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[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1shugf8/firebomb_t...
We pour tons of effort into punishing visceral, direct violence like a stabbing or shooting. But if white collar crime is being committed that leads to the death of hundreds of thousands of people, it's rare that anyone sees jail time. Maybe you could argue the decisions of Brian Thompson made only account for maybe 10% of why XYZ died but when you scale that out, you could easily argue this to be a form of white collar mass murder.
I think the younger generations are increasingly aware of this disparity in justice. If you find it hard to understand the celebration of violent vengeance but don't feel the same inability to understand the celebration of Jeffrey Doucet's retribution, then perhaps you are lacking the sociological imagination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fist%2C_Stick%2C_Knife%2C_Gun
People become okay with vigilante justice when they see the executive branch as compromised, just look at the insane plot/ending of the film Singham.
Many people see this happening in the US. We should expect to see more vigilante justice and organized crime if we see the executive branch as having a significant principal-agent problem.
Organized crime is also going to escalate as the economic squeeze continues to hit white collar workers. Pumping out a bunch of computer science graduates and rendering them unemployable isn't going to lead to all of them giving up and working at Walmart. A certain amount are going to figure out that they can make a better living by going black hat. Likewise for all the office managers, etc. who are put out of a job as belts tighten. Threatening the livelihoods of people who were led to expect a certain standard of living and who can organize and exploit systems is exactly how you end up with organized crime. Doubly so when the burden is falling on the young, who have more appetite for risky decisions.
What does that even mean?
And the growing class divide in the USA I think is the reason why folks are increasingly seeing violence against the upper class is seen as the only option.
Again doesn't mean it makes it right, but it explains why it is almost only an US phenomenon.
Genuine question: is it?
https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/09/nepal-gen-z-t...
When people feel that law and order do not protect them, some eventually will go "the extra mile" (somehow managers always like this phrase). It's not something we can prevent. It is human nature. I guess super riches really like AI because this gives them extra protection.
What to you mean historically? Violence backs every government decree from speeding tickets to the maximum water flow rate of urinals.
Overwhelming violence is something that people will go to amazing lengths and spend nearly all of their economic surplus to avoid.
Could you explain what packages are and what depends on (what?)?
> Historically violence has been a very...effective tool.
This is dramatic sci-fi for anarchists of all political stripes.
The critical reality to understand is that violence is the most ineffective tool, causing catastrophic harm for others and outcomes that the perpetrators rarely control or foresee. Revolutions can overthrow status quo power but what follows is rarely what the perpetrators aimed for. The same happens in warfare - the outcome is rarely what anyone envisioned at the start, a fundamental lessons that experts try to teach hot-headed amateurs that think warfare will solve their problems.
It also establishes violence as legitimate - usable by everyone else too, a very bad outcome and the opposite of the rule of law, incompatible with freedom; it elevates violence and destruction over life and liberty. In contrast, the American Revolution was founded on principles of freedom and law (for example, in the Declaration of Independence), did not embrace violence as desireable, and laid it out for example in the Declaration of Independence.
The most successful societies have freedom, the rule of law, and allow violence only as a last necessity to restore freedom and the rule of law.
That's pretty rich, since the United States only exists thanks to systemic, deliberate violence on a mass scale against the local population.
Packages = ways to "adapt" to the challenges of the world.
The ugly, uncomfortable part is that when a certain fraction of people decide violence is the answer, a tipping point is reached and that's what happens. Historically, people have reached that point en masse without a great deal of provocation. So for a society to remain successful--or to remain at all--it needs to prevent this tipping point from happening. Force alone can't do that.
Enlightenment and industrialization created societies that were fairer, wealthier, and more free than anything before. They also created ideologies such as communism and nationalism that killed hundreds of millions. If your ideas are good and successful in the long term but create poverty, suffering, and feelings of unfairness in time scales people care about, there will be violence.
Compromises are the key tool in preventing violence. Unfortunately, the word itself carries negative connotations in too many languages, making effective compromises less likely.
It's an interesting exercise to compare these threads.
