if you check the rest of the interview (see the TED yt channel), Sam follows that up w/ a dodge answer where he frames IP theft as "democratizing" access to creativity, which I guess is the SV euphemism for theft now. Maybe artists can at least "democratize" access to OpenAI's money in turn.
Actually Democratizing the money, or more importantly the stock ownership of the AI companies, is exactly what the govt should force to happen. They stole everyone's data in a way that is impossible to extract individual rights payments from. So everyone's data created these models, so everyone should own those companies. Turn their stocks into a Capital Commons, say by engorcing DMCA fines to the point that the govt & rights holder groups can force the iwnership change
“Democratizing” is such a tired little buzzword that should’ve remained in 2015. Nobody in this day and age should be taken seriously if they tout their product as “democratizing [X].”
Honestly surprised he didn't have some rehearsed boilerplate response to this. You'd figure this would be something he would expect to get asked. Does he know OpenAI is being sued for copywrite infringement?
Funny how these AI business leaders love to talk up the advancements in comparison to human intelligence but as soon as you bring up other parts of the human experience (ethics and laws) they don't really like to draw a comparison. Can't have your cake and eat it too.
I applaud Chris for mentioning the obvious IP infringement I didn’t expect that. Though I doubt it’ll change much, unless they have more to worry about than a slap on the wrist they’ll continue as they have been.
He said that all creatively is “inspired”, but I think that was intentionally misleading.
You, a multi billion dollar company, have used the works of a billion people to generate your billions. You are using their work to put them out of work. You claim you’re doing this for the good of all humanity.
If you were, you’d have said, we are actively working on figuring out how much of a generation came from X person, and give them Y money via our creator program. Or better yet, we will be working on a UBI or something. That wouldn’t have been dodgy.
But his answers were dodgy. You could hear the cognitive dissonance in his voice.
He cares about safety. What about the safety of people against having their livelihoods ripped from their hands? Safety doesn’t just mean bio weapons. Because these guys are so high off their own supply they literally think they’re gods gifts to humanity. Yes AI is incredible. These guys, not so much. Safety always means these very very unlikely scenarios to them, when the real harm continues unaddressed.
UBI won't solve the problem. It will be super unjust to the truly knowledge hard working passionate people.
Money should be based on someone's knowledge, skill, competence, hard work etc. And AI's main goal is to destroy this, and equate between the knowledgeable and the ignorant, the skill-full and the skill-less, the hard working and the lazy, the competent and the incompetent etc.
Lazy ignorant people will love UBI. But people who love to learn and work and be creative etc. will not like UBI.
I don’t know what the right solution is, but I feel like we’re doing absolutely nothing right now, we’re like deers staring at the headlights of an oncoming car. We’re just wishing this problem will solve itself. And unless we want to go back to a hunter gatherer society if no one is able to make money anymore, we need to come up with a solution. We need to try things. Quickly.
The solution is to make it completely illegal to make money with AI.
No business or individual should be allowed to make money with AI.
If you want to make money, use your knowledge, skill, hard work etc. Don't cheat your way using AI.
Force all businesses to hire real humans. And if a business is caught using AI, give it a big fine.
You can still use AI for non-professional work. If you want a picture of a dog driving a tesla in space, go ahead. But you should not be allowed to make money with it.
This is the only solution. Ban AI from money making activities.
I softened up what I thought but put this out on x. I was in shock over how I felt Andersen was treated. I counted 5 times Sam took the question and made it about Andersen rather than responding to key questions...
Today's workout vid, the Altman/@TEDTalks stream from this week. Be sure to watch it!
Beyond the core AI substance, the interaction modality itself was noteworthy. Some real verbal aikido on display – pivots smoother than an algorithmically generated deepfake circa '24.
Made you wonder though, was the interviewer on trial here? Anderson seemed to be presenting a honest series of sentiment of opinion that bubbles up often.
You see these patterns, the conversational variance... right down to the dismount - shake the interviewers hand at the end would be considered normal - the whole exchange had a peculiar energy signature.
Is the best art created by artists seeking to become rich, or by artists who have a deeply creative spirit that they want to, that they must share with the world? Capitalism has created a culture of IP protection for the sake of corporate profits, not for the sake of maximizing the amount of great art in the world. Publishing companies, record labels and film studios reap millions while the vast majority of actual creators make pennies. The artists will starve without IP protection, but they are already starving with IP protection. OpenAI "stealing" IP amounts to thieving from thieves. We would be better to concern ourselves with systemic issues with the economy as a whole.
