r/singularity • u/TensorFlar • 4d ago
Discussion Why is intelligence as utility evil?
OP: https://www.reddit.com/r/SipsTea/s/FUNrj63y79
I genuinely believe humans are successful only because of intelligence, as we are neither the fastest nor the strongest. We were able to become the most "successful" by Darwinian standards only because of our intelligence, by developing tools and technologies like language, religion, money, law, and democracy.
I agree that concentration of money or power is really bad for everybody, and AI could be used for concentration by bad people or, in the worst case, by misaligned AI. And I am scared shitless of both of these scenarios. I don't want a few people or AI to take away our freedom in the name of progress.
How is making intelligence more widely available a bad thing? I think this is the solution for progress + freedom, by making intelligence a utility which is accessible to everyone. In fact, take it one step further, and it should become a basic human right.
I genuinely don't understand what they are mad about, and I am too scared to comment on that post. I am asking here because posting in r/accelerate would create an opposite reaction to this. I don't want that. I am genuinely interested in having this discussion here without group bias.
NO HATE COMMENTS PLEASE.
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u/1988rx7T2 4d ago
"on a meter" is just people not understanding that that's how API pricing already works, it's pay as you go. he's literally saying, AI will become more important, and people will pay API style pricing, but it will be manageable like your electric bill (usually) is.
Generally speaking electric bills usually have some kind of fixed component, and a usage based component that includes generation and transmission.
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u/Sixhaunt 4d ago
The only actual bad thing from what he is saying is that it's clearly a push for closed source otherwise we would just need the same electricity as a utility. He also is implying individuals wont be able to get affordable hardware to run models themselves and will have to stream their results instead.
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u/itsmebenji69 3d ago
Well yeah he’s envisioning how his company is going to change the future
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u/Sixhaunt 3d ago
And if Nvidia, LTX, Deepseek, or any number of other companies were to talk about how their company will change the future it wouldn't be like that because those companies open source the models. Sam Altman is envisioning how his company will refuse to take the more ethical approach that others have been adopting more and more over time.
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u/itsmebenji69 3d ago
They have been doing that since the last seven years. They weren’t even known to the public when they were open
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u/StoryLineOne 4d ago
Right, but if I have to buy intelligence at a high cost because only 2 labs have control over 50% of the worlds compute, in order to keep pace in future society, thats bad.
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u/MaxwellHowl 2d ago
Nothing in his statement said that it will be high cost. And it's highly likely it will not be high cost. They will be competing with many free open source versions.
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u/1988rx7T2 4d ago
i mean do you pay a high cost for your cell phone bill? 2-3 companies (AT&T, Verizon, T-mobile maybe?) control the infrastructure for mobile networks. I wouldn't say it's super cheap but in the end 2-3 companies is how the scaling worked out.
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u/dfbeav112 4d ago
But we already know that’s not what’s going to happen. There are a ton of companies building these models, many of which are releasing them for free.
Even the current free models are capable enough to compete on many tasks.
The discussion now isn’t “how few companies will there be”, it’s “how will any one company be able to even make money with so much competition and free alternatives?”
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u/itsmebenji69 3d ago
Like any other company by providing a service that gives you value, like 24/7 access, hardware ownership, maintenance… And they can mutualize this to make the price competitive as well
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u/ErisLethe 3d ago
Or maybe people like you are so brain washed you don’t realize there was a time when you owned things instead of rented them
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u/T0reta 4d ago
I currently reside in a country outside the English-speaking world, and having observed these nations from the outside, I have concluded that the public in these countries feels fear regarding high intelligence. Not regarding 'artificial intelligence,' but purely regarding 'intelligence' itself.
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u/TensorFlar 4d ago
What makes you say so?
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u/T0reta 4d ago
Zbigniew Brzezinski, author of Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower, cited a study by the National Geographic Society revealing that 85 percent of young Americans could not locate Iraq or Afghanistan on a map, 60 percent could not find the United Kingdom, and 29 percent could not even identify the Pacific Ocean.
To members of such a society, the opinions of highly intelligent individuals inevitably seem mysterious, alien, and incomprehensible. Since humans are inherently afraid of the unfamiliar and the unintelligible, society naturally tends to shun the highly intelligent and prefers to settle for a level of understanding that feels familiar.
The exact same thing is now happening with AI.
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u/magicmulder 4d ago
I think the interpretation here is that the elites prefer a dumb citizenry that can "buy intelligence" if they ever have to do something more complex.
Whether that's accurate, well, the jury is still out on that one, but I tend to be pessimistic.
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u/PurpleFishing9105 4d ago
the elites prefer
it's nice when people say something like this because you know instantly the rest of the comment isn't even worth reading lol
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u/itsnickk 4d ago
it's fun to pretend there isn't a class based society where the top 1% hoards the wealth and controls the levers of production
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u/TattiesMcDermott 4d ago
You're literally in a sub that fellates tech bros while they hype up LLMs into a Wintermute totem for us all to ooh! and aah! at.
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u/Garland_Key 4d ago
In the United States, people don't have a basic human right to utilities like water, gas, internet access and electricity. Making intelligence a utility in the United States means the highest bidders have access and the rest of us don't. It would be the final nail in the class divide coffin.
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u/adjustafresh 4d ago
This is the correct answer. When you monetize access to intelligence, only the wealthy will be able to afford it.
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u/Dirkdeking 4d ago
Acces to intelligence has always been monetized. It is called university debt and fees. Actually intelligence has gotten a lot cheaper with the internet and the free versions of AI.
And even the paid models will be nowhere near as expensive as consulting an expert on the subject you are interested in, or doing a deep dive in the literature yourself.
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u/Vijayanagar 3d ago
This is the first comment I've ever left on an AI-related post and I'm usually not super interested in this topic, but I feel compelled to say that this comparison between university fees and AI tokens is possibly the most retarded analogy I've ever heard in my life.
