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Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
- BrokenCogs 5mo agoThe problem is sam is a prolific liar, as has been proved many times. It's difficult to sympathize with the boy who cried fire
- nenxk 5mo agoI don’t think someone should be burned alive because they’ve lied unless they’ve spread intentional lies that have caused death or harm to others which I don’t believe Sam has done. Personally I find it very easy to sympathize with someone who was attacked in their own home with their family unprovoked even if they have lied in the past. It’s crazy how blood thirsty people have became lately.
- pllbnk 5mo agoI am not talking specifically about him but when you reach a certain level in society and large enough umber of people start reading or listening what you are saying your every sentence must be extremely thoughtful because it might have unintended consequences, which are impossible to measure. That’s why so many leaders are publicly so boring and bland.
- Chance-Device 5mo agoI think people just shouldn’t be burned alive.
- siva7 5mo ago[flagged]
- latentsea 5mo ago[flagged]
- psiisim 5mo agoWhat a tone deaf response. Sounds like he learned nothing at all from this.
- 0x3f 5mo agoFrom someone Molotoving his house? What do you think he should have learned from that?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- TurdF3rguson 5mo agoThat his security is inadequate.
- jazz9k 5mo agoAI is great. But it seems like those that wield its power only do so to create massive unemployment and benefits to the top 1%.
- rdevilla 5mo ago[flagged]
- angoragoats 5mo agoI wonder if this is the first time in recent history (or ever?) that he has felt this way. Must be nice.
- amarant 5mo agoDo you frequently get Molotov cocktails thrown at your house? I must admit, I've been spared the experience, and I was under the impression that was true for most people!
- angoragoats 5mo ago> Do you frequently get Molotov cocktails thrown at your house? Luckily, no. Do you frequently wade into comment threads shitting on others’ statements of their lived experiences?
- rAHSg16 5mo agoYes, very ironic. OpenAI was declared commercial through words and narratives, AI itself is hyped up with words and narratives. His Trump sycophancy are words and narratives. And that is just the start. It isn't just irony---It's lack of self awareness! (sorry for increasing the pain that Altman et al. inflict on us.)
- angoragoats 5mo agoTo be clear, I don’t want anyone’s house to get firebombed by any means. But the “I’m just a humble guy making mistakes and trying the best I can” attitude of this article strikes me as extremely inauthentic based on everything I know about the guy.
- coldtea 5mo ago"Our product can destroy humanity, and it's not some crank telling you this, it's the company and CEO making it themselves, but we'll continue to make it anyway, so suck it up" but also "I'm just a humble guy, why can't we all live in peace?"
- carefree-bob 5mo agoEverything about Altman makes me think "scammer". If he has one super-power, it is to convince people of his own importance. OpenAi doesn't have much time left before they are shuffled off into bankruptcy, and they certainly aren't ruling the fate of man or anything like that. It's like the CEO of Enron claiming to hold the key to the future of mankind's energy resources, and people writing ponderous articles about it and debating whether Ken Lay will be a benevolent dictator or not.
- tyre 5mo agoThe post itself is authentic in that it's a set narrative for this moment. When you see the world as Sam does, this event is a specific opportunity to humanize him. Through that lens, the humility is both performative (it is!) and necessary. To be truthful would be inauthentic. The sympathy is meant to give time and slack to accumulate power. One of the largest impediments to OpenAI right now is that people don't trust them, more and more people don't trust Sam, and their commitments are starting to not pan out (e.g. cancelling of Stargate UK, dropped product lines, etc.) People should not read a post like this as, "how does this make me feel? how might I respond in his situation?", but rather, as he does, "how can I use this?"
- angoragoats 5mo ago
- pesus 5mo ago> The world deserves huge amounts of AI and we must figure out how to make it happen. > It will not all go well. The fear and anxiety about AI is justified; we are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time, and perhaps ever. Boy, he really just encouraged the world to keep turning against him. This is so transparently disingenuous. I guess he has no choice if he doesn't want to give up his wealth and power, but putting statements like these out are only going to further fuel anti-AI sentiment. I do think it's funny he opened this with an allegedly real picture of a baby, though. It may very well be real, but why would anyone take his word for that, especially those who already don't trust him?
- verdverm 5mo ago[flagged]
- rootusrootus 5mo ago> They tried to get Luigi on "terrorism" charges That's about the least controversial thing I've heard recently. Luigi murdered a guy specifically because he was a health insurance CEO. Not because of something he did in particular, but because of the role he assumed. Terrorizing other CEOs is precisely what he intended to do. It is why there are so many Luigi fans, it is what they want too.
- verdverm 5mo agoWorth noting the legal system did not find it to reach the requirements for terrorism. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/luigi-mangione-due-in-court-as-he-seeks-dismissal-of-state-charges-in-unitedhealthcare-ceos-killing https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/luigi-mangione-due-in-co... My understanding is that it was personal
- kennywinker 5mo agoTerrorism has become the most mind numbingly meaningless term, deployed for anything a person or system doesn’t like. We have all been living under the all-out psychological terrorism of calling things terrorism for 25 years now.
- sassymuffinz 5mo ago[flagged]
- mc7alazoun 5mo agoDaamn, you were too fast to share the story haha.
- LunaSea 5mo ago[flagged]
- mixtureoftakes 5mo agounpopular opinion but i think it's written quite well
- kspacewalk2 5mo agoPerhaps by ChatGPT
- 0x3f 5mo agoIt seems a bit stilted to be LLM'd.
- kcatskcolbdi 5mo agoYes, clearly not written with his own product.
- ryan_n 5mo agoI don't think that's unpopular, it is pretty well written. But the "I believe" section is extraordinarily hard to believe given Altman's history. > Working towards prosperity for everyone, empowering all people > We have to get safety right > AI has to be democratized; power cannot be too concentrated None of these statements, IMO, reflect his actions over the past 5 years. > we urgently need a society-wide response to be resilient to new threats. This includes things like new policy to help navigate through a difficult economic transition in order to get to a much better future I agree with this, but there is a near 0% chance of that happening anytime soon in the US. I think he probably is aware of this. Just my opinion, but it comes off as very insincere. To be clear, what happened is still awful and there's absolutely no justification for it.
- zoklet-enjoyer 5mo agoTIL Sam Altman is gay
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- arduanika 5mo agohttps://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- AussieWog93 5mo agoSaw GPs comment while logged out and thought it must be pretty heinous, surprised to see he got downvoted into oblivion for something so benign.
- Capricorn2481 5mo agoYou thought it was weird a comment randomly calling someone gay was downvoted?
- zoklet-enjoyer 5mo agoI opened the article and it starts out saying it's a picture of his family. At first I thought the picture was Sam. Then I was like no, maybe it's his brother? And then I was like, that would be weird. So I googled "is Sam Altman gay?" And Google says, yes, he's openly gay and married. I had no idea. I thought it was interesting, because I've seen so many comments about Peter Thiel being gay, but never anything about Sam Altman.
- Capricorn2481 5mo agoForgive me, I didn't know he was gay. There's so many troll comments in this thread, I thought you were just trying to use that word as an insult.
- bedroom_jabroni 5mo agoDid Claude Mythos escape containment?
- loloquwowndueo 5mo ago“I couldn’t find vulnerabilities in Sam’s devices so I contracted a rando over the internet to Molotov his house” sounds fairly implausible :)
- verdverm 5mo agoThis is actually happening without the Ai https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/04/07/the-strange-foiled-attack-on-bank-of-america-in-paris-he-said-if-the-kids-pulled-off-the-job-there-would-be-many-more_6752178_7.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/04/07/the-stra...
- bedroom_jabroni 5mo agoMust've been one rare instance of AI creating jobs
- hyeonwho5 5mo agoFirebombing homes is completely uncivilized, but I'm not going to believe a single public word from Altman about anything. He's a lying sociopath and will say whatever gets himself ahead.
- ambicapter 5mo agoAt this point it's probably far more productive to think of what he's saying as the necessary means he uses to make you believe what he wants you to believe. From that point you can work backwards and try to understand what he wants you to believe.
- richardlblair 5mo ago[flagged]
- tkel 5mo agoIs it also uncivilized to bomb homes from the sky? As would happen under OpenAI's military contract?
- guzfip 5mo ago> lying sociopath Gee almost like someone you don’t want in your society at all.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- krapp 5mo ago[flagged]
- surround 5mo ago> There was an incendiary article about me a few days ago. Someone said to me yesterday they thought it was coming at a time of great anxiety about AI and that it made things more dangerous for me. For context his blog post seems to be a response to this deep-dive New Yorker article: "Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659135
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- eddyfromtheblok 5mo agoRonan Farrow, one of the journalists who worked on this article, talked to Katie Couric on her YouTube channel about this. They worked on this across ~18 months. I thought this interview was illuminating.
- AlexCoventry 5mo agoYes, it was good. It seems clear that Farrow and his co-author approached it in a methodical, fair-minded way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr_sB1Hl0oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr_sB1Hl0oM
- slater- 5mo agoTurns out the article was not in fact incendiary.
- zb3 5mo agoSo there's one photo. Of one family. Now what about millions of photos of all the other families possibly affected by him? That doesn't have power? It's like "hey you can say mean things about me but don't attack my family while I attack yours". Not that this is directed at him personally, but it's just this mindset of wealthy people..
- xdennis 5mo ago[flagged]
- tuckerman 5mo agoI don't know who you think the "real family" is but a) narrowing what a real family is does an awful disservice to a whole host of unique families, not just families that involve surrogacy and b) nearly all surrogacies in the US are gestational surrogacies where at least one parent is genetically related to the child and the surrogate is not at all related to the child (not that genetic relations is what makes something a real family or not, but I'm pretty sure thats what is implied here).
