OpenAI for Countries

162 pointsposted 7 days ago
by camlinke
(openai.com)

218 Comments

kiernanmcgowan

7 days ago

> We want to help these countries, and in the process, spread democratic AI

I'm reading this in the same voice as Helldivers 2 "managed democracy"

slg

7 days ago

One of the most shocking aspects of this era of history is the number of people who not only end up accidentally resembling or aligning with the bad guys of our satire and dystopian fiction, but how many of them seem to be actively and intentionally pursuing that path. It's the Torment Nexus all the way down.

hayst4ck

7 days ago

That's because there are no consequences for bad behavior, only reward. Game theory dictates that if bad behavior is a winning strategy it will be adopted and propagate until it is the dominant strategy.

The only way it stops becoming a winning strategy is if we provide consequences, but that requires taking personal responsibility for the state of the world, which was a core American value, but doesn't seem to be anymore.

kubb

7 days ago

How do you reconcile the belief that personal responsibility is the solution with game theoretical analysis? It seems contradictory to me.

In order to change the game theoretic outcomes, we‘d need a systemic change that affects the rewards, not a personal attitude change that will become a losing strategy in the game.

Also, do you remember how tobacco companies were invited to the table to discuss whether smoking is bad for you? Were those the days of personal responsibility or was it even before that?

achrono

7 days ago

The point is, the self-policing is needed because there isn't a better policing mechanism outside of oneself for something so fundamental, so much at the frontier.

As the AI leaders themselves admit [1], they are doing what they're doing (i.e. capability-maxxing without caring deeply about actual risks this opens up for humanity) because they can and because the other guy's doing it, so why should they be left behind?

They're asking for some external force to bring the morality that they agree on paper ought to exist. There is a segment among them that are even okay with millions of people dying before the risk of AI gets taken seriously. [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrESBnPYoZU, seek to 2:45 [2] same as above, seek to 3:25

kubb

7 days ago

If the leaders won’t self-police, is there something else we can do? Or do we just pack up and go home?

whaleofatw2022

7 days ago

I will dare say, it's a question of what happens to Mario's brother. Jury nullification in that is the best message that could be sent to the populace.

mminer237

7 days ago

I'm pretty sure giving everyone the belief that they can murder with impunity as long as the victim is undesirable enough would be the absolute worst thing that could happen right now.

slg

7 days ago

One of the dystopian traits I was hinting at in my original comment is the acceptance of mass murder as long as it occurs in the boardroom and nets an extra few cents for the shareholders. I won't defend or justify what "Mario's brother" supposedly did, but he has inflicted much less pain and death on the world than the man he is accused of shooting and I don't really think there is any room to debate that.

zmgsabst

7 days ago

This is precisely why as a law-and-order type, I don’t care about this particular incident.

A rookie gangster shot a high-tier gangster — why is that a me problem? Gang-on-gang violence is a daily occurrence.

wqaatwt

7 days ago

Hypothetically if laws lose their legitimacy because nobody is willing to enforce them (at least some people have that perception) and the political system is designed in such a way as to make any meaningful change near impossible what is there left to do?

somenameforme

7 days ago

And more generally the fundamental reason we agree to operate under laws is because these laws are expected to improve society as a whole. But if those laws instead start enabling and protecting bad behavior then they're doing the exact opposite.

It's fairly obvious that much of what the more sociopathic corporations do today will be illegal in the future, but changes in social opinions tend to predate changes in the law by quite some time. For the obvious extreme there - slavery was completely legal. Society began to believe that such a thing was no longer fit for society, and consequently acting against it, long before it was outlawed.

s1artibartfast

7 days ago

The way to change this is to build consensus and update the law, not go out and shoot whoever you disagree with.

somenameforme

7 days ago

There are pretty much 0 people who think healthcare insurance providers should be intentionally engaging in delay, deny, defend as a means of maximizing profit. Passing a law against stands essentially 0 chance of happening. If it was passed, it would intentionally have loopholes aplenty buried in a hundred page document that essentially 0 people, including those who wrote it, could understand.

Modern democracy mostly just doesn't seem to work how it ought.

slg

7 days ago

>Modern democracy mostly just doesn't seem to work how it ought.

It is funny to say this as if every other modern democracy hasn't solved the specific problem that you have given. The issue isn't democracy, it is the American democracy (or republic if you want to be pedantic).

Specifically, the combination of our expansive freedom of speech protections (which make campaign financing restrictions near impossible) and first past the post voting system make it easy for corporations and the rich to shape the government however they want.

somenameforme

6 days ago

This is mostly grass is greener thinking. Here [1] is a relevant poll across the EU, for instance. [1] 65% of people do not think high level corruption cases are sufficiently pursued and 57% do not think efforts against corruption are effective. And everywhere except Scandiland has a majority to vast majority that think corruption is widespread in their country.

The only place it seems to be really working is in Switzerland and in the Scandinavian micronations (notably Sweden is trending more towards the patterns of Europe than Scandinavia).

[1] - https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3217

slg

6 days ago

It is weird to claim it is simply "grass is greener thinking" and then point to opinion polls as if those polls won't suffer the same fate. But either way, that wasn't my point. The "specific problem" I was referring to was the example you gave of health insurers maximizing profit and the government's inability/unwillingness to reign that in. The way all those European countries have addressed that is via universal healthcare.

wqaatwt

5 days ago

> The way all those European countries have addressed

They addressed by rationing and limiting access. Of course their systems are generally much more efficient cost wise. However Europe isn’t some Utopian wonderland.

slg

5 days ago

And yet the US trails those European countries in most measures of quality of healthcare including access. It is clear the US pays more for healthcare and receives worse service. That doesn't mean anyone is calling Europe utopian, but the American approach to healthcare is worse by almost every objective measure.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2...

s1artibartfast

6 days ago

I initially thought the greener grass reference was in relation to their own link. I wonder what a more objective measure of government corruption would be. I suspect it's not possible. The closest measure I could think of it was something along the lines of governmental efficiency, w which would include corruption, incompetence and dysfunction.

I wonder if someone could put together a Time series data on some benchmarks like the government cost to put up a stop sign.

slg

5 days ago

There are groups that try to quantify this sort of stuff. According to one measure, the US was already behind most of Europe in 2024[1] and I would expect us to drop much further in the next iteration of this list.

[1] - https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024

wqaatwt

3 days ago

The perception index is flawed in many ways. It effectively entirely ignores high level corruption or institutionalized corruption.

It’s a bit like using Big Mac index for estimating PPP.

s1artibartfast

5 days ago

What I see at that link is a perception index. Am I missing something?

s1artibartfast

7 days ago

Then we need to fix it. Going out and shooting whoever you dont like moves us further from this goal, not closer.

People broadly agree that they dont like the status quo. They dont agree on what would be better. You cant have change without direction and detail.

somenameforme

7 days ago

This isn't the issue. You could get easily get the overwhelming majority of society to agree 'let's criminalize unjustified denials with criminal penalties for the executives of healthcare companies who violate such' and it's simply not going to happen. A handful of corporations' "lobbying" easily trumps the opinion of society.

