830]

This is very much untrue, and the debate about exactly how much sampling constitutes fair use has gone one for many years and court cases.

[overgard]

There are a lot of things that are fine individually that are extremely problematic at scale. Like "reading a book" vs "ingesting all the books and art that ever existed into a plagiarism machine"

[mannanj]

If they illegally pirated books, i.e. downloading pdfs. thats illegal and piracy by no other name. If any of us do it, it's called pirating, why are you being disingenuous and saying it's not theft when a company does it?

[mannanj]

Oh and by the way, their employee got murdered who was testified to speak at a hearing about copyright.

and that murderee's mom is publically resentful against and tweets anti-sam Altman content regularly. It tells me that founder Altman has clearly not demonstrated proper empathy, sympathy or repaired what should be an emotional easy case of delivering to the mom whatever she needs for her peace (or maybe he's actually guilty of complicit in crimes).

[nl]

Learning is not theft.

[root-parent]

That will not hold on court.

[spudlyo]

Won't somebody please think of the copyright holders!?

[estearum]

"This material is valuable enough for me to steal, but not valuable enough to care about there being an incentive to create in the first place!"

Totally makes sense /s

[Kinrany]

How did the diary end up in the court files in the first place?

[layer8]

OpenAI themselves submitted the diary as evidence back in October.

[Kinrany]

So surely they volunteered it?

[secondcoming]

legal discovery process?

[arvid-lind]

there's even an episode of The Office where this happens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3GbCByGltU&t=214s

[applfanboysbgon]

I'm curious what you're writing in your diary that's worse than blatantly admitting to fraud of this scale. He publicly misled people about OpenAI's "mission" as a nonprofit, while seeking to enrich himself to the tune of $1 billion(!!!) dollars.

Also, his entire diary was not in fact made public. The attorneys only quoted the parts that were relevant to the case, which pertained to OpenAI's transition from non-profit.

[siva7]

How about wiping out an entire civilization? Not even necessary to hide this thought in your diary if you have enough power. I've seen today - in fact any day of this year - much worse things than his diary thoughts.

[creato]

Even if you think this this is what OpenAI is doing, they surely don't think that. So why would he write that in his diary?

[pstuart]

I recall a comment that Sam was talking about selling AGI to the highest bidder, including hostile foreign governments, so not literally planning to destroy civilization but definitely selling it out.

And for any equivalencies of the current US regime and Russia and China, yes, that's a fair point but the implication is that they'd be selling to our enemies.

[applfanboysbgon]

Well, gee. When you put it like that, Hitler existed, so really we can't fault anybody for anything short of orchestrating the genocide of 12 million people.

[wahnfrieden]

Musk engineered the deaths of 14 million people

https://time.com/article/2026/05/15/usaid-shutdown-rise-glob...

[kvgr]

The quote is "could lead to 14 million additional deaths by 2030" and i dont like musk. But this is big difference.

[avazhi]

Yeah bro, the US pulling foreign aid is directly causative of somebody starving to death.

lol

[_zoltan_]

Worse? There is nothing wrong with wanting 1B. Anybody who said they wouldn't want it is lying.

[jesterson]

I wouldn’t want. I have enough. Not everyone is wanting money.

But it is not the point. The point is, when you take high moral ground and talk about bug problems to help humanity, and then your own diary exposes you as avaricious simpleton, the whole high moral ground crumbles. And you expose yourself as another grifter.

That’s what happened to Brockman. Although smart people could see these qualities in altman, brockman etcetera way before that happened

[p1esk]

Why can't I want both earning 1B and do good things for the world? Unless his diary directly contradicts what he has said in public (like "I don't care about money"), I see zero moral issues here.

[jesterson]

Because goal of earning 1B and doing good for the world are goals having very little overlap.

[rvz]

> The point is, when you take high moral ground and talk about bug problems to help humanity, and then your own diary exposes you as avaricious simpleton, the whole high moral ground crumbles. And you expose yourself as another grifter.

Unfortunately, this is now 90% of this space and it is now full of grifters which was not the case in 2010.

In the case of OpenAI, there were less grifters and they were dormant in 2016 and many were exposed in 2023 when Sam was fired and rehired afterwards and most of them infiltrated the company after 2023.

In 10 years time, after this upcoming financial crash, you will hear some of the former-employees after 2023 admitting that they were part of the grift and were never interested in AI in the first place.

"OpenAI was nothing without its people" except only if it meant getting a mansion or a yacht for the benefit of h̶u̶m̶a̶n̶i̶t̶y̶ themselves.

[jesterson]

Agree. Just that I see the number much north of 90%. You must be a very optimistic person.

[avazhi]

There’s nothing wrong or strange about aspiring to be a billionaire but writing about it in your diary like a hormonal teen girl reading fairy tales is a bad look.

It’s also difficult to take people seriously if they only care about money or, in Altman’s case, power. Single minded obsessiveness about these sorts of things tends to render people intellectually dishonest by definition.

[root-parent]

Do you understand the kind of self-absorbed asshole you have to be, to seriously write in your diary, what do I need to do, to have wealth equal to the GDP of the Solomon Islands or the Seychelles? :-)

[_zoltan_]

No. And I disagree with you. You don't have to be an asshole.

