It is fair to be critical of Sam and other tech leaders regarding AI, but he has done nothing to begin to justify violence or even the threat of violence against him or his family.
If the Sackler's actions are visible evil, where on the 'LLC/Corpo' scale does evil turn to 'acceptable business' and the choices made by management to inflict damage on many many people switch to 'acceptable business' where the perpetrators are disconnected from their actions/choices?
'LLC/Corporations' absolve management of liability/accountability in the government eyes, but you are making an assumption that then extends to absolving when it comes to actual morality. While you can try to sell 'articles of incorporation' count as modern indulgences freeing people from sin under the religion of capitalism I'm not sure all of society agrees. I think the concept that LLC/Incorporation is a blanket 'papal indulgence' absolving management of all accountability/moral behavior in our modern techno feudalist social structure is wearing thin for a lot of people. Clunky as hell language but it's a discuss that needs to be had, and better for all sooner rather than later.
That was a solid line
Callous indifference seems fine if it’s done at a large scale and the harm impersonal enough. Murder is too small, too targeted.
Sam Altman could use his considerable wealth to hold billionaires like himself accountable for crimes that they commit through lobbying or funding investigations. Seeing criminal billionaires face justice would go a long to reducing this kind of violence.
> Suchir Balaji (November 21, 1998 – November 26, 2024) was an American artificial intelligence researcher who was found dead one month after accusing OpenAI, his former employer, of violating United States copyright law -Wikipedia
I totally agree with your statement if we are talking about the average citizen starting to throw Molotovs at his house. If you’re afraid AI is taking your job, just do something else. It’s not the end of the world changing careers.
Plenty of work AI won’t be able to do, or allowed to do without a human assisting in some way that secures the human a good income and way of life.
So if this is done by an individual citizen, they need to be hunted down, arrested, and get the full force of the justice system to deter others from doing the same.
On the other hand, right now, Sam Altman is a valid military target for assassination in the US / Iran war.
OpenAI did snatch up the contract from Anthropic at the Pentagon, and their technology is in some capacity used to murder Iranian HVTs (High Value Targets). Altman is therefore technically a legal HVT for the Iranians.
If you say it’s valid and not a war crime for the US to assassinate former political Iranian figures and their families for aiding the new regime and therefore becoming enemy combatants in the eye of the US Military, it’s also valid to assassinate Altman and his family for doing the same to the other war party.
It’s a bit of a Schrödinger situation. He is technically a valid target in a current war, but not for the private citizen.
In both cases, though, I’d advocate that violence is neither a solution to solve the problem that AI might be creating for a lot of people in the future, nor should he be treated as an enemy combatant and his infant child and wife bombed to smitherens.
Diplomacy is key here, just like it would have been the better solution than going to war with Iran.
If you disagree with Altman, send him a letter, show up at his workplace, talk to the man, gather people who think the same of him you do, write letters to your voted representatives, make calls, vote politicians into office that are anti AI and who will go after him and regulate his company to shit. Bureaucrats can make Altman’s life more miserable than a thousand Molotovs ever could.
If you gather enough support, you can reach the same goal, taking his power over your life away, without any violence.
But are you really surprised people chose violence over the democracy toolbox in the US if they get told by the people in charge of their country that violence is indeed a good way to solve problems, that you should have a "warrior" spirit and everything is up for grabs, even sovereign countries like Greenland because you can outviolence any other nation on the planet?
Violence only creates more violence and as long as there is a president who chooses to put oil in the fire and pretends it’s ok to murder US citizens like Alex Pretti, you don’t really need to wonder if the average citizen starts murdering tech CEOs in the near future.
They just follow the Top-down approach to using violence as a tool the leadership lives by example.
Sam isn't a political leader, so this comparison is flawed. What the hell, are we really arguing about if assasinating a long-standing figure of this community here is valid? Seriously??
Engineer archetypes hate politics and refuse to think about it. For most engineering, there is negligible political dimension. But culturally-transformative technology is inherently political to the degree it's transformative. Altman recognises this.
He is working towards a social goal, and attracting support to achieve it. Yes, he is a political leader.
But sure, go ahead and define it however you want.
> Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent
Agreed, just look how the US handled Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and now Venezuela and Iran.
No One does!
I also found news hard to believe but it is true:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx91rdxpyeo
I'm not a big fan of Sam Altman, but violence like this is not a solution; it has the actually opposite effect as it probably did with Trump.
I don't support this and yet I know for every harm people in these corrupt institutions are involved in, the universe gives back your due.
If you want to stop the harm. Stop harming the world with your actions in what every way that needs to manifest for you.
So the headline seems to be more "high profile person attacked by lunatic" than "OpenAI CEO attacked for being evil".
But as far as political justification stands, he is as valid of a target for hostile nations just as Iranian nuclear scientists were (unless he has 0 involvment with USG). That's just the world we live in.
Use your tech for war in other nations, you give a justification for other nations to target you. Same goes for Lockheed Martin ceo etc, nothing specific against Sam. But saying nobody has no valid reason to target Sam like this is pretty stupid imo.
Some people are treated a whole lot better than others in prison.