alt Hacker News> The issue would have been, for the AI bosses, that this takes time and doesn't create trillion dollar companies. It only creates companies that they'd actually have to run, long term, and that's boring.
I feel like you’re not acknowledging the inevitability of the technology being developed further. You’re also ignoring competition and the basic fact that people do research and push the boundaries of their field naturally.
If the major frontier AI labs had decided, as you said, to make a fancy autocomplete and a better Grammarly and then simply stop and coast, do you really believe that every AI researcher and entrepreneur in the entire world would look at the situation and decide that the status quo is where it should end?
Humans don’t work that way. People would get ideas and want to push the limit. If the frontier labs stopped developing their technology, other companies would be created to carry on. Academic researchers would push the limits further. It would be discovered that the AI could go further and we’d get back to this same eventuality with a different set of people leading it.
I also disagree with your characterization of this as a get rich quick scheme for AI leaders who want to make a lot of money and then be done. I think this characterization feels truthy if your only conception of startups is as a gamble to retire early, but the people who build and run these companies actually do like building and running companies. If the AI leaders and executive management you’re talking about were separated from their jobs today, even with billions of equity, most of them would be out starting new companies next month because that’s what people like that do. I’m not saying this to “glaze” them or whatever I’ll surely be accused of in the comments, I’m stating some facts about this space. You don’t need to look far to find examples of this already happening.
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“not acknowledging the inevitability of the technology being developed further”
This looks a lot like the “if I didn’t do $badthing someone else would have” line of reasoning.
we can outlaw those kinds of uses, im kinda split rn, most people arent happier with AI but it is empowering so many people, especially around obtuse labor laws etc, it is a double edged sword squared
You operate within the "logic" of capitalism, where no other value exists but the (short term) economic one.
AI indeed goes far beyond "autocomplete" and other nonsense. But the question is, whether it's a good idea to just let the "market" run wild with it.
Short-term capital interests don't align with the public good. AI greatly scales capability, but without anything to restrain it, that implies those non-aligned interests overwhelming society's defenses, outright destroying it in the process.
The idea of rich people being some kind of benevolent caretakers, who independently and dependably foresee and manage the consequences of their actions in everybody's best interest, is laughably wrong already.
With AI, that reality gap will swallow whatever is left.
I really don't like the excuses that are inherent to the "well it was inevitable" line of thinking. Oppenheimer was still responsible for the bomb despite it being "inevitable" in a similar way.
Despite this, when discussing the egregious behavior of the frontier labs, there is vanishingly little acceptance of the idea that 1) yes, it probably was inevitable in some ways AND 2) those involved, particularly at the top, are still responsible for the consequences of their (bad) decisions.