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Comment by drewbeck | Hacker News Reader

I see OpenAI's original form as the last gasp of a kind of liberal tech; in a world where "doing good" was seen as very important, the non-profit approach made sense and got a lot of people on board. These days the Altmans and the pmarcas of the world are much more comfortable expressing their authoritarian, self-centered world views; the "evolving" structure of Open AI is fully in line with that. They want to be the kings they always thought of themselves as, and now they get to do so without couching it in "doing good".

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That world never existed. Yes, pockets did - IT professionals with broadband lines and spare kit hosting IRC servers and phpBB forums from their homes free of charge, a few VC-funded companies offering idealistic visions of the net until funding ran dry (RIP CoHost) - but once the web became privatized, it was all in service of the bottom line by companies. Web 2.0 onwards was all about centralization, surveillance, advertising, and manipulation of the populace at scale - and that intent was never really a secret to those who bothered to pay attention. While the world was reeling from Cambridge Analytica, us pre-1.0 farts who cut our teeth on Telnet and Mosaic were just kind of flabbergasted that ya'll were surprised by overtly obvious intentions.

That doesn't mean it has to always be this way, though. Back when I had more trust in the present government and USPS, I mused on how much of a game changer it might be for the USPS to provide free hosting and e-mail to citizens, repurposing the glut of unused real estate into smaller edge compute providers. Everyone gets a web server and 5GB of storage, with 1A Protections letting them say and host whatever they like from their little Post Office Box. Everyone has an e-mail address tied to their real identity, with encryption and security for digital mail just like the law provides for physical mail. I still think the answer is about enabling more people to engage with the internet on their selective terms (including the option of disengagement), rather than the present psychological manipulation everyone engages in to keep us glued to our screens, tethered to our phones, and constantly uploading new data to advertisers and surveillance firms alike.

But the nostalgic view that the internet used to be different is just that: rose-tinted memories of a past that never really existed. The first step to fixing this mess is acknowledging its harm.

I don’t think the parent was saying that everyone’s intentions were pure until recently, but rather that naked greed wasn’t cool before, but now it is.

The Internet has changed a lot over the decades, and it did used to be different, with the differences depending on how many years you go back.

As recently as the Silicon Valley tv show, the joke was that every startup pitch claimed they were “making the world a better place”.

"I don't want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do." -Gavin Belson

Gavin is a perfect example of this, tho fictional. "Doing good" was a route to personal success and domination; Gavin under a Trump admin would have dropped the act, just as others have done.

> That world never existed

It absolutely did. Steve Wozniak was real. Silicon Valley wasn't always a hive of liars and sycophants.

I have to agree. That's one of the dangers of today's world; the risk of believing that we never had a better one. Yes, the altruism of yesteryear was partially born of convenience, but it still existed. And I remember people actually believing it was important and acting as such. Today's cynicism and selfishness seem a lot more arbitrary to me. There's absolutely no reason things have to be this way. Collectively, we have access to more wealth and power now than we ever did previously. By all accounts, things ought to be great. It seems we just need the current generation of leaders to re-learn a few lessons from history.

You and I are on the same path, just at different points in the journey. Your response is very similar to my own tone and position a decade ago, trying to celebrate what we had before in an attempt to shepherd others towards a better future together. Time wore down that naivety into the cynicism of today, because I’ve come to realize that those celebrations simply coddle those who do not wish to put in the effort for change and yearn for a return to past glories.

We should acknowledge the past flatly and objectively for what it was and spend more time building that future, than listening to the victors of the past brag and boast, content to wallow in their accomplishments instead of rejoining contributors to tomorrow. The good leaders of yesteryear have stepped aside in lieu of championing newer, younger visionaries; those still demanding respect for what they did fifty years ago in circumstances we can only dream about, are part of the problem.

Sure it has. For every Woz, there was a Jobs; for every Linus, a Bill (Gates). For every starry-eyed engineer or developer who just wants to help people, there are business people who will pervert it into an empire and jettison them as soon as practical. For every TED, there’s a Davos; for every DEFCON, there’s a glut of vendor-specific conferences.

We should champion the good people who did the good things and managed to resist the temptations of the poisoned apple, but we shouldn’t hold an entire city on a pedestal because of nostalgia alone. Nobody, and no entity, is that deserving.

