HN user
We're stronger together when we're free.
That kind of "power" can turn on a dime. I'd be wary of it. In this case the mob learned they have influence when they work together. That doesn't mean they are loyal to Altman, rather that they are influential when united.
the level of "entanglement" into our daily life with massive core-AI systems, such as the capabilities of GPT-'N' has, cannot be understated.
Entanglement of big business and government is not new. Yes, we should be very concerned, but the solution is not to worship idols like business leaders or politicians. They will not solve that problem for us. You have to think carefully before handing more authority to individuals who've already been ascribed far more than is due.
from a security guy just saying he doesnt care who runs the black box, is weird
One cannot select the "right" person to run that black box. We're all biased, flawed, etc. So yes, you should be concerned. But use that concern to drive your actions towards distributing authority– not centralizing it through more idol worship.
In response to your edit:
I do not "worship" or "idolize" SA, and especially Thiel - I am terrified of them.
This is idol worship. You're ascribing a power to Altman and Thiel that they do not have. Bad behavior has consequences that are beyond what even the government can impose. If Altman or Thiel were to make a habit of targeting people, he or his adherents/descendants would eventually find themselves friendless in a house built on sand. Altman almost lost his job that way. The fact that consequences may play out slowly in some cases doesn't make it less true. Nobody can infinitely violate the golden rule without eventually facing consequences.
Hah I just read about "Bohemian Grove." Do techies consider that sacred ground because Oppenheimer discussed the atomic bomb there? The idol worship present in SV is so thick I can hardly see anything else.
I hope that all the youngin's in tech (like the actual teenagers, like my children) are really paying attention to where we are in tech history with AI in general - and with OpenAI in particular - as SA can attempt to look like a Carnegie but actually be a Rockefeller.
You should hope that they go back to school and study history. All of this has happened before, many times over.
And yet, he nearly lost his job. None of us are perfect, nor are any of us better than any other. Let's cut the idolizing.
he just posted a thread on how much of a visionary he is
The thread you linked is from 2020.
What is the case against them? You can't claw back without demonstrating some law was broken. Making a bad financial decision that causes a business to fail isn't against the law unless you somehow profited from it. And, from what's publicly known, SVB's CEO didn't come away with more money from the bank's closure than he would have had he continued running the bank.
The mission of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is to maintain stability and public confidence in the nation's financial system.
I see nothing there about "we will guarantee deposits of any amount over $250k."
The decision to guarantee SVB may wreak havoc on the financial system as banks feel comfortable continuing to make risky bets and thus attracting more customers, knowing that the fed will rescue the customer deposits that backed those bets.
Greg Becker isn't going to jail, and he isn't going to be financially ruined. There are thousands of people willing to fill the role of extracting money from the government. The trick is to not give into their attempts to bend the rules.
odds are, just about every bank by now has either reviewed or scrambling to review their exposure
The lesson they learned is to shout global emergency when your regional bank can't meet withdrawals due to poorly managed finances.
Banks will not be more prudent, in the long run. They've just been taught that the government will protect depositors beyond federally insured limits. So now they can make riskier bets.
The question is, what would it take for a bank to be allowed to fail? The FDIC insurance line of $250k must've meant something.
Yes, now I wonder if anyone is allowed to fail. David Sacks complained that if the regionals aren't protected, then everyone will only bank with the big four. Yet if everyone is protected even when the bank makes poor decisions, that's a run on the FDIC itself. So as you say, where is this new line, and who can be trusted to allow those who cross it to fail?
The run they were tweeting about was a wider one on all regional banks. Did not happen at time of their tweets, they were speculating about the future.
Why was it the VCs impacted by the SVB collapse, and not the wider banking world, who stood to lose more, who were loudest to make that claim?
See also Jonathan Haidt's "Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s the Evidence."
https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...
I'm sorry to see "I don't care" as the top response to your thoughtful comment.
We are better off if we can argue the merits of both sides of issues. Trying to ram one answer down everyone's throats is not productive and does not make for good conversation.
I like your honest answers here. It's refreshing to hear in the tech space after a decade of wanna-be Jobs copycats. Good luck with the business.
After 1997 I don't see a single game being developed on the Doom Engine
Because Carmack kept developing new engines that were better. He also made it easy for people to build maps and add onto the game.
You can earn both money and followers by holding back key pieces but still sharing with the community.
Check out the book Masters of Doom.
It's a tragedy no nation should face alone. There should be no "looking bad" here, just opportunities to help. Why not embrace that and do whatever you can? Any city would face horrible losses in this situation. Heck, Miami lost half a building on a normal day...
China's exit, as happened 70-80 years ago, would cause us to have to work more. That might not be such a bad thing, though I doubt it will happen to the same degree. It's still fresh in everyone's mind.
Many people self-describe as pro-life. It is not 'flamebait' for most people and neither is pro-choice.
Pro-lifers can be pro-sex ed and pro-contraceptive. It would be your misunderstanding if you assume those must all go together.
Okay. The topic was birth, not sex ed / contraceptives.
That's one way of looking at it. But pro-lifers don't see it that way, so I was just presenting another point of view. I don't think telling them to stfu is productive.
To be clear, many Christians hold the same view as this example atheist, particularly those who think living is defined by knowing, and being dead by not knowing
And there are many Christians who regard support for abortion within the faith to have been influenced by atheism.
I just think it's an interesting question that has no easy answer. When does life begin? Clearly, the fetus is alive. Saying they "don't know" doesn't make sense to me because it's not like I remember my first year outside the womb either.
Case by case. Generally, if they commit to no violence then they should be supported, even protected by police. Uncomfortable conversations should be allowed to happen.
Do children still have this experience?
Haha, yes, we are not that far gone..
That was just for scanning photos in general.
Are you trolling? What Federighi proposed before was scanning "for CSAM" on device [1]. Same angle.
Doing it on device is probably preferable to on cloud and at worst no different.
Please elaborate. How is it better to force users to run software they don't want than to let them decide whether or not to have their photos scanned when they choose to upload them to the cloud?
Anyway it's a false dichotomy. Apple isn't doing on-device scanning, and now they've announced they won't do it in the cloud either.
Why couldn't they just do it with an OS update today?
See my comment here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33903825
None of us would know if Google was doing ad-hoc scans of particular users' photos at the behest of random LEOs.
Not your device, not your software. You should assume anything you upload unencrypted is scanned. This distinction was clearly voiced by the majority during the debacle of Apple's on-device scanning proposal. They basically said, "Scanning in the cloud is [choose one: fine, skeezy], but we draw the line at doing on-device scans. I don't want that software on my device."
The point of the feature is to use the data in court cases, which are public record. So word would get out there, via journalist, a whistleblower, etc. They had to make the proposal public before implementing it.
I don't understand your question.
Are you arguing in favor of on-device scanning? Or arguing against all scanning?
Perhaps easier, what do you think they should be doing?
Something about the US Constitution, but I can't remember what.
The first amendment comes into play. The government cannot compel Apple to write software in a certain way, such as "write your encryption so you have keys that access all of users' data". That would be "compelled speech". So if the government provides Apple with a warrant, Apple can only provide encrypted or whatever meta information they have, not decrypted content.