What the heck is wrong with our AI overlords?

New profile of Sam Altman shines a light on a whole industry.

See full article...

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

Buried deep within the article the author finally decides to inform his readers that he has/had a legal battle with an AI company:

"Heck, Anthropic used one of my books to train its database, a sin for which it is now paying authors in court."

You really think that's indicative of some sort of conflict of interest that would lead to writing this piece about the moral underpinnings, or rather lack thereof, of the people who are making our technology choices for us? Frankly, coming up with such a forced and weak objection makes me wonder if perhaps there's a conflict of interest behind your comment.

 

[acostara]

Altman raped his sister. He’s a clear sociopath.

 

[Joe Bleaux]

The mainstream tech press is really reluctant to call this out, but these people believe things about society and the world and the future and their place in it that are not only evil and bad but also extremely stupid.

One specific thing that I wish was discussed more is how much evidence of pseudo (or outright) eugenicist thought and theory can be detected lurking through so much of the Tech Overlord's professed belief systems. Whether implied (Altman, Andreessen, etc.) or overt (Musk, Thiel, et. al.), it is abundantly clear that one symptom of Billionaire Brain is the tendency to only see people as vague abstractions, as populations rather than human beings, and to imagine that a part of their influence and legacy really ought to be the sorting and "improvement" of said populations.

The evil and bad is plain to see, but the extreme stupidity should also be apparent to anyone who has taken a rudimentary class in evolution or genetics. In either case, diversity is good!

 

[seekified]

This was the central idea behind Horizon Zero Dawn. The ancient villain who caused everything--was a maniacal power hungry billionaire who believed his own hot air, and thought that making his self-reproducing murder-robots unhackable by humans couldn't possibly be a bad idea--even when his own engineers told him so. Spoiler alert--it didn't go well for Earth or humans.

Obligatory "fuck Ted Faro". And fuck Altman, Karp and their kind, too.

 

[terrydactyl]

For an historical reference, I'll point out this article from 1999,

Bubbles: From "tronics" to "dot com"

Back in the '60s there was a 'tronics' boom, where any company with that in there name was golden. 'Tronics' became the warning for the dot com boom.

 

[stormcrash]

One specific thing that I wish was discussed more is how much evidence of pseudo (or outright) eugenicist thought and theory can be detected lurking through so much of the Tech Overlord's professed belief systems. Whether implied (Altman, Andreessen, etc.) or overt (Musk, Thiel, et. al.), it is abundantly clear that one symptom of Billionaire Brain is the tendency to only see people as vague abstractions, as populations rather than human beings, and to imagine that a part of their influence and legacy really ought to be the sorting and "improvement" of said populations.

The evil and bad is plain to see, but the extreme stupidity should also be apparent to anyone who has taken a rudimentary class in evolution or genetics. In either case, diversity is good!

It all boils down to their thinking that the “right” people, ie them, deserve to be in charge and that everyone else should be subordinate to them

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

The valley went form actually believing in ideals to believing in itself as an/the ideal. And when you make yourself the ideal then in your mind you can do no wrong, and growing your own power is clearly good because it grows the ideal. The valley has become insular, self obsessed and inbred

Quoting song lyrics is the last refuge of a scandal, but reading this made "Burning Sky" by The Jam pop into my head.

Now I don't want you to get me wrong
Ideals are fine when you are young
And I must admit we had a laugh
But that's all it was and ever will be

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

This is exactly the dance these guys play.

AI is a worthless glorified auto complete - and yet it's capable of replacing everyone and put everyone out of work.

They are so scared that they are replaceable that they're running around like headless chickens.

It's not actually a contradiction. Economies have been destroyed by illusory value propositions before.

 

[AliSard]

There are no good billionaires. There has never been a good billionaire. The only way there will ever be a good billionaire is if there is so much inflation that minimum wage makes someone a billionaire.

Elon Musk has more geopolitical power than many, maybe most, nation states.

It is not okay.

I offer no good solutions, just that one horrifying fact.

It is not okay.

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

If you think terrorism campaigns are the key to unlocking your preferred politics, how many walmarts have you personally firebombed?

You are in dire need of remedial reading lessons.

 

[Marlor_AU]

There are no good billionaires. There has never been a good billionaire. The only way there will ever be a good billionaire is if there is so much inflation that minimum wage makes someone a billionaire.