> For every Woz, there was a Jobs; for every Linus, a Bill (Gates)

Nobody said there were no bastards. Just that they didn’t have dominion. We let this happen, in part by being lazy and cynical.

I would argue that cynicism is born of attempting to assert accountability and finding repeated harm from said attempts, rather than some intrinsic pre-existing apathy or laziness.

I think most people will snitch on bad behavior as children. However, our systems often allow other children to discipline the snitch, rather than correct the negative behavior the snitch raised. We see it in adult systems as well: whistleblowers often end up with substantially shorter and poorer lives for attempting to assert accountability or consequences on those who committed them, while the perpetrators often enjoy lives of immense wealth and reward regardless of the whistleblower's actions.

If you want people to stop being "lazy" and "cynical", then you have to support them when systems turn against them. In my experience, none of ya'll actually want to also walk out of work when layoffs happen following a profitable quarter for no other reason than to juice the share price, none of ya'll also want to walk off the job because your employer is taking contracts from authoritarian regimes, none of ya'll also want to put yourselves in the line of fire and risk harm over your purported values.

Don't blame us cynics when we have the battle scars showing our commitment to a better tomorrow. What have you done to prevent cynicism?

Coincidentally, and as another pre-1.0 fart myself :-) -- one who remembers when Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib / Dream Machines" was still just a wild hope -- I was thinking of something similar the other day (not USPS-specific for hosting, but I like that).

It was sparked by going to a video conference "Hyperlocal Heroes: Building Community Knowledge in the Digital Age" hosted by New_ Public: https://newpublic.org/ "Reimagine social media: We are researchers, engineers, designers, and community leaders working together to explore creating digital public spaces where people can thrive and connect."

A not-insignificant amount of time in that one-hour teleconference was spent related to funding models for local social media and local reporting.

Afterwards, I got to thinking. The USA spent literally trillions of dollars on the (so-many-problematical-things-about-it-I-better-stop-now) Iraq war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War "According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report published in October 2007, the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion by 2017 including interest."

Or, from a different direction, the USA spends about US$200 billion per year on mostly-billboard-free roads: https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative... "In 2021, state and local governments provided three-quarters of highway and road funding ($154 billion) and federal transfers accounted for $52 billion (25 percent)."

That's about US$700 per person per year on US roads.

So, clearly huge amounts of money are available in the USA if enough people think something is important. Imagine if a similar amount of money went to funding exactly what you outlined -- a free web presence for distributed social media -- with an infrastructure funded by tax dollars instead of advertisements. Isn't a healthy social media system essential to 21st century online democracy with public town squares?

And frankly such a distributed social media ecosystem in the USA might be possible for at most a tenth of what roads cost, like perhaps US$70 per person per year (or US$20 billion per year)?

Yes, there are all sorts of privacy and free speech issues to work through -- but it is not like we don't have those all now with the advertiser-funded social media systems we have. So, it is not clear to me that such a system would be immensely worse than what we have.

But what do I know? :-) Here was a previous big government suggestion be me from 2010 -- also mostly ignored (until now 15 years later the USA is in political crisis over supply chain dependency and still isn't doing anything very related to it yet): "Build 21000 flexible fabrication facilities across the USA" https://web.archive.org/web/20100708160738/http://pcast.idea... "Being able to make things is an important part of prosperity, but that capability (and related confidence) has been slipping away in the USA. The USA needs more large neighborhood shops with a lot of flexible machine tools. The US government should fund the construction of 21,000 flexible fabrication facilities across the USA at a cost of US$50 billion, places where any American can go to learn about and use CNC equipment like mills and lathes and a variety of other advanced tools and processes including biotech ones. That is one for every town and county in the USA. These shops might be seen as public extensions of local schools, essentially turning the shops of public schools into more like a public library of tools. This project is essential to US national security, to provide a technologically literate populace who has learned about post-scarcity technology in a hands-on way. The greatest challenge our society faces right now is post-scarcity technology (like robots, AI, nanotech, biotech, etc.) in the hands of people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity (whether in big organizations or in small groups). This project would help educate our entire society about the potential of these technologies to produce abundance for all."

What we are observing is the effects of profit maximization when the core value to the user is already fulfilled. It's a type of pathological optimization that is useful at the beginning but eventually pathologizes.

