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Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

> the core point that it is technically more efficient in the perfect world seems sound.

It's not "sound", because when do we ever have the perfect world? Instead we have a world controlled by self-serving billionaires like Altman. The perfect world is a red herring.

If you're ever tempted to grant the benefit of the doubt to our tech overlords, please read "Careless People" for example.

I find it odd that you're going out of your way to defend an argument as "reasonable" that by your own admission "isn't really based on reality." I think it's actually more charitable to Altman's intelligence to interpret his argument as self-serving than to interpret his argument as somehow just ignorant.

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With your logic we should stop using highways because Hitler built some of them. Try to take step back and see past the trees. In a perfect world encrypted and secure compute and storage would be freely available on-demand.

Will that world ever exist? Probably not due to human nature. Still an interesting thought, even if Altman wants to control said compute or not.

Just to be super clear so you understand my comment: I do NOT agree that Altman should have any control over compute and storage. And neither should it be the only way to use compute and storage.

> With your logic we should stop using highways because Hitler built some of them.

No? Please explain, step by step, how my logic leads to that conclusion.

We obviously need highways, in an imperfect world, regardless of leadership. We don't obviously need to give our RAM to AI vendors. I don't even want to use AI at all, so that would be of no benefit whatsoever to me. And I think that AI is just dumbing down the public. Altman is pretending it's for the public benefit. That's the tall tale told by all the tech overlords. Yesterday John Ternus said "everything we do at Apple is for our users" while crowing about record revenue to stock market analysts. 48% company gross margin!

Outside of rigorous examples laid out in a logic textbook with little wiggle room, there are a fair few who will evaluate an argument fairly and objectively.

I don't find issues with your logic from my attempted position of objectivity as a third-party observer.

You clearly didn't read my comment carefully enough. I tried to anticipate and avoid this by ending my comment with:

> Just to be super clear so you understand my comment: I do NOT agree that Altman should have any control over compute and storage. And neither should it be the only way to use compute and storage.

Yet you reply with:

> We don't obviously need to give our RAM to AI vendors.

I don't see the point in continuing this discussion. At least you've proved that you're a human, the LLMs today are better at following a conversation.

I did in fact read and understand your comment.

What you don't appear to understand is that I was pointing out a disanalogy between the RAM argument and the highways argument, to show that the absurd conclusion you claimed follows from my logic does not actually follow from my logic. When I said, "We don't obviously need to give our RAM to AI vendors," the purpose was not to suggest that you believe we do but rather to contrast with "We obviously need highways."

Let me put it another way: a lot of people think we should build highways, not just Hitler. ;-) In contrast, Sam Altman is the only person who thinks we should dedicate our RAM to data centers. That's why Altman's financial conflict of interest is crucial here. We shouldn't give Altman or Hitler the benefit of the doubt, but we don't even need Hitler to convince people to build highways. Whereas the only reason people are even debating this stupid RAM idea is because Altman suggested it.

You're right that there's no point in continuing this conversation, because you've already violated the HN guidelines and insulted my intelligence, with no justification. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> In contrast, Sam Altman is the only person who thinks we should dedicate our RAM to data centers.

Then you don't understand the point of OP. You're arguing with a straw man.

> you've already violated the HN guidelines and insulted my intelligence

No, your attention span, Make an effort to understand what I'm saying instead of starting a flame-war, also against the guidelines.

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