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Comment by mikeocool | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure it’s necessarily a given that what Jobs, Gates, and Carmack created are net-positives when talking on a civilizational scale.

Though Carmack certainly gets credit for keeping me entertained for a good portion of my youth.

And gates probably gets some civilizational credit for what he’s done with his wealth after he made it.

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I’m sitting here in Denmark having been affected by these geeks. They may not have built the Pantheon, but surely they have channeled a group of people’s creativity towards something we have integrated into our society?

Not saying they didn't have an impact -- just that it's worth debating whether the impact is truly a net positive for society on a grand scale, particularly if we're going to give them a pass on less than stellar behavior.

Zuckerberg likely has similar tendencies, should he be given a pass for making social media such a large part of our society?

A lot of people on HN confuse "large impact" with "positive impact."

It's not just HN - history remembers those who had large impacts, not only those who made the world better.

I am under the impression that a big part of the current AI progress is the result of the availability of chips that were created for gaming.

Also worth considering (and probably waiting and seeing) if the current AI progress is a net positive for society on the grand scale.

It is! Earlier, Nvidia was used for displaying pixels - then the AI crowd found out that these chips are perfectly for their computations in their models, so Nvidia now turned into an AI-vendor, more or less

personal computing is inseparable from technological progress, and has been wildly positive for humanity

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