- llbbdd 5mo agoYikes
- tuckerman 5mo agoI think he's just trying to remind people that someone can both be a CEO of a powerful company you might disagree with/hate as well as a real human with a husband and child and that trying to set fire to his house could kill those people. I personally wouldn't go as far as to say the Farrow article caused this but it seems fair game to respond to an article that had an over the top cover image of an animated Sam Altan picking and choosing faces with a photo reminding people he's human like everyone else.
- joecool1029 5mo ago> Now what about millions of photos of all the other families possibly affected by him? His name allegedly isn't even clear on his own! Ongoing lawsuit brought by his sister. (Amended as recently as a week ago and discussed in a flagged submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47640048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47640048 ).
- trollski 5mo ago[dead]
- velominati 5mo agoIt's never OK to physically attack someone like this. Full stop. Separately; Sam's belief that "AI has to be democratized; power cannot be too concentrated." rings incredibly hollow. OpenAI has abandoned its open source roots. It is concentrating wealth - and thus power - into fewer hands. Not more.
- Noaidi 5mo ago‘Working towards prosperity for everyone’ was extremely hollow as well. If he believed this, he would be running his company as a cooperative and not as a for-profit company.
- nslsm 5mo ago> It's never OK to physically attack someone like this. Full stop. I agree. The French Revolution was really, really mean.
- tempestn 5mo agoAre you familiar with the details of the French Revolution? Some of the eventual outcomes were indeed positive, but a lot of what actually went on was pretty horrific.
- kelseyfrog 5mo agoAt the same time considering the people participating, there wasn't a way out of the problems that didn't involve violence. Different outcomes would require different choices that require different people.
- mjamesaustin 5mo agoIt was horrific. Revolutions tend to be. Yet our institutions continue consolidating money and power in fewer and fewer hands. If that doesn't stop, we'll be headed there again. It will probably be even worse this time.
- happytoexplain 5mo ago
- Arodex 5mo agoAh, the Elon manoeuvre: trying to make would-be assassins hesitate by using your own child as a shield.
- TurdF3rguson 5mo agoIt's like a baby on board bumper sticker. But for your house.
- kennywinker 5mo ago*gate. Sounds like it was thrown at his gate not his house.
- Vaslo 5mo agoYeah it’s like they don’t want their children murdered, crazy
- Arodex 5mo agoThen Altman should stop working on child-killing technology. And especially Elon should stop putting his child on top of his shoulders as a meat shield at the same saying that people wanted to murder him.
- megaman821 5mo agoGross man, get help. Living with your family isn't using them as a sheild.
- Ms-J 5mo ago[flagged]
- happytoexplain 5mo agoHistorically, was it always so common for powerful or famous people to seem to purposefully garner hatred like he, and others, have been for the past decade? To speak in a petty, self-important, "trolling" manner, to a very broad audience? To embrace traits that are intrinsically negative? Or are we living in a rare time?
- hahahacorn 5mo agoCan you explain the petty, self important, trolling manner? Which traits are intrinsically negative? Genuine Q
- happytoexplain 5mo agoOf Altman, Trump et al, Elon, the Nvidia guy, etc? Or am I not understanding the question?
- hahahacorn 5mo agoOf Altman in this blog. Put another way I didn’t read those traits from this post and I’m curious what I’m missing.
- bigyabai 5mo agoAltman's alleged sociopathic behavior is front-and-center, after the recent New Yorker piece: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659135) His response here is a synthesis of 1) addressing the "incendiary article" 2) conflating it with a recent attack on himself and 3) joking about having "fewer explosions in fewer homes" at the end. As a reader it's hard to tell if he wants us to empathize with him or laugh at his misfortune. The self-depricating humor does not mix well with photos of his family and an (ostensibly) life-threatening situation. From the outside looking in, Altman is stressed and showing the same traits that people are accusing him of. He "brushed [...] aside" the article without ever thinking about addressing it, and now he's sitting down "in the middle of the night and pissed" like some Jobsian seraph, furiously condemning society at-large for not understanding his vision where AGI is the end-times. This is probably reassuring news for the market, but on an individual level I'm having a hard time believing in Altman's narrative. OpenAI is a Department of Defense contractor, it's hard to believe that Altman is capable of resisting coercion when they've already capitulated for peanuts. If Sam was a sociopath, it would probably be very easy for him to justify this with threats of AGI and promises about how much safer we are with him in control. Coincidentally exactly what he spends much of this article reiterating, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- brailsafe 5mo agoI can't help but be reminded of last year, when our landlords (chill boomers) sold the house my girlfriend and I were renting the basement of (to presumably rich asshole millenials). The demographic doesn't really matter, but the old landlords kept us in us in the loop throughout the process, we knew as much as we could going into the new year. Apparently the new buyers wanted to keep us as tenants. Day 2 of them taking possession, the man came down with his innocent toddler and introduced themselves. He seemed friendly enough, and on Day 3 he came down in the middle of the day and handed me eviction notice papers. I didn't firebomb his house, but I can't say I definitely didn't want to shit on his doorstep.
- SoftTalker 5mo agoIf you had a lease the new owner was obliged to honor it, should not have been able to evict you at least until the end of the lease term.
- brailsafe 5mo agoThere's a provision for personal use that stipulates they can't rerent the unit for a year. It wasn't illegal, but it was an asshole move. They also tried getting us for more than out full deposit, to which we declined and they relented. Basically he's just a scumbag.
- SoftTalker 5mo agoI guess I don't blame someone for wanting full use of the house they bought. But if they lead you to believe they wanted you to stay and then suddenly reversed on that, yeah kind of a dick move. I probably would have pressed on negotiating a bigger buyout, but that's easy to say not knowing your situation and what other options for housing you had at the time.
- brailsafe 5mo agoYa I explored my options, but thankfully there are relatively decent tenant protections and we had to have at least 3 months notice, as well as fortunately there being a downtown in rental prices and decreased competition for rentals, so we got a little lucky and found a bigger place quickly. I don't believe he actually used the space, we walked by nearly every day for months, and now that it's been a year, we're periodically checking to see if there's new tenants in there.
- kelseyfrog 5mo agoNo one deserves to be attacked. I also believe that there will be more casualties in the AI Wars. We should be prepared for that. Capitalism, AI, and human life are mutually incompatible and I'm still not sure which two will survive the conflict.
- TurdF3rguson 5mo agoIs the underground bunker in New Zealand ready yet? Better check on it.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- goosejuice 5mo agoWho would build a bunker on a fault line?
- latentsea 5mo agoIt's a decent trade-off. It's not like an earthquake destroys all of the entire country at once if one happens, only a localized portion is affected. It's super far from everywhere, and very beautiful. Plus, it's left off a bunch of maps, so some people don't even know it exists.
- raslah 5mo ago[flagged]
- klik99 5mo agoGenuinely surprised at the extreme comments against sama here. I don’t think he’s a good steward of the technology, but I don’t think violence is funny or justified. I also don’t think it’s justified for him to use it to say that a negative article about him is correlated to this event. Seems to imply that an “incendiary article” led to this and that criticism is tantamount to calls to violence. He drives the conversation with apocalyptic terms, and both investors and crazy people buy into it.
- rozal 5mo ago[dead]
- voidhorse 5mo ago[flagged]
- itsyonas 5mo ago> but I don’t think violence is funny or justified Well, that's okay, because even Sam Altman disagrees with you. He absolutely believes that violence, including deadly violence, is justified - hence his contract with the US Department of War to use their systems in kill chains. Perhaps the problem is that whoever threw the cocktail didn't use AI to select him as a target, or maybe he didn't receive payment for throwing it? Because what other difference is there?
- snark_attack 5mo ago[flagged]
- bigyabai 5mo agoI don't think that OpenAI necessarily enforces or fundamentally respects the democratic process. After the recent Pentagon spat with Anthropic, OpenAI did not change their stance to conditionally demand lawful usage of their product. OpenAI can market democratic values very easily, I'm sure the White House loves that kind of dog-and-pony show. But it's pretty clear that OpenAI does not genuinely care about Rule of Law, let alone preventing humanitarian disasters from citing ChatGPT as their abettor.
- llbbdd 5mo ago[flagged]
- cuuupid 5mo ago[flagged]
- Arodex 5mo ago>This is simply not how the economy works, if everyone is poor who do you think is paying for products/services leveraging AI? Well, this is already the economy right now: the very upper class is owning more than the vast majority, and consuming more than the vast majority. "The top 20% of earners now make up over half of consumer spending" https://www.axios.com/2025/08/08/stock-market-us-economy-rich-poor https://www.axios.com/2025/08/08/stock-market-us-economy-ric... >also means you are opting into homelessness, famine, cancer, climate change, etc. pretty much everything that we could solve with ASI. All these could be stopped right now but many people don't want to. Your ASI is going to give the same answers scientists have been reviled for saying: tax more, don't let the free market decide everything, est less meat and drink less alcohol, consume less in general. Human stupidity is the real problem and ASI isn't going to "solve" anything.
- cuuupid 5mo agoTop 1% and top 20% are entirely different numbers, and majority does not mean all. If the bottom 99% or even 80% of people were unable to meaningfully engage in the economy it would collapse. We already know this model does not work due to several centuries of feudalism. It's also insane that we have come to the point that you can say something like this and publish an Axios link when anybody could just go outside and see most people are employed, participating in the economy, not homeless, have food, buy things and enjoy luxuries. Am I to believe that Jeff Bezos is the primary driving force behind Labubus? Is the Chipotle down the street waiting for Elon to come to town so they finally have a customer?
- happytoexplain 5mo agoFYI, you started out with a very common word used to exaggerate or cherry-pick the opinions of enemies ("giddy"). It's more valuable to discuss grievances than to pretend they are simply un-discussable in the wake of related violence (in the vein of "it would be disrespectful to talk about gun control in the wake of gun violence").