My own position on the matter is the not an edgy one: political violence of any kind, is never justified, but it does signal that something deep in society requires a change.
* one exception being defense of life and limb.
I'm genuinely curious about how you reconcile this with the world around you.
The optimal amount of crazies getting off the porch at any one time is not zero much like the optimal amount of fraud is not zero.
"causing a fire to an exterior gate" doesn't lead me to believe there was any chance of real harm.
- Go onto a Reddit thread about ICE, everyone in the comment threads says they don't like ICE. That's the obvious statement, not edgy.
- Go onto a Reddit thread about Trump, everyone says they don't like Trump. That's the obvious statement, not edgy.
Why would we think the Sam Altman thread is any different? I unfortunately think the Reddit thread might be the real deal, or at least a little more real than you are saying.
As income/wealth inequality grows expect class violence to grow until there is a revolution. We let rich people get too rich and this is the consequence.
Sam has so far lost say $100B so far, and he is compensated by already being a billionaire. You can see how this might lead to disillusionment with the system.
We've been trying peaceful and democratic means for the better part of a century. It hasn't worked and is met with increasing levels of violence from the government. Right now, today the US government is abducting and murdering innocent citizens in broad daylight. No amount of lobbying is going to stop that.
The explicit and overt goal of this administration is to seize power and do away with democracy. No conceivable democratic process can stop that. Peaceful protest doesn't work, the government kills people when they try.
Every means of peaceful protest is met with extreme violence and suppression. And the violence keeps escalating.
People are resorting to violence because violence against the people is escalating. If you can't see that, then you're the problem. If you think violence is inexcusable, then you must also think that peaceful protesters deserve to get executed in the street.
We are already in anarchy. Laws don't matter, only the whims of our dear leader. Private citizens can be plucked off the street or outright murdered with zero consequence or accountability. Dear leader can declare nuclear war without congressional oversight.
If you think violence is inexcusable, you should really read the goddamn declaration of independence. It is a fundamental human right to remove tyranny by whatever means possible. Just because you, personally don't feel threatened by the us government does not mean that innocent people aren't dying. How many citizens do you think a government should be allowed to execute for no reason? How many nukes should one be allowed to launch without cause?
Democracy has been eschewed by our government. Democratic means don't work and haven't for quite some time. Laws no longer apply to the government. If you want to argue that violence is still inexcusable, you're actually arguing for complete and unquestioned obedience to a fascist government. That's not an exaggeration of any kind, this is what's actually happening in the US right now. Democracy is over, we've been an anarchist state for a few years now.
Theres example after example of people in history being totally fine with violence against human beings.
Or I missed a hint and you’re dehumanizing them?
Flip it again: as a crazy, isn’t it reasonable to enact violence against Johnny Nine Nines? If he’s so innocent, how come his house is behind two security fences?
To be a little more reductive: my house is made of gold bricks so I hired an extra-legal anti-marauder militia, but now the marauders see me as a fair fight because I chose extra-legal militia instead of cops and judges… game on and QED.
- High wealth inequality
- Perceived inability (or reduced ability) to get ahead and have your voice heard
- Government seen as more corrupt and benefiting the elite. Different set of rules for them vs for everyone else
- Highly polarized population at odds with each other
The data has conclusively proven that moneyed interests prevail over the interests of the people. Every single time.
Lol, really? You think there is any chance of that happening in this current political climate? Any whisper at all of rights for workers is immediately shot down as Godless Communist rhetoric.
Ineffectual molotov cocktails are just a cry for help.
If you call one violence but the other is okay because there are some layers of misdirection in between you may have to reconsider your ethics.
Obviously people aren't going to be happy about debt fueled spending inflating prices and crashing the economy again (for the 4th time in most young people's lives).
There’s a lot of scary shit going on.
In the US, health insurance is largely tied to employment. Health insurance, in a personal economic sense, reduces to being able to pay for healthcare. This policy is largely a left-over of World War II era employment policies. No one is taking healthcare _away_ from anyone (strictly speaking), but the ability to be able to _pay_ for healthcare is reduced to zero when employment ceases. Accessing the safety net is a separate skillset. This skill set becomes more difficult to achieve because the political class does not want to provide healthcare for everyone, only the worthy (their loyal voters).