"Deeply creative spirits" do and should make money out of their work: That's the way we incentivize creative spirits in the first place, and it works very well. It's obvious for example that the creative minds behind OpenAI engineers and scientists don't just create code because they want to "share it with the world" or "exercise their creativity", but also to make money. Virtually every scientist who has contributed to AI had a job at university, so was paid for their creativity, or in a private company. The transformer was created at google, diffusion at university. Creativity in art is no different, and IP is the fundamental tool to support it.
"That's the way we incentivize creative spirits in the first place"
Human creativity predates capitalism. To argue that money incentivizes creativity is to take a very narrow view of how human society can be organized. Selling art so that you don't starve doesn't mean that the threat of starvation causes art.
Even limiting the discussion to the scope of the capitalism system we are stuck with in the near term, are the richest 0.1% the most innovative and creative, or the most cutthroat, exploitative and sociopathic? I would argue the latter. Thus, even capitalism disincentivizes creativity relative to exploitation and theft.
"Human creativity predates capitalism". The reality is actually that creativity in all forms has always been connected to economic exchange, since the product of the human intellect was always considered a valuable thing. If you went to a tribal chief, promising a new weapon, it would have payed you for it as well as he would have for an artwork to celebrate his power. As soon as someone creates something clever or beautiful, someone will want to buy it. So creativity is part of the economy as anything else. You fall victim of a certain romantic, 19th century narrative of the creative person as someone spiritual, who should create for free repaid simply by his own fulfillment. It was never like that.
"So creativity is part of the economy as **anything else**."
I'm afraid our discussion will go in circles if you could never be convinced that human interactions and society can exist separately from economic exchange. It is a common view in a world steeped to the bone in neoliberal capitalism, but one I strongly disagree with.
If you claim that a kind of society that never existed is possible, then the burden of proof is on your side. By the way, capitalism doesn't have to be neoliberal. A regulated capitalism is possible, with better redistribution of wealth, equal starting conditions and much more public investments and economic initiative.
He is a modern day hero of bandit capitalism, maximisation of profit with no limits. Greed is good, I win you lose and will lead to war, the ultimate expression of a Darwinian philosophy.
Democratizing of art already occurred more than 20 years ago: Digitalization already made making art very affordable. Meanwhile, genAI itself has tons of copyright issues. Hard to say these close-source for profit models are fair use:)
As for Sam, I generally he chose to take mask off after the 2023 Coup.
It's just more lawlessness and hubris from those who believe the world is theirs and they are the masters. The same attitude has been prevalent in the industry across my 43 years in the profession. Billionaires have taken this beyond the boardroom to the point they see themselves as god-kings. They fear the other god-kings who could dethrone them much more than they fear the "lower" classes.
I wrote this song using AI that begins, "The screen door slams, Mary's dress sways/Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays." I hope Sam likes it and Bruce is cool with democratizing creativity. Because that's Altman's argument: Piracy is fine.
You can't separate this arrogant display from the Trump administration's pro-AI stance. Perhaps he feels emboldened because of that, especially since OpenAI asked the administration to give them a copyright exemption.
if you check the rest of the interview (see the TED yt channel), Sam follows that up w/ a dodge answer where he frames IP theft as "democratizing" access to creativity, which I guess is the SV euphemism for theft now. Maybe artists can at least "democratize" access to OpenAI's money in turn.
Actually Democratizing the money, or more importantly the stock ownership of the AI companies, is exactly what the govt should force to happen. They stole everyone's data in a way that is impossible to extract individual rights payments from. So everyone's data created these models, so everyone should own those companies. Turn their stocks into a Capital Commons, say by engorcing DMCA fines to the point that the govt & rights holder groups can force the iwnership change
What government...?
I wonder what would be his response if someone "democratized" OpenAI's closed source code and training data.
I find it very interesting that OpenAI can scrape the entire web and then make their data proprietary.
Am I missing something?
When you round the corners of a rectangle, it becomes proprietary.
When you round the corners of the laws, do they become complyitary?
Pro-Pi-etary too
They’ve even got me saying “THEIR data”
Can we democratize Sam’s homes and cars, too?