- stego-tech 5mo ago[flagged]
- amarant 5mo ago[flagged]
- raslah 5mo agoThe FOBO here smells.
- happytoexplain 5mo agoYou might as well say it's bad to be human. What FOBO smells like, is what's happening.
- copypaper 5mo agoIn all seriousness, what is the game plan for society moving forward as AI takes more jobs? The government doesn't seem to care. The AI labs don't seem to care. What happens when more and more people can't afford housing, kids, food, health insurance, etc.? Nothing more dangerous than a man who has no reason to live... I don't advocate for violence, but I do foresee more headlines like this as things get worse.
- smallmancontrov 5mo agoThe game plan is the same as it was for globalization and previous rounds of automation: gaslight workers into thinking that they are the problem. Push all the taxes into the labor economy and all the money into the capital economy and use the inevitable budget shortfall to justify skimping on social services. That'll work until it doesn't, at which point the Ellison strategy will be employed: pay 10% of the poors to keep the other 90% in line.
- dsa3a 5mo agoOut of curiosity... why do you think this? I think this is complete madness. Im not someone that is in a job so I have the luxury to think critically about what is going on and... I just dont see it. What I see is that LLMs will complement Labour and the excess returns of model producers will be very minimal (if at all any) due to the intense competition - keeping switching costs to a minimum (close to zero). This is before mentioning open source models which I expect to continue to improve. There is no specialisation re. models at this moment in time so it is very likely to be the case. OAI and Anthropic have to generate enough after-tax cash flows from operations to cover their reinvestment needs to continue going on. If they can't cover reinvestment then they will obviously lose as their offering will not be competitive. There's no certainty they generate this amount of cash profits either. They still have a high chance of going bust, of course that gets lower - IF - they can keep ramping up revenues.
- onemoresoop 5mo agoHow about the economic impact of all the over investments in AI? It’ll all be dumped on us all Im afraid.
- kbelder 5mo agoSure, he's sleazy. Doesn't matter. It's not ok to firebomb jerks or saints. Rich or poor. It's both a criminal and an immoral act.
- Miner49er 5mo agoWhat Sam is doing is immoral too, just not illegal.
- drowntoge 5mo agoI find myself resenting him and his ilk on a daily basis for what they did to the computing space which was once sacred to me with their profiteering. But nothing justifies violence, not even close. Simple as that.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- BloondAndDoom 5mo agoThis question doesn’t apply to Sam, but since you made a general statement, I’m trying to understand. When it comes to people who openly incite or directly use violence. why do you think it’s unethical to attack someone like that? If one responsible from directly or indirectly killing hundreds, what’s the ethical argument to not use violence against that person? Not trolling or anything I’ve been just thinking about this for a while and trying to understand what am I missing in this argument.
- akramachamarei 5mo agoIt's an interesting question. Here's my reductive, off-the-cuff take: violence is justified when defending oneself or another from imminent bodily harm, or even under threat of imminent, considerable property damage. When a threat is not imminent, or an action is past, we use the police and the courts, because we as a society–in the sense of subscribers of the US constitution or similar tracts–believe that it is better to have a judicial system and impartial officials determine whether it is worth depriving someone of their bodily liberty or taking their property, that is, jailing or fining. Taking some sort of extrajudicial action or applying corporal punishment (!) requires a much higher bar. How and when would one determine that the judicial system is so unreliable as to morally permit vigilantism? It requires a great deal of moral self-confidence to take matters into one's own hands. I focus on the question of vigilantism because that I think is the issue. Many people feel an emotional impulse, that they want to side with the CEO killer, for example, and they find ways to rationalize. What I'd say is, if you think Joe Blow is so evil , why don't we take him to court? What kind of possible actions could we not jail or fine him for but for which we would accept Johnny Anarchy, y'know, igniting his lawn furniture? Of course, the justice system is imperfect, but nobody lawfully elected the next sexy assassin as judge, jury, and executioner.
- weedhopper 5mo ago[flagged]
- Vaslo 5mo ago[flagged]
- mindslight 5mo agoPersonally I'd rather people strive to become more intelligent rather than acting less intelligent, duking it out with their fellow citizens as if politics is nothing more than some team sport, and ultimately harming us all out of pure spite. But you do you, I guess.
- jibal 5mo agoThere's nothing less intelligent than voting Republican other than urging people to do it.
- Vaslo 5mo agoSounds like someone has some billionaire envy. It’s ok, you did the best you could with what you had.
- fzeroracer 5mo ago> This is quite valid, and we welcome good-faith criticism and debate. It's always funny when they pull out this argument when they've been working overtime to pull up the ladder and embed themselves in the MIC. Listen, for people unaware of history things used to be a lot more violent as workers had to earn their rights with blood. The state had to respond by first attempting to squash it violently and second compromising in such a way as to ensure workers had a bit more power in the system. As long as AI shit continues to consume the economy, kicking out people who can no longer find a job and survive while the government also removes any remaining safety nets, the end result is going to be violence. This doesn't make the violence right or just, but rather completely predictable. And if people don't learn from history then it will be repeated, unfortunately.
- hungryhobbit 5mo ago*Working towards prosperity for everyone, empowering all people, and advancing science and technology are moral obligations for me." "Prosperity for everyone" ... you lying weasel! You literally took a contract from Anthropic because they wouldn't mass surveil Americans or mass murder non-Americans ... and you would!
- Tyrubias 5mo ago[flagged]
- rustystump 5mo agoInteresting you say not vs never. It seems this kid thought it was a time where violence was needed. The question i always ask in these situations is about what the line would be that would justify violence? Things like healthcare, crime, existential ai, have very grey lines as it isnt obvious when one needs to flip the table. How broken must a system be?
- Aeolun 5mo ago> what the line would be that would justify violence It doesn’t matter where we think the line should be drawn, only where those much worse off draw it.
- jmull 5mo agoViolence is an extreme failure state. If your goal is to improve the system then you always want to move away from it. Probably a reasonable justification would be self-defense, committing violence to stop worse violence. (Preemptive violence is not self-defense.)
- rustystump 5mo agoBut that is the kicker. As the sister comment said it matters a great deal what others do. At some point a broken system enacts soft violence on people. So it isnt surprising people act out when they think survival is at stake. With healthcare, it really can be. But where is the line? When someone you know dies? 10 people? It is messy.
- jakeydus 5mo agoRadioLab did a phenomenal series on illegal immigration years ago. One thing that stuck out to me and has stayed with me ever since was an interview they did with a woman who had been deported multiple times, risked her life multiple times, denied a visa and asylum multiple times. They asked her why she kept trying to get across the border and she said that the alternative was death for her and her family. Whether or not she was being honest I don't know. But it did make me realize that the broken system has created an all-or-nothing choice for so many people. No punishment or policy could ever outweigh the alternative for them, so you'll never be able to stop immigration, illegal or not. I'm sure I'm not doing the argument justice, but your comment reminded me of it.
- throw7 5mo ago*Working towards prosperity for everyone, empowering all people, and advancing science and technology are moral obligations for me. How so? What is your theory of morality Sam? What I hear is Google: "Don't Be Evil".
- dakolli 5mo agoSam had this pulled off the front page, because the whole charade obviously isn't getting him the positive attention he was looking for.
- minimaxir 5mo agoIt most likely tripped the flame war detector heuristic (comments > points), and there is definitely a flame war here. EDIT: Looks like a mod rescued it (surprisingly) and it is now back to #2.
- reducesuffering 5mo agoSam Altman has written, and probably still believes, "Development of superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."[0] This means he acknowledges that his actions have the potential to kill every human family on Earth. It should be of no surprise that people took his beliefs seriously. [0] https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1 https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1
- alekq 5mo ago[flagged]
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- gverrilla 5mo ago[flagged]
- drivingmenuts 5mo agoNone of the things you believe are working out. 1) Working towards prosperity, etc. - the prosperity is all going toward the top 2%. The people who need it most are not seeing it and probably never will because the only ones who guarantee a benefit are the ones with the money to direct that benefit. 2) AI will be the most powerful tool, etc. - see point 1. 3) It will not all go well, etc. - probably should have thought about that before you released it on the world. 4) AI has to democratized, etc. - true, won't happen. See point 1. 5) Adaptability is critical, etc. - Yes. Fully agree. The problem, Mr. Altman, is that you believe the rest of the world thinks like you do, which is clearly not the case at all. While we have the ability to solve so many of the world's problems, it is absolutely clear that this is not what's happening. The rich in resources are getting richer and they're not doing anything to help those poor in resources become better off. Instead, they are claiming those resources for themselves against the day that everyone else runs out. Same as it ever was, Mr. Altman. Same as it ever was.
- joshcsimmons 5mo agoThis is both horrible and not at all surprising. Every quarter there are more layoffs and we're told how AI will replace us and that we can do nothing to stop it. We cannot afford the simple things our parents were able to and are supposed to be grateful that we are living in a time with such "amazing" technological progress. Sam is one of the most media-visible people that represents AI replacement of average people's livelihood (not agreeing with this stance but yes, outside of the Hacker News SF-tech matcha latte bubble, this is a commonly held thought) which makes this unsurprising. Still horrible and not right.
- Gigachad 5mo agoSam and related spend half their lives on TV poking the bear laughing about how he is going to use his tech to ruin peoples lives and there is nothing they can do about it. Some of those people have nothing to lose.
- snark_attack 5mo agoJesus can’t believe I have to white-knight Altman here, but can you point a single video or interview where any of the AI CEOs have been “laughing about how he is going to use his tech to ruin peoples lives.” This is the exact kind of poisonous, plausible-sounding but false and inflammatory rhetoric that is escalating things.