I grew up in and am still a member of the precariat. I am educated and doing well, but I wear a well-polished pair of golden handcuffs due to how my ability to afford healthcare for myself, and my family, is tied to employment. Politically, I _do not_ like being tied to my employer by such a chain, but my arguments to change the system have been met with quite firm push-back.
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/healthcare/2026/03/...
You know this, stop pretending otherwise.
2. Robots take away jobs from Americans and the proceeds to go the owner (investor) class
3. Americans no longer have healthcare
Understand?
So the temperature has been high for a while and he's on board with it.
Temperature is certainly going up, but it definitely hasn’t reached historic levels yet lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence
Because Anthropic just lost their US government contract (AND got slapped with a completely false order that prevents them from working with any government agency) because they wouldn't do the above ... and then OpenAI slid right in and said "yeah, we can do that".
Useful work like generating mountains of deepfake misinformation?
Which is very AI forward.
A: Violence now!
B: Maybe later.
Playing catch up with Elon.
This candidate was later elected to office and in the time since has shown a continual pattern of endorsing violence. He has endorsed violent actions, told reactionary extremist groups to "stand back and stand by", defended state violence against protestors and immigrants, pardoned thousands of people who were convicted of political violence and an attempted insurrection, and recently started a war before threatening to destroy an entire civilization.
Yes. Yes the "temperature" has gone up. People have been talking about this WIDELY, for years now.
[0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26940036?seq=1
You think people will put up with wildly accelerating inequality forever?
It’s going to explode, the only question is when.
No. Nor do I think they should. But UBI, higher income tax at the top and a wealth tax for the ultra rich sound like a much better plan to me than to blow a bunch of things up.
But when I look at how the US handled previous rounds of globalization and automation, I have very sober expectations for our ability to pursue the "happy path." Still, one has to try.
Do you think the ruling elite will allow it?
- Some if not many jobs are at risk.
- AI Psychosis is actively tearing apart families and communities, after social media and opioids have already had a pass.
- Negative social outcomes are in the service of _making money_. Not money to pay taxes to fund a healthy society, but money for the people running these systems.
Humans that lack community, safety, and purpose will embrace more drastic means of exerting control over their lives at the expense of others, no?
It is probably safe to say the temperature has been firmly up for a while. And certain subsets of the population have come to trust their Dear Leader's embrace of violence as a solution, for sure.
It's not that people are accepting of violence. That doesn't just happen. Societies don't suddenly turn violent against the state. This only happens when the state has failed and become violent towards the people. If you're surprised by the rising level of violence toward the state, you haven't been paying attention to the rising violence towards the people.
The US was quite literally founded on the idea that it is an inarguable, fundamental human right to overthrow a tyrannical government. The nice and polite mechanisms for doing this have all been broken, removed, violently suppressed, or outright ignored. When there are no peaceful options left, humans will always revolt with as much violence as is necessary. History shows us this over and over. Violently oppressed societies don't tend to stay that way for long, and they certainly don't become hardline pacifists. They always eventually fight back, or they die.
The rising level of violence from the people at large is a proportional reaction to the increasing level of violence against the people. The level of tyranny has recently upgraded itself from merely an existential threat to the USA as a society, but also an existential threat to the entire damn planet. Of course the people are going to get violent. They feel there's no other choice, because all peaceful options have been exhausted and met with extreme violence.
That's the consensus I see on the street: all nonviolent options have been met with ever-increasingly extreme violence. When all peaceful options are removed, you pick the only one left.
In a historic lens, it's all very unsurprising. This is how revolutions happen. This is what humans have always done when met with tyranny and violent oppression. It's only surprising if you willfully ignore and excuse the tyranny and violence against the people.
The billionaire class has enabled armed masked police in our streets, endless layoffs, basically don't pay taxes at any reasonable percentage, and basically have rigged politics with Citizens United.
Given that, I can see how people are resorting to 18th century French tactics.