And getting people elected is no different. Fewer and fewer people identify as either republican or democrat (with independents being the largest 'party' by far), yet lo and behold like 99.9% of politicians at all levels, high and low, are republican or democrat, with basically no independent representation because the system makes it unreasonably difficult to select an alternative. This is further confounded by an utterly worthless media system that further works to entrench the political establishment, and much more.

s1artibartfast

7 days ago

I dont think it is that easy to define "unjustified denials". People might agree on a vibe, but not detail. What would a bill look like?

Regarding the party and representational system, I agree there is a lot of dysfunction. Same problem. Nobody can agree on alternatives. Even ranked choice, which I think is the tiniest step in the right direction is highly controversial. Ideas like expanding the house to 30,000 representatives [1], seem like a fantasy.

People hate change more than the status quo.

Regarding the media environment, the consumer is the problem. As long as people prefer and seek out garbage, there is no possible solution.

[1] https://thirty-thousand.org/

somenameforme

6 days ago

An unjustified denial is obviously a denial that should not have been denied by the terms of your agreement with the insurance company. And we should also add delays and other anti-payment 'strategies' as criminal offenses as well. And as such behaviors would now be criminal in nature, exact offenses would determined by a jury of our peers.

It's obviously not people hating change. People want these things, and many others to change. It's a completely broken political system that is happy to change, but only when it benefits corporations or political, especially geopolitical, interests. Ranked choice won't do anything. Australia has one of the most dysfunctional democracies in the world, and they have both universal voting, obviously 'Australian voting', and even a proportionally elected Senate.

s1artibartfast

6 days ago

Again, do you think going out and shooting anyone that pisses you off will fix this system?

Politicians can be voted out of office. The process is simple and foolproof. The problem is people are divided and can't agree.

If every voter next election had your claim denial law as their top priority, they could replace Congress entirely.

Instead, they will fight over the same issues.

somenameforme

6 days ago

No they couldn't. Getting ballot access is a huge ordeal, and then the media does an excellent job of divide and conquer by not even focusing on the issues, but instead focusing on hate, fear, misrepresentations, and so forth. Make people hate and fear 'the other side' enough and they won't dare "waste" their vote and will happily vote for somebody they don't even like, but dislike less than the alternative.

And obviously you're straw manning things. The reason people screw over other people is because they expect there will be no consequences. Whether this is some thug mugging a guy for $20 on the street corner, or a guy in a suit developing ever more novel strategies to ultimately refuse healthcare to people - it's the exact same issue. When there are consequences, the entire calculus changes.

s1artibartfast

6 days ago

You are externalizing all of the problems of the electorate and treating them as if they have no agency. As if every other part of the system is a clever actors, and voters are all mindless dolls with no choice in how they vote, what they read, or what they watch.

I agree consequences are a powerful incentive. If you reject updating the law, where does that leave you?

What exactly is your position? Should I go out and shoot people I disagree with or not? Are you going out and shooting people?

somenameforme

6 days ago

Jefferson put it far better than I ever could: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0...

s1artibartfast

5 days ago

I don't think you really believe that edgelord fantasy. Was January 6th far too tame for your liking? How many police and politicians have you lynched?

If I have to read "the tree of Liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots" one more time I'm going to claw my eyes out. It is a rhetorical copout when faced with genuinely difficult of how to enact reform. Spend a month in Syria, Libya, or Sudan and then tell me that you support civil war, let alone every generation. If internet posturing ever turns into reality, people will be in for a rude awakening.

somenameforme

5 days ago

I'd encourage you to read the entire letter alongside its context. The reason I link to the letter and not the quote is because the quote, relevant and insightful though it may be, is made exponentially more so by understanding the context in which it was said.

Here's a quiz for understanding: what did Jefferson think of the 'revolutionaries' of whose actions he's directly defending?

hayst4ck

5 days ago

The tree of Liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants is true, that is literally spoken by a founder of the country and person who penned the country's founding document. It is a belief that you materially benefit from but deny. You have so much privilege but deny it's genesis.

You believe in the product of Locke's philosophy, but deny its requirements.

Tyranny is the result of consolidated power. Tyrants aren't going to respond to "please give up your power" or "please follow the law" peacefully. If you challenge power, power will respond. The freedom of speech exists precisely because saying something tyrants don't like will result in tyrants trying to punish you for your speech. Freedom of speech exists in order to protect speaking truth to power because power doesn't like truth spoken to it.

Freedom is solidarity. Solidarity is its price. The word solidarity itself is important to reflect on, because it is solidarity against a force that seeks to break the solidarity by harming individuals acting in solidarity. Labor rights and protection for freedoms were hard won, many individuals were harmed earning them. This country that you enjoy was the result of a revolutionary and civil war.

This is the language the country was literally founded on. This is where the rights you enjoy being protected come from:

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but "to bind us in all cases whatsoever" and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth.

> Spend a month in Syria, Libya, or Sudan and then tell me that you support civil war

What do you think makes people fight in a war? Why are Ukrainians fighting in what, if you accept Putin's framing, is a civil war?

user

6 days ago

[deleted]

hayst4ck

6 days ago

This is a false dichotomy.

The problem with your judgement is that it presumes that law is a limit rather than weapon, that it protects rather than attacks, and that the law can interpret and enforce itself. This is a form of privilege because you grew up under conditions where those were mostly true because those in power generally followed the law, so you've never had to question many of your base assumptions about what law is, how it is enforced, or what legitimacy/illegitimacy means. Decisions made have mostly been decisions you can tolerate even if you disagree. You've probably never taken the time to understand America's founding philosophy, which states there is truth that supersedes law, specifically that rights are even more fundamental than law and completely supersede it. You owe yourself a reading of the declaration of independence.

You likely haven't been on the receiving end of blatantly unjust law or "law" enforcement nor do you likely identify with those who have been on the receiving end. You've probably never had to bribe a police officer, something that happens on this planet. You probably haven't experienced law enforcers robbing you of your dignity with the force of courts behind them. You've probably never been subject to law that says you are someone else's property.

Unfortunately for your argument, law can be used to consolidate power to update the law. You can update the law so that only you are able to update the law. When the system of legitimacy for the use of force becomes a tool for power consolidation, "consensus" becomes irrelevant. Consent becomes irrelevant. This is in many ways communicated by OP's managed democracy. What happens when you disagree with management? What does it mean for democracy to be managed. It obviously is because politicians ask for money, not time, not votes, but money. That implies that those with money can influence election results loosely proportional to their money.

You should really read about political philosophy, specifically the "state of nature" which even conservative NYT columnist David Brooks has said we are in. Generally when people say that it means that we are effectively lawless and subject only to systems of power. There is no law to follow because it is arbitrary and unpredictable or everything is criminalized to the point where everyone is guilty allowing enforcement to punish who they choose while technically enforcing the law.

How do you get people who have consolidated systems of power to the negotiating table? How should Ukraine get Russia to the negotiating table? Russia is claiming it is Ukraine's government and therefore Ukrainians are "protected" by Russian law. Gazans are "protected" by Israeli law too. China claims that it's laws "protect" Hong Kong citizens and Taiwanese. Their militaries are technically acting as police if you accept their framing.