When we already have efficient food production that drove down costs and increased profits (a good thing), what else is there for companies to optimize for, if not loading it with sugar, putting it in cheap plastic, bamboozling us with ads?

This same dynamic plays out in every industry. Markets are a great thing when the low hanging fruit hasn't been picked, because the low hanging fruit is usually "cut the waste, develop basic tech, be efficient". But eventually the low hanging fruit becomes "game human's primitive reward circuits".

I think it did and still does today - every single time an engineer sees a problem an starts an open-source project to solve it - not out of any profit motive and without any monetization strategy in mind, but just because they can, and they think the world would be better off.

Hopelessly over-idealistic premise. Sama and pg have never been anything other than opportunistic muck. This will be my last ever comment on HN.

I feel this so hard, I think this may be my last time using the site as well. They don't care about advancement, they only care about money.

Like everything, it's projection. Those who loudly scream against something are almost always the ones engaging in it.

Google screamed against service revenue and advertising while building the world's largest advertising empire. Facebook screamed against misinformation and surveillance while enabling it on a global scale. Netflix screamed against the overpriced cable TV industry while turning streaming into modern overpriced cable television. Uber screamed against the entrenched taxi industry harming workers and passengers while creating an unregulated monster that harmed workers and passengers.

Altman and OpenAI are no different in this regard, loudly screaming against AI harming humanity while doing everything in their capacity to create AI tools that will knowingly harm humanity while enriching themselves.

If people trust the performance instead of the actions and their outcomes, then we can't convince them otherwise.

Oh I'm not saying they every believed more than their self-centered views, but that in a world that leaned more liberal there was value in trying to frame their work in those terms. Now there's no need to pretend.

And to those who "say" at least now they're honest, I say "WHY?!" Unconditionally being "good" would be better than disguising selfishness as good. But that's not really a thing. Having to maintain the presence of doing good puts significant boundaries on what you can get away with, and increases the consequence when people uncover some shit.

Condoning "honest liars" enables a whole other level of open and unrestricted criminality.

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They deeply believe in the Ayn Rand mindset that the system that brings them the most individual wealth is also the best system for humanity as a whole.

When people that wealthy are that delusional... With few checks or balances from politics, media, or even social media... I don't think humanity as a whole is in for a great time.

They are roughly as delusional as everyone else. There is an image human bias to convince yourself that what benefits you is also best for everyone else.

It’s just that their biases have much more capacity to cause damage as their wealth gives them so much power.

Yes, people are generally delusional; importantly though, some people are much less so (and some more so). Being connected to reality, being grounded, are learnable traits (but not very valuable to CEOs and narcissists).

> They are roughly as delusional as everyone else.

I would bet serious money that people who believe in Ayn Rand are generally more delusional than others, and the same goes for the ultra-wealthy living in a bubble of sycophants.

And their wealth gives them much more capacity - and motive - to cause damage.

I disagree with this. I think there's probably a baseline "capacity for delusion" we all share, but the very wealthy are insulated from the negative repercussions of their actions in a way everyday folks are not. They also hold so much power by virtue of their wealth that they end up surrounded by sycophants, creating the conditions for a level of self-belief that is deeply delusional, and that only the most narcissistic among the rest of us could ever dream of attaining.

It got you the 20th century

The problem with that mindset is that money is a proxy for the Marxist idea of inherent value. The distinction does not matter when you are just an average dude, doubling your money doubles the amount of material wealth you have access to.

But once you control a significant enough chunk of money, it becomes clear the pie doesn't get any bigger the more shiny coins you have, you only have more relative purchasing power, automatically making everyone else poorer.

Which Ayn Rand book says that?

Is it reasonable to assign the descriptor “authoritarian” to anyone who simply does not subscribe to the common orthodoxy of one faction in the american culture war? That is what it seems to me is happening here, though I would love to be wrong.

I have not seen anything from sama or pmarca that I would classify as “authoritarian”.

are you aware of worldcoin?

altman building a centralised authority of who will be classed as "human" is about as authoritarian as you could get

Worldcoin is opt-in, which is the opposite of authoritarian. Nobody who doesn’t like it is required to participate.

it's always opt-in until it isn't

it is opt in until they manage to convince some government to allow them to be the contracted provider of "humanness verification" that is then made a prerequisite to access services.