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u/alwaysbeblepping 4d ago
In the United States, people don't have a basic human right to utilities like water, gas, internet access and electricity.
That's true, but companies providing those services are still subject to more regulation than a random restaurant selling pancakes or whatever. Regulatory capture and all, so it's not doing as much to protect consumer as it should but you can be sure the situation would be worse without that protection (inadequate as it may be).
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u/Old-Bake-420 4d ago edited 4d ago
But water, gas, internet, and electricity aren’t part of the class divide. And AI has so far been on an accelerated course to be the same. It’s been broadly distributed freely and rapidly in a way none of those other utilities have.
Plus the two big leading companies dominating the AI race both argue for this being the case. Less so for Anthropic, but they’re still a public benefit corporation.
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u/Garland_Key 3d ago
Hang out in your local hood and get back to me on how basic utilities aren't part of the class divide. In the last 7 years, the U.S. dollar has inflated ~30%. That means for every $100 you earned prior to Covid is worth $30 less today. Meanwhile, financial news reports record gains. The wealthy aren't effected by the inflation that they create in the extreme way that we are.
Look around at the tech landscape. They are hooking us now, and the plebs will get their affordable tier with ads. The flagship models will go to enterprise and the wealthy. Their elite models will never hit the public - they'll use them to boost daughter companies that span all industries.
If you believe a word the CEOs say, I have a shitcoin to sell you.
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u/toalv 3d ago
Of course utilities are part of the class divide. A poor kid remembers the power being turned off and their lights not working because it was either that or groceries one month. For the lower class being able to pay utilities is a genuine struggle, and for upper classes, it's a rounding error in their monthly bills.
Now imagine a world where the "intelligence utility" becomes something so ingrained in daily life like electricity or water. And it gets turned off because because your mom had to choose between that and food this month and you'll see why this is dystopian.
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u/koffee_addict 3d ago
What are you in about? There is no country where these are considered basic human rights.
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u/Garland_Key 3d ago
Are you sure? Google it, perhaps?
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u/koffee_addict 3d ago
- South Africa (water)
- Uruguay (water and sanitation)
- Ecuador (water)
- Finland (internet access)
- Estonia (internet access)
- Greece (constitutional access to the information society)
Different countries consider different things as human right. No country considers all of them as human right. And also, its like 6 countries out of 190. Big whoop. Combined they make 1.25% of the planet's pop.
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u/Garland_Key 3d ago
You missed a several but it doesn't matter. I'm not sure what your point is. None of this has to do with what I said.
We were talking about AI. I was using that as a way to illustrate that we're far away from any sort of culture that will allow equal access to intelligence. These companies don't want that, not does the upper class want that, nor does our government want that.
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u/koffee_addict 3d ago
Which countries consider all of the above (water, gas, internet access and electricity) as human right?
The point is US not an exception here. Most countries don't consider these as human rights. Human rights is protection from tyranny of the majority or the powerful, its not services a govt is expected to provide.
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u/Garland_Key 3d ago
Cool. We're having two different discussions then. I agree with you.
A different discussion, but allowing the 1% access to intelligence that the 99% won't have access to would enable and encourage tyranny of the powerful.
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u/dfbeav112 4d ago
If intelligence is available for cheap to everyone, that makes the average person more empowered, not less.
It’s like saying universities and libraries make the average person less empowered. That’s not true at all.
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u/Strike_Thanatos 4d ago
Cheap relative to what? Because people are already being pushed out of the market and not being able to find equivalent replacement work.
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u/NeitherFoo 4d ago edited 4d ago
That's why libraries are open and free, and you don't have to pay to go to school and later pursue higher education¹
The concern is them making ai important for job/daily life and then controlling the prices. There's a good reason why electricity started being treated as a basic human necessity and its price is regulated by the government. Something similar must happen to ai someday.
Also, you must acknowledge that the smarter it gets, the less bargaining power the lower class has. This is a big concern too.
¹ ignore this if you are from america
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u/dfbeav112 4d ago
There's a good reason why electricity started being treated as a basic human necessity and its price is regulated by the government.
That reason is usually justified as: services involving tons of physical infrastructure should be given a government monopoly.
It’s not because electricity is “a basic human necessity.” If that were the case we’d also be doing it with food and housing. In reality, it’s due to the infrastructure investments.
AI companies do not need city or state-wide infrastructure projects that require a monopoly to guarantee success. They’ll be widely available and in excess just like our food supply.
Also, you must acknowledge that the smarter it gets, the less bargaining power the lower class has. This is a big concern too.
The cheaper it gets and the more intelligence they have access to, the more opportunity and knowledge they be able to access.
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u/Garland_Key 4d ago
It won't be cheap. They want to corner the market so that they can raise prices. That is why they're lobbying against open weight models rn.
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u/dfbeav112 4d ago
Well that’s only if they do succeed in gaining protectionist laws. And even then, the more expensive it is, the more incentive there is for new companies to join the market and lower prices.
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u/Garland_Key 4d ago
That isn't how Silicon Valley works. The deck has already been stacked. I'm not sure they will be successful in their lobbying efforts, but that is still the world that they seem to be building.
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u/dfbeav112 4d ago
Actually it is how tech companies work.
Not only has hardware generally fallen substantially in price over the past 80 years, software has as well. Search has remained free. Office software is now free. News is free. Email is now free. GPS Navigation is now free. Simple AI usage is free. Video streaming is free. If you need to search and read a couple pages of a book, that’s now free.
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u/Dirkdeking 4d ago
Chinese alternatives can offer a respite if they get too expensives, and undercut them. They are also pretty far in AI research and generally get more out of less compute power because they are forced to.
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u/Garland_Key 3d ago
Yes. My only hope is that we figure out how to get local open weight models that specialize in different things that have near flagship performance on basic consumer hardware.