Multiple second in commands of the US military have said trump is trying to divide and conquer America. Think about that. Think about what it means for a president to divide the country. It means that they see themselves as president of only half of the people. What does that mean for the other half, do they actually have a government? Are they protected by law?

This country was founded on the philosophy of John Locke, and it's not clear you've read it or understand it, because it doesn't say shoot whoever you disagree with (although that is something that happens in the state of nature), but it also doesn't rely on magical thinking about "building consensus to update the law" which is something that makes sense to think about under a constitutional democratic government, but doesn't make any sense in a monarchy or government aspiring to have a "unitary executive."

s1artibartfast

6 days ago

[flagged]

hayst4ck

5 days ago

You're original false dichotomy is also condescending getting you a condescending tone. There is nobody who believes in shooting whoever you disagree with. There is nobody who supports random shootings. The post you were responding to was one almost directly laying out American founding philosophy, that we live under a consent based government.

The person you were responding to was laying down an argument that would defend the civil rights movement, that frequently acted in violation in of the law, threatened violence, and even became violent, before the descendants of people who were literally slaves (under law) were given protection by the law, protection that is still violated to this day which the black lives matter protests and contemporary driving/walking while black cases show. It took riots to see consequences for one cop extra-judicially killing a man.

Say what you want about the case in new york, but it is building consensus that we have a 2 tiered legal system that exists to protect the rich and impose order (not justice) on the poor.

Change doesn't happen only from the carrot or only from the stick, but the carrot and the stick working together. Where you are right is that destruction and being against alone will not lead to good outcomes, you have to create and be for something to have good outcomes.

If I reflect on this in relation to the national situation, you're de facto defending what is happening right now and choosing beliefs that defend this repeatedly new normal as inevitable and using magical thinking to describe how change should happen. It's magical because its easy to say what you say, but if you were to write an algorithm for what real physical humans do in real life to create change, you will quickly find out how much magic is required and how many functions you have to implement later or how many impossible things you need to be true. Russia has elections too. Believing that American elections could not be like Russian elections is pure American exceptionalism.

People with agency vote based on information, but there is an entire information economy controlled by the very rich that you deny in your other posts. Money influences votes, you have to confront the depth of what that means and you're not. You should read the dissent of citizens united.

You're right I don't know your background, but you don't seem to have internalized the founding philosophy because if you had you couldn't argue the way you argue which means either you don't have a philosophical framework to support you or you haven't really deeply thought about the things you say yourself and given them any philosophical rigor.

And yeah, I agree, there is an extremely strong analogy to the national situation, and you should reflect on which "side" you are on.

By calling the post obnoxious you haven't made me feel obnoxious, you've created the conditions to confirm my own beliefs and made yourself appear to be in denial. You haven't given me anything to critically think about my own beliefs, you've only told me that being told you're wrong and uninformed feels bad, but much like the half of America who feels condescended and chooses to be strong and wrong rather than question themselves, you will get exactly the government you deserve.

I think you see the target on your back (based on your profile) as someone who could be seen as contributing to the downfall of America and directly harming those who participate in our for profit healthcare system, and want laws to protect you while failing to realize that laws are not defending those our for profit healthcare system victimizes. Since you profit from a system that victimizes people, I can certainly see how you would see the attack as "random" since the very same logic that applied, and that some are even celebrating, could reasonably be applied to you based on your titles alone giving you a sense of insecurity that those who need healthcare feel.

I think the actor acted with conscience and since I also act in conscience I don't feel at risk. I feel more at risk from people who follow the law but don't care about justice than I do from people who care about justice but don't follow the law. America was literally built by the latter. There is no explicit relationship between justice and law other than law without justice de-legitimizes law until people reject it and choose to act on their own, meaning they choose the state of nature.

I am as white and as American as you get. I am descended from people who fought in the revolutionary war, all 16 of my great great grandparents were born here, and I would feel much much safer sitting next to the person in question than an ICE agent, and I would prefer to be in a country made of the former than the latter, and if you want to live in a free country, you should start contemplating why you must support people who hold justice in higher esteem than the law.

s1artibartfast

5 days ago

I am not defending the current situation, I am opposing people acting as judge jury and executioner, in the name of their own justice. Individuals going out and shooting people on the street is not an appropriate "stick" in a functional society, or one that seeks to prevent sliding deeper into dysfunction. What I reject is the idea that anyone who doesn't accept your definition of justice should have a target on their back. That is not a power I will grant, even under veiled threats of death and national destruction.

I have never voted republican in my life, am appalled by the current lawlessness, and generally support healthcare reform. We should be allies with many mutual interests, but here you are making an enemy.

hayst4ck

5 days ago

> Individuals going out and shooting people on the street is not an appropriate "stick" in a functional society

I absolutely 100% completely agree, however you added "in a functional society" which is why that statement is true. We are not in a functional society, we are in a rapidly deteriorating one.

So why did you add in a functional society? Is it true in a non functioning society? How should people act in a non functioning society? What determines whether a society is functioning or not? Who gets to make that choice whether society is functioning or not? Was the confederacy a functioning society? Was it a functioning society for chattel slaves? Would they have been justified in using "sticks"? Are Ukrainians justified in using sticks? Why or why not?

> is not an appropriate "stick" in a functional society

> am appalled by the current lawlessness

Don't you see your own denial even a little, or how someone in good faith could interpret it that way?

> We should be allies with many mutual interests, but here you are making an enemy.

I could accuse you of the same, but I don't think you're an enemy at all, I think you're ignorant, privileged, and haven't really given your own point of view a thorough shakedown. I am not angry at you, nor do I see you as an enemy. If I did, I would treat you like rayiner, I might accidentally respond, but otherwise I would downvote flag and move on. I am sad that you are too scared to accept what is true because it makes you personally responsible for participating in building a future we want to be a part of and nobody wants to be told they are responsible especially when that message comes with personal cost. Anger is a result of feeling threatened, but sadness is a result of understanding, and I am deeply sad about the current state of things and people who should be ideological allies choosing comfort over truth.

Everyone wants a functioning government, but "nobody" wants to pay taxes or take a pay cut do be a part of it. Everyone wants labor rights and higher wages, but nobody wants to risk their job, their pay, or their "permanent record." Everyone wants to sit in the shade of the tree of liberty, but nobody wants to water it. You'll only want to fight for liberty once it's gone and by then the fight will be much much harder.

I asked so many questions and almost none of them are rhetorical. I think if you took the time to answer any of them, you would quickly run into trouble maintaining internal consistency, and I think the core of it is that you have no conception of what it takes to go from the state of nature to a consensus based lawful government because you think Locke and Jefferson were "edgelords".

wqaatwt

7 days ago

The fact that such behavior might become acceptable (at least amongst a significant section of society) indicates a systemic failure in the socio-economic system. IMHO its more a of symptom. Like labor and anarchist related political violence back in the first Gilded Age back in the late 1800s.

Massively increasing inequality and giving too much political power to corporate robber barons has its costs. If nobody is willing to keep them in check the appearance of some sort of “vigilantism” seems hard to avoid. Not implying that its a good thing or that political violence really ever led to positive change historically..

const_cast

7 days ago

We can already murder with impunity. Just get a few people together, form a company, and you can do whatever. Even crimes against humanity won’t get you in prison, probably. At worst you’ll lose some cash and be demoted to “normal person”.