Net of transfers, 60% of households receive more from government transfers than they pay in taxes.
The idea that rich people don't pay taxes is just not correct. The entire system is basically rich people subsidizing everybody else through byzantine distributional systems.
Eta: these data are from 2018 before the BBB
Stop acting as if taxation if theft, it’s the fee that allows everything else to function.
If we have a pool of $100 and I take $99 and you get $1, and then I get taxed $5 and you get taxed $0, I still have almost everything. Is this.. unfair to me?
It's in fact the opposite of what you said: everyone else is subsidizing the rich, who have gamed the system to live extravagant lifestyles. Eventually this will lead to a revolution and all us rich people will be beheaded. It's the normal outcome of this sort of thing.
I constantly see posts focused on high earners already paying tons of tax. They do, but this should reinforce the point that the ultra wealthy should be paying more tax. People aren’t saying the guy on £500k should pay more, they’re saying the guy with £100m in assets should be.
Hell, even the president regularly calls for and promotes violence, so I don't think it's that much of a minority. The US was founded on it, after all.
Most of it. Across the political spectrum.
> even if not to such an extreme
That’s precisely the point. There is a massive difference between doing or aiding and abetting such behavior, cheering it on, and giving into the impulse of “couldn’t have happened to a worse person” before self correcting. There are a few saints who reject the violence at first glance. But most people are in that self correcting phase, and the correction happens the more they learn about the specifics of the assault.
> even the president regularly calls for and promotes violence
To what numerical end?
It's only a minority of people who are radicalized, but it's a growing minority. Radical ideas are more accessible than ever for people to latch on to.
Radical views on violence, social relations, science, politics, distrust of institutions, etc are all way more common than they were in the 90s.
I’d want to see this interrogated with rigor. The alternate hypothesis, and my null, is a relatively fixed fraction of folks is more connected and visible today than before.
Here's one of the posts on that thread: "I mean one thing is to use AI or even ChatGPT as a product, and another is being aware of how billionaires treat the rest of the people
As for Sam, he also has pretty controversial views for how this whole thing will pan out and how he doesn't give a shit about the consequences it might have for the rest of us. Also more recently, the whole Pentagon contract thing"
People can both use LLMs whilst having a distasteful view of the leaders of the industry.
I have a tremendously distasteful view of a lot of Silicon Valley leadership. Doesn’t mean I want them to suffer at the hands of vigilante justice.
The sheer tone-deafness of AI marketing is going to come back to bite us very hard. This is probably just the beginning.
And I have no sympathy because this joker has been pushing people to the edge with his hyping.
All this violence against the innocent in various places and levels, and you think it’s weird that people are fine with violence used against a billionaire conman?
no, the mob is forming at the gate, and they are starting to climb
Thinking something should be done, means nothing is being done. The poor in france didn't start with bread riots. They begged and pleaded and asked nicely first, and while lots of people thought something should be done to help them, nothing was.
Thank you for getting over the line.
Too bad she never said it, though.
The job market's shit, it's nearly impossible for young people to buy houses or pay rent, well paying jobs are disappearing to AI, inflation is sky rocketing and people are getting desperate. But then we're told the economy's doing great and billionaires like Musk and Altman are rolling in money.
What kind of weird world are you living under...
https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1806729161840476598
But where people are "OK with violence" is with state violence.
State violence include police violence (>1000 people are killed every year in the US by police), prison violence, violently rounding up immigrants and putting them in concentration camps, criminalizing homelessness, denying people life-saving medical care, evictions while landlords collude to raise rents, genocide, sending random people to a maximum security prison in a foreign country (ie CECOT), mass shootings, going with a firearm to a protest to instigate an incident and get a legal kill, intentionally creating the opiod crisis and so on.
For a large number of people some or all of these incidents will get a reaction somewhere between "thoughts and prayers" and "no, it's good actually".
Compare the state's reaction to one healthcare CEO being murdered and the perpetrators that are implicated in the Epstein files. Epstein himself was known to authorities since the 1990s and got an absolutely sweetheart deal in 2008.
