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Sam (and Greg Brockman) want something they do not have, very desperately. They want to win, to be Great Men, to be remembered by history with Jobs and Gates and the other tech luminaries. This is mentioned in Karen Hao's Empire of AI.

They are both a lesson to me that no matter how much you have, you will not necessarily be satisfied.

> He can fucking afford to have some fucking principles.

Who is to say he doesnt? Just because they dont align with yours doesnt mean he doesnt have his own principles.

> he's choosing to do the wrong thing

To many millions he is doing the right thing. I am on the fence personally, but I know many people who think that increasing defense capabilities at any cost is something that the governmetn should be doing. Any company that helps them do that is 'doing the right thing'.

> I wouldn't let being a coward stop me from doing the right thing

The 'right thing' is always subjective, and for you it is decided by you alone. Try to remember that and see things from both sides.

He posted like seven hours ago about these principles and changed them like twenty minutes after the president had a temper tantrum about Anthropic.

Whether or not he agrees with my principles isn’t the issue. He doesn’t even agree with his own stated principles. He posted his stipulations about AI models used by the department of defense to presumably get social credit, and then changed his mind over the course of a few hours.

He claims that the Department of Defense principles just happen to now align with these principles but as far as I can tell he seems to just be trusting their word. The word of a Fox News TV host and a convicted fraudster.

You can judge his actions all you like, but unless you know the man and sit down and discuss it with him everything you are saying is just speculation and opinion. That is fine, just realise that.

Umm, no shit? This isn’t actually saying anything. I am saying that his stated principles are inconsistent with his actions.

Yes, sure, maybe deep down on his heart of hearts he actually is the most kind caring person who ever existed, but I have no way of knowing what is in his heart of hearts so I can only judge him by what he has said and done, and I am arguing that his actions don’t match his words.

You really think that a CEOs public statements match their real thoughts and feelings?

Everything you hear from any CEO is constructed to form a desired image and narrative. Any public statements from a CEO that you are using to judge their character is completely false and misguided. You have no idea what the real man is behind the image.

You haven’t really gone through my comment history here, which is fine, I haven’t gone through yours, but if you had you would see that today I posted about how you can’t trust anything billionaires say because there’s no negative consequences for lying.

I am arguing that he posted on Twitter not even 24 hours ago a post laying out what looked like principles. Not even 24 hours later he decided that those principles aren’t actually important.

I am not a psychic because psychics don’t actually exist, so I can’t read minds, so I cannot know what he is actually thinking. I am claiming that he’s a piece of shit for not following his own stated principles. I actually do think billionaires should face consequences for lying.

Are you trying to say he might be a great guy if you get past the things he says and the actions he takes? What's left?

Are you saying you have never done anything where your hand was forced, or that you have never done anything that you look back on and regret?

People change, as do their circumstances and opinions. You have no idea what forces and pressures are making a man do what he does.

I'll note you didn't answer my question. I assume this is because the answer to "what's left" is "excuses," which is what you appear to be describing now.

Actions are the only thing that matter.

"He does evil things, but maybe he feels conflicted about it. That makes them okay."

So youve never done anything that you look back and regret?

"increasing defense capabilities at any cost "

Ugh

Agreed, but in this society of fear created after 9/11 it is a very popular sentiment across many millions of people.

There has to be a line that will not be crossed, in order to be seen to have principles.

Until that line has been reached, we can safely assume there are no principles at play.

You are the one drawing that line for yourself. Everybodies line of principles is in a different place.

No, you're incorrect.

Some people never reach a line. And if they do get close, it gets hastily redrawn.

Thats exactly what I said/implied. Everybody has their own line, and can draw it and move it wherever they like.

If you draw a line and somebody else crosses it, that affects you and you only. Its unfair to impose your own standards onto another person.

A person can be judged by their actions. Especially if they have a habit of redrawing their own 'line'.

"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." -- Warren Buffet

The original context was very different, about financial markets, but I've been thinking about it a lot the past 12 months. There's a lot of cowards in high places in tech, surprisingly cowardly people. Or they have sold out their principles to be friends with terrible people, which is also a form of cowardice. Hard to say which.

The whole Epstein thing is a really really great marker of this too. Though I'm not sure if the tide has gone out all the way (we mostly know what's going on), or if there's a lot more tide to fall.

LBJ was a real son of a bitch, who, when he finally was thrust into power as president, did something pretty surprising by going all-in on the civil rights movement. Power reveals who people are, and times of trials reveal who people really are.

I think we merely have a system where the best people are selfless and poor and the worse people are rich and in charge. It makes sense; we have a system that rewards immoral behavior so we shouldn't be surprised that immoral people have made it to the top.

Such systems are nothing new, and are in fact the norm. The current system is perhaps even notable for how it has deviated from the past, and in particular Silicon Valley was a means for promoting some of the most selfless and poor into positions of great wealth and influence, especially going back to the Fairchild Semiconductor days. Always been greedy venal and immoral people here, but perhaps less than in other systems of power.

The stoics, people that Zuckerberg and others pretend to understand and follow, would have nothing but disdain for the lack of virtue that's apparent in those like Zuckerberg.

I think if you read Plato's The Republic you might find that this is nothing new. Welcome to society and human nature.