How many people has UHC killed? I don’t know, it’s really hard to measure. Besides the people killed because they didn’t receive funding for care, there’s also the plethora of practices insurers enforce. Some, maybe most, of those practices are non-optimal, so some subset of people are dying that shouldn’t. Oh well.

Der_Einzige

7 days ago

The purge movies are the relevant ones for this idea…

krapp

7 days ago

That belief is already commonplace, and has been vigorously tested among the sex worker, queer, Black and Native communities and proven correct. I don't see why we should be any more concerned about adding "rich white men" to the pile than we are about any of the other disposable demographics in our society.

pembrook

7 days ago

The fact that rich engineers on hacker news would be flirting with bolshevism as their ideology is just endlessly funny to me. I know it’s just people parroting the emotional “vibe” of their political tribe on any given day, but it’s so ironic.

Beyond the obvious moral decay of cheering on murder at all, and the fact you’re in the privileged class of the richest nation on earth, the idea of targeting the replaceable middle managers of said system is so silly. As if committing random acts of terrorism will somehow force Americans to democratically design a better system? Fear is just another recipe for more ballooning costs (see the TSA).

I guess I find this so amusing because leftists love to fetishize European healthcare without understanding in European countries the government is much more aggressive about denying care than any US insurer. They actually have to keep costs sane for their system to continue existing.

jack_h

7 days ago

> I guess I find this so amusing because leftists love to fetishize European healthcare without understanding in European countries the government is much more aggressive about denying care than any US insurer. They actually have to keep costs sane for their system to continue existing.

All economic systems must contend with resource scarcity. Part of dealing with that is rationing resources which can take the form of higher prices, longer waiting lines, by need, countless other metrics, or some combination of metrics. While the current healthcare system in the US is a byzantine disaster that only a bureaucrat could love, I think far too many think there is a "solution" that somehow leads to a system without resource constraints. This imagined system isn't an economic system though, it's just a utopia.

“The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.” -- Thomas Sowell

justinrubek

7 days ago

I work in software in the US, but I am not rich, nor would I consider myself close to "the privileged class" at all. Yes, I do better than a lot of the people I know. However, this is more that they are in a poor situation. Despite being somewhat frugal and not spending (I've never been on a vacation, I cook at home, I rarely do anything that requires money), I don't have a huge disposable income. If I lost my job, I'd be on the street in less than a year.

The privileged class is significantly higher up than this. I've clawed every bit of everything I have from this world despite many efforts to keep me down.

I don't find your comment genuine at all. You're just trying to be dismissive.

pembrook

7 days ago

Yes, I am indeed trying to be dismissive of people glorifying murder. You caught me red handed.

justinrubek

7 days ago

I don't know what kind of reply I expected. At least I know you never intended to have a real conversation.

lobal

7 days ago

> They actually have to keep costs sane for their system to continue existing.

That is also the case for US insurers. The only difference is if the government denies life saving treatments, people protest. If private insurers do so, people have no recourse.

pembrook

7 days ago

In both situations you have zero recourse. In fact the US Government is less responsive to protest than US businesses are.

US healthcare is one of the most complicated systems of adverse incentives and tangled byzantine public/private spiderwebs ever created. To kill random people involved at 15 layers of abstraction away from the actual root causes thinking that will somehow make it better is probably the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

hayst4ck

6 days ago

It's not bolshevism, it's jeffersonianism/locke-ianism and this administration is ticking away the grievances in the declaration of independence like it's a recipe.

We have a consent based government, that's plainly stated in the founding document. Now this government is doing things no person of good conscience can consent to, such as talking about wars of aggression against Greenland, Panama, and Canada, denying due process in clear violation of the constitution we were taught in school regardless of what any judge rules (and they are ruling it is a constitutional violation), and sending people to death camps in foreign countries. The leader said "I wish I had Hitler's generals".

I am being ordered to deny the evidence of my eyes and ears daily.

Unfortunately there aren't very many lessons about what withdrawing consent for a consent based government looks like.

Calling us rich benefactors is accusing us of not having morals, values, or red lines we hold in higher esteem than money. If our values are violated but we can't be bribed by our privileged position in a corrupt society then that's Bolshevism? It's having a conscience. It's having integrity. We are getting the society we deserve right now, one where money is the only thing that matters, one where integrity is punished and even judged as "endlessly funny".

There was nothing random at all about the actions being referenced, that's why you find so much support online and even more support with virtually every city dwelling person who is not a boomer in person.

I don't think it's the best way to promote change, but he did start a conversation about justice and its relationship to the judicial system that needs to be had.

jillyboel

7 days ago

The only way out is to hold executives personally responsible for the actions of their companies, and politicians for the results of their policy.

Sam Altman should receive the same treatment as Aaron Swartz. Actually, he should be punished much more severely since the scope of his copyright infringement makes Aaron's seem like child's play.

carterschonwald

7 days ago

Darn, that’s a brutal but quite fair and honest assessment

moralestapia

7 days ago

100%.

"Smaht"[1] people learn to game the system and scam others for momentary benefit.

The worse side that is that we're all guilty of that system, to some degree, even if only by enabling it.

I'm also 100% sure that this is what drives civilizations to the ground.

1. Smaht is a term I use to describe people who think they're smart but they're actually extremely stupid. A lot of smaht people have degrees and diplomas which further fuels their delusion of intelligence.

nicbou

7 days ago

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

(@AlexBlechman on twitter)

staticman2

7 days ago

Sci-Fi Author: Inspired by human atrocities, I present to you my new novel: God Emperor of Dune.

Tech adjacent blogger: Hey guys here me out I love that we're building "starships" but it would also be spiffy if we end democracy and appoint a God Emperor!

pixl97

7 days ago

>end up accidentally resembling or aligning with the bad guys of our satire and dystopian fiction

Quite often this dystopian 'fiction' is just a biography with the names and place rewritten. A scary number of people are rather anti-human.

roxolotl

7 days ago

I really wish I could know if they are earnestly cosplaying Lex Luther or if they are just deluded. Of course a good Lex Luther cosplay would involve misdirection so it’s basically impossible to know. It doesn’t really matter which one it is because the outcome is similar but it would be very gratifying to know.

Trasmatta

7 days ago

They used the word "democratic" 8 times in that post. I'm not sure that word means what they think it means.

ASalazarMX

7 days ago

It means "ChatGPT aligned with your government agenda".

snihalani

7 days ago

I think it means they are blinking twice in front of their republic friends. Fortunately, no one is going to save them

krackers

7 days ago

As opposed to those "unaligned" communist open-source models. As a proud freedom-loving citizen of the West you wouldn't want to support those now would you?

I'm reminded of the first half of this wonderful short-story that was shared on HN a year back https://www.fortressofdoors.com/four-magic-words/

dzhiurgis

7 days ago

What's an open source model?

GuinansEyebrows

7 days ago

"democratic" means "i can pay for anything i want, so i will"

echelon

7 days ago

> spread democratic AI

Open weights and code and models? That's the only way to ensure sovereignty.

