Sam Altman asks if government can nationalize artificial general intelligence | Hacker News Reader

Sam Altman asks if government can nationalize artificial general intelligence

thenewstack.io

31 pointsMilnerRoute13 comments

Rhymes with that time 3 months ago they floated the idea of the government backstopping their debt: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/technology/openai-finance...

I have a really cool idea! In this system nobody owns any property, and to keep everyone happy the government tells you how to live your life.

Does anyone happen to know what would a system like that be called?

i suspect you're being cute by avoiding the c-word, but that's not what that means.

This week I'm being informed that property ownership is over, so you'll surely forgive my cynicism.

If AI can be used to launder any IP into the public domain by passing it through a legalized-government-theivery corp, what's the point in working to create anything?

That would just mean that ideas are worthless, which in turn makes judgement & execution extremely valuable.

State capitalism for me, anarchic austerity for thee. You will rent your favela mud hut and any dissent will be severely punished.

Hey y’all I’m starting to think this dude might not be a good guy! What a surprise.

isn't agi just a measure of profits, for openai?

Considering that $0 is a lot lower than $100000000000, shouldn't they be focused on actually "making it" before thinking about nationalization of something that, by your own definition, is exactly 0% of the way there?

Sure they can, but it’s still five to ten years away. (Rimshot)

dude just wants his company to be in the news, so he tweets stuff like this

Nationalization assumes AGI creates a monopoly worth seizing. But if multiple labs converge simultaneously and price it toward marginal cost, there's nothing to nationalize. The question is whether governments coordinate before commoditization makes the whole debate moot. History suggests they don't: https://philippdubach.com/posts/is-ai-really-eating-the-worl...

Would you please stop spamming HN with links to your site in comments?

I know that spamming is a strong word, but what you've been doing isn't just excessive, it's abusive: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

Normally we'd just put the site into a spam filter, but in this case I'd rather assume that you want to use HN as intended and are not just treating this place as a vehicle for promotion, which is against the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Appreciate you flagging this directly rather than just filtering.

Spamming is the exact opposite of my intentions. After Tom told me I shouldn't post links to my site anymore because long-time users complained about it making the front page three times in a month, I really cut back on posting and tried to only comment on topics where I felt I had something of value to add. If you look at my profile, plenty of my comments have no links at all or link to other sources, and based on feedback like today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47265869), I thought I'd found the right balance.

I'll adjust. Thanks for giving me the chance to.

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