It is fair to be critical of Sam and other tech leaders regarding AI, but he has done nothing to begin to justify violence or even the threat of violence against him or his family.
If I torture 1 person that is bad. If I inflict a smaller suffering on millions of people, does it reach parity? Were the Sackler's actions that ruined so many lives, led young girls/boys into forced prostitution, led to so many ODs and suicides, something that ranked close to deserving violence? Or does the 'LLC/Corp' absorb all responsibility like some capitalist papal indulgence?
If the Sackler's actions are visible evil, where on the 'LLC/Corpo' scale does evil turn to 'acceptable business' and the choices made by management to inflict damage on many many people switch to 'acceptable business' where the perpetrators are disconnected from their actions/choices?
'LLC/Corporations' absolve management of liability/accountability in the government eyes, but you are making an assumption that then extends to absolving when it comes to actual morality. While you can try to sell 'articles of incorporation' count as modern indulgences freeing people from sin under the religion of capitalism I'm not sure all of society agrees. I think the concept that LLC/Incorporation is a blanket 'papal indulgence' absolving management of all accountability/moral behavior in our modern techno feudalist social structure is wearing thin for a lot of people. Clunky as hell language but it's a discuss that needs to be had, and better for all sooner rather than later.
If you work to inflict violence on others, you shouldn’t be surprised when it’s attempted to be inflicted back on you. I’m not saying it’s a just worldview, but it is pragmatic.
Justice isn't just about punishing the guilty. It is also about restoring the trust in our society when it has been damaged by criminals. Very few Americans I know have any faith in our justice system's ability to hold the wealthy accountable. As a result, we will see more and more violence as a natural consequence.
Sam Altman could use his considerable wealth to hold billionaires like himself accountable for crimes that they commit through lobbying or funding investigations. Seeing criminal billionaires face justice would go a long to reducing this kind of violence.
Holy shit how is this the first time I am hearing about this? This should not be my first time hearing about this.
> Suchir Balaji (November 21, 1998 – November 26, 2024) was an American artificial intelligence researcher who was found dead one month after accusing OpenAI, his former employer, of violating United States copyright law -Wikipedia
There was a Tacker Carlson interview with Sam Altman where Tacker probed him on Balaji's murder and Sam quickly got confused and disoriented. Make your own conclusions.
Saying he got confused and disoriented is and interesting conclusion to make of that interview. He was defensive from the onset and even went combative when Carlson continued down a specific line of questioning, which he allegedly did at the request of the victim's family.
I totally agree with your statement if we are talking about the average citizen starting to throw Molotovs at his house. If you’re afraid AI is taking your job, just do something else. It’s not the end of the world changing careers.
Plenty of work AI won’t be able to do, or allowed to do without a human assisting in some way that secures the human a good income and way of life.
So if this is done by an individual citizen, they need to be hunted down, arrested, and get the full force of the justice system to deter others from doing the same.
On the other hand, right now, Sam Altman is a valid military target for assassination in the US / Iran war.
OpenAI did snatch up the contract from Anthropic at the Pentagon, and their technology is in some capacity used to murder Iranian HVTs (High Value Targets). Altman is therefore technically a legal HVT for the Iranians.
If you say it’s valid and not a war crime for the US to assassinate former political Iranian figures and their families for aiding the new regime and therefore becoming enemy combatants in the eye of the US Military, it’s also valid to assassinate Altman and his family for doing the same to the other war party.
It’s a bit of a Schrödinger situation. He is technically a valid target in a current war, but not for the private citizen.
In both cases, though, I’d advocate that violence is neither a solution to solve the problem that AI might be creating for a lot of people in the future, nor should he be treated as an enemy combatant and his infant child and wife bombed to smitherens.
Diplomacy is key here, just like it would have been the better solution than going to war with Iran.
If you disagree with Altman, send him a letter, show up at his workplace, talk to the man, gather people who think the same of him you do, write letters to your voted representatives, make calls, vote politicians into office that are anti AI and who will go after him and regulate his company to shit. Bureaucrats can make Altman’s life more miserable than a thousand Molotovs ever could.
If you gather enough support, you can reach the same goal, taking his power over your life away, without any violence.
But are you really surprised people chose violence over the democracy toolbox in the US if they get told by the people in charge of their country that violence is indeed a good way to solve problems, that you should have a "warrior" spirit and everything is up for grabs, even sovereign countries like Greenland because you can outviolence any other nation on the planet?
