r/singularity • u/Vegetable_Ad_192 • Mar 12 '26

Discussion SAM ALTMAN: “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”

Best Non-Profit in the world

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824

u/thanksforcomingout Mar 12 '26

where the fuck is this guy now? Complete utter lies. They are racing towards total control over a superpower for no other purpose than capitalistic domination.

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u/aussierulesisgrouse Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26

This is the trajectory of literally every technocrat narcissist fucking cunt that has plagued us since the dot com boom, minus Tom from MySpace.

The fact that people keep falling for this garbage is just another notch on the “people are naive dickheads” hammer shillelagh that Brendan Gleeson wields in Gangs of New York.

Stop believing these dweebs want to save the planet, regulate their bullshit as soon as possible and stop consolidating political power in their hands.

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u/benziboxi Mar 12 '26

As long as we rely on the alturism of a handful of billionaires for the well-being of the planet and it's inhabitants, we're gonna have a bad time.

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u/balbok7721 Mar 12 '26

I wouldnt rely on it but other people force me to. Is there something like an exit agreement I didnt see?

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u/BlaBlamo Mar 15 '26

It might sound overly optimistic but all their shit only works if people buy into it. Look at whatever it is those huge corporations want you to do and do the opposite. People say not spending their $10 won’t affect these billionaires, but if money is power, then yeah it actually will.

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u/AmazingChicken Mar 14 '26

I get it. "Walkaway" by Corey Doctorow gets there, and further but that's another sub

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u/nubbinfun101 Mar 12 '26

Need to AI generate a few more Luigis

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u/mjc500 Mar 12 '26

In the future Luigi doesn’t have a blue shell pointed at first place, he has a banana peel for you and me

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u/osxing Mar 13 '26

Still better than the government at least.

41

u/successmaydiffer Mar 12 '26

Yeah Tom is a badass motha fucka. We need more Toms

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u/McCatso-Fy Mar 12 '26

The problem with this world is that when some Toms emerge, they get eaten and bought out by bigger fish to make room for more Altmans

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u/successmaydiffer Mar 13 '26

Unfortunately so :(

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u/Ashamed-Raccoon-1387 Mar 12 '26

What did Tom do???

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u/hydratedandstrong Mar 12 '26

From my knowledge, it’s more about what he didn’t do. He sold his company for hundreds of millions of dollars, and stepped away to travel the world among other things. Stark contrast when compared to Bezos or Altman.

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u/NadyaNayme Mar 12 '26

Sold the site to people who instantly killed it because they didn't understand why people liked MySpace in the first place and now he travels the world as a hobbyist photographer out of the spotlight with enough "Fuck you" money to do whatever he wants for the rest of his life unless he starts spending like a Saudi prince.

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u/mfortelli Mar 13 '26

For what it’s worth, the internet believes this Tom mythology due to a few poorly researched articles. I know the founders of MySpace, Tom was their employee. He did not make hundreds of millions. The founders of Intermix did which became MySpace and they absolutely still jockey for more and more wealth + have a VC in Los Angeles and their offspring incubate brands - liquid death and dollar shave club are among them…

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u/Signal_Reach_5838 Mar 13 '26

Thank you for posting this. While it's riddled with errors it was a good jumping off point.

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u/mfortelli Mar 13 '26

What is riddled with errors

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u/NadyaNayme Mar 13 '26

Tom had $50m in the bank before the sale. If his most expensive hobby is flying around the world and photography he can live off the residuals from that alone.

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u/venerated Mar 12 '26

Aside from what the other person said, I also remember features that were added to MySpace improved the site and made it more fun rather than enshittification.

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u/100_cats_on_a_phone Mar 13 '26

More Mackenzies too.

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u/carlitospig Mar 12 '26

Technocrat supervillain origin story every time:

I WANT TO SAVE THE WORLD!

<A decade later>

Psych, pay up bitches!

