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Comment by H8crilA

8 hours ago

As far as Brockman account of the past goes, there's also his personal diary which was made public as a part of that lawsuit by Musk. Includes for example the line: "Financially what will take me to $1B?". BTW, if you don't know, Musk lost it because he filed too late, lol.

If his entire personal diary got exposed and that's the worst that's in it, good for him.

  • What about stealing 12 million books of copyrighted human culture, at massive scale, and then enclosing the value created inside proprietary, investor-backed systems? Something wrong with that?

    What happens if you go tomorrow, downtown San Francisco, and leave a bookstore with one book without paying?

       "Behind every great fortune there is a crime"
             - Honoré de Balzac

    • > What about stealing 12 million books

      Who's missing the books? 12 million books is a rather large warehouse!

      I thought HN was in the "information wants to be free" camp...

    • > enclosing the value created inside proprietary, investor-backed systems

      What do you think copyright does. Human culture is owned by humanity, not Disney or the New York Times.

    • Even though the founders of OpenAI are not exactly someone you'd root for, comparisons to theft are silly.

      By that token it would be illegal to go into a library, read a book, and actually remember what was in it. Except in this case the reader is a robot.

      LLMs are such a fundamentally different thing that existing laws don't really make sense. Wait! Put the pitchfork down! I know, I know, stealing is stealing, and OpenAI founders are slimy. But what about derivative works? Why is a human making a hip-hop track allowed to sample, and a robot is not? Again, LLMs are such a fundamentally different thing that existing laws don't really make sense.

      It's actually surprising in retrospect that nobody did this sooner. Even back in the 80s books about computers would gush about how a computer has enough memory to store an entire library's worth of books. It's just that someone finally figured out how to put an index on it.

      Where I agree: given that this is basically the sum of all humanity's knowledge, the company should have been a non-profit. It was a non-profit. And then greed won.

  • I'm curious what you're writing in your diary that's worse than blatantly admitting to fraud of this scale. He publicly misled people about OpenAI's "mission" as a nonprofit, while seeking to enrich himself to the tune of $1 billion(!!!) dollars.

    Also, his entire diary was not in fact made public. The attorneys only quoted the parts that were relevant to the case, which pertained to OpenAI's transition from non-profit.

    • How about wiping out an entire civilization? Not even necessary to hide this thought in your diary if you have enough power. I've seen today - in fact any day of this year - much worse things than his diary thoughts.

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  • Worse? There is nothing wrong with wanting 1B. Anybody who said they wouldn't want it is lying.

    • I would be a billionaire for about 5 minutes because I'd spend 95% of it making the lives of others better and still have enough left over that neither me nor any of my immediate family ever has to work again instead of hoarding it like the monsters who end up actually having a billion dollars.

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    • I wouldn’t want. I have enough. Not everyone is wanting money.

      But it is not the point. The point is, when you take high moral ground and talk about bug problems to help humanity, and then your own diary exposes you as avaricious simpleton, the whole high moral ground crumbles. And you expose yourself as another grifter.

      That’s what happened to Brockman. Although smart people could see these qualities in altman, brockman etcetera way before that happened

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    • Nonsense. What the hell would you do with 1B? Give it to charities maybe. Maybe set up an investment where dividends are paid to charity. Running out of ideas

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    • Every billionaire is a policy failure. It's not a question of equity, the issue is that no one human should be that powerful. It's very obvious that its leading to the US's rather quick and colorful decline. A small cohort of very powerful people are moving elections and policy to enrich themselves, everyone else be damned.

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    • That level of personal wealth is inherently immoral and doesn’t *ever* happen without exploitation.