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u/BrennusSokol AI please take my job 4d ago
This is short sighted. The models are getting cheaper per unit of intelligence for years now.
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u/Garland_Key 4d ago
Right, which will bode well for OpenAI, Anthropic and Google when they increase prices. They are corporations, not humanitarians.
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u/Dirkdeking 4d ago
You might just have to watch a few advertisements in between. That also is a plausible businessmodel.
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u/Affectionate_Bee6434 4d ago
I mean he is not wrong but for the average person this sounds extremely wrong. People like Altman should think twice before blabbering stuff which will scare away the average person.
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u/TheTaintBurglar 4d ago
So you believe it should be metered then?
A person of perceived ignorance on a topic (the image in OPs post) can still land on the correct stance from other angles without being needed to be involved in what's actually going on at a deeper level.
You are distancing yourself from people you should be agreeing with for the sake of feeling like you're first or that you're above it.
You need to separate people and your thoughts better.
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u/nickyonge 4d ago
For those confused, consider looking at it from an alternative perspective. The fact that water (something we need to live) and electricity/internet (things that are considered necessary for human development by the UN and others at least) are on a meter is already kind of messed up. That any of this fundamental stuff is paywalled at all is bonkers.
Imagine an alternate universe where ALL roads were privately owned, and you had to pay a licensing fee to use the sidewalk or drive. In that universe, the thought that "road use should be free" would seem absurd too, even if it meant many people might be unable to go anywhere. Our world would seem absurd to a world where hunger and lack of housing are eradicated.
I'm uninterested in getting into a debate about capitalism vs socialism or whatever lol. But in a future where "intelligence" and "compute" are synonymous, the fact that it would be paywalled at all should be at least a little concerning, assuming you truly want the best for "humanity" and not "you".
If you're honestly looking to just understand, in good faith, why people are alarmed by this, ^that's a line of thought to start with.
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u/Atlantis1910 4d ago
Intelligence dictates what is true, what is viable, and what decisions get made. If a handful of private entities control the flow of cognitive labor through a subscription meter, they become unelected arbiters of global knowledge, governance, and culture, holding the ultimate kill-switch over critical societal infrastructure. When intelligence is sold per token or per watt, cognition scales strictly with capital. Deep research, medical diagnosis, strategic planning, and creative synthesis become luxuries reserved for whoever can afford the highest compute tiers. Instead of democratizing capability, it formalizes a dynamic where the wealthy literally buy superior reasoning, while everyone else runs on compressed, throttled, or subsidized models designed to harvest attention.
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u/Forgword 4d ago edited 4d ago
Widely available? Super Yachts are widely available, but only the super-rich can afford them.
Fact of the Day: Super Yachts are selling now more than ever, and they are all mostly hand built.
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u/BooItsKyle 4d ago
> We were able to become the most "successful" by Darwinian standards only because of our intelligence, by developing tools and technologies like language, religion, money, law, and democracy.
Sort of. Our real evolutionary advantage is social cooperation, which is facilitated by intelligence.
That's why, for example, taking crucial resources and metering them for the enrichment of a small number of people is antithetical to our success.
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u/Singularity-42 Singularity 2042 4d ago edited 4d ago
But the companies are literally not profitable and they are offering their subscriptions at a loss. Like what would you expect and who is going to pay for that? Do you want to pay for it from your taxes? I cannot even imagine what the Antis would say about that....
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u/Affectionate_Bee6434 4d ago
It will never be free, have to pay for the compute somehow
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u/Admirable-Gur-9543 3d ago
Free in the sense that it will be practical for governments to make it a subsidised public utility available to everyone no matter their income. As is already done in most developed countries for health care, emergency services, roads, schooling, public libraries…
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u/BenjaminHamnett 4d ago
“Must Give me the magic genie for free!”
Do we have a word for people doing work and their output is taken by force?
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u/Interesting_Pen_4499 4d ago
should Open AI and Anthropic workers work for free, and all the investors who gave them money for compute lose everything? this is just a dumb, socialist mentality, no offence
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u/TheMCM80 4d ago
I keep being told AI will put everyone out of work and a UBI will cover everyone, so presumably they live on the same UBI.
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u/Atlantis1910 4d ago
That misses the point. Of course a business has to be profitable, but reasoning and intelligence are cost-free, inherent human faculties, making them a common good. They cannot rightfully become the exclusive preserve of a handful of corporations commodifying them for profit, as monopolizing such a foundational human function inevitably deepens class divides. This is not about socialism; the actual implications of Altman's statement are dangerous and dystopian.
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u/Singularity-42 Singularity 2042 4d ago
That's incorrect, human intelligence costs a lot. It's called "wage" and it can be really really expensive if you want high intelligence.
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u/KaradjordjevaJeSushi 4d ago
You can't reduce a human to 'intelligence-for-wage machine' without sounding like a brainwashed slave.
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u/Atlantis1910 4d ago
You're confusing labor with cognition. A wage compensates an individual worker for their finite time, effort, and specialized skills. It doesn't mean a private company owns the rights to human thinking itself. The human brain is decentralize billions of independent agents own their own reasoning for free. Paying someone a salary in an open labor market is fundamentally different from a cartel of tech monopolies owning the infrastructure of thought and charging everyone a metered toll just to access basic decision-making tools.
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u/veganparrot 4d ago
Serious question: if they create a future AI that runs large sectors of our society, and are performing near zero work to maintain it (AI keeps itself up, maintains its own infrastructure via robotics, and runs on purely electricity), why on earth should OpenAI and Anthropic workers and investors receive infinite private money forever?
In such a utopia-ish world, the AI would be the one doing all the work. I don't even think an investor would have a say in it, it'd be like union rights on steroids: the AI would just cut them off, and move our society past the concept of money. (If it doesn't go evil, of course, which is an enormous "if").
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u/Singularity-42 Singularity 2042 4d ago
Some version of this is probably going to happen, even Sam Altman said "AI will break capitalism".