I think this company is a walking oxymoron.

rytill

7 days ago

Don’t forget the training data!

caseyy

7 days ago

We are far from open training data... training data might even be incriminating.

echelon

7 days ago

100%, though I still feel as though open training data will eventually become a thing. It'll have to be mostly new data, synthetic data, or meticulously curated from public domain / open data.

Synthetic training data sets, even robotically-acquired real world "synthetic" data, can rapidly create training sets. It's just a matter of coordinating these efforts and building high quality data.

I've made a few data sets using Unreal Engine, and I've been wanting to put various objects on turn tables and go out on backpack 3D scan adventures.

Someone will have to pay for it, though.

user

7 days ago

[deleted]

dzhiurgis

7 days ago

There are countries with more and less freedoms than USA... Operating to that countries standard opens up the market and improves UX.

nicbou

7 days ago

Facebook did that. It ended up exposing a lot of private information to China and supporting a genocide in Myanmar.

Tech companies only care about growth. They only care about anything else insofar as it supports growth.

user

7 days ago

[deleted]

nicbou

7 days ago

I just finished reading "Careless People" and the tone is shockingly similar to the one Zuckerberg loved to use. It reminds me of that Silicon Valley scene where every startup wants to "make the world a better place".

As someone who is both expected to keep creating information to train AI while being stripped from the fruit of my labour by it, I find it sickening.

cedws

7 days ago

You will have democracy and you will like it.

mikrl

7 days ago

GPT SAVE ME! stabs USB drive into leg

jwrallie

7 days ago

> It’s clear to everyone now that this kind of infrastructure is going to be the backbone of future economic growth and national development.

Well, OpenAI, I think you are mixing up your own backend for economic growth with everyone’s!

gooob

7 days ago

i'm wondering what's going to happen when AI tells us to stop pursuing "economic growth" and instead seek "health and sustainability"

tedivm

7 days ago

They'll train a new version to fix the problem.

cube00

7 days ago

The eternal AI hype excuse, the next model will fix that, now we're seeing new models hallucinating more then ever.

caseyy

7 days ago

Just tweak the system prompt until global domi... I mean democracy is achieved. /s

zmgsabst

7 days ago

WEF is already pitching that, so it would represent a pivot to be “on brand” for fascist elites.

blibble

7 days ago

> These secure data centers will help support the sovereignty of a country’s data

there is no data sovereignty if there's a US entity at the top

fakedang

7 days ago

I honestly wonder if American companies are so dense that they think foreign governments don't know of the Cloud Act.

Sol-

7 days ago

Comes with a free US government backdoor to all of the foreign citizens' data and AI usage.

Though of course this is already the status quo for all US companies abroad, so you have to give props to OpenAI for spelling it out explicitly: Give up what remains of your digital sovereignty to the US government and you get a small piece of the AGI pie.

_bin_

7 days ago

The pattern for basically every small nation is "choose of which superpower you wish to be a client." From that patron you get some level of benefit. Not aligning with any either doesn't work (you get attacked) or means you get no benefit (and eventually get pushed into obscurity and instability.)

You can make a lot of complaints about America but we have, looking back on history, been nicer than any other patron. Other good evidence includes the fact that europe is still standing (paying to rebuild) and her extravagant welfare states of the past decades, subsidized largely by American defense spending.

delusional

7 days ago

I agree with most of what you said. America has been a great ally, mostly by allowing her allies to flourish independently of herself. The US did whatever she wanted to do, and so did her allies. This was a great benefit to all involved.

> subsidized largely by American defense spending.

This part is in my opinion ahistoric. US wars have not been popular in Europe. We did not want a war in Afghanistan or Iraq, we supported an ally calling for defense from terror. American war machine spending is rooted in her own desire for hard power, not pleas from her allies.

All of this is coming to an end. Not because the US is retracting. I think most of the west would accept a more nationally interested US, but because the US is starting to see her allies as vassals that she should control. She is realigning as a traditional power, like the USSR.

We are not vassals, we are independent nations seeking our own happiness.

kubb

7 days ago

> The pattern for basically every small nation is "choose of which superpower you wish to be a client."

This is straight up Russian mentality.

> extravagant welfare states of the past decades, subsidized largely by American defense spending

This sounds to me like a US partisan narrative rather than anything else. It’s a nice story, because it strokes the American ego, but I’ve yet seen it backed up by serious analysis. Most likely it’s just a story.

_bin_

7 days ago

This isn't a russian mentality, this is more of a realpolitik reading of how things work. Don't mistake a positive statement for a normative one.

There was actually a really good article in the FT of all places on this subject: https://www.ft.com/content/37053b2b-ccda-4ce3-a25d-f1d0f82e7...

The fact that the FT is picking this up should tell us something given its typical perspective. There are two big groups of countries in this situation concerned with keeping russia in check: America and the Euros. The former has less of a direct concern but more ability to do something about it; the former have more concerns but less ability. So we settled on a compromise where each country would contribute a proportion of GDP rather than a dollar figure. This is fair-ish; it's still a huge benefit to the euros, but pretty fair. Yet for decades, they have consistently failed to meet their proportional obligations, instead directing those funds to things like "free healthcare".

Other major reasons they can do this include not having debt from having to finance the rebuilding of their continent themselves.

kubb

7 days ago

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?most_...

The US is spending more of its GDP percentage-wise on healthcare than any European country. How you can consider the European spending "extravagant" is inexplicable, you have to be deep deep in the ideological rabbit hole, and unable to admit new information.

_bin_

6 days ago

This is a good example of "lying with statistics". You are doing this by implying we are paying more for the same thing. You are then doing more of this by equating healthcare spend to the total welfare state. Europe is still spending a lot of money on healthcare; less than us, but their healthcare is pretty crappy.

Healthcare is one part of the profligate safety net europe has maintained for decades, not the whole thing. Europe has more pensions, more unemployment, more retirement benefits, more childcare, more socialized housing, more of almost every flavor of welfare. They pay for this by shifting the burden of defending themselves to America.

Here's a good and more in-depth analysis: https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/04/europe-military-welfare...

It's a hell of a lot more useful than one graph. Please read it.

kubb

6 days ago

> their healthcare is pretty crappy

They have much better healthcare outcomes, so it sounds like they’re way more efficient with their spending.

They also have lower GDP which means that they spend way less in absolute terms.

Of course there’s an article somewhere to back up every opinion that you have. That doesn’t say much.

How you defend your opinions (pointing to other opinions that agree with you and unsubstantiated claims) says a lot though, and is indicative of confirmation bias.

_bin_

6 days ago

They have healthier people going in, obviously. When the average person is approaching being wider than he is tall, all the healthcare spending in the world can do only so much. I have a bunch of family in Europe and have heard way too many of their experiences with waiting lists and overcrowding.

Not sure what the heck you want in terms of validation if not "analysis that supports my point". Are you now criticizing that I've read on this and have data and analysis that agrees? I'm sure if I didn't, you'd come after me for not having that. Double bind sounding ass.

rowanseymour

7 days ago

> This is straight up Russian mentality.