When I was working in Silicon Valley, I spent plenty of time with insanely rich people (perhaps not billionaires, but not too far off it). Some of them were actually super-friendly and supportive people who were fixated on mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs, and plowing their own capital into nascent businesses. They were just as interested in spending time with a younger crowd and imparting knowledge as they were in trying to get a return.

We had one investor in particular, a notable veteran in the industry, who would just come and hang out in the office at lunchtime a day or two per week. He'd come in, start brainstorming ideas, imparting wisdom, reminiscing about the old days, and making sure everyone wasn't burning out from the stress of trying to get the business off the ground. Then quietly, on the side, he was bankrolling the company. He was doing this for several other startups as well, treating this mentoring as a full-time job. Meanwhile, he was on the board of several non-profits. He did all this while flying under the radar - these were his passion projects, and he certainly did nothing to advertise them.

There seemed to be plenty of other industry veterans doing the same thing, just quietly supporting startups and using their connections and experience to help them get off the ground. I came to realize that this anonymous group of quiet investors is just as important to Silicon Valley as any of the tech behemoths. And, from what I saw, they were, by and large, genuinely nice people (I guess all the assholes were off at the VC firms).

 

[Slackenerny]

Or perhaps you are putting the cart before the horse. . . perhaps you need a broken mind to be willing to do what it takes in terms of screwing other people over on a massive scale, to become a billionaire in the first place.

I've actually had the opportunity to watch someone become a billionaire (a CEO of a tech company that I joined when it was much smaller). I had multiple personal conversations with him, and heard him talk a lot in meetings, and he seemed like a smart, driven and empathetic person who surrounded himself with other similar folks which he listened to, and valued feedback from.

However, in the last few years he has increasingly surrounded himself with yes men, and is making larger strategic errors in the direction of the company, and not taking feedback from people who have better insight into the problems being faced.

If power can turn a relatively high-EQ and empathetic person into an isolated person who lives in their own reality, imagine what it does to people who start out as sociopathic arseholes?

 

[protodeus]

Once the richest one hundred million people on the planet have robots that can produce everything they want, what do they need the other 7.9 billion of us around for taking up land and resources?

I assume the majority of disgustingly wealthy individuals throughout history have also had their own vision of 'world domination' that have never come to fruition. I am reminded of a quote from Lectures on Ancient Philosophy about the nature of evil and why it can never fully succeed: "Hence, good ever fortifies its own nature, while evil undermines itself by the ceaseless warfare between its own parts."

 

[AliSard]

I've actually had the opportunity to watch someone become a billionaire (a CEO of a tech company that I joined when it was much smaller). I had multiple personal conversations with him, and heard him talk a lot in meetings, and he seemed like a smart, driven and empathetic person who surrounded himself with other similar folks which he listened to, and valued feedback from.

However, in the last few years he has increasingly surrounded himself with yes men, and is making larger strategic errors in the direction of the company, and not taking feedback from people who have better insight into the problems being faced.

If power can turn a relatively high-EQ and empathetic person into an isolated person who lives in their own reality, imagine what it does to people who start out as sociopathic arseholes?

Cue obvious Winston Churchill quote.

 

[MagStone]

I think this article focuses unnecessarily on Altman. You can find plenty of stupidity from the other wannabe AI overlords. Consider Musk, the most successful extractor of the extraction class when he said this:
Elon Musk Predicts ‘Universal High Income’ Will Pay For Everything — How Much Would You Get?

This article is about an (excellent) article about Altman. Musk makes an appearance. But the subject is Altman, so why did you want for Musk?

 

[LordInternet]

Warren Buffett has said some sensible things

While I admire Buffett's value investment philosophy and his humbleness compared to others he isn't fully squeaky clean in purity in my view:

Warren Buffett Book Recommendations

'Jack: Straight from the Gut' by Jack Welch
In his 2001 shareholder letter, Buffett gleefully endorses "Jack: Straight from the Gut," a business memoir of long-time GE executive Jack Welch, whom Buffett describes as "smart, energetic, hands-on."
In commenting on the book, Bloomberg Businessweek wrote that "Welch has had such an impact on modern business that a tour of his personal history offers all managers valuable lessons."

 

[numerobis]

This article is about an (excellent) article about Altman. Musk makes an appearance. But the subject is Altman, so why did you want for Musk?

The headline says overlords, plural: "What the heck is wrong with our AI overlords"

I take that to mean this is the first in a series.