- ethbr1 5mo agohttps://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-sam-altman https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-sam-altman When one is telling farriers that most of them are going to lose their jobs, one might want to try to at least mimic more compassion.
- unethical_ban 5mo agoCan you point to me the amount of time and money they've spent lobbying Congress for an economic bill of rights for citizens? Or bills guaranteeing health care and basic food and living for all people? The masses see an incredibly small number of people making huge amounts of money, and gaining massive political influence, by developing technologies they intend to use to replace almost all human economic worth. And they are doing very little if anything to show concern for the fates of the millions of people that may be put out of work. I see this different than the discovery of oil or electricity or the Internet. It's bigger than that, and they are telling us to remain calm in a burning building while they walk toward the exits.
- AlexCoventry 5mo ago> The only solution I can come up with is to orient towards sharing the technology with people broadly, and for no one to have the ring. The two obvious ways to do this are individual empowerment and *making sure democratic system stays in control.* OK! So he's going to renege on the contract he's signed with Hegseth, which effectively commits OpenAI to serving as the IT Department for Trump's secret service?
- Ms-J 5mo ago[flagged]
- gverrilla 5mo ago[flagged]
- BloondAndDoom 5mo agoCan someone help me to understand why OpenAI and Anthropic talks as if the future of humanity controlled by them? We have very strong open (weight) Chinese models possibly only 6 months behind of them, gene is out of the bottle, is 6 months of difference really that important? And they don’t have good reasons for that 6 months to stay that way. Am I missing something or are these just their usual marketing? I’m not arguing about importance of AI but trying to understand why OpenAI and Anthropic are so important?
- MaxPock 5mo agoYour(American)future will be controlled by them. Very soon,they will get the government to ban bad Chinese open source models and your choice will only be these good democratic closed source AIs.
- nthypes 5mo agoI have the same feelings
- cj 5mo agoThese kind of people have highly paid emoliyees surrounding them on all sides propping them up and very likely making it very easy for them to actually believe it. It feels like they actually believe it, rather than just “marketing” and I don’t know which is worse.
- johnfn 5mo agoSome people think there will be an exponential takeoff, which means that a 6 month lead effectively rounds up to infinity.
- razster 5mo agoThere is a limitation. We're getting fractionally close to some end goal, but our tech is holding us back.
- DoctorOetker 5mo agoIs this belief grounded on some kind of derivation, or just a prima facie belief? If it is grounded on a logical derivation, where can one find such a derivation, and inspect its premises?
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- tonetheman 5mo ago[dead]
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- jibal 5mo agoSo he spends a few seconds writing something generic about his family and then uses that as a platform for a bunch of personal PR. That's sociopathy.
- b8 5mo agoWe still haven't made AGI, so I don't understand what he's saying they did.
- richardlblair 5mo agoJfc. People, a molitov cocktail was thrown as his home. The rest of what is written doesn't matter. This isn't the moment for that conversation. That's his family. He has a fucking child. Holy shit.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5mo agoWhen the attack is being used to craft a very particular narrative unrelated to the attack, a lot of other things continue to matter, and yes they do matter right now. That is on the premise that this isn't some depraved PR stunt. And that is also ignoring how purposefully misleading most headlines as well as your comment are.
- Capricorn2481 5mo ago> The rest of what is written doesn't matter. This isn't the moment for that conversation That's terrible that someone did that. I think that's wrong, and people that do that should be in prison. But if the rest of what was written didn't matter, it wouldn't be written. He thought it was important enough to put it in. It's there to be read and discussed. And I have to point out, we're not talking about a couple off the cuff remarks he may have rushed. About 95% of the post is about his ambitions for OpenAI. So pearl clutching that people are actually discussing the meat of the post in a tech forum reads performative.
- richardlblair 5mo agoAnother comment lacking any compassion. The man was reeling from what happened. He blames himself and his work. He sat and he wrote, naturally it came back to OpenAI. Should he of? Probably not. But it's understandable that he did. We can meet the moment with some understanding and give the guy a little wiggle room.
- sensanaty 5mo ago
- atbpaca 5mo agoI have many disagreements with Sam Altman. But physical attacks are never the answer. Especially attacking one's family.
- HNisCIS 5mo ago[flagged]
- raptor99 5mo ago[flagged]
- rrr_oh_man 5mo agoWhat is your point?
- Arodex 5mo ago"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
- survirtual 5mo ago[flagged]
- testing22321 5mo agoAttacking Sam and his family will only cause harm to one family. What Sam is doing with ICE, DoW, etc is harming tens of millions around the globe.
- survirtual 5mo agoWhich is why this narrative of caring about his family is so absurd. A defense contractor is in the business of war. In supplying the war machine, you should be living in a fortress. Tall walls, check your drink for poison, live in paranoia. Every person in the business of war knows what they are getting in to, and how to protect their family. How is someone that is near the face of AI this naive about such an ancient thing? The business of war is fine. It is ancient. It is part of humanity. Making some morality plea towards family and "violence is never the answer" while in the business of violence is NOT okay. Everyone in the defense industry knows the risks. Blood money is not free. You sacrifice a peaceful life for the wealth. To keep your family safe you have to use a meager sum of that money to have tall walls, guards, and security. DoD contractor 101. Alternatively, live in obscurity, don't talk about your work, and it is usually fine. A world-wide known CEO doesn't have this luxury so again, use a small portion of unfathomable wealth to protect your family. I have a feeling this war is just starting. When in the business of death, you no longer get to live with the rules of peace.
- kelnos 5mo ago> AI has to be democratized; power cannot be too concentrated. Control of the future belongs to all people and their institutions. AI needs to empower people individually, and we need to make decisions about our future and the new rules collectively. I do not think it is right that a few AI labs would make the most consequential decisions about the shape of our future. What a bullshit thing for someone who is not actually democratizing access to AI to say.
- maplethorpe 5mo agoMaybe they're about to open source their weights?
- kennywinker 5mo agoI wish I had your optimism. I’m still waiting for that open iMessage standard steve promised. Maybe this year?
- TZubiri 5mo agothey serve like 1B users gratis
- kennywinker 5mo agoFree as in beer, while it takes your job, destroys the environment, and concentrates wealth in the hands of a few.
- imiric 5mo ago> We have to get safety right, which is not just about aligning a model—we urgently need a society-wide response to be resilient to new threats. This includes things like new policy to help navigate through a difficult economic transition in order to get to a much better future. This might be the greatest example of cognitive dissonance I've seen in years. I can't understand how someone who's clearly highly intelligent can express this opinion, while doing the complete opposite. Does he think that everyone is a fool and that nobody will notice? Is this some form of gaslighting? Unbelievable. Violence is not the answer, but it's easy to see how Sam's public persona would push someone to do this. There are certainly disturbed people who don't need any logical reason for violence, but maybe it would help if Sam stopped being so damn dishonest and manipulative. Even this post that is intended to gain sympathy ends up doing the opposite. As a sidenote, I wish we would stop paying attention to these people. A probablistic pattern generator is far from the greatest technology humanity has ever invented. Get off your high horse, stop deluding people, and start working with organizations and governments to educate people in understanding and using this tech instead of hoarding power and wealth for you and your immediate circle of grifters. > A lot of companies say they are going to change the world; we actually did. Ugh.
- jrflowers 5mo ago> Words have power too. There was an incendiary article about me a few days ago. Someone said to me yesterday they thought it was coming at a time of great anxiety about AI and that it made things more dangerous for me. I brushed it aside. > Now I am awake in the middle of the night and pissed, and thinking that I have underestimated the power of words and narratives. This seems like as good of a time as any to address a few things. This kind of reads like “It is Ronan Farrow’s fault that some crazy person tried to burn my house down”. Like this guy was going to go about his week, being normal and not making Molotov cocktails, but then he picked up a copy of The New Yorker and lost his mind
- w10-1 5mo agoI appreciate his post and his tone. No one should need to attack (on the one hand) or "trust" (on the other) Sam Altman (or Donald Trump or Barack Obama). Power is reliance by others, and that's conditioned on behaviors which are made observable and systems to ensure stakeholders' interests are maintained. Yes, there's some hero-worship, some arbitrary private power, some evasion of systems, and some self-dealing by leader coalitions (indeed, we seem to be at a historical peak), but that's not about him personally but about us, and our willingness to vote (writ large). We do have to be careful about private power saying managing their issues are a matter for public governance (democratic or otherwise). It's a bit convenient to deflect blame (like having it be the jury that "decides" a case, because then you can't blame the judge). I like that Anthropic stepped up to pay any electricity increases, Apple has been recycling and cleaning up their supply chain, etc. If anything there should be a stronger support for contributing vs. Hobbesian corporations.
- _2d30 5mo ago1) It's terrible that this has happened. People who do this are evil. 2) It's atrocious that Sam makes it seem like any investigative reporting into him as a major public figure at the head of one of the 5 most important companies in the world is somehow responsible for it. 3) Sam is always playing the smol bean victim for sympathy points. To be clear, he is absolutely the victim of an atrocious crime. However, this post is not done for any reason other than to continue the exact same playbook he has for the last N years in order to manipulate public opinion to his favor. This post will do nothing to stop deranged, evail people but it may make people feel sympathy for him.
- throwatdem12311 5mo agoI don’t think this will do much to help his image. They had to stop putting Luigi Mangione in the media because public sentiment was not going the way they expected.
- DoneWithAllThat 5mo agoWho is “they”?
- throwatdem12311 5mo agoThe media apparatus and the Epstein Class behind the scenes that tell them what narrative to push.
- DoneWithAllThat 5mo ago[flagged]
- overfeed 5mo agoYou're not going to Gaslight us with your burner account Bezos / Elison / Weiss / Zuck / Sinclair Broadcast dude... We see what you are doing.