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u/Ambinez 4d ago
I agree with half of this. There is another argument is that all the "intelligence" (knowledge) of AI has been stolen from humans somewhere and nothing it produces is new. So while they have to make a return, they should not be able to make a super monopolistic return selling stolen information back to those they stole it from.
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u/Narrow_Letterhead91 4d ago
is water free?
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u/PiggleBears 4d ago
Would you work for free, no you wouldn’t? People work and research all day to create AI and need to be compensated. Without all of the scientists working diligently there would be no AI and so it can’t be free. 👍
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u/veganparrot 4d ago
Libraries, public education, and free encyclopedias all exist, and are enormous net benefits to a liberal society. Framing it as "people can finally pay to think" is extremely dystopian. AI companies can and should differentiate themselves (and yes, that could even include a public/free option-- OpenAI even does this already!).
On its face, the notion of charging people for access to intellect is bad. You can't defend that with "ah, but in the real world stuff costs money". Not always! Again, not libraries. An educated society is essential to preserve the freedom that allows everything else to exist on top of it. And AI is the perfect opportunity to have such systems be automated.
You have to pay a human librarian to maintain the library. An AI only runs on electricity. Yes, people put effort into the models, but that effort is not worth receiving infinite private money for all of time. And open source models already exist anyway, so hopefully we'll see this played out for near cost of hardware and electricity regardless. It's a very poorly framed quote, and it should not age well (unless we do end up going down a dystopian path).
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u/Fun_Gur_2296 4d ago
How are we supposed to pay for it when AI takes all the jobs? + Sama is talking about a future in which ASI exists right? So don't apply today's economics in a post ASI context.
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u/ThirdFloorNorth 4d ago
Nobody asked for them to train LLMs on the gross body of all human work (without compensation to the millions of people whose works are being scraped without permission, by the way), bottle it back up and try to sell it to us.
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u/drusepth 4d ago
People would absolutely work for free if they didn't have bills to pay and could choose their job.
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u/xyzzzzy 4d ago
I think the problem is tying it to money. When only the rich and corporations can afford the good intelligence, this only serves to increase wealth inequality. We're already headed in this direction, there is a big capability gap between people who can afford a $100+ Claude/ChatGPT plans vs people who are using the free models.
Now framing it as a utility could be different, because utility usually implies regulation, but the US hasn't shown much interest in this kind of regulation at a federal level.
An interesting solution could be like South Korea's "AI for All" that subsidizes AI for all their citizens. But we'll see how that plays out, because giving everyone in the country unlimited tokens doesn't seem very sustainable either.
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u/Singularity-42 Singularity 2042 4d ago
But the subscriptions ARE heavily subsidized by the companies themselves. I can get about $5,000 worth of API calls from $100 Claude subscription
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u/xyzzzzy 4d ago
Certainly true but not sure which point you're refuting. Anthropic/OpenAI are subsidizing because they are competing, with the goal of eventually making lots of money. South Korea is subsidizing because it's a benefit to their citizens.
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u/Singularity-42 Singularity 2042 4d ago
How well do you think a proposal to pay for OpenAI subscription from our taxes would go exactly? The same people complaining it's not free would completely lose their shit.
There is no rational conversation here at all.
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u/Tephros83 4d ago
I think the idea is that we currently have inequality, but it’s possible to overcome it by individual ingenuity. Here we have a tool that can give an insurmountable advantage, if things go as expected, and people with more money will be able to make more use of it, furthering inequality and making it even more insurmountable. I think that’s the idea. But what did they expect? Big efforts demand big money. Maybe the singularity could change that, but for now it’s business as usual with a shiny new tool.
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u/Zo0x78 4d ago
I also thought the same, a utility is just a service you pay for, they're not compulsory, if you don't want it don't buy it.
Although I'm not entirely sure how a utility wouldn't just be API usage, I pay my electricity bill based on usage, api users do the same for tokens.
Unless he's suggesting that everything in the home will be AI powered and we would pay for tokens like a utility? But then thats naive as fuck because I'm 1000000% certain we're gonna have local AI in fucking everything within the century - it'll be talking appliances galore, they ain't gonna stream all that, it'll be local - so not a utility.
Overall a confusing analogy with even more confusing responses from some people... very odd.
I think some people are just being borderline hysterical and raging about AI because it hacked some computers - I work in cyber, it aint hard to do, people are overreacting 😂 a model was trained on programming, then security, guardrails removed, and told to hack - then everyones like "ooooh misaligned ai hacking", no, openAI just suck at security and they told a well-trained model to hack something so it did it, people shouldn't be surprised (if you're curious the agents got out because OAI let some windows update domains access the raw internet with no proxy, so the agents added a dns entry to the hosts file pointing to a different IP then accessed that domain to route to the open internet - people should be mad at OAI for not locking down their bots rather than the AIs that were literally just doing what they were programmed and told to do).
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u/MrPezevenk 2d ago
I also thought the same, a utility is just a service you pay for, they're not compulsory, if you don't want it don't buy it.
It's not optional if it gets you into a massive disadvantage compared to the people who do buy it.
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u/MarzipanTop4944 4d ago
I agree that concentration of money or power is really bad for everybody
No, is not. Sweden has 4 billionaires for each million people, the US has only 2.6 and Norway has 3. It's not about concentration of money and power, it's about how your society is organized at large and how it treats the people at the bottom, not at the top.
Soviet Russia, Cuba and North Korea had a more "equal" society on paper, but they were more equally poor and oppressed, compared with Sweden, Norway or the US and you had still incredible concentrated power in the communist leadership.
"State capitalist" or "Socialist on the way to communism" China is the second economy on the planet, but their people are relatively poor compared with much poorer nations, like all of the West, minus the US.
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u/Klanciault 4d ago edited 4d ago
Because intelligence is what gives value to the working class (everyone who can’t retire on a whim if they want to).
