We went through a cycle like this once before in U.S. history, and the amount of violence it took to correct the overreach of organized money was not 0.
Demonstrations are a start, though they seem to be more useful for networking inside a group and forcing the press to pay attention to some matter. Decision makers can easily ignore them.
What's less easy to ignore are strikes, especially general strikes, as e.g. port workers in Italy threatened during the total blockade in the Gaza war.
Even then I don’t they they get a lot of choice as far as results go.
There is growing anger and discontentment in a large part of the population, driven by inequality of wealth and power. Hopelessness and a lack of control over the future.
Are the nodes of power willing to spread wealth and control more widely to stabilize the country? What are they willing to do to consolidate their power? The vast majority of violence is perpetrated by those nodes, to either consolidate power, or gain more of it.
Other people in this thread have already suggested more actionable responses: organize, unionize, understand class dynamics, and vote accordingly.
I'm not arguing any points how these conflicts will ever be solved, but it shows that violence hasn't solved anything until now, for decades over decades.
I'm just waiting for dang, et. al to fix our thread voting system as it's a little too Reddity around here these last days.
The people saying it doesn’t work are the same people who can’t must the effort to even contact their representative.
I had a professor in college who was big on entrepreneurship. So he formed an organization, got others involved, went to Washington to lobby his rep. His rep said “let’s do it”, and sat him down with her staff to write a bill. That bill was brought to the floor for a vote and passed.
Until you’ve done that, dont complain the system doesn’t work.
The issue with politics today is the level of engagement of the average voter. Few people ever get involved, so the vacuum gets filled with whichever power-hungry mediocre person who puts some effort in.
The honest truth? They're supposed to do nothing and take their licks with a smile. If that's not good enough for them, they are allowed to occupy themselves with ineffectual political activities, preferably on issues that are exhausting and do not disturb the power of the elite (e.g. abortion, transgenderism, etc.).
California has a referendum system. Get signatures for a policy and put it to the voters.
A little wild to me that so many of the replies don't understand that.
The specific stigma against physical violence (and not against other types, even for cumulatively worse actions) strikes me as very self-serving, an instance of "the law forbids both rich and poor to sleep under a bridge." It's increasingly the only remedy available to everyday people, and the mad acceleration of government capture by elites in the last decade is making murder and rioting inevitable, at least as long as ordinary people still feel they should have some power.
Any sort of violence is bad, singling out physical violence as uniquely bad gives misbehaving elites impunity.
I often can't help but see the "all violence is bad" narrative as another tool of oppression by the ruling class. Even if that isn't its intent, it certainly seems to serve their purposes.
By sending bombs to people Ted Kaczynski made the "should we really do this" discussion of technology off limits for decades.
> I don't think I've ever seen a thread this bad on Hacker News. The number of commenters justifying violence, or saying they "don't condone violence" and then doing exactly that, is sickening and makes me want to find something else to do with my life—something as far away from this as I can get. I feel ashamed of this community.
> Edit: for anyone wondering (or hoping), no I'm not leaving. That was a momentary expression of dismay.
Perhaps something to think about in a scenario like this. Personally I think it's interesting that some people are so quick to condone aggressive attacks on powerful people, yet have no comment on those powerful people committing lower levels of violence against the masses. It's all social context.
Not people advocating for hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths from covid. Not people advocating for bombing campaigns blowing children to smithereens. Not people advocating for mass cuts to programs treating people with tuberculosis. Not people advocating for mass cuts to programs feeding the starving. Not people defending ICE in murdering people either via gunshot or medical neglect in their disgusting prisons.
In fact, a lot discussion critical of that stuff just gets [flagged].
None of that counts as violence to dang. But threaten a billionaire? Oh that's a bridge too far.
All of those arguments will be vile, as they have to be given the context.
I'm not criticizing you, and I guess I'm glad someone wrote this comment quickly. You're right. But I would caution people against reading too much into the countervailing sentiment here. It's not trolling, but it is something adjacent to it.
Did you ever think that maybe people do in fact believe what they say they believe?