Democratize” in Altspeak means “tokenize”, with OpenAI controlling and charging a toll for token production and dispersal.
“Democratizing” is such a tired little buzzword that should’ve remained in 2015. Nobody in this day and age should be taken seriously if they tout their product as “democratizing [X].”
He sucks ass at explaining this.
Found a transcript that claims to be (and seems to be) from the full interview, since I really dislike to judge based on a short clip like that:
https://singjupost.com/transcript-of-openais-sam-altman-on-the-future-of-ai-safety-and-power-live-at-ted2025/?singlepage=1
the full interview is on youtube -- here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MWT_doo68k
He appears to be a psychopath -- zero empathy for the artists and writers he's stealing from. In fact he seems to have contempt for them.
Most tech CEOs appear to be sociopaths.
It's not just an appearance, it's a key to how they get there in the first place.
If he's a psychopath then he is a stupid one, to say this in public.
He's talking to an audience of one, the Mad King, who loves and supports fellow thieves.
They are all psychopaths. They used to hide it, but now that Peter Thiel’s man is VP and Musk is co-president, they have no reason to hide anymore.
An acute Psychopathology really does seem to be indigenous to SV "success" types...why should we even listen to these broken souls?
Honestly surprised he didn't have some rehearsed boilerplate response to this. You'd figure this would be something he would expect to get asked. Does he know OpenAI is being sued for copywrite infringement?
Funny how these AI business leaders love to talk up the advancements in comparison to human intelligence but as soon as you bring up other parts of the human experience (ethics and laws) they don't really like to draw a comparison. Can't have your cake and eat it too.
He's gotten used to softball questions. They all have, and get sore when the interviewer doesn't play along.
I applaud Chris for mentioning the obvious IP infringement I didn’t expect that. Though I doubt it’ll change much, unless they have more to worry about than a slap on the wrist they’ll continue as they have been.
He said that all creatively is “inspired”, but I think that was intentionally misleading.
You, a multi billion dollar company, have used the works of a billion people to generate your billions. You are using their work to put them out of work. You claim you’re doing this for the good of all humanity.
If you were, you’d have said, we are actively working on figuring out how much of a generation came from X person, and give them Y money via our creator program. Or better yet, we will be working on a UBI or something. That wouldn’t have been dodgy.
But his answers were dodgy. You could hear the cognitive dissonance in his voice.
He cares about safety. What about the safety of people against having their livelihoods ripped from their hands? Safety doesn’t just mean bio weapons. Because these guys are so high off their own supply they literally think they’re gods gifts to humanity. Yes AI is incredible. These guys, not so much. Safety always means these very very unlikely scenarios to them, when the real harm continues unaddressed.
UBI won't solve the problem. It will be super unjust to the truly knowledge hard working passionate people.
Money should be based on someone's knowledge, skill, competence, hard work etc. And AI's main goal is to destroy this, and equate between the knowledgeable and the ignorant, the skill-full and the skill-less, the hard working and the lazy, the competent and the incompetent etc.
Lazy ignorant people will love UBI. But people who love to learn and work and be creative etc. will not like UBI.
I don’t know what the right solution is, but I feel like we’re doing absolutely nothing right now, we’re like deers staring at the headlights of an oncoming car. We’re just wishing this problem will solve itself. And unless we want to go back to a hunter gatherer society if no one is able to make money anymore, we need to come up with a solution. We need to try things. Quickly.
The solution is to make it completely illegal to make money with AI.
No business or individual should be allowed to make money with AI.
If you want to make money, use your knowledge, skill, hard work etc. Don't cheat your way using AI.
Force all businesses to hire real humans. And if a business is caught using AI, give it a big fine.
You can still use AI for non-professional work. If you want a picture of a dog driving a tesla in space, go ahead. But you should not be allowed to make money with it.
This is the only solution. Ban AI from money making activities.
He said something else: "If you don't see the difference why would you care?". So when stealing and counterfeiting becomes so good, it is okay?
I softened up what I thought but put this out on x. I was in shock over how I felt Andersen was treated. I counted 5 times Sam took the question and made it about Andersen rather than responding to key questions...
Today's workout vid, the Altman/@TEDTalks stream from this week. Be sure to watch it!