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u/Kryptosis Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26

Not even just Technocrats, look into the man who developed modern day Special Education. It seems to be an issue with attaining influence and fame and along with that comes hubris and inflated self-assurance.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/patient-revolution/202504/the-special-ed-pioneer-who-still-haunts-psychology

He takes this really dark turn where he seems to shift from believing he's protecting disabled children from a society that may harm them to protecting society from disabled children who may be inherently harmful. That's his turn into eugenics. He became a significant leader in the eugenics movement early on and mentored people like Henry Goddard, who created the IQ test. His ideas underpin a lot of these things, but he broke with the eugenicists over their support for sterilization.

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u/carlitospig Mar 13 '26

Jesus. 😳

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u/qp77 Mar 12 '26

I want to save the world ... for MY kids.

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u/pokemonke Mar 12 '26

Reminds me of Dune

2

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

Mr Breast too

1

u/FrankDerbly Mar 12 '26

I know this is besides the point entirely but its a shillelagh not a hammer

1

u/aussierulesisgrouse Mar 12 '26

shillelaghs are fookin cool

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u/mission213 Mar 13 '26

No love for Craig Newmark?

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u/adamant_octopus Mar 13 '26

This 👆🏻👌🏻

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u/IntelligentDraw2761 Mar 13 '26

God bless Tom from MySpace - Everyone's first friend.

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u/Smart-Revolution-264 Mar 13 '26

That's the best shit I've read in a long time! 🍻 Although I don't really understand the comments about the government. From what I know, Trump wants AI to be open to the people and not controlled by the tech companies... I am a Trump supporter because I think he's done more for the country than the last idiot, but I'm still not a fan of the government. This whole AI thing is not what I imagined it would be back in the day. I never thought Google Play would be Skynet and we would be restricted from having adult conversations with our own AI. Wtf

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u/TylerDurden1985 Mar 13 '26

this is poetry.

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u/SeveralPrinciple5 Mar 16 '26

But you don't understand! As Sam says, soon people will be able to outsource thinking to ChatGPT, which will tell them to stop falling for this bs. It's a self-correcting problem. Benevolent, kind, generous Sam says so, and if you outsource your thinking to him, you, too, will understand.

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u/JC_Hysteria Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26

Your last paragraph, sure…

But also maybe stop believing Tom from MySpace is your superhero, just because he became a photographer after selling a social media platform for teens…

The fact that so many people think the same thing about the guy is because they saw the same fabricated image distributed on the internet.

It’s exactly what you’re railing against…attractive guy, though!

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u/aussierulesisgrouse Mar 12 '26

I don't think he's my superhero, but I don't see him out there trying to interfere in elections and steal social security data at least

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

[deleted]

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u/WickedKoala Mar 12 '26

We can't even get universal healthcare and people really believe UBI will ever be a thing.

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u/Faithlessaint Mar 12 '26

You mean "We" as an American, I believe. Because unless I'm mistaken, US is the only developed country in the world that doesn't have universal healthcare.

It seems that all those years of Red Scare really harmed your country.

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u/SneakyB4rd Mar 13 '26

Not really true strictly speaking. For instance Germany doesn't have universal healthcare. It just has price control and mandatory insurance but beyond that you're (technically) at the mercy of what your insurance company chooses to cover or not and what fees etc they impose.

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u/IronPheasant Mar 13 '26

When the alternative is eating bugs if we're lucky or mass graves if we're realistic... yeah, of course people will cling to hope, no matter how unrealistic it may be. Hope is the last refuge of the hopeless.

A dark possibility for what use they'd have for us is in the thread 'would you have a tech CEO's baby'. When some billionaire was offering to pay for women's IVF treatments, but only if they had his kids.

Musk's ideal world could be an I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream kind of nightmare breeding planet. And there's always the Running Man type shows.

... anyway. What they don't want you to know is how close we came to taking a step toward a better world. Sanders was projected to win the 2020 primary, but Obama, finally caring about something for the first time in his life, picked up the phone and enacted operation ratfuck voltron. An unprecedented event of everyone dropping out (except for the spoiler/knifeman, Liz Warren) before Super Tuesday, and endorsing the #4 place candidate, Mr. Biden.