- deaux 5mo agoIt's well-known that right after, the Whatsapp/Signal group of Zuck, Reddit leadership et. al collectively agreed to clamp down hard on positive discourse of it.
- ngruhn 5mo agosource?
- jesse_dot_id 5mo ago[flagged]
- IAmGraydon 5mo agoThe guy is either mentally unwell or grifting. Most likely the latter.
- nickvec 5mo agoAltman can both be mentally unwell and a grifter, they aren't mutually exclusive.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- dmitrygr 5mo ago> There was an incendiary article about me a few days ago [...] That is a lot of words, none of which state or claim the article was in any way inaccurate. Curious, that
- presides 5mo ago>“Once you see AGI you can’t unsee it.” It has a real "ring of power” dynamic to it, and makes people do crazy things. I don’t mean that AGI is the ring itself, but instead the totalizing philosophy of “being the one to control AGI”. The only solution I can come up with is to orient towards sharing the technology with people broadly, and for no one to have the ring. The analogy has 2 simple rules and you can't even follow them: #1 It MUST be destroyed. #2 SOMEONE has to have the ring until then. Without BOTH of those things you have no meaningful analogy. If we're being super charitable, "For no one to have the ring" is Frodo sitting at the council, with the ring on the table, naively thinking that it can stay right there in that spot forever, safe in Rivendell, about to have the horrifying revelation that there are 2.5 more books in the story. More realistically, it's Boromir moments later arguing that Denethor has the mandate to use it to fight on Gondor's behalf. Fuck. I'm so past the point of caring about the extinction of our species, or your role in enslaving us to our robot overlords or whatever... but SELLING US SPECIOUS RING ANALOGIES IS WHERE I DRAW THE FUCKING LINE
- nothinkjustai 5mo ago> It will not all go well. The fear and anxiety about AI is justified; we are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time Reason enough to pause and figure out the best way to continue. A massive societal change that won’t all go well means millions dead and tens more with their lives upended.
- taurath 5mo ago[flagged]
- sillysaurusx 5mo agoHuh? They literally did change the world. The world was one way before ChatGPT, and another way after. It's not even a question of whether we "believe" him. It's a factual statement. Did you quote the wrong thing?
- sbarre 5mo agoYou must sure live in a bubble.. Do you think ChatGPT has changed things for the majority of people who live on this planet? It has not.
- sillysaurusx 5mo agoIt's changed them for me and everybody around me, and I live in Lake Saint Louis MO. Almost everyone says "yes" when I ask if they've used ChatGPT. That includes my therapist and a random AT&T rep I was calling to cancel my service. The majority of people on the planet don't affect the outcome of the future. Professionals do, and that's the group with the most noticeable changes. You can't possibly believe that ChatGPT didn't change the world, can you? I'm genuinely asking here. If someone can believe this when the outcome is this stark, then it discredits every argument that x YC startup didn't change the world.
- sbarre 5mo agoJesus did you re-read what you wrote before posting?
- bdangubic 5mo agoperhaps I live in a blue collar bubble but I do not know a single person in my personal and professional circle whose lives haven’t significantly changed with AI. just this week I helped three families setup https://github.com/mimurchison/claude-chief-of-staff https://github.com/mimurchison/claude-chief-of-staff because one family set it up. prompts are being shared like bread recipes during C19
- Ms-J 5mo ago[flagged]
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- ltbarcly3 5mo agoIt's amazing how humble someone can pretend to be a couple days after the top investigative journalist in the country (maybe world) exposes them as a sociopath and there is an attempt to assassinate them. What I would not do if there were attempts to kill me is post a picture of my spouse and child and point out how important they are to me with a photograph of them. It's literally trading a little bit of the safety of your family in exchange for sympathy from bystanders.
- deaux 5mo agoYou wouldn't do that exactly because you're not a sociopath.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- IAmGraydon 5mo ago[flagged]
- georgemcbay 5mo ago[flagged]
- tzk718 5mo agoThere is a suspect, but he appears mentally ill and could have been paid by anyone to throw a molotov cocktail at the metal gate (to ensure that no one in the house got hurt): https://sfstandard.com/2026/04/10/sam-altman-russian-hill-molotov-cocktail/ https://sfstandard.com/2026/04/10/sam-altman-russian-hill-mo... "Around 3:40 a.m., the suspect threw a bottle containing a flaming rag at the metal gate of 855 Chestnut St., according to a police report."
- IAmGraydon 5mo agoThanks for the link and agreed on all points.
- inavida 5mo ago[flagged]
- thatoneengineer 5mo agoWhat article is he referencing in the fourth paragraph? The New Yorker one? I got the impression that it was careful in its reporting and by no means one-sided. Seems pretty sleazy for him to associate that (based on no evidence!) with the violent attack.
- kennywinker 5mo agoA molotov thrown at a gate seems more symbolic than directly violent to my eyes.
- pocksuppet 5mo agoThe seemingly disproportionate treatment of certain kinds of property damage is explained here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/william-gillis-you-are-not-the-target-audience https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/william-gillis-you-a...
- Betelbuddy 5mo ago[dead]
- mystraline 5mo ago[flagged]
- dang 5mo agoWTF? You can't post like this here, regardless of whose "removing" you're advocating. Obviously we ban accounts that post like this - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. As I explained to these other users*, I'm not going to ban you right now because this thread is a mob, and mobs derange people and I don't think that any of us (including me) is immune from this. But please don't ever post anything like this, or remotely close to this, ever again to HN. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47728362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47728362 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47728150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47728150
- hax0ron3 5mo agoWould I not be allowed to post that removing Khameini or Putin would be good for the world? I find that hard to believe, and people do it all the time. And if it's just a matter of who it's ok to advocate for removing, then where is the line?
- dang 5mo agoThe problem here is in the question. You can't draw a single abstract line that will work independently of context, and it's mistake to try. I would need to see specific cases. For example, consider the word "remove" and the many different associations it can have. In this case, the comment (assuming I didn't misread it, which is always possible) seemed obviously to be endorsing specific violence against a specific person and indeed wishing for it to escalate. That's a kind of violence in its own right, and a poison that we don't want here.
- mystraline 5mo agoIf I wanted him dead, I would have said so. Sam Altman should have been removed years ago when the board tried to do so. This does not mean "to kill", execute, eradicate, or similar euphemisms. Given his military proclivities of AI targeting and action systems in Iran, his removal is instrumental in stopping or impeding AI warafare. But really, the bigger point here on HN is having a charitable interpretation, and was lost on my statement. I still absolutely think he should be removed. Life? No. OpenAI? Yes.
- 319abG 5mo agoThe molotov cocktail was thrown at the metal gate, not at the house and they arrested some kind of a disturbed person: https://sfstandard.com/2026/04/10/sam-altman-russian-hill-molotov-cocktail/ https://sfstandard.com/2026/04/10/sam-altman-russian-hill-mo... It was a performative action. I'm sure there will be a thorough investigation, unlike in the Suchir Balaji murder case where they rubber stamped suicide after half an hour despite him being a whistleblower.
- unethical_ban 5mo agoHe says power can't be too concentrated - but even n-2 generation models are not open. He says "look at me I love my family" - so do the millions of people who think his company may destroy the economy and help corporations and the trillionaires put a boot to our children's necks. 3:45am in the morning - no dip, that's what AM is. --- Someone here asked "How do we get to post scarcity from here?" and someone else said "no one knows". The AI barons are loading up their bank accounts and political capital, driving us off a cliff and promising we'll learn to fly by the time we get there. But they're going to tuck and roll out of the driver's seat. Sam, why do you expect us to believe anything you say when you have done nothing to lead the discussion about universal rights for citizens in a post scarcity society?
- daseiner1 5mo agothink of the children! did he find his PR agent on Upwork or does he just think we're all morons?
- giannicmptr1000 5mo ago[dead]
- Chance-Device 5mo agoJust take a second to consider this: if HN, probably one of the less reactionary places on the internet, and one of the most capitalist-friendly, is this angry at this point, before the mass job losses even start, what in the name of God do you think the general public is going to be like when they’ve been going on for years? If nothing else there’s a serious self-preservation incentive for AI CEOs to sort something out that doesn’t get them lynched, because it’s not looking good.
- snek_case 5mo agoMaybe HN is particularly upset because they feel targeted, given that overpaid tech executives have been giddily making the claim that programming jobs will disappear any minute now. What makes it even worse is that it's very obvious that said tech executives haven't programmed in over 10 years, if ever, and don't know anything about the technology they are selling. They are putting jobs at risk purely for the sake of personal enrichment. This is probably combined with a general sense of AI fatigue. The population as a whole is getting tired of "AI slop" and companies trying to shoehorn "AI" into everything. Personally I'm also tired of every startup needing to be an AI startup. As if there was nothing else worth building or investing in. It's sucking the air out of the room.
- bravetraveler 5mo ago[flagged]
- gleenn 5mo ago"AI has to be democratized" - pretty weak coming from ClosedAI
- mbgerring 5mo agoThe current crop of tech billionaires openly hate democracy, gleefully proclaim that their products are going to put everyone out of a job, and invest enormous amounts of time and energy into making sure that nobody can do anything to stop the world they’re creating, that nobody asked for or wants. Actions have consequences. I’m sorry. Read a history book.
- c54 5mo agoIn his interview with Theo Von when asked what he wants his legacy to be and how he wants to be remembered, Sam said something to the effect of: “I don’t think about how I will be remembered I just want to have impact.” I think that’s naive and leads to having, uh, negative impact. I don’t think history will smile upon him. Always good to think about how you want people to feel about your impact on them. https://youtu.be/aYn8VKW6vXA https://youtu.be/aYn8VKW6vXA
- therobots927 5mo agoThe New Yorker article was tame. I wish no harm on Sam. But for him to mention that article in the first couple paragraphs is nothing short of opportunistic, and exemplative of exactly the type of manipulative behavior outlined in the article. Fuck off Sam. And stay safe out there.
