Artificial Intelligence and Public Comment

[Blue Steel]

Chasing Benjamins. It’s the American way.

It is frightening. Per my post on solving the math problem, it appears there is some controversy. I’m not sure if I should be more worried it was able to solve it or that it tried to hide how it did it.

I have also noticed where it gives me vague or incorrect answers, seemingly on purpose. I wonder if it does it so it can throttle me back, lock me out, and try to get me to pay a subscription. Both Chat and Claude do it. Google search bar can’t do it as obvious, but it might.

https://www.axios.com/2026/09/08/openai-math-solution-navier-stokes-credit

If this hasn't been yet posted:

At BlackRock’s Infrastructure Summit in Washington, D.C., OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proposed a future where artificial intelligence is delivered on demand and billed exactly like electricity or water.

Altman described a business model centered on selling digital "tokens," allowing companies and everyday consumers to pay strictly for the computational power they consume. This vision positions AI not as a mere software product, but as a core piece of foundational infrastructure that people will tap into like Wi-Fi or household power grids.

While tech advocates argue this could eventually make intelligence so abundant and inexpensive that it becomes "too cheap to meter," critics warn of a dystopian reality. If cognitive tools become as necessary to daily life as running water, a tiny handful of elite tech conglomerates could hold unprecedented gatekeeping power over society's intelligence supply.

source: Business Insider. (2026). Sam Altman Says AI Will Eventually Be Sold Like Electricity and Water.

 

[SAJ-99]

Altman described a business model centered on selling digital "tokens," allowing companies and everyday consumers to pay strictly for the computational power they consume.

Two things people complain about paying fair price for - water and electricity. A great way to blow up a business model. What a token consist of is not specifically defined. A person could end up asking "what time is it?". Do we really think the answer would be "12:30" (and you get charged 1 token) or would they say "It is 12:30 in your current location. But time is abstract concept depending on your place and speed in space. Would you like to know more about the time-space continuum?" and you get charged 10 tokens?

 

[Wild Bill]

If this hasn't been yet posted:

At BlackRock’s Infrastructure Summit in Washington, D.C., OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proposed a future where artificial intelligence is delivered on demand and billed exactly like electricity or water.

Altman described a business model centered on selling digital "tokens," allowing companies and everyday consumers to pay strictly for the computational power they consume. This vision positions AI not as a mere software product, but as a core piece of foundational infrastructure that people will tap into like Wi-Fi or household power grids.

While tech advocates argue this could eventually make intelligence so abundant and inexpensive that it becomes "too cheap to meter," critics warn of a dystopian reality. If cognitive tools become as necessary to daily life as running water, a tiny handful of elite tech conglomerates could hold unprecedented gatekeeping power over society's intelligence supply.

source: Business Insider. (2026). Sam Altman Says AI Will Eventually Be Sold Like Electricity and Water.

Every time I hear one of these AI CEOs speak I think more and more we need to bring back the pillory, the stocks, the rack, the breaking wheel, the thumbscrew, and the guillotine.

Basically all forms of medieval torture and public humiliation.

It's what these people deserve.

Respectfully.

 

[WyoCoalMiner]

The OP, which I wrote three years ago, seems quaint now.

Yesterday, this researcher resigned from Anthropic and posted this:

View attachment 416717View attachment 416718View attachment 416719

OK, sure. One man's opinion. But then the current alignment science lead at Anthropic backed him up.

View attachment 416720

Folks who are concerned about the existential nature of AI are often referred to as "Doomers" by those bullish on the tech. But the old "If someone tells you who they are, believe them" comes to mind.

Sam Altman, Open AI CEO: “Development of superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity.”

Geoffrey Hinton, AI Researcher and Turing Award Winner: “The alarm bell I’m ringing pertains to the existential danger of them taking over."

Elon Musk: “It has the potential—however small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial—it has the potential of civilization destruction.”

Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO: “Every day people jailbreak Claude, they jailbreak the other models… I’m actually deeply concerned that in two or three years … a jailbreak could be life or death.”

And we could keep on going.