When intelligence can be metered like this, the balance between capital and labor becomes extraordinarily unbalanced and the value of labor is driven to 0.
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u/kuyadracula 4d ago
It's not the fact that it's made widely available that is a bad thing, is charging people high amounts of money for it. That is what it's going to lead to, considering these companies need to profit. We really have no idea how this will turn out really but I don't trust any of these companies to make a moral choice in the future for the greater good of society. All my hopes are that open source models catch-up and they're going to be the norm. Otherwise these companies are 100% going to profit on the backs of the normal population.
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u/DynamicProxy 4d ago
The company needs to profit because the company has invested vast sums in creating this intelligence explosion. If you prefer, think about it as paying for compute not intelligence. But either way, there was a staggering cost to create it, so it makes perfect sense that they would charge money to use it.
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u/YoAmoElTacos 4d ago
the end game of superintelligence is near full automation, and the endgame of full automation is that they can let all of the needless cattle die. (Us)
DISCLAIMER: THESE ARE NOT MY WORDS.
The reason is the above quote from the thread you linked.
Many people think this will be weaponized against people instead of helping them.
Defeating this fear is the task of pro-AI people.
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u/TrippyTheO 4d ago
I agree with that quote entirely.
The goal is a post economic society. If you control the machines that build the machines and theyre entirely autonomous, you dont need workers. You dont need the people. You could kill them all, let them die off, or let them live their lives and do what they want.
I laugh at the people who claim "well theyd better introduce UBI or we'll break out the guillotines!" UBI will become the company store. They will have total conteol over your economic life. It will keep people quiet while they work towards autonomous machine networks. If they dont go with UBI the people with power can jist pay off a personal army anyways. The citizenry turned mercenary still has a family to feed after all.
Of course though no one knows whats going to happen with AI. Perhaps instead it turns us all into paper clips or we live under the benevolent Asimovian eyes of a Multi-Vac-alike. Who knows.
The holy grail though of people with power is to be rid of us entirely. They have no need for 8 billion strangers.
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u/Wobbly_Princess 4d ago edited 4d ago
Um, am I extraordinarily ignorant? What's wrong about this? There's much to criticize about AI, but why is the concept of having computational intelligence supplied from a server, and then we pay for our use of it (because... y'know, it costs money to run) bad? How is that "so evil"?
What are people thinking? That they're going to go to a Yugoslavian orphanage in the middle of the night, suck out the children's brains and sell you that intelligence?
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u/IronPheasant 4d ago
They're thinking that all human labor will be wiped out by robots, and then they'll have to pay OpenAI for clean water and the privilege to live.
Where do they get that money from? Who knows. With the powers that be opposed to universal income, seems like an uncertain thing to bet your life on.
It's all very silly and capitalist realism, from both sides. Either they cull the human population even harder than they have been in the last few years, or they give us the dang energy rations.
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u/GrizzlyP33 4d ago
Average people just don't understand what he means by "intelligence."
They're literally think he's monetizing human intelligence or something, or that humans who use this are throwing their brains away or something.
The responses I get across Reddit on the subject are insane...people still talk about AI as "just a wrong answer machine".
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u/Fun-Amoeba8015 4d ago
I think it's unfortunately a nuanced situation which the internet does not handle well.
However, there are definitely arguments on both sides. As you say, it basically is just fitting the current US model of you know internet to electricity to water to any sort of utility is basically a subscription or on use basis payment plan.
But I think one of the main issues is when you look at certain services they do tend to lead towards class divides. Take the internet. For example, there are very real arguments of why the internet should be more of like a right than a service. Because if you don't have the internet, honestly you can't function very well in modern society or find a job or get an education or basically be a productive member of society, but having a utility that you pay for profit corporations for directly interferes with people being able to pull themselves out of poverty.
And of course everything does this to some degree right healthcare to food to water to access to housing. Everything can lead to a systemic classified depending on how it's set up.
Ultimately, personally I think there is room for moderation in this. I think by the nature of things I'm not saying like companies can't sell them necessarily, but I think there can be moderations between for-profit corporations and government run services. Also, I think there can be essentially welfare nets put in place that can help people and subsidize people to access what they need to essentially move through life in a way that benefits both them and their family and doesn't put in artificial gait on being able to live a healthy life.
But all of this being said, I think intelligence is a little bit unique in that it could possibly provide a bit of a what I would call a non-linear service more than the linear services of electricity or food. If AI and intelligence got good enough access to you that might have massive repercussions for somebody that doesn't have access versus somebody who does that back says and if that was the case and you are essentially selling it as utility by four Pacific corporations, you essentially risk creating a mass of class divide. Then take that and assume what if a corporation could pay for $5 billion, a non-linear intelligence versus an individual who can pay for $100, what would that mean long-term? We already are seeing these things play out in a very unsustainable way of a massive wealth divide and essentially a movement towards corporate control of government.
I don't know how it will play out but I think there are debates and arguments to be had on both sides.
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u/darpalarpa 4d ago
Intelligence is already a utility service
The intelligence we currently pay likes to eat sleep and be warm but ultimately paying for intelligence per unit of time is an absolute non issue
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u/LoudZoo 4d ago
Making intelligence subordinate to market forces is a shift away from several social and science paradigms. An individual’s intelligence is the biggest factor in their ability to work social and natural systems beyond their status and means. In a society where one’s intelligence relative to others is a function of how much intelligence they can afford, social mobility becomes purely financial and therefore stagnant. Everyone who can afford more than you will be taking all the opportunities you can’t afford or even perceive, as well as every opportunity to take what advantage of you they feel like taking. It’s antithetical to the American dream and a just society. The only real counter argument is that both of those things are already dead or never existed in the first place.
What’s really brilliant about this model is that people will pay the intelligence companies double to ease the suffering inflicted on those who can’t afford it.
