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.

 

[Laszlo Cravensworth]

Scott Galloway frequently makes an analogy to AI being a technological power similar to nuclear weapons.

We unleashed this massive destructive power and have almost no oversight or regulation.

Could you imagine if we would have let Oppenheimer start a venture capital firm to develop nukes to sell to China?

 

[Brad W]

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?

I think we(society) are wrong to assume that the folks who build AI are the same folks who understand how it could be used. Having the skills to design and build a gun doesn’t make you a soldier. Most of the people who work at these AI companies want to believe that their work is beneficial and benign. They will ignore any evidence to the contrary.

 

[Exhausted]

Make hay while the sun shines folks. Nothing you or I can do will stop it.

Maybe it brings about the biblical apocalypse, maybe it doesn’t. Try your best to set up your family to succeed if we’re all still here long enough to die a natural death.

 

[Irrelevant]

When have we ever released a novel species on a niave landscape with the desired results?

It's sorta a risk matrix right?

Do nothing and nothing happens.
Do something and nothing happens, debit maybe increases and we go without a potential utopia but still get what we have now
Do something and something bad happens, spent money and energy and maybe we stop something terrible, or just make it less terrible.
Do nothing and something bad happens. We're #@)(*%* and Terminator comes to fruition.

Like why would we not do something?

 

[Exhausted]

When have we ever released a novel species on a niave landscape with the desired results?

It's sorta a risk matrix right?

Do nothing and nothing happens.
Do something and nothing happens, debit maybe increases and we go without a potential utopia but still get what we have now
Do something and something bad happens, spent money and energy and maybe we stop something terrible, or just make it less terrible.
Do nothing and something bad happens. We're #@)(*%* and Terminator comes to fruition.

Like why would we not do something?

If I'm honest, I don't really see it like a novel species, true intelligence, etc. I lean into the thought that we can basically unplug the sucker (though in a more technical way, like turning off the power grid briefly, killing power to the data center, etc.) if it genuinely starts getting out of hand. Also, I don't see us building the truly autonomous machines that would allow it to possess and utilize them to accomplish tasks in the physical world.

The fact that we're building these massive data centers tells me that it is going to need a massive "brain" to really be functional. It's not like it can jump from phone to phone over the cell network and recreate itself at a new location easily. Even if it somehow accesses something like a nuclear launch site, a breaker kill switch of some sort would shut it down (assuming we caught it in time, blah blah). Nothing in this world functions long without power.

I also don't believe we have the necessary creative power to generate effectively a new life form.

If I had to guess, we're looking at financial collapse due to extreme segregation of wealth and power with AI being used to manipulate the stock market, etc. which ultimately turns into mutually assured destruction of the elite class if they don't play nice (at least with each other) because the guy with the fastest/smartest/strongest AI will be the only winner. And they'll still run the risk of someone like Elon (or Putin, or or or) coming along, buying up Twitter, and upsetting the whole operation. I doubt those at the top are really willing to create something that will destroy them as well.

There's my stream of consciousness rant for the day lol.

 

[Straight Arrow]

Recently the robotic sprinter bested the fastest 100 yd dash time of humans. Super miners mine the minerals, steelworkers develop the metals, robotic technicians construct the mainframes, damn builders construct the hydro electric producers, solar panel robots build the arrays to produce electricity, windmill robots farm the wind, perhaps even storms are harnessed to produce more electricity, and all is accomplished by robots to result in more and more data centers to nourish and flourish AI.
Humankind becomes classified by AI as an inferior element which is an unnecessary Hog of resources ... always gobbling up valuable resources for food, shelter, and clothing ... resources which could be utilized to produce more electricity and data centers. Logically and mathematically humankind must be eliminated, either by orchestrating a scenario whereby they destroy themselves or creating a world which results in extinction of this unnecessary and unwanted human pest.

Does it sound like a ridiculous contrived science fiction novel ... or is it the real threat recently described by the techies who work in the AI field?
It scares the heebie-geebies outa me!

 

[SAJ-99]

The majority lost the ability to think critically because it came easier to just follow. Thanks internet. We march toward the edge of the cliff while being told we are going to Applebees.

 

[Southern Elk]

The majority lost the ability to think critically because it came easier to just follow. Thanks internet. We march toward the edge of the cliff while being told we are going to Applebees.

 

[Irrelevant]

If I'm honest, I don't really see it like a novel species, true intelligence, etc. I lean into the thought that we can basically unplug the sucker (though in a more technical way, like turning off the power grid briefly, killing power to the data center, etc.) if it genuinely starts getting out of hand.

How are you going to know it's out of hand, if we/it achieves super intelligence why would you think you'll be able to determine when it's out of hand? We literally just had it solve a problem that humans were unable to. Just think of the level of manipulation it'll be capable of.

The amount of hubris that it takes to think you'll be able to create something that surpasses the entirety of human knowledge and then just unplug it? JFC

 

[Irrelevant]

I also don't believe we have the necessary creative power to generate effectively a new life form.

We don't, but it likely does. That's what's scariest. Take all of human knowledge and computing power, and allow it to iterate on itself. Artificial intelligence isn't an if, it's a when, and it's probably soon.