 

[wildsman]

Sounds like a short story we read in high school called The Rocking Horse Winner

Ooh.. That takes me back. DH Lawrence.

Yes, That's a rather apt comparison.

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

But you switched the claim with a strawman.

The claim was AI replacing workers not destroying jobs (by destroying the economy).

The first is a contradiction - the second is not.

Your rhetorical yoga isn't really all that.

You claimed people held two contradictory thoughts simultaneously:

AI is a worthless glorified auto complete - and yet it's capable of replacing everyone and put everyone out of work.

But most people I see who believe AI's capabilities are vastly over hyped, including me, also believe that hype includes the false promise of massive efficiencies to be gained by firing people and replacing them with machines.

There's no contradiction.

And yes, while you are technically correct that you said nothing about destroying the economy but I did, you are incorrect in seeing it as a strawman argument. I was using that to emphasize that supposedly rational managers making irrational economic choices are very much a proven thing as illustrated by any number of economic failures.

What someone in a good faith discussion would get from that is that acting in accordance with a belief in the AI hype and laying people off is an irrational economic choice that will have negative consequences.

However there is then the additional implication that these consequences might not be merely contained to the business entities doing the laying off, but could have huge systemic effects as well. But that implication is the value added part of what I wrote. It's not the primary point I am making, but it is chosen expressly because this isn't just some game of tiddlywinks. Vast sums of money and the future of many businesses are at stake. Give me a call after the big selloff and I promise not to laugh in your face.

 

[zoltan_merc]

I don't think we can do that.

The first step would be to get money out of politics. But we can't do that because of existing judicial rulings (Citizens United). To overcome that obstacle, we would need to pass a constitutional amendment. But we can't do that because the people in power would have to approve that amendment, and they are the ones benefiting from the status quo.

In the 1760s, the people of the 13 colonies had a similar problem about "getting the King out of our politics". The above argument, mutatis mutandis, could have been then. However, they ended up finding a way out of their version of this logical trap.

Of course, a quarter of a millenium later, their descendants reinvented their own version of a golden idol, who is just as mentally unstable as George III, but without the excuse of (possibly) having porphyria. And the humongous size of the US defence/DHS budget pretty much guarantees that the spatter zone of any repeat of the American Revoluttion will be vastly bigger than the original's.

 

[cgo_12345]

There are no good billionaires. There has never been a good billionaire. The only way there will ever be a good billionaire is if there is so much inflation that minimum wage makes someone a billionaire.

Watching people who are, to the last man, infinitely closer to being potentially homeless than being potential billionaires demanding that you make an exception for their particular favorite billionaire has sure been... something.

 

[wildsman]

For an historical reference, I'll point out this article from 1999,

Bubbles: From "tronics" to "dot com"

Back in the '60s there was a 'tronics' boom, where any company with that in there name was golden. 'Tronics' became the warning for the dot com boom.

But in all of these cases, the bubbles were short term crashes but the technological shift was very real. People got the timelines and the companies wrong but the technology transformed the landscape.

I expect this to happen with AI as well. There most definitely is an AI bubble but that says nothing about the underlying technological revolution coming.

 

[Dusfud]

Remember when we thought the google founders were benevolent billionaires? "Do no evil."
Haha naive younger days...

Money is power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

No.

I do remember they had that motto, and a friend that worked there at the time being clear the culture was horrible and obsessed only with making money.

We can't give ourselves a pass on this, lest we fall for it again.

The signs were there.

 

[Dusfud]

MacKenzie Scott tacitly approved of what Bezos did and profited immensely from it. She was ok with him being a shitass, she was just not ok with him sticking his dick in people she didn't approve of.

Actually, she didn't publicly, at least, care until the dick-sticking became public.

Same pattern with Ms. Gates - suddenly things got irreconcilable when things got public.

But this behavior seems tangential to billionaires - as it happens with the poverty-stricken millionaire class as well...

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

There's no contradiction in the way you presented your position - I agree.

That is usually how strawmen are used - you caricatured my argument into something else that you could refute and then debunked it by saying: 'there is no contradiction'.

Oh, that is too rich. You’re still flogging the nonexistent strawman right after pretending that I didn’t say the contradiction you originally claimed others were engaging in wasn’t a contradiction. Which is a strawman.

I’m out. You’re too full of straw to bother with.