So I'd say the real problem is what people view as violence and who's allowed to do it, seemingly without oversight or consequences of any kind most or all of the time.
They did not want a target painted on their backs or being involved with the company responsible for mass job displacement.
Let's hope that SF doesn't turn into a free-for-all after the IPOs, since the silliest thing is for everyone to move to SF and buy up the houses and then the have-not's realise who got rich.
I'd donate that money away or give the employees (who have nothing) a one-time bonus / raise like the five-guys owner [0] to not be a target.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/27/five-guys-ce...
Seriously shocked that this is the aspect of this moment in history that you choose to focus on, and not the absurd levels of violence perpetrated by the ruling classes against common people.
The world was never a wise and virtuous man's paradise, but it has been quickly sliding into ever increasing and monstrous irrationality. Give Plato's "Republic" a read and you might find it concerning how closely we exemplify the last stages of political and social decline.
I also think that he might've been able to reduce the odds of this happening by being a less awful human being.
If Taylor Swift owns a dozen homes, does she have full time security guards at each one? Or just accept some amount of burglary may occur? Do they go everywhere with a guard? Only to public events?
The silent or unknown ones will often still have something (usually a requirement of their or their company's insurance).
Once you graduate from "2, 3, 5 houses" to "mansions" you will have staff at each one, even if relatively bare-bones.
To hear tell from my coworkers that did go on site the security was insane, the media apparatus was insane (like a dvr for every channel running 24x7 so the family could call up whatever, wherever they were at any time). This is back in like 2010ish, before the marriage blew up.
From https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/13/entertainment/kim-kardash...
> Kim Kardashian, testifying in the trial of the burglars accused of tying her up and robbing her at gunpoint nearly nine years ago, told a Paris court on Tuesday that she “absolutely thought” her assailants would kill her.
> “I have babies, I have to make it home, I have babies,” Kardashian recalled pleading with the armed men, who had broken into her hotel room while she slept during Paris Fashion Week in 2016.
> Facing her alleged attackers for the first time since the heist, the billionaire reality TV star detailed how she was robbed of nearly $10 million in cash and jewelry, including a $4 million engagement ring – gifted to her by her then-husband Kanye West – that was never recovered.
Whether "the jobs" have been lost or not is irrelevant. There's something to be said of the leadership here raising a trillion dollars to do that very thing.
It's not hard to imagine an outsider taking him at face value.
If this guy says publicly, "I'm building a robot that is going to fundamentally change the economy by making most knowledge based jobs obsolete." Then proceeds to play a major role in propping up the economy on this idea.
At some point, people are going to get concerned.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/molotov-cocktail-c...
So the arrested suspect is either the wrong person, did not actually want to kill anyone or has no clue how fire spreads.
A strange incident that will make many people think of sending a noose to oneself (where oneself does not have to be Altman, but a pro-AI org who wants to generate sympathy).
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd11gzejgz4o
The described action seems performative and emotional, as it they were ideologically opposed to AI. Like spitting out food because it was prepared by a caste you found unclean.
Where does this come from?
IF someone is to the point of worrying about AI recipe risk for chicken, they should have already rejected any food made by amateur or professional cooks due to excessive risk.
But I would be disgusted. Someone told me they planned their vacation with an llm and I couldn't help but express disdain for this friend of mine.
Why are we outsourcing creativity and research and interest in discovery to an llm?
Are you right? Yeah, basically. Are you going to laugh at your stupid neighbors until they burn your house down in rage? Maybe? You don't treat fear with malice.
Look at what you're writing.
"Doing X is so clearly irrational that I chuckled a bit."
Please don't perpetuate the image of the elitist techie. That is what was just firebombed.
I think this says more about how neurotic and paranoid people are.
When have they bragged about this?
Sam's got 3 billion net worth.
Jensen's got 165 billion to his name.
They are giddy about taking jobs away, and both are engaged in "tax reduction strategies" and suck up to Donald Trump.
You wonder why people are pissed?
This is just your interpretation. My interpretation is that they talk about computers being able to perform some intellectual tasks that are now handled by humans in a more efficient and fast manner. They're excited about technological progress and new opportunities it provides, not being "giddy" about unemployment and economic uncertainty.