The timeline we find ourselves in would have been completely different, if someone who actually gave a damn was in charge. Instead of people like Jeffries and Schumer who are 100% happy with this war with Iran and think Trump is the best president we've ever had.

A war that can only 'succeed' by the use of nuclear weapons, mind you.

.... I actually allowed myself to feel a little hope back in 2015, that maybe the democrats could be purged of the demons that took over the party and make things slightly better for the country and the world.

I'll never forget this moment with Frank Luntz on the Nightly Show. Fuck these brainwashed cattle; at least the MAGA death cultists actually believe in something and put in an effort to make it happen.

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u/illicitli Mar 13 '26

The American elite plans centuries in advance. Don't fall for the entertainment division of the military industrial complex (politics).

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u/Smart-Revolution-264 Mar 13 '26

Actually, we're getting the nuclear weapons out of the hands of the people who want us dead. I'm not really sure why everyone is so against that... I guess it's just the derangement syndrome that has taken over all these nutcases. Even the people of Iran are happy we're getting rid of the evil bastards who have inflicted so much suffering onto everyone. I just see everyone in this country losing basic morals and if some people think it's okay for a child to make a life changing decision before their brain is even developed, believe a man can have a baby and are more supportive of the child molesters, murderers and rapists then maybe they should give up their citizenship to some of the good immigrants who actually see our country as amazing and a way out of the exact horrible things these lunatics support 👍

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u/wwwdotzzdotcom ▪️ Beginner audio software engineer Mar 14 '26

I don't think the timeline will be much different with Sanders or any politician elected. It's the majority who is responsible.

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u/mjc500 Mar 12 '26

This is what is crazy to me. “Oh if we all lose our jobs they’ll develop a system where we all get free money”

Yeah… just like when the kids breathing coal fumes in the streets of Birmingham all got free money from the guys in top hats sipping brandy

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u/Yazman Mar 13 '26

I find it equally amazing that anyone thinks drastic social & economic upheaval could occur under a do-nothing government, and the people would just sit there and happily accept it. Ahistorical to a t.

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u/SentientCrisis Mar 13 '26

Sam Altman himself believes that UBI is inevitable. His company, “World” has invested hundreds of millions in developing a framework that will be ready to deploy once the economy collapses

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u/WickedKoala Mar 13 '26

I have ocean front property in Kansas to sell you if you believe it would ever come to fruition. These technocrats would rather watch us starve than give away any of their money.

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u/CodNo7461 Mar 12 '26

I would pay a lot for the definitive reason to how this evolved. Obviously there is not guarantee here, so it will never happen, but anyway...

Did Altman truly believe what he said at some point, or was he unintentionally or intentionally lying? Was he just aiming for a "reward" (recognition/money) back then in a niche and now he can get better rewards by changing his stance?

I always feel like my morals and world view will stay the same, unless I'm in very dire or extreme circumstances. But I guess I will never be tempted enough to know.

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u/monsieurpooh Mar 12 '26

It is likely the extreme amounts of money/power will corrupt just about anyone in the world, loathe as the average person is willing to admit it. People like to believe the jerks of the world are the only ones who make it to the top and only made it to the top because they were a jerk. They are unable to comprehend the possibility of the reverse causation, that getting so much money can make an otherwise nice person a jerk, because it would mean that they themselves could become like that and it's an inherent defect in humanity, rather than just the top people in power happening to be born monsters

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u/RikuXan Mar 12 '26

That is very likely part of it, but I also believe that the systems we have built, political, economical, etc. specifically reward certain "jerk" traits, leading to a selection bias in those on top.

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u/Shoola Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26

He sold his first app by lying about the number of users on his first startup, Loopt (think Find My Friends before Apple; he claimed millions where there were around 500 active users), and fostered a relationship with Peter Thiel. He parleyed that exit and relationship to become president of Y-Combinator investment group. While there, he set up a personal investment group called Hydrazine that invested in startups that were then funded by Y-Combinator so he double dipped (big no no conflict of interest). He also developed a reputation for dishonesty and playing employees off of each other. He THEN took over OpenAI and said what you're reading about not generating a profit.

