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Comment by overvale | Hacker News Reader

I'm so genuinely confused by all this. It seems that Altman has a lot of detractors here, and I'm not sure why (my fault for not keeping up I guess). But a company that wants to spend trillions of dollars on AGI infrastructure and hopes to re-shape the entire global economy surely needs to plow a staggering amount of money into its operations and not into a non-profit. I get that there is controversy over redirecting profits of a very successful business from a non-profit entity (which would be great) to private parties, but... that was always going to happen right? Am I just too cynical?

What am I missing? I'm genuinely curious.

Also, the largest theft in human history surely has to be the East India Company extracting something like 50 trillion from India over 200 years, right?

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> Also, the largest theft in human history surely has to be the East India Company extracting something like 50 trillion from India over 200 years, right?

I never understood these sorts of statements. I feel historical events maybe after the Victorian age can claim to be theft, otherwise it's just empires and conquest.

Adjusted for inflation, wouldn't Alexander the Great's plundering of Persia, which at the time comprised 40% of the world's population, be the greatest theft in human history, using your logic?

The world population was a lot lower back then, and India is quite large to begin with.

If we're going by theft as a percent of world GDP, then surely the biggest theft was when Zog stole Ug's best smashing rock

The measurement should be theft per capita or how many people did Sam Altman take from?

Divide total GDP by the population and turn it into one unit.

Ug's best smashing rock would be 1.

This was my favorite Far Side

That's nothin', my great^N ancestor was part of a horde that conquered the entire planet in a Grey-Goo apocalypse.

Sure, it's divided up amongst all the descendants now, but it was quite a heist.

when Zog stole Ug’s intellectual property rights in the starting of fire.

Yeah, you're right, it's not a fair comparison.

> I feel historical events maybe after the Victorian age can claim to be theft, otherwise it's just empires and conquest.

One criterion that might work is whether there's some greater power around that says it's theft, and is able/willing to enforce that in some manner.

So for example a successful conquest isn't theft, but a failed conquest is probably attempted theft (and vandalism of course).

There no way Persia comprised 40% of the world population at that time with India and China around.

> I feel historical events maybe after the Victorian age can claim to be theft, otherwise it's just empires and conquest.

It was always theft. Having been done in the past does not make them less theft. The reason East India Company is shown as example for such things is that it is the first human organization that did those on an industrial scale and genocidally.

https://yourstory.com/2014/08/bengal-famine-genocide

It was already starving Indians by forcing them to plant opium instead of food crops to sell to the Chinese to kill them for money (20 million/year estimated dead from opium) in the late 18th century. And when the Chinese finally tried to stop it, Opium wars happened. The justification shown for that war was 'Free trade'. The justifications still havent changed, neither the practices. This should tell you why East India Company is specifically evil, because it is the first large scale application of the evil you see today and it invented a lot of its methods.

>I feel historical events maybe after the Victorian age can claim to be theft, otherwise it's just empires and conquest.

"empires and conquest" is literally armed robbery.

The article tracks some good historical quotes. But it doesn’t seem to try and steel man the other side, that is, what’s oAI worth without its workers and an attached for profit company?

To the extent the answer is ‘much lower’ then he could have spent a whole blog post congratulating California ag and Sam for landing the single largest new public charity in real dollar terms maybe ever.

If the point is “it sticks in my craw that the team won’t keep working how they used to plan on working even when the team has already left” then, fair enough. But I disagree with theft as an angle; there are too many counter factuals to think through before you should make a strong case it’s theft.

Put another way - I think the writer hates Sam and so we get this. I’m guessing we will not be reading an article where Ilya leaving and starting a C corp with no charitable component is called theft.

[deleted]: I need to be calm before posting.

If only we all would!

Are you saying that because you're cynical you thought Altman would always go for the biggest money grab possible, and so you won't criticize him on that basis? I'm cynical enough to think a lot of people will always go for the biggest money grab possible, but I still will criticize them for doing so.

No, I'm saying I'm cynical because I assume that whenever this much money is involved there's no way events unfold in a fair, ethical, utopian way. It always turns into a knife fight in the mud.

But they should unfold in a legal way. And I'm not convinced that they have.

Okay, but what I'm asking about is this part of your previous comment:

> It seems that Altman has a lot of detractors here, and I'm not sure why

Why are you confused/surprised that Altman has detractors?

I should have structured my sentences a little better. I'm not confused about why he has detractors, I'm confused as to why people thought it would go any other way with this munch money on the line.

But, you're right, that's no reason to refrain from criticizing them for it.

It seems a bit strange to me that we as a society have agreed to arrest everyone in the knife fight in the mud despite very little risk of innocent parties wandering into the mud to be hurt, but if you put on a dress shirt..

Yes. Colonialism is certainly going to be worse. One AI company going from non profit to whatever it is now is not close.

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