 

[Penguin Warlord]

Remember when we thought the google founders were benevolent billionaires? "Do no evil."
Haha naive younger days...

Money is power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Now they actively oppose modest wealth taxes, and pour their resources into building AI powered military weapons.

When they took down that motto, the founders really decided to personally wipe their asses with it.

 

[BobbyBobberson]

It's time to start UBI.

 

[KGFish]

I ran across this article a few days ago that mentions a lawsuit by Altman's sister claiming that he sexually assaulted since she was three (yep, you read that right).
https://www.reuters.com/legal/gover...sister-accusing-openai-ceo-sexual-2026-03-20/

It's a lawsuit, not a criminal conviction, but... with everything coming out about Altman, I wouldn't be surprised if this turned out to be true as well.

 

[RZetopan]

Remember when we thought the google founders were benevolent billionaires? "Do no evil."
Haha naive younger days...

Money is power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

They have always been corrupt, they merely hid it because of the potential backlash. Once they achieve sufficient power, hiding their sociopathy is no longer required so they openly display it.

 

[Uncivil Servant]

I'm expecting to see 20-30% reduction in current white collar roles (I'm waging that new roles will replace existing ones) in the next decade.

Across the board? You seem very confident in a great number of industries and roles for which you are almost certainly unfamiliar.

Not every white-collar job has the same job requirements as a software engineer. Beware virgins recommending brothels.

 

[Uncivil Servant]

Too many premises that I don't agree with. I don't see layoffs happening with a belief in AI hype - I do see a slowdown in hiring junior developers and interns

I had to come back to this because it really highlights the "virgins talking about sex" phenomenon. Nobody will ever save money by hiring fewer interns and entry-level workers! You are not hiring them to do important, meaningful work. It is work that needs to get done, like thankless tasks on long-term projects, basic stuff that senior people don't want to have to do themselves.

But you're not saving money by automating these things because the tasks are not the primary goal there: this is like a professional sports team trying to improve by having fewer draft picks. You're just reducing your potential recruiting pipeline. The intern in-house is worth the dozens you'd need to interview for the position that intern could fill in a year or two.

In a world of hot takes, seeing second and third order effects is starting to feel like a 24-eyed box jellyfish among the blind.

 

[kasparkn]

The rate of technological progress will keep accelerating, and

So, if the rate increases that means that progress is accelerating. If the rate itself is accelerating, as Altman claims as per the quote, then progress is in fact not just accelerating, but the acceleration of progress is increasing.

That sounds like things are moving faster and faster and...

 

[Sypher the 297th]

Hogwash. One coud devote that money to eradicating entire global diseases, as has been done (tho I am NOT implying Bill Gates is some kind of moral leader).

If I had $1B, my dream would be to buy back any used firearm I could get my hands on and destroy them. This nation has WAY too many firearms.

The issue is not whether $1B can be used for the good of humanity, it's that there aren't many billionaires with the ethics or morals to attempt that. They are typically too wrapped up in their lifelong quest to accumulate more to recognize that it's time to stop collecting and start paying back.

Gun buybacks don't work. Its a nice sentiment but they are just a waste of money as things are now.

 

[randomname19937]

Disclaimer: this comes from a person who made significant money on AI stock.
We need an overhaul of our economic system. The two things we should start with are:

• kill high speed trading with a turnover tax (1% should do the trick)
• tax capital gains more than wages; the tax should be the same for people and companies/banks.

I felt ridiculous when around half of my regular compensation was taken away for various taxes, social insurance and what-not, compared to only 19% of stock money. This should be reversed.

 

[randomname19937]

I had to come back to this because it really highlights the "virgins talking about sex" phenomenon. Nobody will ever save money by hiring fewer interns and entry-level workers! You are not hiring them to do important, meaningful work.

I work in a tech corporation and that is just not true. Our internships usually have a particular topic and that topic is often exploratory, with potentially high rewards. It's been a running joke around the office that most of our big new features were added by interns, because they were too risky to invest regular employees' time in.

 

[puelocesar]

I'm usually a very peaceful person, but from time to time I wonder why there's not more Luigis in this world..

 

[Jacob J]

Great read, glad we can get some perspective on the madness out there.

 

[randomname19937]

I'm usually a very peaceful person, but from time to time I wonder why there's not more Luigis in this world..

Because most people play single-player, as Mario /s