History is full of cowards who are arguably as guilty as the people who committed the atrocities. The people who are remembered positively in history are the people who overcame their fears and did what they thought was right, even if it carried a real risk of it blowing up in their faces.

> It's frustrating. Sam Altman already has everything. He's a billionaire, he can buy literally anything he wants, he can live anywhere he wants, he can buy a brand new sports car every day just to blow it up, he can buy a new house every week just to demolish and replace it with a trampoline park. He can afford to do anything.

No, he doesn't have everything. See, maybe he's worth $3 billion. Or maybe $30 billion. But he's not worth $300 billion. That's a lot more worth he could have! And even then, he could be worth $3 trillion instead!

But yes, $100 million is the maximum amount of assets one individual should ever be allowed to hold. Potentially less. Anything higher is enormously harmful to society. People would get used to it very quickly and would work just as hard to reach that $100 million as they do now to reach $100 billion.

“Yes, but I have something he will never have — ENOUGH” - Joseph Heller.

After a billion dollars, I doubt another billion will make you happier. In fact, I don’t think another trillion will make you happier. In fact, I don’t think another quadrillion dollars will make you happier, etc.

After a certain point you have effectively infinite money. Enough money to live dozens of extremely comfortable lifetimes. And importantly enough money to afford to actually have some principles. Oh no, he wouldn’t be able to afford to have his house re-covered in 24 karat gold again if he doesn’t fellate our lolcow president.

'Dozens' should be multiples by many million, but I definitely agree with the sentiment.

Way more than a dozen!

We live in a capitalist economy. What do you expect, a company to just say 'Thats fine we have enough money we dont need any more'?

How does a $100 billion dollar company grow? By taking on massive government and military contracts, they are the only clients big enough left in the world.

If a company does not show continual growth then it is classed as failing. That is the society we have built, and you cannot blame one man for following those principles. Every CEO in existence does the same.

Somehow Anthropic’s CEO managed to reach a different conclusion.

They don’t have to do business with every single entity who asks them to and they don’t have to bend over for every stipulation that that entity asks for.

Yep, in exactly the same way that for years Google was 'not evil'.

When anthropic can no longer grow through developer subscriptions and deals with ethical companies, Lets see how long it takes their shareholders to force them to remove such sweet statements from their company mission statement.

I love how you chastised me for speculating on Altman’s mind state but apparently you can predict the future and know what Anthropic is going to do N years from now.

Yeah maybe Anthropic will become a rent-seeking corporation. That’s likely even. And yet that’s not actually relevant at all to what I said; the fact is that right now they appear to have more principles than Altman and OpenAI

There is no corporation in existence that hasnt eventually bowed to the whim of their shareholder masters. Everybody grows up and moves on, and when everybody in Anthropic who shares your golden heart is gone onto their next job, the companies ethical nature will plummet rapidly.

Please, come on.

Is this really the best backup?

Sam Altman has demonstrated that he's a piece of ** with this move.

We can now safely assume that all the pronouncements and grand statements before were simply posturing.

> Is this really the best backup?

It is the justification for anything any corporation does. This is a company with boards of directors and shareholders, you really think this is just Sams opinion guiding this?

> Sam Altman has demonstrated that he's a piece of * with this move.

Thats is your opinion based only on what his company has publicly dislcosed to you. I prefer not to judge a mans character based on corporate puffery.

Sympathy for the Devil.

So youve never done anything you look back on and regret? You dont believe in second chances or reform?

It sounds like your opinion is that when someone makes a bad decision then thats them for life.

If that's you Sam, repent now.

> We live in a capitalist economy.

We live in a multifaceted (are we allowed to use that word again? I think 2026 models have stopped using it) economy.

> That is the society we have built

Maybe you have, I sure haven't. Luckily "we" also haven't, as many - no, the overwhelming majority of people - aren't like that.

> and you cannot blame one man for following those principles.

You absolutely can, as much as you can blame the sadistic guards at Auschwitz.

> Every CEO in existence does the same.

A shocking, bald-faced lie. How do you get these keystrokes out of your fingers? This is so trivially false it immediately outs itself as bad faith. It takes less time to fact-check as being made up than the average post on Truth Social.

> Maybe you have, I sure haven't.

If 'we', the collective population of the earth, have not made the society we live in, then who has?

> You absolutely can, as much as you can blame the sadistic guards at Auschwitz.

If this was true millions of German soldiers would have been captured and punished/killed at the end of the war. Guess what? They were all rehabilitaed and reintegrated into society, even though they all followed orders and killed millions of people. We did not judge them and gave them a second chance. Some simple research will show you this.

> It takes less time to fact-check as being made up than the average post on Truth Social.

It also takes less time and energy to just attack and be spiteful and insulting in a forum reply, than to engage in a discussion and explain your opinons properly.

I see you have taken the former option.

I am eagerly waiting for the afterlife.

Ok.

I completely support the sentiment of what you wrote. But it doesn't directly seem relevant to the parent question.

It’s not but it is relevant to the surrounding context as to why this post has made it to the top of HN right now.

Very few of the comments on this thread are actually about the act of canceling the subscription.

Principled men do not become billionaires.