Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident

jazz9k

AI is great. But it seems like those that wield its power only do so to create massive unemployment and benefits to the top 1%.

rdevilla

> Now I am awake in the middle of the night and pissed, and thinking that I have underestimated the power of words and narratives. I am glad you feel my pain, Mr. Altman.

angoragoats

To be clear, I don’t want anyone’s house to get firebombed by any means. But the “I’m just a humble guy making mistakes and trying the best I can” attitude of this article strikes me as extremely inauthentic based on everything I know about the guy.

pesus

> The world deserves huge amounts of AI and we must figure out how to make it happen. > It will not all go well. The fear and anxiety about AI is justified; we are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time, and perhaps ever. Boy, he really just encouraged the world to keep turning against him. This is so transparently disingenuous. I guess he has no choice if he doesn't want to give up his wealth and power, but putting statements like these out are only going to further fuel anti-AI sentiment. I do think it's funny he opened this with an allegedly real picture of a baby, though. It may very well be real, but why would anyone take his word for that, especially those who already don't trust him?

sassymuffinz

“I’m just trying to make the world a better place for my child by ensuring millions won’t be able to afford to feed their children.”

mc7alazoun

Daamn, you were too fast to share the story haha.

LunaSea

Unserious answer about a very serious event. I don't believe a word of Sam's "I believe" section.

bedroom_jabroni

Did Claude Mythos escape containment?

psiisim

What a tone deaf response. Sounds like he learned nothing at all from this.

hyeonwho5

Firebombing homes is completely uncivilized, but I'm not going to believe a single public word from Altman about anything. He's a lying sociopath and will say whatever gets himself ahead.

surround

> 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. For context his blog post seems to be a response to this deep-dive New Yorker article: "Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659135

zb3

So there's one photo. Of one family. Now what about millions of photos of all the other families possibly affected by him? That doesn't have power? It's like "hey you can say mean things about me but don't attack my family while I attack yours". Not that this is directed at him personally, but it's just this mindset of wealthy people..

mattsoldo

It's never OK to physically attack someone like this. Full stop. Separately; Sam's belief that "AI has to be democratized; power cannot be too concentrated." rings incredibly hollow. OpenAI has abandoned its open source roots. It is concentrating wealth - and thus power - into fewer hands. Not more.

Arodex

Ah, the Elon manoeuvre: trying to make would-be assassins hesitate by using your own child as a shield.

happytoexplain

Historically, was it always so common for powerful or famous people to seem to purposefully garner hatred like he, and others, have been for the past decade? To speak in a petty, self-important, "trolling" manner, to a very broad audience? To embrace traits that are intrinsically negative? Or are we living in a rare time?

zoklet-enjoyer

TIL Sam Altman is gay

brailsafe

I can't help but be reminded of last year, when our landlords (chill boomers) sold the house my girlfriend and I were renting the basement of (to presumably rich asshole millenials). The demographic doesn't really matter, but the old landlords kept us in us in the loop throughout the process, we knew as much as we could going into the new year. Apparently the new buyers wanted to keep us as tenants. Day 2 of them taking possession, the man came down with his innocent toddler and introduced themselves. He seemed friendly enough, and on Day 3 he came down in the middle of the day and handed me eviction notice papers. I didn't firebomb his house, but I can't say I definitely didn't want to shit on his doorstep.

kelseyfrog

No one deserves to be attacked. I also believe that there will be more casualties in the AI Wars. We should be prepared for that. Capitalism, AI, and human life are mutually incompatible and I'm still not sure which two will survive the conflict.

TurdF3rguson

Is the underground bunker in New Zealand ready yet? Better check on it.

raslah

OpenAI will end up the hero of this whole AI saga. I actually believe what he wrote there. Anthropic just took a left turn when they chose to lock up mythos. That was a pivotal move that proved Anthropic’s mindset is dangerous. They just changed the trajectory of AI completely, for the worst. OpenAI just needs to learn to manage products. They need to start finishing things rather than just shutting down projects without putting real effort into iterating on them to create viable business models. They are undisciplined. They’ve done this phony version of looking disciplined by shutting down Sora and nixing adult mode, but that’s superficial. The things they’re pivoting to are no more serious. They just sound serious. They gotta learn to create desire in consumers and design viral AI products. Like Apple. Consumer facing pop culture products. That’s the market that’s wide tf open. They can print if they get good at that.