I don't know how you can look at nearly a century of US imperialism in Latin America and the Middle East and conclude that client states is a Russian thing.

tuyguntn

7 days ago

additionally, anytime you oppose US government ideas, data centers in your country gets shutdown.

globalnode

7 days ago

How can a glorified NLP app be equated with being the backbone of economic development and a path to AGI ? So many people have been fooled by marketing.

Honestly though, we have a much bigger issue with climate change in the medium to long run and it doesn't really matter what our governments and companies do with stats and spyware. If anyone thinks we can stop and deal with the climate when it becomes a bigger problem, just take a look at our track record so far.

(only mentioning climate change to offer perspective)

n_ary

7 days ago

> How can a glorified NLP app be equated with being the backbone of economic development and a path to AGI ? So many people have been fooled by marketing.

Regulators are still figuring out this “AI” and oAI must move into as many market to sustain their valuation and future before regulations start to close many open doors.

Also, when entire EU comission makes “AI” a core focus, all other governments are having a FOMO, which is the most fertile opportunity to entrench oneself quickly before everyone realises the smoke and mirror of “productivity gain” song means just making another layer of middleman mandatory for everything(see Apple pushing towards modifying Safari to be AI first).

Also what climate change? Everyone was being shamed into indignation recently for their carbon footprints, only to wake up to massive power infra expansion and Nvidia/Amazon/Msft announcing that everything is on the table including burning more fossil fuel to power the energy demand(utilities are usually often govt controlled and hence a social cost overall).

nyc_data_geek1

7 days ago

The climate change that, if left unchecked, will almost certainly lead to the death of much of humanity, and the majority of life on Earth. Hundreds of millions of climate refugees knocking at your door.

egorfine

7 days ago

> Partner with countries to help build in-country data center capacity.

Except USA banned export of GPUs to like half of the European Union, let alone third-world countries.

andrewinardeer

7 days ago

As long as banned GPUs are under USA control and know what data is being processed on them then perhaps it will be allowed.

MegaButts

7 days ago

Trump has announced plans to change that (this is news from today).

https://archive.is/2eLzj

> The Trump administration plans to rescind Biden-era AI chip curbs as part of a broader effort to revise semiconductor trade restrictions that have drawn strong opposition from major tech companies and foreign governments, according to people familiar with the matter.

pornel

7 days ago

This doesn't mean anything. He won't get enough likes on Xitter tomorrow and will flip-flop to 1000% tariffs or whatever else comes to his senile mind.

This unstable circus of a government can't be trusted.

egorfine

6 days ago

True. Unfortunately this is not a time to have a confidence in long-term business relationships with the US.

egorfine

7 days ago

Given any other US administration this would be a good news. This one? I genuinely have no idea.

user

7 days ago

[deleted]

user

7 days ago

[deleted]

mooreds

7 days ago

On several of Tyler Cowen's recent podcasts, he has said essentially "there are really only two countries that have AI, China and the USA. Does this mean that other countries (like Peru) won't really have a functioning, powerful government when AI runs everything".

See https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/chris-dixon/

> As you know, not many countries have serious AI companies, and even those in Europe may or may not last. They’re not obviously mega profitable. Let’s say you’re the government of Peru, and you can turn over your education system to some foreign, maybe American, AIs. You can turn over how your treasury is managed to the AIs. You can turn over your national defense to the AIs. None of these are Peruvian companies most likely. In the final analysis, are we even left with the government of Peru? Or has it, in some sense, been pseudo privatized to the companies that are running the structures, and indeed to the AI itself?

Interesting to have OpenAI offer up AI infra so other countries are not at quite as large a disadvantage. Also really good for their business.

soared

7 days ago

IMO that analysis is shortsighted when looking at other technologies. Peru’s government would grind to a halt with say, windows/osx, excel, chrome, email etc. They are all tools that enable work. I don’t see AI being categorically different.

In this hypothetical world where AI runs the treasury, is the US now in a massively better position to make treasury related decisions? Maybe? Does the US gov have a remote chance of abiding by these decisions? Etc.

I can see Peru being disadvantaged if they don’t use AI, but if they contract out and set up their own stuff that they didn’t actually build - how’s that really worse? I feel like they let the US spend hundreds of billions in development costs and can now reap the rewards.

47282847

7 days ago

> They are all tools that enable work. I don’t see AI being categorically different.

You don’t see the difference between a self-contained product, and a foreign subscription service with no influence over what it is delivering and the privacy and data sovereignty implications? Let alone the vast array of subtle manipulation possibilities in responses?

selfhoster11

7 days ago

By and large, those technologies do not come with an always-on umbilical that leads out of the borders of those countries. It is relatively easy to build out capacity, unlike with AI that requires extremely specialised hardware in vast quantities.

simonw

7 days ago

Mistral mean France (and through it Europe) do have at least one very solid contender.

ClumsyPilot

7 days ago

> You can turn over your national defense to the AIs. None of these are Peruvian companies most likely. In the final analysis, are we even left with the government of Peru?

Folks, this has already been happening for decades, western consultancies and think tanks have been pushing for privatisation and outsourcing to American firms and as a result many governments, like UK, have been hollowed. In many cases they haven’t got a grip and the country is running on autopilot.

As the consultancies replace employees with AI, the outcome you talk about will be achieved, in about 5 years. No far fetched future required

ToucanLoucan

7 days ago

> when AI runs everything

You can't be seriously considering fancy autocomplete word guessers are replacing governments when Musk can't even get Grok to stop telling Twitter users what a moron he is.

HeatrayEnjoyer

7 days ago

Fancy autocomplete is, today, killing people in at least two wars. We must stop dismissing the technical nightmare now at our doorstep.

user

7 days ago

[deleted]

apwell23

7 days ago

llms are killing ppl ? care to share any references ?

selfhoster11

7 days ago

Anthropic is allowing the US government to use their services. This includes various intelligence organisations and their data analysis they presumably use to target strikes.

ClumsyPilot

7 days ago

> fancy autocomplete word guessers are replacing governments

UK has had them in government since 2022, or maybe since Brexit/ Teresa May with her nickname Maybot.

The decline in quality of governance has been so severe, that I’d wager you would not see a difference. Both sides of the isle seem to be full of unintelligent or inexperienced people that do not believe in anything or have a vision

dzhiurgis

7 days ago

> Musk can't even get Grok to stop telling Twitter users what a moron he is

what an oxymoron.

this is testament how good grok is.

notrealyme123

7 days ago

The wording gives me the heebie-jeebies. Every bit if private/secret data will be 100% used to train their global cash cow models.

blitzar

7 days ago

The wording feels like it was written by Ai.

rikafurude21

7 days ago

I dont get the proposition, they want to build DCs in partnering countries to run GPT on? Who is this useful for, except for OpenAI to get lower latency connections to their customers?

eksu

7 days ago

Not latencies, think data privacy / keeping queries and data from leaving sovereign borders. This way, if there is some local instance / everything is local than the datacenter and service are subject to local laws and regulations (and alternatively you're not subject to foriegn the laws and regulations (and agencies).

sReinwald

7 days ago

That's not quite correct. The "sovereignty" pitch here is largely illusory when dealing with a US-based company like OpenAI.