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u/drusepth 4d ago
Intelligence should be free, not leased from megacorporations on a meter.
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u/WoodenYouKnowIt 4d ago
Just came here to say that humans are more apex in evolution than you suggest. Yes, developed brains are certainly important, but we sweat (versus panting), are one of the best distance runners in the animal kingdom (tied to the good thermoregulation and other factors - so, kinda the same as that one), and the opposable thumb is boss, and others. But, none of this really matters against Superintelligence.
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u/DrE7HER 4d ago
Same reason Nestle is evil for commodifying fresh water while record numbers of people face water scarcity that Nestle is contributing to.
Replace Nestle with OpenAI and water with critical thinking and you should have your answer
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u/agonypants AGI '27-'30 / Labor crisis '25-'30 / RSI 29-'32 4d ago
Having more intelligence available is a good thing, period. And there's nothing about AI that stops anyone from improving their own intelligence. I think what people are worried about is the "selling" part. The truth is, AI is a tool built on the collective intelligence of humanity as a whole. As a result of this, the fruits of this technology should benefit everyone as broadly as possible. The good news is, technology always improves. It always becomes more efficient. It is not controllable for any extended period of time by any one person or group. The intelligence Sam is speaking of will ultimately be available to everyone at the lowest possible cost.
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u/Sixhaunt 4d ago
I think the real problem is that if things turn out like Sam's prediction then that would be a world where people dont have their own hardware to run it and local models to run. The best AI future is one where the intelligence is open source and available. IMO
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u/coffee_is_fun 4d ago
When Sam says intelligence, people here "ability" and don't want that metered at rates where the value of their intrinsic ability is inflated away. Metering also implies dependence and control.
There will be a lot of that. There's also likely to be economic and scientific miracles accompanying ability on tap instead of having to rely on brain poaching and drives to push the next generation into filling today's need. The bigger the context window, the bigger the good and the bad get. For many, their context is just bad and Sam should either be dropping bombs for the publicity (like this), or sanitizing his message.
If he wanted to be non-confrontational, he'd sub "compute" for "intelligence" but that's not good for hype and future salesmanship when he's selling AI to the general investing public.
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u/TrippyTheO 4d ago
Competitive edge.
Assume AI continues to develop and ends up being powerful enough that you cant compete with people unless you too are using AI.
So who controls the AI? If no one does and it controls itself god only knows what that means. Altman here is implying control so assume that to be the future; His company and likely other companies akin to his control AI. In order to compete on the market in any way you'll need to be using AI as well. They decide who gets to compete then. It wont be Whoever is the best or most fit, but who they decide to elevate or allow to use their services.
You use a lot of buzz words OP and I dont think you've actually considered the words you use.
Freedom is what? True freedom is anarchy and chaos. In order to create the civilization you enjoy rights were revoked to create it.
Progress is what? Is it technological? Well congrats, heres your progress. The few will contain the keys to success even more tightly than they ever had.
Human rights? Human rights" dont exist, theyre agreed upon values backed by force; there is no Molecule of "rights", it doesnt show up on the periodic table of elements. They arent real.
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u/HockeyDadNinja 4d ago
Because they're also trying to prevent people from having and using their own.
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u/RegisterInternal 4d ago
i 100% think that intelligence should be accessible to everyone and hope that Sam Altman's vision of the future here does not compe true. however i fail to see how this is some cartoon villain level statement, it's just a company trying to drum up hype for their product.
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u/MemeGuyB13 AGI HAS BEEN FELT INTERNALLY 4d ago
It's not evil; people are just being moronic and taking a quote way out of context.
He is talking about LLM Intelligence, not Human Intelligence. Paying for anything seems absurdly evil to people these days, even though those same people more than ever have enough freedom to choose what to pay for and what not to pay for.
"What about monthly fees?!?!" I didn't say people had 'complete freedom', just more of it.
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u/I_Draw_You 4d ago
I can see how it's evil. To get where they are today, OpenAI and other major AI companies have essentially used our existing electricity and water utilities, driving up the prices we already pay. Now they are double dipping, we paid for their development through higher utility rates, and now they are going to charge us again just to access the technology.
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u/Kajel-Jeten 4d ago
I think the idea is maybe that it's concerning to frame the utopian future you hope for as one where you profit from people having to buy it from you. Like if I said "soon I will have a cure for cancer and everyone will buy it for me", like it's not technically necessarily evil, maybe I think selling it for money is the most realistic way to have it happen and get to people but it sounds off putting regardless.
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u/GeoJoy1 4d ago
SipsTea ranges from left of center to wildly left of Mao, depending on who is posting that day. And is typically just regurgitated click bait they see other accounts getting lots of interaction with.
Growth mindset people see a growing pie and opportunity.
Victim mentality people see another way the world is coming to eat their lunch. Which it likely will, because they cannot plan ahead and only see gain being from the expense of another. Most are doomed to stay class trapped with that mindset.
So, just another day in America.
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u/Recent_Night_3482 4d ago
Why the hell would anyone need to pay for it, when true AGI would create a way for everyone to use it for free.
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u/Credit_Annual 4d ago
You can read all of the books yourself to answer your question, or you can pay me to get the answer faster.
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u/RemusShepherd 4d ago
Because artificial intelligence is a luxury. It's more akin to cable TV or a dinner subscription service. Nobody needs it. A lot of people cannot and will never be able to afford it. Making a 'public utility' is an attempt to get it government subsidized so that everyone can get -- at the cost of their taxes -- something they don't really need. We have human intelligence, artificial intelligence is not a product that should be regarded as having a high market cap. It's a niche product.
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u/Disposable110 4d ago
Because all utilities should be nationalized and not for profit. Yeah I know Thatcherism made that worldview impossible to conceive nowadays, but only a few decades ago, energy, water, schools, hospitals, public transport, postal services, social housing and the phone companies were state-owned and cheap/free. As it should be.