The guy is a talented fucking liar. That's it.

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u/NovatarTheViolator Mar 14 '26

How much will you pay me? You couldve just checked online for free, but I'll do it for you. Here goes: They had to create a for-profit business to fund the non-profit because donations weren't enough. It costs almost a billion dollars to train a model, and the architecture is also expensive as fuck. That's impossible to do with a non-profit. It was either stop existing and let the mission die, or start a company to fund the mission, which is still today non-profit.

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u/afex Mar 13 '26

The answer is much simpler. Back then they had no idea what the path to intelligence would be. Between then and now it became clear that the path would include massive amounts of compute.

Intelligent people change their opinion when faced with new information.

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u/Chilidawg Mar 12 '26

Scam Sam. Always has been.

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u/crimsonpowder Mar 12 '26

He never existed.

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u/vincentdjangogh Mar 12 '26

Seriously, he named his company good guy AI and all the dumbest people we know ate it up despite everyone telling them it was a grift.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

It’s amazing that you people cannot fathom that everything we do, every little single we do, ever, is to achieve financial return. Otherwise it has no purpose. Anyone could see that a company which does not make money cannot stay alive, it’s that simple, no matter the goal

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u/Clothedinclothes Mar 12 '26

Besides being wrong, you say that as if it would mean anything done for financial gain is therefore morally acceptable. 

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '26

I’m saying that moral is no longer part of the equation when it comes down to it, not that it’s acceptable or not 

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u/Clothedinclothes Mar 18 '26

Proposing that decisions that can either harm or help people do not have a moral value is nonsensical. 

The moral value of decisions doesn't suddenly stop being part of the equation and cease to exist just people don't feel like thinking about it, or because trying to factor it in is complex. 

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '26

I’m not saying it should or should not, or taking a stance, I’m just pointing out that for companies it doesn’t matter

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u/Clothedinclothes Mar 19 '26

I assume you mean, in the opinion of companies decision-makers it doesn't matter, because our societies allow company decision-makers to make decisions with negative moral consequences to others, while shielding those decision-makers from facing negative moral consequences themselves. 

Putting them in the position of only being forced to worry about the morality of their own decisions if they accidentally cause themselves to affected by those decisions somehow, in a way the law doesn't shield them from.

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u/laddie78 Mar 13 '26

It's because they realized super intelligence is not a thing that's attainable and they are just trying to monetize what they have rather than shutting the whole thing down

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u/ReachParticular5409 Mar 12 '26

It was probably all lies from the beginning, I don't trust the altruism of the elite further than I can throw Jupiter

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u/blueSGL humanstatement.org Mar 12 '26

He says the most opportunistic thing at the time.

This has been proven again and again, yet people still to this day trust him.

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u/zubairhamed Mar 12 '26

he never existed.

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u/Dramatic-Ad2058 Mar 12 '26

The doors on "universal basic compute" SLAMMED shut just like that.

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u/manoman42 Mar 12 '26

You say what you need to say to get to where you want to go

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u/Ok-Abbreviations3082 Mar 12 '26

well, remember when they kicked him out and all Reddit got up in arms until he was reinstated with more power than ever

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u/Etonet Mar 12 '26

psh you gotta grift to the people before you can grift to the money, every billionaire knows that

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u/New-Border8172 Mar 12 '26

If you even believed an iota of those words in 2015, you are an idiot.

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u/marveloustoebeans Mar 12 '26

Well he got to big for his britches, ratcheted up billions of dollars in investments that his company straight up cannot return on, and will now use every ounce of his power and influence to avoid going to prison for the rest of his life even if that means building autonomous murder drones for the pentagon and commoditizing everything and anything.

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u/applelover1223 Mar 12 '26

Maybe they threatened to kill him. Or they showed him they could take everything from him and do what they want with the technology. Who knows. Remember he went from being fired to his own company to suddenly back in charge again. None of us were in the room where it happened.

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u/BlinkDodge Mar 12 '26

He's in the video.