Beyond the core AI substance, the interaction modality itself was noteworthy. Some real verbal aikido on display – pivots smoother than an algorithmically generated deepfake circa '24.
Made you wonder though, was the interviewer on trial here? Anderson seemed to be presenting a honest series of sentiment of opinion that bubbles up often.
You see these patterns, the conversational variance... right down to the dismount - shake the interviewers hand at the end would be considered normal - the whole exchange had a peculiar energy signature.
Important questions were asked.
Enjoy! https://x.com/SulkaMike/status/1911522130744721528?t=xV9vbCfybFIpej3YKvHHwQ&s=19
Justine Bateman? I'm with her.
Is the best art created by artists seeking to become rich, or by artists who have a deeply creative spirit that they want to, that they must share with the world? Capitalism has created a culture of IP protection for the sake of corporate profits, not for the sake of maximizing the amount of great art in the world. Publishing companies, record labels and film studios reap millions while the vast majority of actual creators make pennies. The artists will starve without IP protection, but they are already starving with IP protection. OpenAI "stealing" IP amounts to thieving from thieves. We would be better to concern ourselves with systemic issues with the economy as a whole.
"Deeply creative spirits" do and should make money out of their work: That's the way we incentivize creative spirits in the first place, and it works very well. It's obvious for example that the creative minds behind OpenAI engineers and scientists don't just create code because they want to "share it with the world" or "exercise their creativity", but also to make money. Virtually every scientist who has contributed to AI had a job at university, so was paid for their creativity, or in a private company. The transformer was created at google, diffusion at university. Creativity in art is no different, and IP is the fundamental tool to support it.
"That's the way we incentivize creative spirits in the first place"
Human creativity predates capitalism. To argue that money incentivizes creativity is to take a very narrow view of how human society can be organized. Selling art so that you don't starve doesn't mean that the threat of starvation causes art.
Even limiting the discussion to the scope of the capitalism system we are stuck with in the near term, are the richest 0.1% the most innovative and creative, or the most cutthroat, exploitative and sociopathic? I would argue the latter. Thus, even capitalism disincentivizes creativity relative to exploitation and theft.
"Human creativity predates capitalism". The reality is actually that creativity in all forms has always been connected to economic exchange, since the product of the human intellect was always considered a valuable thing. If you went to a tribal chief, promising a new weapon, it would have payed you for it as well as he would have for an artwork to celebrate his power. As soon as someone creates something clever or beautiful, someone will want to buy it. So creativity is part of the economy as anything else. You fall victim of a certain romantic, 19th century narrative of the creative person as someone spiritual, who should create for free repaid simply by his own fulfillment. It was never like that.
"So creativity is part of the economy as **anything else**."
I'm afraid our discussion will go in circles if you could never be convinced that human interactions and society can exist separately from economic exchange. It is a common view in a world steeped to the bone in neoliberal capitalism, but one I strongly disagree with.
If you claim that a kind of society that never existed is possible, then the burden of proof is on your side. By the way, capitalism doesn't have to be neoliberal. A regulated capitalism is possible, with better redistribution of wealth, equal starting conditions and much more public investments and economic initiative.
Perhaps it’s more of an altitude problem - he’s too high and mighty.
He is a modern day hero of bandit capitalism, maximisation of profit with no limits. Greed is good, I win you lose and will lead to war, the ultimate expression of a Darwinian philosophy.
It was a powermove. Altman thinks he is untouchable and he wanted the audience to feel it.
Democratizing of art already occurred more than 20 years ago: Digitalization already made making art very affordable. Meanwhile, genAI itself has tons of copyright issues. Hard to say these close-source for profit models are fair use:)
As for Sam, I generally he chose to take mask off after the 2023 Coup.
It's just more lawlessness and hubris from those who believe the world is theirs and they are the masters. The same attitude has been prevalent in the industry across my 43 years in the profession. Billionaires have taken this beyond the boardroom to the point they see themselves as god-kings. They fear the other god-kings who could dethrone them much more than they fear the "lower" classes.
I wrote this song using AI that begins, "The screen door slams, Mary's dress sways/Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays." I hope Sam likes it and Bruce is cool with democratizing creativity. Because that's Altman's argument: Piracy is fine.
You can't separate this arrogant display from the Trump administration's pro-AI stance. Perhaps he feels emboldened because of that, especially since OpenAI asked the administration to give them a copyright exemption.