> suck up to Donald Trump
When you're a head of multi-billion dollar company that employ thousands of people and respond to board that expects your company to continue growing and make money for them, it's strategically dumb and irresponsible to NOT suck up to the most childish and vindictive person who has real power to screw over you and all the people you employ who expect you do everything in your power to prevent this.
If you don't do that and Trump fucks your company over as a result, you're just bad at your job as a CEO.
I could totally believe uneducated or less well-adjusted people reacting in the above way, though.
People trust AI outputs in ways they should not. They don't understand its sycophantic design and succumb to AI psychosis. They deploy it in antisocial ways, for war, or spam, or scams. They use it to justify layoffs. They use it as a justification to gobble up public funds. They use it to power their winner-take-all late-stage capitalism economy. It goes on and on.
Me, too. The AI hype machine involves some really bad ideas, the amount of money being poured into "AI" right now distorts everything, public understanding of how these tools work is low, and a lot of contemporary uses both by corporations and governments are irresponsible, dangerous, and likely to produce or reproduce harmful biases and reduce the accountability of humans for crucial decisions and outcomes.
At the same time, it's useful for me at work, and I'm curious about it. I sometimes enjoy using it. It lets me do things I didn't have time for before. It eliminates some procrastination problems for me. I think its use in computing is also likely to be increasingly mandatory for the near-to-moderate term, so it's probably good for me to get used to using it and thinking about it and looking for new useful things it can do for me.
And my own experiences in using AI are part of what drive my anti-AI sentiment as well! I see it do completely insane and utterly stupid things pretty much every day, both in my personal life and in my professional life. I have a visceral awareness of its unreliability because I use it frequently.
I should hope that as hackers we can muster some understanding and respect both for LLM users and for people with hard "anti-AI" stances. Even if you're "pro-AI" to the core (whatever that means), it's worth understanding the most serious and well-considered arguments of critics of LLMs and the contemporary "AI" race. You might even find, as someone who uses and enjoys using LLMs, that you agree with many of them.
And quite a few of them like to mix their religion with politics.
The two things they told us not to talk about at the dinner table in order to have a better experience.
Maybe it was solid advice after all.
Wonder why that is, and if we'll grow out of it peacefully.
My blue collar work buddies don't feel as strongly or as existential about it. To them, it's just this buzzwordy crap that has ruined entertainment or made the quality of services even worse. It's more of an annoyance than an outright fear and/or loathing of it.
Maybe if the bubble pops and the economy tanks and it affects their bottom line they might hate it as much as the aforementioned people.
Example: in the very best case, every call center worker will be replaced with a chatbot. Service quality will be worse. Any situation out of the norm will be way more frustrating. It will be buggy. It will get into loops. And there will be no human contact to break the cycle.
I think that's the dynamic that worries people the most - their bank, their landlord, maybe even their 911 service all replaced with something that is even less responsive and even less accountable.
turning myself (an overweight bearded guy) into an animated hula dancer and turning my coworker into the Terminator and sinking into molten steel don't seem to inspire the same hatred. unless you don't like hula dancers.
I work in a non-tech industry and I see this all the time from people, but it's not just limited to AI. SV itself evokes hatred in a lot of people on both sides of the spectrum.
I can't repeat the worst things I've heard, but Altman and his ilk should be terrified of the mob violence they're instigating.
The tech people are the ones that have the strongest opinions one way or the other.
Same can be applied for DC (politics/military), NY (finance), LA (entertainment).
SV was around since the 60-90s but didn't get much attention until beginning of this millenium due to the huge value creation and control they had over the US economy. They just happen to be relevant in recent times. 100s of years ago it was the railroad and oil conglomerates, 1000s of years ago kings and feudal lords. So there is always a powerful influential class who controls the strings -- its a feature of human society.
(I don't feel at all confident in that statement; I am requesting reassurance.)
Mentioning "AI" in non-techies circles is a bad idea. It tells you that many here are in a massive bubble and unaware of the visceral hate against AI because it directly affects them and they cannot opt-out.