Violence only creates more violence and as long as there is a president who chooses to put oil in the fire and pretends it’s ok to murder US citizens like Alex Pretti, you don’t really need to wonder if the average citizen starts murdering tech CEOs in the near future.
They just follow the Top-down approach to using violence as a tool the leadership lives by example.
> If you say it’s valid and not a war crime for the US to assassinate former political Iranian figures and their families for aiding the new regime and therefore becoming enemy combatants in the eye of the US Military, it’s also valid to assassinate Altman and his family for doing the same to the other war party.
Sam isn't a political leader, so this comparison is flawed. What the hell, are we really arguing about if assasinating a long-standing figure of this community here is valid? Seriously??
He is a leader and a political figure. This blogpost is political (as well as sharing a family photo, which is itself imbued with a political message in that context).
Engineer archetypes hate politics and refuse to think about it. For most engineering, there is negligible political dimension. But culturally-transformative technology is inherently political to the degree it's transformative. Altman recognises this.
He is working towards a social goal, and attracting support to achieve it. Yes, he is a political leader.
He's rich, connected at the highest levels, works with the US govt and specifically the military. Able to have a relatively high political influence (on the workforce at the very least). How is he not actively a political figure?
People on this forum applauded Charlie Kirk’s murder too. Unfortunately theres a number of people here who believe it’s okay to murder instead of argue with words. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent
Indeed. I've seen much more outright support for the murders of Pretti, Good, and Taylor than people "applauding" Kirk's murder. Never mind the recent support for the mass murder of Iranians ("bomb them back to the stone age" etc). Unfortunately those incompetents who take refuge in violence are now in charge of our society.
(I suppose I'm getting the reply-less downvotes from people's cognitive dissonance getting triggered. Just because it's possible to frame a murder as being legally justified, does not absolve you of the fact that by adopting this justification you're still supporting a murder. In fact I'd point out that the most horrific atrocities in human history have been legally justified. Randomly-directed violence doesn't really scale up, whereas organized violence does)
I intentionally repeated the same word for consistency, and that was the word used by GP's comment. If you don't like the word, then feel free to mentally replace it with something else, perhaps "killing". Especially if that can help you engage with the substance of an argument.
I am not saying he should not be criticized or even held legally liable for actions. Merely that, you know, fire bombing peoples homes whose actions you disagree with is bad thing.
Sure, it's bad in a vacuum. I think people notice the decades long pattern (the Sacklers, etc) and just know that if some rich dude causes a million of people to lose jobs and live in poverty (or straight up die) nothing will happen to the dude.
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon, and more and more people feel the same. There's no faith left to be had in the justice system anymore after Epstein, Kissinger, etc.
We live in a system that threatens to invade the Hague to protect its war criminals, not a system that exists to prosecute evil-doërs.
if every business(man) who lobbies against regulations for their business is a fair game to go after violently (not just her/him but his family as well) there would be a bloodbath of epic proportions… one day, this might be you and your family too…
It already is our families. We don't have healthcare. We live in rentals that enrich others. We take rented scooters to work. We have no retirement funds or futures.
Live in slavery and be happy? Hold a sign no one reads? Own nothing? Feel no peace, have no medicine?
I don't condone it, but I understand it.
I believe there's still the possibility for us to fix things in peace, but I can see why others don't.
> We don't have healthcare. We live in rentals that enrich others. We take rented scooters to work. We have no retirement funds or futures. Live in slavery and be happy? Hold a sign no one reads? Own nothing? Feel no peace, have no medicine?
I hope so, because if instead of reflecting and trying to prevent whatever I created is used to hurt people, my option is to try to lobby/shield me from it, I hope the angry mob to come after me and put me my head on the stake, I will deserve it.
whatever you create will eventually hurt someone. legos have caused
more injuries (and choking deaths) than just about anything but we are not gonna go to lego investor’s house or current CEOs and try to burn his house down.
This analogy only works if the toddler buys their own lego and, while assembling it, the neighbour's toddler - whose parents can't afford to buy lego - chokes to death.
It is possible to build things that don't hurt people.
It is possible to reduce the harms of things that are likely to hurt people.
It is possible to not treat hurt as a foregone conclusion.