Comcast is also opt-in. Except, in many areas there are no real alternatives.

I doubt Worldcoin will actually manage to corner the market. But the point is, if it did, bad things would happen. Though, that’s probably true of most products.

I’m not sure exactly what they meant by “liberal” in this case, but since they put it in contrast with authoritarianism, I assume they meant it in the conventional definition of the word (where it is the polar opposite of authoritarianism). Instead of the American politics-as-sports definition that makes it a synonym for “team blue.”

correct. "liberal" as in the general ideas that ie expanding the franchise is important, press freedoms are good, that government can do good things for people and for capital etc. Wikipedia's intro paragraph does a good job of describing what I was getting at (below). In prior decades Republicans in the US would have been categorized as "liberal" under this definition; in recent years, not so much.

>Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various and often mutually conflicting views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.

No I don't think it is. I DO think those two people want to be in charge (along with other billionaires) and they want the rest of us to follow along, which is in my book an authoritarian POV. pmarca's recent "VC is the only job that can't be done by AI" is a good example of that; the rest of us are to be managed and controlled by VCs and robots.

Donating millions to a fascist president (in Altman’s case) seems pretty authoritarian to me. And he seems happy enough hanging out with Thiel and other Yarvin groupies.

Yup, if Elon hadn't gotten so jealous and spiteful to him I'm sure he'd be one of Elon's leading sycophants.

I think this is more a symptom of the level of commonplace corruption in the American regulatory environment than any indication of the political views of the person directing such donations.

Tim Apple did it too, and we don’t assume he’s an authoritarian now too, do we? I imagine they would probably have done similarly regardless of who won the election.

It sure seems like an endorsement, but I think it’s simply modern corporate strategy in the American regulatory environment, same as when foreign dignitaries stay in overpriced suites in the Trump hotel in DC.

Those who don’t kiss the ring are clearly and obviously punished. It’s not in the interest of your shareholders (or your launch partners) to be the tall poppy.

I do feel that way about every CEO in those cheery inauguration day photos (https://apnews.com/article/trump-inauguration-tech-billionai...). Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai, Cook, Altman, Musk, Thiel: enablers of fascism, every one. However, it should be noted that Cook donated from his own name and not Apple. Guess he didn't want his shittiness to rub off on his company.

As for the shareholders, Cook was more than happy to "do the right thing" in the past, even when under pressure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–FBI_encryption_dispute).

As far as “enablers” of fascism - would we have the same amount of fascism if they didn’t participate? I posit that the answer is yes.

Furthermore, you are dead wrong on the last point. The “dispute” between the FBI and Apple is a fiction designed to restore public trust in Apple’s privacy stance following the Snowden revelations about FAA702 (aka PRISM) that shows that companies allow the USG warrantless access to their data in realtime via special APIs or portals.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

The tech executives came to DC to meet with Obama in the wake of the whole Snowden thing to discuss it, though it was widely reported as being a consult on fixing healthcare.gov (lol) a few outlets reported it correctly. There are photos of the meeting kicking around.

I imagine the Apple-vs-the-FBI narrative (which is widely regarded as true and has resulted in mainstream false belief, such as yours demonstrated here) was borne directly out of these meetings.

Apple intentionally maintains access to the majority of their users’ data by the USG and the CCP (in their respective zones). It is required for them to continue operating in their current fashion. Every iMessage and (basically) every file in iCloud (photos included) is readable by Apple and the government. Apple has the technical capability to prevent this by migrating their userbase to e2ee systems, and they do not.

I firmly believe that this is by design, and that they would be very severely punished, legally or extralegally, if they changed the status quo.

No, "authoritarian" is a word with a specific meaning. I'm not sure about applying it to Sam Altman, but Marc Andreessen has expressed views that I consider authoritarian in his victory lap tour since last year's presidential election.

> They want to be the kings they always thought of themselves as, and now they get to do so without couching it in "doing good".

You mean, AGI will benefit all of humanity like War on Terror spread democracy?

Why are you changing the subject? The “War on Terror” was never intended to spread democracy as far as I know; democracy was a means by which to achieve the objective of safety from terrorism.

> The “War on Terror” was never intended to spread democracy as far as I know;

Regardless of intent, it was most definitely sold to the American public on that premise.

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