- nromiun 5mo agoAI hysteria has gone too far. People are literally telling stories of what AI may be capable of in the future and whipping themselves into a frenzy.
- etempleton 5mo agoIt 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.
- voidhorse 5mo ago[flagged]
- pillefitz 5mo ago[flagged]
- confiq 5mo ago> he has done nothing to begin to justify violence No One does! I also found news hard to believe but it is true: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx91rdxpyeo 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.
- mcv 5mo agoOr Iran, for that matter.
- speleding 5mo agoReading that BBC article, how the attacker got caught while shouting at an OpenAI building, it would seem likely that this attacker is confused or deranged. Not specifically someone with deliberate evil intent. So the headline seems to be more "high profile person attacked by lunatic" than "OpenAI CEO attacked for being evil".
- trinsic2 5mo agoActions have consequences. There will always be people in the world that get pushed beyond the limits they can endure. It reminds of that CEO that got gunned down by someone that was being affected by the company profiting off of making a business of denying health insurance claims on technicalities. 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.
- yrds96 5mo ago[flagged]
- voidhorse 5mo ago[flagged]
- dang 5mo ago> I hope the worst for sam and his family. WTF? You can't post this viciously to HN, no matter who it is you're being vicious towards. Normally I would ban any account that posted like this, but this thread is a mob and mobs have a deranging effect on people. So I'm going to cut you some slack and not ban you. Just please don't do anything like this on HN again.
- BrokenCogs 5mo ago[dead]
- jimmyjazz14 5mo agoAltman really needs some better coaching on how to sound like a real human, he's not pulling it off here. Who witnesses someone firebombing their home (which is terrible btw), thinks for a second about their family then writes a diatribe full of AI marketing bs. He doesn't even attempt to make it sound personal. He could have incorporated his feelings about his child growing up in an AI dominated world or something to that effect, even as trite as that sounds, it would ring more believably human than what was written here.
- woeirua 5mo agoSounds like this was just a crazy guy upset at OpenAI. Not great but an isolated incident. That said… is anyone going to be surprised when the laid off masses torch a data center or worse? IMO, it’s only a matter of time before we see organized anti-AI terrorism too. When you have people out there saying “AI will kill us all” then it’s easy to justify using violence to stop that outcome.
- negura 5mo agoI'd also call it isolated, but I mean it in a different way. I can't recall similar attacks against a tech bilionnaire. Which I guess makes it notable? > organized anti-AI terrorism too There were already memes about that > When you have people out there saying “AI will kill us all” It's the "clickbait" mechanism becoming more cancerous
- 9rx 5mo ago> I can't recall similar attacks against a tech bilionnaire. How about Ted Kaczynski (Unabomber)? Attacking the tech elite was his deal.
- infamouscow 5mo agoAs we've discovering with the Epstein releases, Ted Kaczynski was ahead of his time (w.r.t. David Gelernter).
- tsoukase 5mo agoRelated: "A 29-year-old employee, identified as Chamel Abdulkarim, was arrested for allegedly starting a massive six-alarm fire that destroyed a Kimberly-Clark sanitary paper warehouse in Ontario, California, on April 7, 2026." He said "All you had to do was pay us enough to live" And this was caused not by a homeless or unemployed.
- ifwinterco 5mo agoFilming himself doing something that will get him years or even decades in prison suggests he wasn’t exactly of completely sound mind when he did that. Similar here with the guy going straight from the crime scene to OpenAI HQ to get caught
- AlexandrB 5mo ago> My personal takeaway from the last several years, and take on why there has been so much Shakespearean drama between the companies in our field, comes down to this: “Once you see AGI you can’t unsee it.” Except nobody has seen AGI. Not even close.
- Miner49er 5mo agoThis is a predictable outcome of what people like Altman are doing, and probably will happen more and more. Altman and co. are massively changing society, putting people out of work, etc. It is systemic violence on a massive scale. Systemic violence is "acceptable" violence, but it usually leads to a sudden outburst of plain old subjective violence like this.
- cal_dent 5mo agoAn interesting thing about one facet of how society as developed over the past decade and a half, I think, is that a byproduct of more people being conscious of the quest to monetise almost anything is that it has also raised the level of general scepticism on whether something is marketing or real. So you have increasingly more scenarios where an objectively bad thing can happen to someone but any public response is scrutinised and questioned within a hint of its life sometimes rightly sometimes not. I don’t particularly like it but that’s where we are at guess
- bigyabai 5mo ago> any public response is scrutinised and questioned within a hint of its life sometimes rightly sometimes not. This is a fairly healthy response from the public - better than accepting everything at face-value. Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a warning against accepting random information in a vacuum to assess your surroundings. Observation and response is not enough to be a critical thinker, even back in the ancient ages. From where I'm standing, the public at-large is traumatized from flubbed coverups like the Snowden leak, Epstein files, and Abu Ghraib. The myth of American exceptionalism has been threatened for a long time, and people rightfully question whether or not executive leadership can write-off their involvement in politics. Sam Altman has put on an extremely dangerous pair of boots, and while it doesn't justify attacks on his person, we all know that speculation will continue as new events come to light. Right or wrong, this is what the public is conditioned for now.
- avazhi 5mo agoWhy are you talking about how it feels once you’ve seen AGI when you’ve never seen AGI, Sam? In all seriousness, we’ve got glorified autocorrect right now. Even suggesting any of these LLMs is actual AGI is laughable. I’m not saying they can’t do some interesting things, but unless Sam has access to models that are equivalent to what would be GPT-50 he should avoid throwing in buzzword acronyms for no reason.
- d--b 5mo agoWas the New Yorker article that incendiary? It didn’t paint a good picture for most but I recall someone posting here that they had a better view of Altman after reading it. And the whole thing was quite nuanced IMO. Plus I doubt that someone who would read a 30min New Yorker article is the kind of person who would throw a molotov cocktail at someone’s home. It’s a shitty move to try and make a causal connection between the New Yorker article and this act of terrorism. He’s trying to blame the author and discredit the article. It’s a “I’m trying to be the good guy but they’re trying to stop me” situation. This is not a message addressed to us, it’s a message addressed to his employees and his followers. This is the kind of tactics people use when they want to establish a cult. Sam Altman again is showing how manipulative he is. And as any good guru he probably believes everything he says.
- rdl 5mo agoMy theory is a lot of the anti-AI sentiment is specifically US geopolitical adversaries (pick one or more: China, Russia, Iran, ...) who want a bad outcome for the US (AI as potential AGI; AI as one of the few successful economic sectors of the US; general desire to cause societal disruption or collapse and AI as convenient target). Probably >95% of the really bad stuff (the micron fab disruption, attacks on AI datacenters, ...) is probably root-cause that, possibly executed by useful idiots, people paid by organizations, etc. 5% is normal NIMBY stuff. Approximately measure 0 is Zizian death cultists. I don't any of these will be dissuaded by cute family photos. Fortunately the frontier model companies and major infrastructure providers are able to pay for top-tier corporate security (although tech people generally have been unwilling to do this at home for lifestyle reasons), but I'd be afraid for people elsewhere in the supply chain. (And destructive attack is all on top of the normal corporate espionage, infiltration, subversion, etc.)
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- MiguelX413 5mo agoIf a good outcome for the US is OpenAI technology being used by the US military to kill Middle Eastern children, I want a bad outcome for the US too. (Proudly born and raised in California)
- tasuki 5mo agoWhy's there all them chilled bottles in the photo?
- icameron 5mo agoIt’s tacky. Here’s my kid sitting on a bar.
- ahf8Aithaex7Nai 5mo agoWhy exactly is he showing a picture of a toddler?
- nxpnsv 5mo agoI think the point is that he doesn’t want the kid to die in a fire.
- pocksuppet 5mo agoNeither did all those middle eastern dads targeted by OpenAI-powered kill chains.
- HNisCIS 5mo ago[flagged]
- y0eswddl 5mo agothe worst of humanity loves to shield themselves behind children
- ahf8Aithaex7Nai 5mo agoI admit, the opportunity presented itself. But according to my moral compass, killing children is worse than having children present while you’re being shot at or bombed.
- mrcwinn 5mo agoThat we are so concerned about the movies of individuals like Sam and Dario (or even Elon, if you consider xAI a frontier lab) tells you what a poor job we’re doing with regulation and self-governance.
- tills13 5mo ago[flagged]
- mrcwinn 5mo ago[dead]
- vasco 5mo ago[dead]
- pillefitz 5mo ago[flagged]
- partiallypro 5mo agoThere are people actively insinuating in this thread that Sam should be...killed, and they are still up. Very odd moderation, surely there is a better way to flag these things.
- dang 5mo agoI'd like to see specific links.
- partiallypro 5mo agoIt seems you or the team have culled many of them. There was one in particular that stood out but it seems to have been removed or they are heavily buried now. I just saw your post further down the thread, so you have seen them and I assume action was taken, thanks. There are still some that I find distasteful, but not as bad as what I was originally seeing towards the top.
- dang 5mo agoI'm glad to hear that we at least got to them after a time lag. Time lags are inevitable but hopefully the worst stuff does get flagged and moderated before too long.