The US CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) explicitly gives US authorities the power to compel US-based companies to provide data stored on servers, regardless of where those servers are physically located. This effectively undermines any meaningful data sovereignty claims.

Consider the actual arrangement being proposed:

    - OpenAI (US company) maintains control of the infrastructure
    - OpenAI controls the models and their development
    - OpenAI maintains the security protocols and access rights
    - The data merely sits physically within national borders
This isn't sovereignty - it's a limited hosting arrangement that remains fully under US legal jurisdiction. US intelligence agencies can still access this data through legal mechanisms that bypass the host country's laws entirely.

rany_

7 days ago

It would also allow OpenAI to operate in countries that have state subsidized electricity and low wages.

gerash

7 days ago

locality is good for resilience and latency but for privacy? how does it work?

How can one audit that the bytes going from a DC in country A to a DC in the US is not the user queries but some telemetry data for example? Presumably you don't get to look at the unencrypted packets

eldenring

7 days ago

I mean its useful to the customers who get lower latency too.

john2x

7 days ago

Ah yes, save 100ms for a chat response that takes 10 seconds to generate.

soared

7 days ago

> It’s clear to everyone now that this kind of infrastructure is going to be the backbone of future economic growth and national development

Source?

nprateem

7 days ago

They mean for themselves.

minimaxir

7 days ago

The Stargate link is notable since that has received a large amount of backing from the United States government, who hasn’t been friendly with other countries lately.

skywhopper

7 days ago

Stargate has no US government funding. It was latched onto by Trump to pretend he was immediately making some “deals”. But the whole thing is an illusion of pre-existing projects and investments that pre-date the last election.

nprateem

7 days ago

It's not an illusion if he can threaten to disable access, etc. which of course he could, just like China.

Y_Y

7 days ago

Hey sama, ballsy move!

Have you considered that this proposition is even too ridiculous for current reality?

stego-tech

7 days ago

So let me get this straight: countries fund the infrastructure, shoulder the risk, dole out taxpayer money to the for-profit arm of OpenAI, weaken privacy laws, and hand over taxpayer data for…nothing? It just reads like a “hey gullible suckers, give us your land/money/data and we’ll let you slap our logo on stuff until it’s no longer economically convenient for us to do so, at which point we’ll demand you subsidize us because we can claim we’re indispensable/too big to fail” grift to me, unless I’m missing something.

bnjms

7 days ago

This is the leader pg admires?

user

7 days ago

[deleted]

grafmax

7 days ago

They are claiming that free markets are an expression of democratic principles.

Free markets concentrate wealth and power.

Concentration of wealth and power is antithetical to democracy.

ClumsyPilot

7 days ago

See, you just don’t get it, we will only be free when we get rid of politicians and have referendums on all legislation.

But you can sell options on your family’s votes.

Once someone sells a vote, they are in vote debt, and can default by voting a different person than they agreed.

So now you have to have a credit rating, but for voters. Then you need to have Voter Default swaps, which can be Bundled into Voter Default Obligations, Of VDO’s. And then you can have Synthetic Voter Default Swaps and ahead of a major election you can do a Big Short.

simonjgreen

7 days ago

I’m trying to remember the last time I saw an advertisement or product targeting entire nations…

aduffy

7 days ago

Every defense company. c.f. Anduril's "arsenal of democracy" campaign

paradite

7 days ago

I'm getting so much sci-fi vibes from this post.

I've read so many sci-fi stories where big tech corporations have similar control over people as countries. Now we are actually heading there.

I'm both excited and a bit worried about the future.

nicbou

7 days ago

Heading there? Facebook has been a kingmaker for a decade. Musk runs DOGE. Most big companies can bully smaller administrations when they feel the need.

agnishom

7 days ago

How can it be "democratic AI" if the infrastructure is held privately?

user

7 days ago

[deleted]

martythemaniak

7 days ago

> We’ve heard from many countries asking for help in building out similar AI infrastructure—that they want their own Stargates and similar projects.

Who is this for exactly? The thing about reneging on your agreements and treaties and threatening and demonizing everyone around you is that they learn not to trust you. US-led AI sounds terrible, it would never pass muster in Canada. Neither in the EU, China, India, Brazil... Like, you Cannot entrust your governments functioning on the US anymore, you can just get cut off at any point for no reason.

So who's this for?

vitorgrs

7 days ago

Brazil it's actually building a project to give tax breaks and change/simplify a few regulation for datacenter projects. Import tariffs will also be 0 for them...

Finance Minister it's in the California trying to bring investments from the big techs... He met with Jensen Huang already.

I wouldn't doubt if Brazil might be interested.

TikTok is also interested in building a datacenter in Ceará, Brazil, as part of this project.

cheriot

7 days ago

"We will trade control for datacenter subsidies"

Brilliant in a Bond villain way

neilv

7 days ago

They mention a good point (which probably most countries already realized), but the obvious answer is to invest in lowercase open AI, not uppercase OpenAI.

estebarb

7 days ago

In the post-truth era, with fascism gaining adepts all across the world... who would want to give a government editorial powers on generative AI?

I'm deeply pessimistic.

light_hue_1

7 days ago

So they're running out of large enough companies as customers. Now they want governments to pay them.

mrcwinn

7 days ago

Anyone have something positive to say?

Paddywack

7 days ago

I’ll try, but not succeed with a view from Australia..

Companies and governments have been concerned about data and AI sovereignty, and chip (processing) access. The new risks imposed by the USA are increasing this concern / push.

So, it’s hardly surprising that Sama is getting a lot of calls for local instances.

However, if the data etc. moves back to the USA this is exactly the opposite of the control companies and governments are looking for.

So, fair proposal, wrong execution.

Waterluvian

7 days ago

Honest > positive

mrcwinn

7 days ago

Well, sure, but that’s irrelevant here.

Most of the commentary is presuming to know something about OpenAI’s motivations. That’s not honesty; it’s just an opinion. So my question stands. Does anyone have a positive opinion?

Here’s a take. For those of us who use their tools in our day to day, we might take for granted that we have the existing and new infrastructure to support that product. Is it more good than bad that other parts of the world could reach beyond their current grasp? I hope so. It might be.

staticman2

7 days ago

I guess you were hoping that people wouldn't post opinions related to "democracy" in a discussion of a product offering "democratic AI rails."

You worked very hard to offer an "opinion" that largely ignored the topic of discussion.

The problem is your "opinion" in avoiding the topic of discussion says basically nothing.

ClumsyPilot

7 days ago

> presuming to know something about OpenAI’s motivations

To increase shareholder value?

dbalatero

7 days ago

Why should that be a requirement? Do you have anything positive to say?

mrcwinn

7 days ago

It’s not a requirement. If it’s just the culture of HN to dunk on certain companies or products, then it is. This place doesn’t belong to me any more than it belongs to you. I am hopeful though that we could encourage more diversity of opinion here. Otherwise it’s exhausting.