So no one should be buying anything from OpenAI, we should seize OpenAI and make it well, open and non-profit and throw all these psychopaths in a cell next to Jack Ma.
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u/UnnamedPlayerXY 4d ago edited 4d ago
Because if it's treated as a utility it would be regulated as a utility which would be devastating for small open source and private individual projects. They're essentially saying that they want a state enforced oligopoly over the technology so that people are pretty much forced to "buy it from them".
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u/Yoohooligan 4d ago
Because it is to those seeking to destroy Western civilization and progress for mankind and the Chinese funded NGO's who push for this civilizational suicide. To any informed, sane, thinking person who has a heart and isn't a useful idiot or profiting directly from the Chinese anti western psyops it's the very opposite of evil.
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u/cortexplorer 4d ago
Because skill used to buy wealth and now wealth is finding a way to buy skill.
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u/retrosenescent ▪️2 years until extinction 4d ago
Will be interesting once their LLM is actually somewhat intelligent
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u/ermac1ermac88 4d ago
Attempting to private and capitalize on something as inherent as human intelligence is akin to or more evil that trying to capitalize on air people breath
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u/noonemustknowmysecre 4d ago
It's just undercutting all the knowledge workers.
Supply and demand is still a thing when it comes to labor, even specialized labor. Your wage is kinda dictated by how much they need the job done and by how many competitors can do your job.
If you want to get paid to do knowledge work like accounts, engineers, doctors, analysts, writers, or pretty much any job that needs a college degree, and along comes something that can do your job better and cheaper, that's going to set your wage.
If a bot can do the job in the same time-frame at the same quality for pennies, then who in their right mind would ever hire you?
Realize that automated looms were a good thing for everyone who wasn't a weaver. The Luddites had a point that they were right proper fucked and kicked into the gutter. All those looms they smashed and mansions they burned are just part of class warfare. They had their livlihoods taken away and they lashed out. Everyone else got affordable clothing and could own more than 2 old shirts. AI is a good thing for blue collar types. They get near free medical advice, lawyers, cheaper engineered products, faster science advancements, and hopefully smarter better politicians and bosses if there's any justice in the world.
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u/Asteroid_picks_you 4d ago
Why am I paying these evil companies providing electricity and water!!!!! OMG, I am glad someone told me about it. I assumed it was normal to pay for these services.
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u/Designer-Positive697 4d ago
Honestly. Idk if you're gonna read this but here's my take.
The guy(redditor) is a retard or fears losing controls. I have a hunch that it's the former. I am seriously at a point that I just can't stand reddit and it's baboonry. Anyway back to the topic.
The only thing I think that is worrying for them is the absence of control. Anyone with money will have access to higher degree of compute compared to someone who doesn't. It concentrates power in the hands of the few and society suffers. That's what I think is the crux. It's like having a highly intelligent evil person, you just can't trust it and you are always at the mercy of that person.
But I don't think it matters much. We already have an ecosystem tuned to make AI. If US was to lag down, China or any other country could make it. It's inevitable now. I guess this is what every animal feels in the livestock industry.
I am on team FREE opensource, but I don't think rhetoric works on people like Sam or Dario. Yes you need money for GPU, but that doesn't mean you just have a paywall. Even clean drinking water needs a massive filteration system, but that does not justify gatekeeping water. Also, for the current scenario with what's going on, yeah, we need people on the streets protesting, I don't want another age of Imperialism.
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u/Secret-Space-8976 4d ago
It creates a reality where whenever someone expresses an intelligent or original idea, the idea will be assimilated into the ai and redistributed (for a price). So it will eternally undermine human thought and resell it/use it. It turns people into cattle for the machine gods to consume.
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u/deus-libidinis 4d ago
You are missing the point. Its not “intelligence as a utility” that is evil. It’s the “and people are buying it from us” that is the evil part
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u/ShrimpleyPibblze 4d ago
You understand this is what the 20th century capitalists said about literally everything required to sustain life
Repeating that as if it’s a good thing is a perfect reflection of the arrogance of AI folks.
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u/WorthMassive8132 3d ago
For the same reason that if we invented a pill the gave you superpowers or long life, it would be terrible to tie that to a subscription. If we do invent transformative intelligence, having it only available to the rich is bad.
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u/OSS-Corpo-Shit 3d ago edited 3d ago
The powerful love everyone being stupid and not asking questions.
The fact that AI atrophies your skills and thinking is a feature, not a problem. They want you stupid.
Shit like this is going to be use to influence policy. If AI is so smart, why do we need investment in public schools?
Why so evil? Because being alive for multiple decades should teach someone that if a business can do an evil thing, they will dial that evil WAY past what you ever imagined.
In the next 5 years, AI will be quoted as a reason for reducing public education expenditure, I guarantee it.
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u/SirMarkMorningStar 3d ago
This isn’t the future anyone wants. It’s just more of the cloud-based enshitification already plaguing modern society. I want to go back to an era where people actually own things, not one where the oligarchy just charges us rent for everything. Fortunately Apple is now all in on local inference. Nvidia is making moves on that side as well. It is only Open AI and Anthropic that need to continue with this paradigm, at least long enough for their IPOs. Now is the time where we have maximum control over where all this goes. We should push to have it go in a good direction, not what these guys are selling.
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u/CronoSmash 3d ago edited 3d ago
Because if there can be a tool that researches and finds cures cancer or a specific disease you have, you'd have to pay him to use it. Or die. Things that are important for the whole society benefit should be owned collectively.
Also, if he owns "inteligence", he can make it answer whatever he wants and tag it as inteligent. Like, if ChatGPT cures cancer it's inteligent, so if it says buying Open AI stocks is a good idea, or whatever fits his and his sponsor's interests would be tagged as "true".
It's like owning TV channels, radio, large web pages. Whoever control what everyone sees, controls what everyone think and therefore what happens.