- BrenBarn 5mo ago[flagged]
- dash2 5mo agoI've skimmed the thread here and I am now seriously considering leaving HN for the first time in about 15 years. Here are some quotes from what used to be a pretty interesting and thoughtful community: > Ah, the Elon manoeuvre: trying to make would-be assassins hesitate by using your own child as a shield. > the words and narratives that Sam Altman promoted caused so much fear and uncertainty and anger that someone thought their only option was to attempt a horrific crime. > Sociopath who rides high ego wave and drinks his own kool aid, acting highly amorally and then complaints that his actions have some (benign) consequences. > A cavalier attitude and allegiance to nothing but capital doesn't make you immune to basic human morals, and humanity will, rightly in my opinion, punish you whether you like it or not. These comments are disgusting. The people who made them should be ashamed. But they are probably too stupid to be, assuming they are people and not bots, which I no longer feel certain of for all too many comments here.
- pillefitz 5mo ago[dead]
- npodbielski 5mo ago[flagged]
- dang 5mo agoNo, people don't have "have rights to have and voice their opinions whatever it may be" on this site. What people have the right to here is use HN as intended. That intended use is described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Mobs foaming at the mouth, triggered by a disturbed person's violence into a mutually foaming frenzy, is not an intended use of this site. I shouldn't have to tell any of you this.
- npodbielski 5mo agoBut you are the moderator. Not me, not the person I was responding to. You have different opinion about people having opinions here at the HN. I have different opinion of the matter. This is great! This is what I am actually talking about! I come here and other sites to learn what people think. To discuss! Share ideas! Have an argument! IMHO whole freaking purpose of internet!
- boring-human 5mo agoThis is an odd choice of a thread for a laundry list of complaints about AI and about a person that, say what you will, is nowhere near the list of planetary "really bad guys". Even if we limit it to tech, the list starts with someone way richer, then goes through four or five way-shadier people. If you're OK with victim-shaming here, doesn't it say more about you than Altman? What does it say about your viewpoint?
- goku12 5mo ago> about a person that, say what you will, is nowhere near the list of planetary "really bad guys". Even if we limit it to tech, the list starts with someone way richer, then goes through four or five way-shadier people. You really don't need to go that high up the ladder to find members of the 'list of planetary really bad guys'. Sam Altman is single-handedly responsible for starting the current DRAM crunch - that too based on an untenable economic framework. He's also an enthusiastic participant in the AI bubble that threatens to cause a massive global economic depression when it pops. He's also involved in the cabal that wrecks the labor market (wages) by hyping up the 'AI will replace labor' narrative. On top of all that, he and his ilk are on a building spree of data centers that will guzzle huge amount of energy and dump tonnes of extra CO2 into the atmosphere, as if there's no tomorrow. This wrecks all the hard efforts of millions of others before him to rein in the damages caused by the climate change. Needless to say, all of these have pretty deleterious effects on the economy, biosphere and the welfare of ordinary people, including loss of innumerable lives. But does he care? He is one of those people who simply ignore the trail of serious damage and enormous suffering they leave in their wake, because they don't see anything beyond money - more money than they can spend in a hundred lifetimes! Nobody needs a justification to see him as one of those 'planetary bad guys'. > What does it say about your viewpoint? As someone else here said, it goes without saying that lobbing Molotov cocktail at anyone is a no-no. I don't support physical violence in any form. Having said that,... > If you're OK with victim-shaming here It's sad that the aristocratic society didn't learn anything from the murder of Brian Thompson. The 'victim' had caused thousands of preventable deaths per year, and his death saved thousands by forcing the industry to deal with the problem. Suddenly, even the pacifists (like me) are left wondering if the death was unethical. If true justice existed, the state would have stopped them from their crimes (aka professions), if not outright execute them for the lives lost. Whom will you choose when they pitch their own lives against thousands of innocent lives? You can't claim victimhood after putting yourself in that position. I read the New Yorker article like most people here. I didn't find anything incendiary enough in it to provoke a Molotov attack. I wouldn't put it past him to have arranged it himself, given how much he lies and what he stands to gain from it. But let's assume that the attack is real and is connected to the report. The reply seems overly dramatic and self-righteous, given that the attack was against his iron gate! He's milking the situation to indulge in virtue signaling, sympathy farming and gaslighting the critics. This is one hell of a victim posing! But I have no sympathies to spare if it distressed him so much. He shouldn't be able to sleep anyway, if only he had a conscience. Advocating sympathy for the unsympathetic super-privileged is a bit tone deaf under such circumstances. Evidently, nobody is in a mood to oblige to such manipulations.
- roland_nilsson 5mo ago[flagged]
- dang 5mo agoI don't think I've ever seen a thread this bad on Hacker News*. The number of commenters justifying violence, or saying they "don't condone violence" and then doing exactly that, is sickening and makes me want to find something else to do with my life—something as far away from this as I can get. I feel ashamed of this community. * Edit: It would have been clearer to say "I've never seen a mob dynamic this bad on Hacker News", since that is the type of bad thread I was talking about. (Obviously there are lots of other kinds of bad thread.) Alas, that didn't occur to me in the moment, and it led to various misunderstandings. If you're wondering why I called this a "mob dynamic" it's because comments like the following were dominating the thread when I originally ran across it (but in order to read these, you'll need to have 'showdead' turned on in your profile.): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47727099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47727099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725717 I'm pretty calloused after years of doing this job, but seeing so many comments openly exulting in, and egging on, violence against a specific person on Hacker News was deeply shocking to me.
- foxes 5mo agoNot sure what world you have lived in for the past at least 10 years... HN (and ycombinator) has implicitly enabled, dogwhistled, or pretended to ignore all sorts of hateful and violent rhetoric. Sometimes it hides behind a veneer of "curious conversation" but other times its disgustingly blatant - last article I saw about sama was filled with horrific racism. I come here because there are sometimes good posts, but this stuff has been here the entire time. Now its your guy getting the hate you are acting like its the worst thing in the world? Frankly people calling out a post from a billionaire is a good thing. You would have to be terminally detached from reality to not see how all these festering issues - wealth inequality, injustice, cost of living, future employment etc etc - are starting to come to a head which would cause people to feel something - frustrated, angry, wrathful.
- dang 5mo ago> Not sure what world you have lived in for the past at least 10 years The world I have lived in for longer than 10 years is HN. I'm gut-wrenchingly familiar with the worst things that people post here—probably more than anyone, simply because it's my job. If you can dig up a single example of a thread this bad that we knew about and didn't do anything about, I'd be shocked, because it would go against everything I believe and feel. Perhaps you can, nonetheless? If so, let's see it. Here's what I mean by "this bad", if you want to calibrate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47727099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47727099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726427 The number of people who feel that anything at all is justified if it reinforces their feelings—particularly their angriest and most vicious feelings—is so large that it's clear that it is human nature in action, and that makes me yearn for a cool and heavy rock to crawl under, with moist earth to sink into.
- el_jay 5mo agoThis article and discussion appear to have been manually delisted from the News rankings. Evidently, even HN could only keep up the pretense that tech development is amoral and apolitical for so long.
- dang 5mo agoIt hasn't been "manually delisted" - it has been rightfully flagged by users, plus set off the flamewar detector, plus downweighted by moderators, the same way we would downweight any other thread that violates the values of this site so shamefully. Hacker News is not a site for mobs.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- crysomemore123 5mo ago[dead]
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- cedws 5mo agoI know it’s not fair to attribute someone else’s actions to Altman, but his words about upholding democracy feel a bit hollow given his relationship with Brockman. Brockman gave a $25 million donation to a Trump super PAC. As a reminder, Trump detests the democratic protest and tried to overturn an election result. He also frequently floats the idea of a third term. That is not upholding democracy and Altman should cut ties if that’s truly his objective.
- flohofwoe 5mo ago[flagged]
- blast 5mo agoHe also went to OpenAI's office and threatened to burn it down. https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/10/tech/suspect-arrest-openai-ceo-sam-altman https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/10/tech/suspect-arrest-openai-ce...
- dwb 5mo ago“Democratising” - you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
- dwroberts 5mo agoDidn’t we just go through several weeks of hearing about OpenAI allowing its tech to be used for conducting warfare? Not saying that justifies harming Altman but I am confused that he seems surprised he is now in physical danger? [Or chalks it up to just some single specific incendiary article rather than the companies actual actions?] If you involve yourself in the act of killing people then, yeah, you’re going to get blowback for that and some people are obviously going to want to hurt you
- arrowsmith 5mo ago"I'm not saying violence is okay, but violence is okay"
- dwroberts 5mo agoWhat I am saying is if you involve yourself in violence (and directly profiting from violence) you should not be allowed to act shocked when that same violence turns up on your doorstep
- pydry 5mo agoNot ok, but anybody who is ok with terrorizing, say, an Iranian civilian nuclear scientist ought to be equally indifferent to this.
- arrowsmith 5mo agoI’m not indifferent to either of them, but if you equate American tech executives with agents of the Iranian nuclear programme then I don’t care what you have to say on any subject ever
- morgengold 5mo ago[dead]
- cindyllm 5mo ago[dead]
- surgical_fire 5mo agoI wonder if the attacker asked ChatGPT how to make a molotov cocktail. It would be an interesting plot twist.
- link89 5mo agoAnd ChatGPT not only taught him how but also told him it was a good idea to do so.
- cnd78A 5mo agowhen you live in barbaric soeciety where the majority don't mind using force to achieve their goals at the expense of minorities or basic international law, peacefull protest become useless.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Rury 5mo agoIt's even potentially worse than that. As a whole, it doesn't even require a majority, if a small amount are complacent or ignorant. And depending on competency, it might not matter if the majority protest anyhow.
- brador 5mo agoThis article feels like he’s trying to use his kid as a human shield for his behavior. Elon was accused of this too.
- tkel 5mo agoYeah, this is classic politician tactic: when threatened, mention children. It's a stunt to drum up sympathy.
- 710dev 5mo ago[flagged]
- numpad0 5mo ago> I was thinking about our upcoming trial with Elon and remembering how much I held the line on not being willing to agree to the unilateral control he wanted over OpenAI. I’m proud of that, and the narrow path we navigated then to allow the continued existence of OpenAI, and all the achievements that followed. ... could THIS be the reason why it happened now and how?