It is possible not to use this foregone conclusion to defend strangers who not only create things that actively harm people, but promote this harm as a good thing, without also providing the support to reduce or avoid those harms.
You'd consider that a fair comparison? I mean, it's not like the lego inventor is trying to shove legos down kids' throats against their will. These AI promoters on the other hand... are absolutely trying to thrust things against others and their wills, even promoting loss to what some deem a source of their well being (ie jobs). And while I don't know if the lego inventor knowingly & willingly deals with bad actors, I'm not so sure we can say the same for the AI promoters.
There is a difference between inventing a toy that has a chance of injuring someone, and, just for the sake of example, pushing cigarettes onto teens. Or opiates onto people in general.
I feel like Americans are tired of this shit being done to them with no negative consequences to the people who do this.
> In essence, he has threatened to kill millions of people.
“In essence” is doing enormous work here, and it will be basically impossible to have any kind of discussion if that work is considered acceptable.
This kind of word-twisting can be used to make pretty much anyone into a murderer, at which point “discussion” will come down to who the mob chooses to listen to.
But if you're trying to get people fired, then obviously the people you're threatening to fire will be pissed. That should be obvious. You and altman playing stupid does not change that, it just makes you look stupid.
The fact that "your health insurance is tied to employment" is a conscious choice you, Americans, made. You could have a different system. You chose this one.
But, once more, admitting and owning the consequences of your choices is completely foreign to the American mindset.
You could have AGI emerging tomorrow, telling you "make health insurance universal", and you would unplug it/lobotomize immediately for being "too woke" or "communist".
I mean, it would also be an option to fix the deficient public health of USA. For all the stupid manipulative stuff Altman says, the system precedes him, no?
This is not an argument or a rebuttal, and I don't think you're really understanding what I'm saying.
I'm not saying altman is actually a murderer or that AI is even bad for society as a whole.
I'm saying that what he is saying is directly threatening to a lot of people, and it should be obvious that some of those people will lash out.
Something being good for society can still be bad for you. If you're someone who altman is bragging about making redundant, then you might be mad at altman. It's very simple reasoning.
I simply don't understand how somebody able to enjoy modern comforts precisely because of innovations resulting in job eliminations will suddenly draw the line when AI might risk some jobs.
I never said that I'm drawing the line anywhere - I'm merely saying that Altman bragging about it is a REAL and OBVIOUS threat to the people he's trying to replace.
Whether that's good societally is a different question. Is it good FOR THOSE PEOPLE from their perspective? Of course it's not, and that should be painfully obvious to everyone here.
So then, why are we playing stupid and acting surprised when Altman is in danger? Everyone should have saw this coming.
Words can justify violence. A serious threat of violence is a reasonable basis for acting in self-defense. Another comment said the same about pre-emptive self-defense as if one should wait to be shot at even whilst a gun is pointed at them before shooting back.
By this incredibly specious logic, many of your comments here represent “threats” towards people who work in AI, or with the DoD, etc, in any capacity. I guess they’re now justified in trying to murder your children, right?
Actions have consequences. There will always be people in the world that get pushed beyond the limits they can endure. It reminds of that CEO that got gunned down by someone that was being affected by the company profiting off of making a business of denying health insurance claims on technicalities.
I don't support this and yet I know for every harm people in these corrupt institutions are involved in, the universe gives back your due.
If you want to stop the harm. Stop harming the world with your actions in what every way that needs to manifest for you.
Reading that BBC article, how the attacker got caught while shouting at an OpenAI building, it would seem likely that this attacker is confused or deranged. Not specifically someone with deliberate evil intent.
So the headline seems to be more "high profile person attacked by lunatic" than "OpenAI CEO attacked for being evil".
Is there anything anyone can do that justifies violence or threats of violence? No. Even if that person is a proven child molestater, a just society stands on just law.
But as far as political justification stands, he is as valid of a target for hostile nations just as Iranian nuclear scientists were (unless he has 0 involvment with USG). That's just the world we live in.
Use your tech for war in other nations, you give a justification for other nations to target you. Same goes for Lockheed Martin ceo etc, nothing specific against Sam. But saying nobody has no valid reason to target Sam like this is pretty stupid imo.
Yes. Why the fuck are we pretending they are not? Even his husband is a valid target as he knows who he goes to bed with and where the caviar comes from. (I will probably say his kid no because he has no responsibility/understanding of this)