In general, violence can certainly solve problems, especially when the problems are not being caused by almost-inevitable technological revolutions. One of the issues to keep in mind, though, is that it often also creates new ones, often surprising ones. For example, the assassination that led to World War One. For another example, if Trump had been assassinated last year, that would have solved many problems for people who dislike Trump. However, that doesn't necessarily mean it would have made the world overall a better place - that is almost impossible to predict. Hence the sci-fi sort of scenario of "you go back in time and kill Hitler, but when you return to your own time it turns out that Hitler dying just let mega-Hitler take power".
Your analysis seems to assume that people will remain more afraid of being "outcompeted" than of being murdered, even after a campaign of terrorism that would make 9/11 look minor.
>it often also creates new [problems], often surprising ones
Let's reframe this to remove the negative bias: murder has the obvious direct first-order effect of removing the target from existence, but also a host of non-obvious higher-order effects resulting from people's response to that violence. These can be counterproductive to the goals of the murderer, but they can also work in favor of it. That is why "terrorism" is a real thing - the higher-order effects are essentially a force multiplier, and if you have nothing to lose then the calculus of causing a major disruption begins to look favorable; any disruption, because regression to the mean is good if you're at the shitty end of the bell curve.
Sure, but keep in mind that Hitler is already pretty bad. So while yes, killing him might open the door to someone worse stepping in, it may also open the door to someone more level headed.
You know. In theory.
The people who are doing this stuff are unhinged but why? Perhaps they do not trust law and order. Perhaps they feel helpless and have been led to believe its over for the labour class due to the overhyped marketing and so on.
A serious frank conversation needs to be had and the hyping needs to stop.
Or, if you truly believed AI was a threat and represented material harm and managed to get standing to bring a suit, you are looking at years and years and years of litigation.
Full stop, no "but". That's all that needs to be said on this thread.
Here in Sweden, back in the 1400eds etc. the farmers often made war on the government whenever it did anything they didn't like. This had the long term consequence, that by the end of this era, self-owning farmers owned 50% of the land in Sweden, whereas in Denmark, which did not have this kind of violence, it was only 10%.
It's incredibly important to be feared and to engage in violence, so that you are in practice and can threaten your political opponents, and this remains true in a democracy.
It's important that powerful people know they can't trust that they will truly be protected by the laws if they do something which harms others-- that the veneer of civilization is thin and the masses dangerous. Otherwise you end up with very dangerous situations where people can get away with anything that's legal.
The long gone history of a country is not a something that should be allowed to determine its modern narratives. You shouldn't forget your history, but there are limits you shouldn't cross. When I hear arguments going back for centuries, it is a red flag for me. It is most likely a propaganda.
Psychologists talk about two common failing of their clients. People often fixate over the past or they fixate over the future, while forgetting about the present. The healthy approach is to keep a good balance between the past, the future, and the present, with a strong accent on the present. The history determinism reminds me a lot of the over-fixation on the past, and propaganda actively tries to unsettle balances in people's minds and fixate them on anything but the present.
When a State becomes undemocratic, it can more easily wield that violence against its own people. Part of the founding ideals of the US is the hope that the people would oust such a State, explicitly through the threat and application of violence if necessary, thus the second amendment.
you can disagree that this was necessary, which I'd agree with.
Something is fundamentally broken when the sitting president of the United States pardoned thousands convicted in a court of law of attempting to use violence to achieve political ends.
No wonder people are increasingly recognizing that democracy is now broken.
- OpenAI made a deal with the Pentagon (fair)
- OpenAI changed their business model from non-profit to for-profit (fair?)
- Sexual assault allegations by his sister. Sam Altman denies this and it's currently before a court.
- Overpromised AI to investors (everyone does this)
- Lobbying against regulations (I support)
- Some vague accusations of "being a liar" and a "sociopath" by his competitors Ilya Sutskever and Dario Amodei.
- He doesn't know how to code (lol)
Is there anything that I'm missing? Does he put ketchup on his pizza?
That's it, I don't think much of the rest has any weight outside internet forums like this one.
*I've seen people using copilot and calling it "chatgpt".
