This is a response to this Sam Altman’s blog post.


Sam Altman is not the bad guy. History comes from two places, great men and causes and forces. We have way too little of the former and way too much of the latter right now. I hear that in America people fear the government taking away their freedom, and in China people fear the lack of government taking away their freedom.

Maybe it’s just because I have been living in Asia, but I don’t fear Sam or Elon or Dario at all. I fear the Molochian tragedy of the commons. The small decisions made by millions every day that make the world slightly worse for their fellow man, like adding a dark pattern to a website, lobbying to siphon a few more tax dollars, posting an advertisement that uses fear to sell, or enabling the tip screen in a coffee shop. I don’t fear “great men,” I fear that there’s no one coordinated enough to prevent this.

Technology does not contain a destiny. If you haven’t read Manna, now is a good time to. The choices we as a society make determine our future.


The blog post is far too trusting of the democratic worldview. I know it doesn’t say UBI, but I hope you understand UBI is not a real solution, UBI is an extremely dangerous way of disguising slavery in a form of giving you something. Everyone would do well to study Yarvin and understand that in modern democracies, power doesn’t come from the people, it flows through the people. “Making sure (the) democratic system stays in control” is meaningless, it’s not in control right now.

The only solution I can come up with is to orient towards sharing the technology with people broadly, and for no one to have the ring.

This is the right path. Now, sharing isn’t offering them a subscription to your cloud service, that’s feudalism. You actually have to share the technology, not “access” to the technology that can be revoked at any time.

I totally understand not sharing the weights of a trained model. That model cost a lot to train, and you have to recoup the investment in order to afford training the next model. But what I don’t understand is not sharing research. Share the architecture. Share the tricks. Share the science. Tbh I’m not sure why any self respecting researcher works at a closed lab, this isn’t how impactful science ever happens and it won’t be different this time.

You will keep your lead. You’ll attract any researcher who cares about impact beyond $$$. You’ll keep the original dream of OpenAI. And you’ll be remembered in history. Science never credits the first guy who came up with an idea, it credits the guy who published.

You can actually make this change. Have OpenAI start publishing. Rejoin the millenia long project of science instead of being a forgotten circus of trinkets and intricacies.