I remember when having 10k was a goal. Then it become having 100k.

It's the same after. Once you have 1M, you'd like 2, 5, 10.

[nativeit]

That level of personal wealth is inherently immoral and doesn’t *ever* happen without exploitation.

[rozap]

Every billionaire is a policy failure. It's not a question of equity, the issue is that no one human should be that powerful. It's very obvious that its leading to the US's rather quick and colorful decline. A small cohort of very powerful people are moving elections and policy to enrich themselves, everyone else be damned.

[ToValueFunfetti]

Even assuming all of this is true, nothing you've said means it's wrong to want a billion dollars. As described, your issue is with the system that makes it possible to get it.

[sumeno]

I would be a billionaire for about 5 minutes because I'd spend 95% of it making the lives of others better and still have enough left over that neither me nor any of my immediate family ever has to work again instead of hoarding it like the monsters who end up actually having a billion dollars.

[tasuki]

What is the point of your comment? It is hard for me to read it in another way than "I am very virtuous", which might be true (well done you!) but usually isn't a thing people post about themselves in a discussion forum...

[sumeno]

It's a direct response to the person I was replying to, that's how posts work.

[tasuki]

The person you were replying to said:

> There is nothing wrong with wanting 1B. Anybody who said they wouldn't want it is lying.

You said:

> I'd spend 95% of it making the lives of others better

Again, well done you. And... I don't think that's a counter example? Being this virtuous, wouldn't you love to give away a billion? Wouldn't you enjoy it very much? You could write comments about it and people would upvote you!

[exfalso]

Nonsense. What the hell would you do with 1B? Give it to charities maybe. Maybe set up an investment where dividends are paid to charity. Running out of ideas

[_zoltan_]

Set up a nice investment vehicle with maybe 400m so I can get 1.6m in dividends a year which would be better enough to comfortably travel the world, have a private chef, someone who organized travel so I don't have to..

A nice 12 person yacht on the Mediterranean is 400k eur for 2 weeks (with staff) so I'd realize it's not enough and invest the rest so I could get comfy.

Along the way help friends and family, pay off mortgages, usually good stuff.

It's not that hard to spend 4% a year of that.

[exfalso]

What's the point of that? That sounds like the most boring life. You want to rot away on a yacht? Private chef? Are you kidding?

Help family? Sure, although you don't need that much money for that. Friends? Ehh not very smart, just think about the changes in the friendships' authenticity.

[snihalani]

I am not sure the benefit comes from doing it. I find the optionality & the social security attractive

[_zoltan_]

Rot away? See the world. It's such a big place.

Private chef, absolutely. Like some people rot away managing Linux as a desktop or putting together 3D printers instead of buying one that works and using a Mac, I enjoy food.

[jesterson]

There are a lot of greedy people thinking everyone would die for a bullion. They couldn’t comprehend another way of thinking due to narrow mindset

[fragmede]

You've run out of ideas already? Try harder! What charities? Why? How much, to which ones? How involved with those charities are you going to be? What dent in history are you going to make with that billion? With or without your name attached. Build housing, cure cancer, feed the hungry, buy this simulator https://www.1940airterminal.org/news/liquidation-of-simulato...

[sureglymop]

I could be wrong but I think you could get started with all of that with a fraction of $1B.

Sure there is leisure and entertainment but if you want to use it to do something meaningful, with only 24 hours in a day you'll probably have much more money than time to use it well.

On the other hand 1B is really an arbitrary choice of number, so I think the reason he would choose this specific number definitely has more to do with arbitrary reasons (class, status), perhaps subconciously.

Personally I don't agree with the parent that everyone wants that much money. I think I can safely say not only am I content with much less but I also don't ever want to have the responsibility of having to manage that. Though I'm already saying that from a place of privilege where I don't need to worry about survival.

Furthermore, a lot of money almost certainly places you in an outlier group where normal laws and rights as formulated by humans don't apply the same. Assuming everyone has some empathy and sense of justice/righteousness, that should make them intrinsically not want to be in that group.

[codechicago277]

Completely missing the other costs associated with any of these things. If money was enough to “feed the hungry” Musk or Gates would have already done it. The real problem is systemic injustice, like governments stealing foreign aid that’s meant to go to the poor. Money can’t always solve these.

Time is more valuable than money and unless you have tons of time and space that simulator is just an expensive paperweight.

[exfalso]

My point was that there isn't anything I could do with that money, and neither can the vast majority of people in the world. So I would immediately try to pass it on to people who have better use for it

Wishing for 1B is completely nonsensical if you understand what kind of money that is.

[Angostura]

Perhaps the commenter would just like to lead a contented life without having to bother with all of that

[gizajob]

Didn’t even buy a Yacht or a Warhol yet.

[fnord77]

I'd finally feel financially secure

[rvz]

Really?

If anything less than $1B isn't enough then it is never enough. $1B is the new $100M thanks to ongoing currency debasement.

Also, there is something called "taxes" which is what makes anyone who has millions or billions to want even more money and the IRS will still come after you anywhere in the world.

Otherwise they have to renounce their citizenship and move to a tax haven.

[_zoltan_]

I'm not in the US, so I don't care about the IRS.

Tax wise at this level there are very tax efficient vehicles available.

[thenthenthen]

Tres Comas!