It'd be one thing if he was just promising more than he could actually deliver, but he went further, making promises of buying up unrealistically large chunks of the global RAM supply, causing everyone else to suffer, with no remorse.
There's also WorldCoin. I don't think a decent person would continue to push such an awful, untrustworthy system. This is a supposedly privacy-focused project that several countries are investigating for privacy violations and has been found to be in violation of privacy laws in some of them.
It's almost as if he goes out of his way to do as much harm to the world as he thinks he can get away with while maintaining the facade of just doing business. I don't think he's the antichrist, I think Peter Thiel is the closest to deserving that description.
one US mindset I can't wrap my mind around
- Barely gave 1% of compute (on oldest chips) to safety team after promise of 20%
- Worked behind the scenes to try to land federal deal that gives mil no guardrails control and ability for mass surveillance
- Lied about China AI 'Marshall Plan' to get federal funding
- Tried to get MBS money ever after Jamal Kashoggi
While long, I'd recommend just reading the New Yorker article
I personally object from him trying to divert trillions in investment from potential helping the hungry type stuff which is popular to sticking slop in everything which many don't want.
It is not just a question of morality. A sociopath with that amount of power can be a danger.
1. Violent attacks against AI CEOs, researchers, and engineers is going to begin. This is due to widespread negative press that AI receives and as well as a pervasive feeling of economic uncertainty and doom in the population. Some of this being caused by the current administration's leadership, but much of it attributed to AI taking jobs and destroying opportunity.
2. Violent acts taken against non-tech CEOs will increase hand-in-hand.
3. If AI continues to demonstrate impressive new capabilities for automation, this rate will increase substantially.
4. The government may come down hard on these individuals, which will further inflame the situation.
5. Data centers will come under attack / sabotage.
6. This will all wind up further inflamed by prediction markets.
I have a colleague at Anthropic that refuses to put it on his LinkedIn. We all now know why.
The pro-Palestinian activists set their cause back a year by overplaying their hands in Columbia at the start of the war. If we want to ensure zero AI legislation for the next 2 years, I couldn’t think of a better way to ensure that than to start potting randos in the streets.
I think the general population is much more likely to feel joy about it than want a police crackdown.
If we're talking about attacks against average software engineers and obscure founders, fewer people would be happy about it, but a great number still would be. There is a lot of envy toward software engineers and founders.
I doubt it. It would further polarize your population and what you really want is to unite them. You could make a video documentation that contrasts all the known, massive corruption cases in your administration (and SV personae) with the equally massive decay in your infrastructure from roads to bridges to the closure of maternity wings in hospitals because they are no longer profitable. Make as little dialogue/narration as possible and quote dollar numbers as often as possible. Spread posts contrasting corruption/decay to every outlet/social media.
Most people don't understand technology and/or its second order effects. They do understand when they are being stolen from.
Doesn't complaining about protestors at Columbia just make it clear that these complaints aren't actually about violence but are instead about rabble-rousers?
Most of the population will be for the violent attacks. Techbros went way too far in gleefully describing how they would destroy most people's careers while enriching themselves. Never bothered to think whether they should just because they could. Now the rooster is coming home to roost.
The best way for the attacks on AI executives to stop is to pass meaningful legislation that limits the use and scope of AI.
But even if the DA prosecutes, the jury can nullify the charges, which is a risk. What happens when a jury finds the accused not guilty?
The masses will only tolerate so much before the elite start dying. See all of human history.
The threat to AI far exceeds any benefits I can see.
If 95% of jobs go away, the destabilization leads to violent conflicts, and power and wealth become more centralized does it really matter if we have better healthcare or automated cars? Will people have purpose in their lives? Will this be a better world for most?
What I instead see is a massive system of rents that will be affordable only by other businesses who replace their workers and leave tons of people out in the cold with no income and minimal access to these tools.
also, if the worst case scenario does happen and most of the population finds itself without money. there are other ways to live with very little money.
If I knew someone was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars building a big laser pointed at my house, I would not wait for "quantified evidence" of its effect to take some sort of action. The only real debate is what kind of action.