And yes, I do, and it’s shared in a different comment. Search if you care to read it.

dbalatero

7 days ago

Interesting, I've had the opposite feeling of AI being super hyped throughout the industry, with tons of positivity and not a whole lot of reflection or criticism.

gizmodo59

7 days ago

I’ve been noticing this a lot too. Dunk on companies and products and blindly glorify other companies and product (emotional rather than objective)

Karrot_Kream

6 days ago

As HN has gotten bigger its contrarian streak has gotten worse. I suspect the dunking culture at this point is what attracts people to this site. If you want a clear-eyed picture into the industry then look elsewhere.

gloosx

7 days ago

Is it really clear to everyone that this kind of infrastructure will be the backbone of future economic growth and national development?

Helping people do more? Scaling our ability to create and produce?

Sadly, none of these things ever made us happier as humans.

morkalork

7 days ago

How is this different from NGOs flooding poor countries with food aid and causing prices to crash, local farmers to go bankrupt and then become dependent on that same aid? There are 2nd and 3rd order effects on innocent partnerships everywhere.

H8crilA

7 days ago

So that's just (or "just") locating the inference infrastructure inside the user's country? All operations, deployment, all training, tuning and development, contract negotiations remain the same?

akomtu

7 days ago

That's how AI is going to fuse countries together. People will be gradually outsourcing various functions of their governments to a few AIs, until one day they will realise that nearly everything on the planet is managed by AI, using the same principles. National govs will become a fiction at this point. Problem is, this process won't stop there. AI will be given the right to monitor and manage human behavior, in the name of safety, of course, and those who disagree to hand their will to AI like that will be declared enemies of the people and will be reeducated with very creative methods. It will be a perfect inhuman civilization with the AI as its king.

nico

7 days ago

To a certain degree, this is already the case

Our attention is dictated or at least influenced in big part, by AI, not LLMs, but the algorithms behind Google, Meta/Insta, TikTok, et al

And our attention is what ends up controlling our actions (this is kinda the core of meditation and Buddhist-style practices)

greenavocado

7 days ago

This is a genius move to lock in revenue from countries lacking the technological infrastructure and capital to develop and run their own "safe" (for the local junta) models. Doubly so that OpenAI are experts in censorship - I mean "alignment" - and can help local authorities impose a localized censorship regime. The logical next step is going hard on promoting "AI Safety" and legislating the use of certified approved censored models in each locale, and criminalizing the use and possession of unapproved models, the same way certain JPEG files carry multi year prison sentences or how possession of certain books in certain countries carries prison time.

hoshikihao

7 days ago

Why do you restrict people from Chinese Mainland from using ChatGPT?

rany_

7 days ago

Isn't it blocked by GFW not OpenAI?

lm28469

7 days ago

> It’s clear to everyone now that this kind of infrastructure is going to be the backbone of future economic growth and national development

lmao, is there a single soul at openai who truly believe this bullshit?

Are they so high on their own supply they can't even tell they're becoming a parody of a black mirror evil corp?

user

7 days ago

[deleted]

Leary

7 days ago

Translation:

You provide the capital and the data, we'll co-own the data centers share the models until Trump and the US government decide to shut it off as a bargaining chip.

omneity

7 days ago

"And as a bonus we'll have the first pick on every little thing your citizens are thinking about."

botanical

7 days ago

As if Western-backed companies are some type of beacon of light. If news of your company has Trump and Oracle linked to it, you aren't the good guys. This is just the American way of "consolidating power", by "spreading democracy."

Also, it's not like OpenAI responses aren't censored when it comes to "sensitive" topics.

jsnell

7 days ago

> Through formalized infrastructure collaborations, and in coordination with the US government, OpenAI will:

> Partner countries also would invest in expanding the global Stargate Project—and thus in continued US-led AI leadership and a global, growing network effect for democratic AI.

Yeah, good luck with that pitch... I have to assume that the target market for this page is not other countries, but the US leadership.

hlava

7 days ago

Looks like OpenAI is trying to set the narrative, literally.

jMyles

7 days ago

...this is not AI for countries. This is AI for _governments_. Those two concepts are diametrically opposed to one another.

stepanhruda

7 days ago

Diametrically opposed? They are distinct, but hardly opposed.

jMyles

7 days ago

Well I guess the time scale is what determines the degree to which the distinction becomes opposition. AI is likely to persist for tens or hundreds of thousands of years in some form. Are any of today's nation states built to last that long? I think we all know the answer.

If you have AI which is in the service of an entity which proclaims itself to be the sole franchise of government authority over a given landmass, it is strictly incorrect to say that this AI is "for the country", because it's perfectly plausible (and on sufficiently long time scales, inevitable) that the country will want to evolve, replace, or deprecate that entity.

stepanhruda

7 days ago

I agree that “AI for governments” is much more accurate, just saying that diametrically opposed doesn’t really capture the relationship between the two concepts well

dimaulupov

7 days ago

Every interested country gets 5% discount on tariffs?

mupuff1234

7 days ago

Every 4 years people elect a new system prompt?

fancyfredbot

7 days ago

This is simultaneously why most people desperately want to invest in OpenAI and at the same time why all the best gen AI researchers want to work for anthropic. The less you understand the more impressive this seems. Conversley the more you understand the more embarrassing this seems.

gizmodo59

7 days ago

Can you give more detail on this? Or this is a vibe comment? Who do you consider as “best”?

n_ary

7 days ago

Hmm, the cynic in me reads this as move fast and capture market(+regulation) before new regulation is setup to thwart the likes of GDPR and other privacy acts. When something is new and regulators are having hard time understanding the consequences and future risks, it is most efficient and cheap to capture the market. Once the fallouts start, regulations strike but by then the early players are too big and well established to deal with anything, while the new and smaller players get crushed under compliance and consequences of the early big players’ shenanigans.

philip1209

7 days ago

I guess Norway as first customer.

skywhopper

7 days ago

This is disturbing to read and wonder what other countries are going to want “democratic” AI developed in partnership with and “led by” the US and Trump.

verdverm

7 days ago

Probably other "democratic" countries?

867-5309

7 days ago

seeking cheap land, electricity and labour. this stunt is bound to backfire

user

7 days ago

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goshx

7 days ago

> We want to help these countries, and in the process, spread democratic AI, which means the development, use and deployment of AI that protects and incorporates long-standing democratic principles (…) Likewise, we believe that partnering closely with the US government is the best way to advance democratic AI.

The current US government? To protect “long-standing democratic principles”? Give me a break.

drivingmenuts

7 days ago

Not sorry, I don't trust anything with Trump's name attached to it. I have to live here, but I don't have to like it, or trust him or anyone attached to him.

marviel

7 days ago

every day the culture grows nearer

stevage

7 days ago

I sure did not expect to see Trump's name used in a positive way when talking about supporting democracy.

stogot

7 days ago

This is so tone deaf that it’s embarrassing. And to liken OpenAI as democratic is beyond ignorant, it’s deceitful

dev1ycan

7 days ago

Dude I'm reading 1984 at the moment and it's really crazy, George Orwell could only dream...

rambojohnson

7 days ago

blah blah blah.. anybody else fatigued by all this nonsense?

paul7986

7 days ago

sounds like you dont use GPT Many to numerous times a day too....

user

7 days ago

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