The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical

unethical_ban 15 points 11 comments August 26, 2026
www.gatesnotes.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (5 comments)

ThrowawayR2

He missed the most basic risk: unequal access. AI providers have enormous investments to pay off and enormous operating costs and want a ROI so they are going charge all the market will bear. Imagine a nightmare scenario where access to AI is like access to medical insurance coverage in the United States: white collar professionals get access to more tokens on better AI models through their employer and can afford the same for their personal endeavors. Meanwhile the working poor and unemployed are expected to make do with low cost AI models and smaller token allotments that they are grudgingly given by the tech megacorps at the cost of exposure to advertising or some other unwelcome intrusion. One could conceivably see the destitute pawning off possessions to buy enough high end LLM tokens to clean up their resume for an important job interview only to tragically blow them on their AI GF/BF because they needed a moment of reassurance in an uncaring world. Somebody ring up Cory Doctorow; I'm sure he could wring a cautionary dystopian tale out of the concept.

dgellow

Have we considered NOT taking that risk? Given it is extremely unlikely that we will do the necessary preparation and take precautions. It’s fine to identify issues and benefits, but then you have to ask yourself why accept that gamble in behalf of the whole world

ChrisArchitect

Dunno what's going on with these urls; [dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49448137

mcswell

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49450672 , meet https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451313 reply

ungreased0675

I really dislike the vision of the future the AI industry wants. There are so many things that could be built, why are we building potentially horrible ones?

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