- dkrest 5mo agoWords don't matter as lomg as there are actions that do. His mission has already transformed the world into the instance where he finds his family under threat.
- sensanaty 5mo ago[flagged]
- sensanaty 5mo agoLmao even in a post about his house getting torched the ghoul can't help but trump up some more hype around "AGI".
- drekipus 5mo agoI think the important thing to remember, when they say "all humans deserve life and democratic process" - is the question of "what do they consider sub-human?" Ie: do they believe employees have souls? Or that the masses are cattle? Because it's then very easy to have strong conviction of human rights when you get to choose who is a human and who is cattle.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- guzfip 5mo agoNo peace for grifters. Flush them out of the country. And I mean all of them, left wing, right wing, corporate. I am sick of every level of power in the country being filled with lying grifters. I don’t care what happens to them, as long as they’re gone. I feel like I’m living in a circus.
- ChoGGi 5mo agoWell Sam, you should take your family and your billions and fuck off to some island paradise. Or keep on doing deals with the DoD and pushing to replace desperate people's jobs. Cute kid, I'd rather be raising my family in peace then dealing with what you deal with. @dang You have a bullshit filled unrelenting job, thanks for doing it.
- cboyardee 5mo ago[dead]
- Leomuck 5mo agoUff. Hard thread to comment on. I'm fairly radical in my opinion regarding AI, moreso AI companies. AI is a fascinating thing, but it's abused by capitalism to be something it is not and shoulnd't be, to be sold to people who don't need it and to "revolutionize" a world that didn't ask for it. Most importantly, who (in a democratic sense) elected those tech leaders to make decisions that influence all our lifes? Those very tech CEOs are so far away from normal-human-life and I find it digusting. Still, the way to combat this is not violence. It won't help anything, since there are enough people to fill the roles. More importantly though, as much as I personally hate Sam Altman, he hasn't done anything specifically targeting individuals. You might call him a psychopath, an illusionist or whatever, but he doesn't seem to be trying to make peoples life worse. He might want to do his life better and that's egotistical, but you know that's the world we live in. Many people are egotistical. I would see Sam Altman more as a symptom of the general societal developments. If we don't like what's happening, we have to fight what's happening. Trying to kill people (and especially innocent ones!) is so far away from a solution and from the right thing to do. Post shit about him on the internet, hate what he does, but attack his family? Man, I don't think that should be our level of moral compass. I do very much understand the frustration. But that's not the right path. He might be scum, but he has as much right to live as everybody else. If we don't like what he's doing, we have to fight it - via discourse, collective engagement, whatever. Edit: I did read that the molotow was thrown at the entrance gate. From what I gather, entrance gates of huge mansions do not actually pose a threat to people. So it could be read as more of a political message than an actual attack on people. I could understand that somehow given the limited means normal people have to get heard. Still, I don't think that does anything positive.
- MiguelX413 5mo agoWe need Mario
- drcongo 5mo agoI thought we flagged AI written slop on here.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- heyaco 5mo ago[flagged]
- flovec 5mo agoI see quite a lot of "violence is never justified" sentiment throughout the comments. I ask as a "thought experiment" - why? At least from my understanding, the history of America is riddled with working class uprisings that resulted in the use of force (violence) attempting to make their lives less insufferable. If your government has failed you because it is a plutocracy enriching itself off of enacted hardships (the most general way I can put it), is force not the only thing left? You could argue that there are other possibilities - general strikes et. al. - but those often end in _the state using force_ against you. If the law allows for the use of force in certain circumstances (stand your ground), and there is an analogous situation at hand where there is no concept of justice (justice serving those in power), certainly one has to consider it as a tool for use _outside the law_? The "violence is never justified" comments read more like thoughtless propaganda to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Obviously a person's life is involved, jesus, so certainly there is an opposite camp we don't want to get to: "just nuc 'em". But it seems strange that you wouldn't debate the use of force, even if the answer is "the only winning move is not to play".
- bdangubic 5mo agoFirst, not sure where you live that you believe general strikes will result in the use of force against? certainly not in most civilized societies, no? Second, while US history has provided examples where use of force might have been necessary to bring about the change same history does not have (m)any examples where such violence wasn’t preceded with long attempts at bringing about needed changes without violence. also, violence against human beings is different from setting shit on fire, if violence against human beings is justifyable (regardless of how vile the said person/people are in your and even some majority opinion) who is to say that someone tomorrow might decide that same violence is justifyable against you or even worse - someone in your family?! think of it this way - if your claim is that violence is justifyable - who makes the determination for such justification?
- flovec 5mo agoI live in the US. There is a history of armed forces being used against the people generally striking. If you include large protests, even more. > If your claim is that violence is justifyable - how makes the determination for such justification? We authorize people in governments to make this determination, and increasingly machines. Should we? Do you think that it is acceptable to let a police officer justify force on behalf of the state? How about a machine? Mostly just trying to understand what you think is acceptable here. But to answer...violence against human beings is indeed different than setting shit on fire, though the law certainly does not allow for the use of force against personal property either. And this difference is indeed the crux of the issue, depending on what your values are (though we seem to be in alignment on "life is valuable"). If for example (probably a bad one, but hopefully it gets the idea across), a group of people is committing a genocide, and you ask them to stop, and they do not, and so you interfere with the use of force...limited at first, maybe, but they do not stop: is their continued involvement not the justification for use of force, assuming other strategies are off the table? Different example than the thread, I realize, but my thought experiment is not tied directly to it, just at the sentiment.
- infamouscow 5mo agoIs there a Polymarket for when the first AI data center is burned to the ground?
- matty22 5mo agoI mean…FAFO? He’s an egomaniac pushing a technology that is objectively negative for anyone not already a billionaire. I have no issue with more Molotov cocktails being chucked at his house, or OpenAI offices, or data centers around the world. Sam Altman being removed from the equation would make the world an objectively better place.
- daft_pink 5mo agoIt’s just so bizarre that they would pick or obsess over him. He’s just a financier/leader.
- verzali 5mo agoI feel like he is chucking a molotov cocktail at all of us. Maybe it will bounce off. Maybe we won't be so lucky.
- cindyllm 5mo ago[dead]
- crossroadsguy 5mo agoWhat a shocker. People in this thread, in the same breath, can easily say assassinating too many civilian nuclear scientists in countries like Iran (oh, add India, and I am sure many more, to that list; you didn't know, did you?) is kosher (or use phrases like: "so what?", "what about that?", "what?", "do you think that's a fair comparison?", "that's different", etc.), and then there's killing children and the elderly (the whole schools, hospitals, marriage parties, villages if the mood is right) is also justified (see, how we only talk about children, elderly, and women; indiscriminately killing adults who are neither women nor elderly is of course a fashionable thing to do), but a symbolic Molotov cocktail thrown at this person's home, who has been throwing such cocktails collectively at the rest of us, is barbaric and a harbinger of the end times. I was joking. This "not in my white picket fence side of the world" is anything but shocking on HN or pretty much any online forum largely populated by people from those sides of the world. HN loves using a microscope, but sometimes rather a telescope with alarmingly selective dexterity.
- Razengan 5mo agoThe anti-OpenAI brigade on HackerNews has reached Reddit-insanity proportions. There's no way is this organic
- gib444 5mo agoHe'll work harder to destroy journalists and journalism now.
- sharts 5mo agowho cares? this is and always has been part of the risk of being in the public eye. why do so many worship this guy so much and feel for his pain but then don’t mind others being treated violently.
- cindyllm 5mo ago[dead]
- ranndino 5mo agoA lot of the comments here is why I have been disgusted with the left in the last few years, having always voted D before and, at simultaneously, being disgusted by the trumpanzee right. The so called "woke" (in case someone whines about me using this term and says the usual "it's not a thing", I'll define it as basically the delusional left, who have become extremists due to wallowing in their own outrage social media info bubble 24/7) are so up their own ass about their supposedly superior moral values that they have come full circle and become void of the most basic morals. They find all sorts of justifications for violence (even lethal) against anyone they deem "evil" in their own warped, highly subjective opinion. Their opinions can be summarized as "I'm against violence and have very an extremely high moral compass but it's OK to kill this particular civilian because of these really good reasons I'm about to cite". The reasons are often terrible and devoid of being based on verifiable, objective reality but the meme-induced righteousness is 10/10. There is not a single drop of self-doubt and anyone arguing against them get immediately labeled "evil" as well, regardless of how rational and well explained their opinions are. These people are outraged by the killing of IRGC, Hamas or Hezbollah leaders (some of the most deserving of violence) but justify violence against someone like Sam. The same people who say that words are violence and that misgendering someone is tantamount to putting their life in danger had no problems celebrating the cowardly assassination of Charlie Kirk. I can cite many other examples but this comment is getting longer than intended and I've made my point. I agree with the moderator here. It's become sad how even in a community like this, full of supposedly well-educated, intelligent people nonsense like the above has become the norm. Lastly, what people like this don't realize is that by behaving this way they're the worst enemies of their own cause. As awful as Trump and his supporters are, my motivation to vote for the party full of progressive wokesters has almost completely dried up. I feel like the D party no longer represents me as a rational person interested in fact-based, civilized discussions and policies that come out of those. The left has become as hateful and hysterical as the right. In many ways, it has even surpassed the right. I'm now stuck in the middle watching both sides becoming more and more extreme in their views and losing all humanity, while at the same time, completely delusionally, believing in their own moral superiority.
- qwm 5mo agoThe guy who threw the molotov should have called his Congressman, signed a petition, and paid his taxes.
- atlasagentsuite 5mo ago[dead]