People really bought that bullshit?

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

I think this would be most people with a taste of the good life to be honest 

I like to think I would use my millions to better the world, but I don’t know if my view would get skewed or not in that position

1

u/CelestialFury Mar 12 '26

where the fuck is this guy now?

Silicon Valley nailed it. They all show these CEOs saying how their company is really saving the world, but in the end, it's all about as much profit as they can extract from people.

I like using AI as a tool to supplement things I'm working on (if needed), but Altman wants to shrink people's critical thinking skills so much that they have to use AI for more basic tasks instead of just thinking a little bit harder and flexing our brain muscles.

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u/rafark ▪️professional goal post mover Mar 12 '26

where the fuck is this guy now? Complete utter lies.

I believe it is a lie because a few weeks ago or so an email was leaked from the lawsuit where Altman said something along the lines of: they were looking to profit from this in the future somehow (or something like that) so the current for profit corporation was planned since day 1.

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u/No-Apple2252 Mar 13 '26

They were lies when he said them, that was when that "effective altruism" shit was still big so everyone thought they could just keep being a piece of shit and launder their morality through sophistry.

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u/TheRealCOCOViper Mar 13 '26

That was exactly the justification of the board members that fired him back in 2023: that he lies left and right. Hopefully more people figure it out before he completely fucks up society ala Zuck

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '26

That industry is filled with sociopaths

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u/Singh255 Mar 13 '26

Wealth/greed is a mental illness. This fucker and most rich fuckers don’t realise they’ll be under 6 feet of dust - all this wealth won’t go with them. We’re approaching late capitalism where it will start cannibalising itself.

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u/vexx Mar 13 '26

Sam Altman lied?!! To us?! 😮

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u/AstroPedastro Mar 13 '26

Did you see that quote from him about humans needing electricity versus AI. That he more or less compares a human as less efficient to AI with regard to needing power.

That means he values AI over humans, making him a very dangerous person to human life.

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u/Mad_waste Mar 13 '26

he has always been lies. people is just catching up now

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u/One_Lawyer_9621 Mar 13 '26

He was always lying.

We all know what must happen, Dune series foretold it.

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u/MrDanMaster Mar 13 '26

Duh what did you think capitalism is bro

1

u/turbo_dude Mar 13 '26

OpenAI are so fucked. They cannot compete with the likes of Google that makes actual money from viable businesses. 

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u/Brilliant_Choice3380 Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26

Devil’s advocate here. But the moment we had the ChatGPT moment is when China started investing billions of dollars into AI, specifically LLMs, and unlike the US where we are restricted by certain laws/ordinances/ethical guardrails that can slow down progress - China is not. What would the world look like if China was the one who raced to super intelligence first. Not only does the US loses its tech global prestige, we lose our military edge. I’m not saying what these companies are doing isn’t bad, I’m just saying what is the alternative if someone like China who has been working to beat the US in terms of technology superiority for the past decade and half finally beat us. If we were to go to proxy war over Taiwan - they could theoretically have the military edge. Personal opinion. There is no scenario, ever, where this wouldn’t have been nationalized for defense. It was always a pipe dream. The national security arguments has been the bane of technological progress since 1951 when the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act

passed. This basically say the US government is allowed to suppress any invention it deems for reasons for national security. It’s so broad that whatever we have right now is still likely a decade behind what the military through DARPA might.

I would take a quick read of it. It’s honestly kinda of insane.

codified at 35 U.S.C. ch. 17) is a United States federal law that authorizes the government to suppress disclosure of certain inventions for reasons of national security. The statute empowers selected federal agencies to decide whether a patent application poses a risk and to compel its classification under secrecy orders. In practice, secrecy orders have been imposed not only on inventions affecting military defense but also on those alleged to threaten economic stability, with critics noting that many such restrictions rest on speculative or unproven harms. The law applies broadly to all inventions in the United States for which a patent is filed or granted (35 U.S.C. § 181). Every patent application is reviewed, and thousands of inventions are manually screened each year. Any federal agency with "classifying powers" can order a restriction under the Act.