Given that AI takes more than it gives back (jobs, energy, water, houses) of course you will get anti-AI activists.
Not entirely unwarranted given the track record of LLMs as a chef though:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/10/pak-n-save-sav...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd11gzejgz4o
Of course it was two years ago and it's unlikely to happen again, but that's the drawback of the “move fast and break things” attitude: sometimes you've broken public perception and it's hard to fix afterwards.
That was an unnecessarily extreme reaction, like AI 3d printed the ingredients.
The idea that AI will bring an age of abundance may be true, but not in the short term. Companies are letting people go, and AI will be blamed for that, whether true or not. For decades the public perception that most Tech Bros have prioritized profits over the wellbeing of the little guy is well established, in my view, in some cases well deserved with no accountability.
It's looking like AI will generate a modern version of the early 1800s Luddite Rebellion where British textile workers destroyed machines that displaced jobs, prioritizing factory owners' profits over workers. They targeted technology and industrialists.
Tech Bros can avoid this by modifying their priorities, prioritize employee rights and lobbying governments to begin implementing some sort of Universal Basic Income of some sort and or provide the means by which people can survive, or the government may start marketing Soylent Green to consumers :(
The outlook from my view, though limited, is so pessimistic that I just keep thinking about a scenario similar to, though not AI-related, Soylent Green or Great Ravine from The Dark Forest, Volume 2 of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy (aka The Three-Body Problem series).
I keep hoping I come across a 1973 Ford Falcon XB GT Coupe aka "V8 Interceptor" or "Pursuit Special," when all hell breaks loose :|
It's worth remembering that the way that ended was extremely bloody, particularly for the Luddites themselves. There were a handful of extreme participants, there was a murder, and there was a hell of a lot of violence directed at anyone perceived as a Luddite— even though most actual Luddites themselves mostly avoided violence against other humans.
It would be good if we can somehow avoid such outcomes this time.
I once had the chance to be a Bro, far richer than any of the current ones, thanks to the still secretive and anonymous "original-sn-adjacent cryptographic collective". Things, however, did not work out in my favor thanks to other nefarious third-party actors. So, I know where from I speak.
Any outcome is in the hands of the Tech Bros but by the looks of it, greed drives their every action, so things are not looking good!
:(
That’s what’s coming. Like it or not.
Source: https://rb.gy/wdzmsc (YouGov poll, n=2,646, date = sep 10, 2025, question = "Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals? (%)", raw data linked under poll graph, downloadable )
I’m not sure how much this question actually measures propensity towards violence, than it does creativity and imagination.
Political violence is a daily occurrence in modern society. You find it acceptable because it is sanctioned.
It's currently in vogue for "the other side" to decry political violence; of course they will say it is not justified in a 2025 poll. The only problem is that it is blatantly contradicted by the political violence which is perpetrated and excused by "the other side".
Maybe they are just not reporting near misses
Only minor damage was caused to a metal gate far from the building. Yet people here speak of "bombing Altman". So the sympathy works, and might work on the jury in that trial as well.
to the people on HN who are against blockchain but bullish on AI
With blockchain and smart contracts or stupid even memecoins, you can only lose what you voluntarily put in. You had to jump through a few hoops, then maybe you got rugpulled, maybe you became a millionaire.
With AI, regardless of whether you consented or not, you can lose your job, gradually your relationships and sense of purpose. And if some malicious actors want to weaponize it against you, you can lose your reputation, your freedom, get hacked at scale, and much more. The sooner we give biolabs to everyone the sooner someone can create an advanced persistent threat virus online infecting every openclaw machine, or a designer virus with an incubation period of half a year.
And I know what someone on here will always say. There will always be a comment to the effect of "this has always existed, AI is nothing new". But quantity has a quality all its own. Enjoy your AI slop internet dark forest. Until you don't.
