OpenAI's Sam Altman to Brief UN Security Council Next Week

1 hour ago (reuters.com)

I find it very hard to understand the things these AI CEO's say.

He will probably get up there and say his companies products will destroy every citizen of their countries.

Why these bug eyed salamanders have any say at all for any of this is beyond me. He's a tech ceo who wants to make money, nothing more.

  • I thought you meant the UN at first and was about to agree. They should have no say about US tech.

  • He’s rich, in charge of a pretty significant company that has made history and continues to do so.

  • Who do you think designed central banks?

    Bankers or politicians or the plebs?

    These kind of meetings are to create common vocabulary/seed common frameworks across the world for problems all govts are seeing or expecting on the horizon.

He will probably tell them exactly what they want him to say. If he means it or not. That is hard to say.

If governments regulate AI and make it slow down, does that let one get out of data center contracts?

  • If OpenAI voids its spending commitment, the bubble has to pop. I know the market is irrational, but that would be the clearest top signal ever

How's AI doing in Russia with all the sanctions and whatnot?

  • The AI industry in Russia is not doing well. Domestic AI models exist, but they aren't exactly high performers, and many of them are based on the open weight Chinese models - so there is very little reason to use them. IT power users run Western or Chinese models, often through proxies, VPNs or resellers.

    AI is being adopted and used, but if there was ever a chance of Russia being an AI power, it died in 2022.

    A few formerly-Russian IT companies had their "rainy day" HQs overseas, and leveraged them to slip the noose and leave Russia - brain draining what AI expertise was available in the country. See: Yandex -> Nebius.

Are we still pretending models aren't cyber capable, and will be an immense force for hacking? I expected this shit on reddit not here. You don't have to like Sam, and still not do this bullshit

  • The fearmongering is based in the notion that the LessWrong fanfic is coming true as we speak, not LLMs being used as tools for hacking.

The private equity debt time bomb is here. Then there is the bond market.

And then guaranteed bust of AI bubble. 2000 billion dollars for a single company? That too when bottom of the boat has been drilled by open weight Chinese models that are cheaper and good enough but can even be deployed locally?

In face of all that - that kind of return is not realistic.

However - good gimmick scaring UN asking for a ban on Chinese models perhaps.

  • The UN is not a body that would be involved in banning models from a specific country, and even if they were China is one of 5 members with permanent veto power.

  • Only way to justify those valuation is if they can achieve regulatory capture and outlaw competitors and open models.

    Expect the fear mongering to escalate to a fever pitch.

    The UN has no authority to ban anything but it's a good platform.