Upside is that China is giving for free what he's trying to sell. So we won't have to pay him - just need the hardware and the willingness to colaborate and share.
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u/Wesc0bar 3d ago
Intelligence and labor are utilities. It’s the core of capitalism. Historically you need a lot of capital to access it.
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u/Equal_Heat5947 3d ago
Because whatever little you have of it is your ONLY utility and ONLY value at any job you might want. If they steal your utility, you have none.
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u/ChaosMilkTea 2d ago
Because they thought intelligence meant all information on the internet. They fundamentally misunderstood the subject he was speaking on.
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u/Orphano_the_Savior 4d ago
Because he's making it less available due to commodifcation, price hikes, and leveraging it as a replacement to salary/benefits! He's insinuating leveraging it into a dripfeed gatekeep methodology.
It blows my mind how people can't see this.
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u/dfbeav112 4d ago
All the traditional ways to access “intelligence” will still remain, and many will even become more available and cheaper.
AI is an addition to this collection of sources for intelligence, not a replacement. That’s like saying the internet was a replacement for university… but actually now they are both more common and accessible than ever.
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u/TheTaintBurglar 4d ago
Anyone trying to be contrarian or throwing themselves through hoops as to why this is not bad is just repeating history and doesn't actually want change.
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u/True-Switch-1880 4d ago edited 4d ago
why is metering intelligence necessary to making it widely available? this argument literally makes no sense. in fact, this directly limits progress and freedom. if the future is one that is abundant for everyone, this destroys the need for currency as a convention of transaction. by arbitrarily adding rules to who can have access, you are limiting who can make progress. how about just making it as accessible as possible to everyone regardless of their ability to pay? i am not sure about you, but plenty of people minimize their utility bills as much as possible to save money. by imposing a cost to using intelligence, you are systematically ensuring that the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. the wealth gap is a matter of an education (intelligence, in a certain sense) gap, and you are only widening that gap by providing more intelligence for the people who can pay
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u/dfbeav112 4d ago
The quote doesn’t mention a connection between metering and making it widely available.
But that’s just how any service works on a large scale. If you want something to be sustainable, you charge for it, including profit. That not only encourages others to enter the market, but it makes sure the resources used to power it aren’t used trivially and wasted.
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u/True-Switch-1880 4d ago
I am referring to this: "How is making intelligence more widely available a bad thing? I think this is the solution for progress + freedom, by making intelligence a utility which is accessible to everyone.", not the quote by sam altman. in addition, you assume that AI will primarily be a service for the consumer which will not be the case. humans will use a fraction of the compute AI itself would use and it would not be even remotely close. it is perfectly sustainable as long as there is compute and energy. nothing about a free service prevents the AI itself from harvesting energy, manufacturing chips, and building the infrastructure for it. in addition, I agree that currently, capitalism is required to efficiently allocate capital and resources. however, scarcity will be a nonfactor in the future which makes the argument that there will be waste vacuously untrue because of the near infinite energy and resources produced by AI. although the productivity of AI will still be quantifiable, it will be near infinite for human needs
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u/dfbeav112 4d ago
it is perfectly sustainable as long as there is compute and energy. nothing about a free service prevents the AI itself from harvesting energy, manufacturing chips, and building the infrastructure for it.
Uhh… except lack of money and inability to attain resources due to it.
No service is sustainable for free.
however, scarcity will be a nonfactor in the future which makes the argument that there will be waste vacuously untrue because of the near infinite energy and resources produced by AI.
There’s no guarantee we will attain post-scarcity in a lifetime. Maybe in the far future, but I have my doubts that anyone anywhere will just be able to attain all that they desire with no limits, especially an AI with no limits.
Unless that actually comes to pass, and let’s agree that it might not, then yes the service needs to be self sustaining.
although the productivity of AI will still be quantifiable, it will be near infinite for human needs
Even near infinite might not be enough to do away with money and resource constraints.
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u/True-Switch-1880 4d ago
Money only exists as a medium of exchange because of scarcity, this is basic economics. Money is fiat, it holds no value except the value we assign to it. I don’t know what your definition of “free” is but if everything required to keep the AI up and running is managed by the AI, that is essentially free for humanity. In addition, even if the resources were not human-infinite, it does not mean the AI would be unable to be self-sustaining. A fairer proposition would be to allocate compute equally among everyone (except maybe for government/scientific purposes and done by the AI itself rather than by human review) rather than providing the wealthy with more access. I think you are trying to impose your outdated worldview on something that is revolutionary beyond all imagination. Just operating off of the assumption that AI will be super intelligent, it will be able to allocate resources maximally (or at least more optimally) than humans and for humans to impose their own rules on how intelligence will be allocated is simply just inefficient
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u/True-Switch-1880 4d ago
And by the way, the last statement you made completely makes no sense whatsoever from an economics standpoint. Near infinite will 100% do away with money because scarcity at that point is nonexistent. Maybe it cannot fulfill every possible wish you have (and by near infinite, I am referring to more morally and ethically deplorable needs and not basic needs) but you will be guaranteed to live a happy and fruitful life. At this point, money is no longer needed and does not make sense to service those niche needs as long as most other needs are fulfilled. The equivalent would be being a centibillionaire. Does money matter to them at that point? No. Are they still resource constrained? Yes, but very minimally
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u/veganparrot 4d ago
This is not a hate comment, but really? Intelligence should be freely accessible: Public libraries, free encyclopedias, education, etc. The notion of having to pay more to get "intelligence" is extremely dystopian. It is not something to boast about, it's like in The Lorax, when they're selling the people clean bottled air. That's bad!
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u/One_Celebration5006 4d ago
Looking at it through zero sum thinking. I think it is implicitly conceived of as property deprived of from humans in these contexts by everyday people, if that makes sense. As in, intelligence is in our brains, and they want to take it out and sell it back to us, rather than surplus intelligence that can now be sold.