Is your definition of bullish "believes the technology is a major net good for society?" - if so, you're comparing two technologies with significant social aspirations that come from very different philosophical backgrounds. While both are techno-optimist, Blockchain is a fundamentally libertarian technology, while generative AI comes from a more utilitarian, capital-focused background. People who value individual freedom above all else will get excited about blockchain and feel mixed-to-negative about AI, while people who want to elevate the overall capability of the human race to the exclusion of anything else will get excited by AI and see blockchain as a parlor trick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-mztxHgYQo
Joe sings great harmony in this video by the way!
@dang didn't see this post before posting the archive.ph link at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47722344 - feel free to delete/merge that thread with this one
Also, @mentions are not implemented on HN; email hn@ycombinator.com to get mod attention. (And you can confirm with them what I wrote about archive links.)
I suppose part of your point is that they should be able to see that the post is dead; that regardless does not tell them why the post is dead. I'm also not totally convinced they can see that the post is dead. When an account is shadow-banned on this forum they can still log in and post but their posts will all be dead to everyone except them; naively, it is plausible to me that they actually cannot see that the posts are dead because they were DOA. In other words, even though the account is not shadow-banned, the domain might be.
Anyway, hope that helps.
All that is being "promised" are vague claims of "abundance". But all I see is this:
"AGI" is going to bring abundance of lots of very angry people and UBI to no-one (because it can never work at a large sustainable scale).
Some people are starting to realise that "AGI" was a grift and a scam and they are not happy about this lie and the insiders knew that and increased spending on security and private bodyguards.
It's hard to say it's not X when we can't really define X.
Agentic changes the calculus.
Also every AI company is motivated to have us use their models _just enough_ to want to pay for them, but not more than that.
We also need to rebuild our manufacturing supply chains, and there’s a huge amount to be done there.
We're going to see the ultrawealthy become targets of drone attacks conducted by people who have terminal illnesses and nothing to lose.
I predict that we'll see a movement start where people who get diagnosed with a fast acting terminal illness that gives them a few weeks to months of relatively high functionality followed by a quick downward decline -- like say a brain tumour decide to kamikaze against the people they feel have wronged them and their kin gravely.
People will use something like this[0] to evade detection but won't really give a shit if they get caught because they'll be dead in a few months.
Even if they don't have access to such technology they can always just use a firearm like we've seen people try on Trump and Charlie Kirk and that Healthcare CEO guy with relative success.
I'm amazed that Peter Thiel is giving talks about the antichrist at the Vatican. I've seen relatively recent videos of him walking down the street with only a security guard or two[1], and they seem completely unprepared for any sort of attack on them from someone with a firearm or a drone.
It's like these people genuinely don't understand how destructive their actions are viewed as by society and the bubbling resentment and rage that is growing towards them.
I'm not sure what the defense against such a movement is. I guess maybe fixing wealth inequality and giving people at least the impression of greater participation in our democratic system?
This[2] is the vibe right now and it's only growing stronger by the day.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrZ1aH5gtMU
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pGHIplhJ8Ek
[2] https://genius.com/25966434
In real life the attacks in response to climate change(and in this case, economic injustice), will be committed by such an uncountable plurality of groups that the violence will seem almost capricious.
oh nooooo. anyway
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659135 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may...
> There was an incendiary article about me a few days ago. Someone said to me yesterday they thought it was coming at a time of great anxiety about AI and that it made things more dangerous for me.
https://blog.samaltman.com/2279512
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47724921
That’s like saying we don’t need minimum wage or unions because companies choosing to treat workers with respect is also a possible outcome. It’s technically true but once you go from “is this theoretically possible?” to “is this likely?” it becomes obvious that the answer is no. Most of the big AI backers are openly salivating at destroying millions of jobs, and they’re already evading taxes now so they’re not going to be funding UBI willingly — and if you have any doubt, look at where their political spending goes, consistently to the people who are doing their best to remove what small taxes they’re still paying and declaring war on the concept of regulated markets.
Do you genuinely believe there's any chance that's going to happen?
Are you also sure that it is unthinkable to those running these companies? I wouldn't be surprised if these models end up being used for internal security-- that people would try to keep an extremely unequal society stable by surveillance and massive analysis capabilities. I think it's apparent that some use of this sort already occurs and that these companies are already participating.