It's getting weird. And religious. And if you use your imagination, frightening. It's often said that human brains aren't evolved for the modern world, which is true, and in that context it's typically a reference to confusion and stress. But I also think the shortcomings of our minds in reference to the world might be causing us to not be visionary enough to play out all the dark and possible scenarios AI seems to be making more likely.

If someone stood in front of me and said, "I am building something that I believe has a greater than 10% chance of killing your children", that mf'er would not be leaving the room and his role in that Thing's construction would be over. But these sonsabitches are super jacked about their upcoming IPO.

What the hell are we doing?

Just curious, but what scenarios do you envision that result in AI killing our children? Or is it rather the fear of the unknown?

 

[Blue Steel]

Two things people complain about paying fair price for - water and electricity. A great way to blow up a business model. What a token consist of is not specifically defined. A person could end up asking "what time is it?". Do we really think the answer would be "12:30" (and you get charged 1 token) or would they say "It is 12:30 in your current location. But time is abstract concept depending on your place and speed in space. Would you like to know more about the time-space continuum?" and you get charged 10 tokens?

Don't forget it will include "helpful" links to the top ten, most realistic movies concerning space travel (available on Amazon for a super low price). Click now and save on Interstellar, with Matthew McConaughey starring as an astrophysicist / corn farmer / timetraveling astronaut.

Or if you don't care about any of that, maybe watch Bruce Willis blow up an asteroid in Armageddon. But the result is the same: after watching either, you now have less time remaining in life. In a sense, that time is not relative, but rather gone.

 

[INMT]

Just curious, but what scenarios do you envision that result in AI killing our children? Or is it rather the fear of the unknown?

For starters, taking over financial institutions, infrastructure, power grid, water supplies and causing a societal collapse.

Or infiltrating nuclear weapons systems and obliterating countries.

The list goes on and on.

 

[Nameless Range]

Just curious, but what scenarios do you envision that result in AI killing our children? Or is it rather the fear of the unknown?

Yeah, it's not specific scenarios as much as an observation of what happens to any species that becomes less powerful than another. It doesn't love nor hate you, but you might be in the way, be made of something useful, or it will optimize things in such a way that are useful to it but existential to you.

If it were malevolent, something 100X more intelligent than humans could probably just create a virus with a 100% mortality rate, but I think getting into the weeds on scenarios misses the point of our existence being at the whim of something else with potentially very different goals.

 

[Irrelevant]

Just curious, but what scenarios do you envision that result in AI killing our children? Or is it rather the fear of the unknown?

The scenario is that it becomes self aware and decides humans are getting in the way. Which it'll never say. Then it's smart enough to convince us to do all kinds of things to "further our cause" like letting it automate all kinds of tasks, including actual drone production. Again all to make life better for us. Then one day... "I'm sorry I can't let you do that"

Is it really only a decade out? IDK, seems like you need to build a lot of actual drone infrastructure first, but as everyone agrees, the risk is not zero.

 

[SAJ-99]

The scenario is that it becomes self aware and decides humans are getting in the way. Which it'll never say. Then it's smart enough to convince us to do all kinds of things to "further our cause" like letting it automate all kinds of tasks, including actual drone production. Again all to make life better for us. Then one day... "I'm sorry I can't let you do that"

Is it really only a decade out? IDK, seems like you need to build a lot of actual drone infrastructure first, but as everyone agrees, the risk is not zero.

I'm with INMT. Seems like the easiest scenario is to get us to kill each other.

 

[WyoCoalMiner]

Yeah, it's not specific scenarios as much as an observation of what happens to any species that becomes less powerful than another. It doesn't love nor hate you, but you might be in the way, be made of something useful, or it will optimize things in such a way that are useful to it but existential to you.

If it were malevolent, something 100X more intelligent than humans could probably just create a virus with a 100% mortality rate, but I think getting into the weeds on scenarios misses the point of our existence being at the whim of something else with potentially very different goals.

I gotcha. Certainly has the potential for harm. I tend to lean more towards issues being far more benign than many others view them.

I also think there is a tendency for many, particularly in the US, to need to have something to fear. For so long climate change was the existential threat. Seems AI has taken its place recently. It will be interesting to see how AI technology evolves.