> also, if the worst case scenario does happen and most of the population finds itself without money. there are other ways to live with very little money.
If you have so little attachment to your money, why hold on to it at all? Do not be upset that other people are operating on a slightly larger time horizon than you are, and are interested in their livelihood not just today, but three or five years from now.
This is even more hideous than expressions of approval for individual violence. This is a dystopian acquiescence.
The same thing happened with Kirk. Everyone standing up to "mourn" a neo-nazi, fake tears, rolling with the grift. Rolling with the white supremacist grindbox.
It's gross.
Yes, violence shouldn't be the first resort, and when violence is unleashed innocent suffer as well, but there is a great difference between choosing not to use violence due to whatever consideration, and being so toothless and tamed that a sight of dog that finally bites when being constantly beaten sickens you.
We're not on first resort anymore, people are dying because they cannot afford living.
This information of course might be false, so take the words below with a grain of salt. I might be completely wrong.
When an influential group in the Valley that has ties to many tech companies spends years speading rhetoric about “bombing data centers” or the title of the book above, I fear this kind of psychosis is inevitable. People in this thread are focusing on labour and AI issues as the motivation but I am afraid the problem might be closer to home.
Disclaimer: I am not American, just an outside observer.
Some random people with a gun and a Molotov aren't even the same (metaphorical) book.
* likely still better than me though, even on this specific measure. But even being the ten thousandth best speaker on the planet, out of 8 billion, leaves you at a huge disadvantage compared to the best.
> bombing data centers
At the risk of demonstrating the exact mistake I've just accused Yudkowsky and Altman of:
With B-52s, not as a DIY job with home-made Molotovs.
If you start with the claim "AI has the potential to cause as much harm as nuclear weapons", and "the USA already uses B-52s to enforce the non-proliferation treaty", this follows naturally.
If you're not willing to call on your representative to sign a binding international treaty to stop data centres that forcefully, talking about "stopping AI" or "pausing AI" seems hollow, because even if your government agrees to not build data centres near you as a result of low-grade domestic terrorism, in the absence of a credible threat to use a B-52 on someone else's sovereign territory there's nothing that you and your flaming rag in a bottle of petroleum distillate can do about them being built outside your country, in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons that German public opposition to nuclear weapons completely failed to influence North Korea.
How many people believe continued AI "progress" would be so dangerous that it should be prohibited? 136,513 people signed a statement to that effect:
https://superintelligence-statement.org/
The name of the man that threw the Molotov cocktail is Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama, and "Daniel Moreno" is one of the signatures on the statement. I concede that his motivation almost certainly was to try to slow down AI "progress".
Violence can solve problems. This kind of violence is stupid, counterproductive and immoral.
Strategically deploying violence takes time, resources and discipline. Wanking off with a gun does not.
What us cushy engineers haven't realized yet is that the gradient for who are well off are sliding more and more towards one end. Sooner or later engineers will be on the wrong side of that gradient.
The elites after the French Revolution were not only mostly the same as before, they escaped with so much money and wealth that it’s actually debated if they increased their wealth share through the chaos [1].
I have seen anti-AI sentiments from people known all over the spectrum.
The last thing I want is for someone, in 2029, to say "but LLMs just weren't given a fair chance last time, we would have definitely reached AGI with more funding if it wasn't for [targeted attack]"
Didn't work for a german political party some centuries ago, don't work for this.
But violence is false.
I agree this is a symptom of large systemic issues.
Long gone are the days a bumbling fool could get a well paying job at the local power plant and provide a good life for a wife and three children, with a large home, decent insurance and two cars.
You get comments like "violence is bad but we would not have $x if not for violence" and then you get to justify violence for any pet cause they have.
I expect to see more of this until it dies down because of how ridiculous the premise is.
I don't know if they are right, neither in world view nor conclusion. But it seems this is the world we currently lived in. This is one of the cases where for once i wish there was a manifesto to read, because i badly want to understand why
Violence never solves anything. You will never make anything in this world better by becoming a worse person than your enemies.
