slowin

Thank you but I'm no saint. I joined Microsoft knowing that they were incompatible with my values. I just told myself that I wouldn't work on those types of projects and try to stick to my values. I told myself that I could just be "professional" and keep my head down.

But, as I learned more I was filled with a deep sadness and shame. It was tearing me apart. Every day I got up to go to work and was getting sick to my stomach.

Now I just feel lost. I spent my life building a career in this industry and it feels like I have nowhere else to turn. Microsoft is not the only company actively complicit with horrible crimes and human rights violations. I've loved technology since as far back as I can remember, but looking back with the knowledge I have now, I just feel dirty. I honestly don't even know what to do at this point, I do have a job now but when I look at who funded us, it's every bit as bad as working at Microsoft. I feel like I need to walk away from it all and start a food truck or something.

AI is the end of the funnel and I actually think the mass surveillance at the beginning of the funnel is a bigger issue. The concentration of power is the problem. If you or I could defend ourselves against state level actors with AI weapons, then they would be a good thing (imho). AI and mass surveillance at the state level create a power imbalance that is a major threat to human rights and should be resisted as much as possible.

AI helps people scale. If being "on target" means that you find people when they're eating dinner so you can kill their entire family, then using AI to scale that up is a terrible thing. That's exactly what Israel did with Lavender. They literally had a kill list called "Where's daddy?".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39918245

Props to the author. I left Microsoft due to their work with Israel to spy on Palestinians and record all of their phone conversations (in addition to other IDF collaborations). They ended up walking some of it back, but Satya was complicit.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/25/microsoft-bloc...

Anyone who's impact is more than just rampant financial fraud. Human's are the product of their environment and mostly just in the right place at the right time, but there's no criteria where you could put Elon Musk in a list of the most important humans of all time.

You could say people like Henry Ford are on his level

Since Tesla was started, they've sold ~9.6 million cars. In that same time period, Ford has sold 100 million. Musk is no Henry Ford, it's much more accurate to compare him to P.T. Barnum and Bernie Madoff.

Yep, we're cool with it because changing the clocks twice a year is ridiculous. People should live in an environment they're comfortable in. We should also push for a culture of not having to wake up at absolutely insane times in the morning. Like I said in another comment, this is a huge opportunity for many people to WFH and just ditch the commute. Positive changes all around.

Sales engineers do post-sales work. Typically if they're going to do a significant amount of real work, they'd just be called "consultants".

And those people are optimizing for money, "prestige" or something other than having a healthy schedule. We definitely should not dictate the entire country's sleep around west coast financiers.

If you wake up in the dark you are ensured to use the maximum amount of daylight possible. You also have the added benefit of being able to sleep until you need to get up instead of being woken up early by the sun.

Start school and work later, "problem" solved. Also another great argument for WFH, don't waste an hour in commute, spend it in bed getting the rest you need!

The Justice Department’s files include email correspondence between Gates and Epstein about philanthropic projects, calendar entries documenting dates they got together, and photos of Gates at events the two men attended.

Incredible that they omit that Bill Gates asked Epstein for STD drugs to slip to his wife without her consent after cheating on her.

These used to be called "Sales Engineers" but Palantir wanted something more militant sounding. It's a shame others picked this gross term up and started using it.

We don't but our government does (or they're blackmailed to support them). They're actually trying to sneak a merger of our millitaries into law (https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-israel-military-merg...) because they know this is the last generation of Americans that will ever support israel.

If Israel doesn't want US politicians monitoring them, they can stop taking our tax dollars, military resources and political cover. The best solution is to immediately cut all aid and support for Israel. They should be on their own, and no US politician will need to visit. Until then, we need to call the shots and exit this relationship permanently.

My taxes aren't "money given without strings attached". They are payment for services that benefit myself and others in the community. They're not a free gift for the government to hand out, that's theft.

You are entitled to a benefit from your tax dollars being spent. Otherwise, it's just theft.

Absolute classic. If anyone is interested, the Footloose soundtrack (which has Holding Out For a Hero on it) is probably one of the greatest soundtracks of all time. The movie sucks but damn, this soundtrack is incredible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footloose_(1984_soundtrack)

The prior art you state is exactly why I think this is almost certainly happening.

One difference is that a CEO cannot set off an atomic bomb, but they can use an uncensored AGI model. The side-effects would be impossible to trace.

I wonder, though, how many people advocating for popular access to uncensored AI models also advocate for an unrestricted (not infringed) right to bear arms or an unrestricted right to freedom of speech.

I advocate for all three of those things, for the same reason: the people I least want to have access to them, almost definitely do and it's imperative that the rest of us sit on equal footing.

I have to disagree. For the sake of argument say Elon Musk had his own personal, uncensored SOTA model. He has the cash and politics to make that a realistic goal. Would people want him to have that? Not really, hence secrecy as well.

It strikes me as highly unlikely that Anthropic has developed another fable-class model where the only difference is that it doesn't answer questions in that way

I'm curious why you think that's highly unlikely given the monetary incentive (or even post-monetary!) to create such a thing? I imagine there's also an arms race aspect, if you assume your enemies (whoever they are) have access to such a model, certainly those capable of creating one, would.

Do we think that someone at Anthropic, OpenAI, the government... has access to SOTA models without censorship? "How do I build an effective weapon?", "How do I effectively control the masses?"...

It's very concerning that we get the nerfed models but you know that somewhere, people with a lot of resources have access to the raw, uncensored, probably more powerful models. The sprint toward AGI looks even more dangerous when you think about who will be gaining access to it first. I do believe the goal is to pull away from the rest of humanity in a near trans-humanistic state. Are we ready for that and how do we counter it?