The issue is not just individual wealth but also wealth of nations. Certain countries have been more successful through industrialization, colonization and hoarding a lot of global resources. It is likely this will continue in the future.

A true Scotsman wrote a book about this, _The Wealth of Nations_. He observed how politicians use wars to increase taxes. Tech companies are exploiting our fear of AGI to get voluntary taxes. Time to give Henney Penny a call.

This is your conclusion from the drama at OpenAI? The tech companies are "exploiting our fear of AGI to get voluntary taxes". I don't know what planet you're on, but it doesn't seem to be the same one I think I'm on.

What do you call it when corporations with more money than you can imagine use that to convince you to buy things you don't need?

There's a lot of things you could call it.

"getting voluntary taxes" doesn't spring to the top of the list.

That is an odd way to thank me for opening your mind on this planet.

Don't worry, the petroleum moguls actions may just negate the long term impact of AGI on humanity anyway. Ie Cliamte Change will beat them to the "kill all humans" phase of AGI.

I don’t understand this sentiment. Aren’t consumers doing the burning?

I'd like to have the choice not to. I have extremely limited options for that.

And I already live in a country which regularly has all of its electricity generated renewably.

> I'd like to have the choice not to.

your choice can't be outcome based. i.e., you can't want to choose an option where you obtain the same electricity and energy and comforts, but with no pollution and with the same cost. Because such a choice never existed at the time, and will likely never exist until we discover fusion.

Your choice was to just not consume. And you didnt take that choice.

You can choose to join a hippie farming commune. You don't have a choice to force Jimbo to get rid of his F-350 and to not get mad at the government whenever gas or prices rise.

> You can choose to join a hippie farming commune.

It is very difficult to reply to such a sentiment in a productive way

I want to live in my community, I want my community to exist in peace until it changes, by natural evolution, into something unrecognizable, and to keep doing until the end of time

True, I could abandon my community and go live in a monastery. Or I could gather up the greed heads and gun them down like dogs

I choose neither

I choose, chose, to do the work to change the world one Hacker News comment at a time....

You have all the choice in the world. If you want, you can literally go and do subsistence farming — there are plenty countries in the world with extremely lax visa situation and plenty of empty land.

Of course, doing this would extremely hard and dangerous. But living an easier and safer life is the whole point of the industrial revolution and it's consequences, so if you truly believe that it's the disaster for the human race, this should not be a problem.

Any meaningful impact has to come from governments, from large companies, and from huge numbers of concerned citizens.

One person running off to live in the woods does nothing except make them miserable, or happy, or both.

Well that is a convenient answer.

> You have all the choice in the world

Untrue. Choices are very constrained. We are not isolated individuals, and we need our families and communities

> If you want, you can literally go and do subsistence farming

That would be very selfish. And wanting to place limits, short of infinity, on private wealth is not a vow of poverty

> there are plenty countries in the world with extremely lax visa situation and plenty of empty land.

No there are not!

Why don't you have the choice to not burn it if you are willing to pay the price? I can hardly think of anything for which there is no electric counterpart.

Any inventor should attempt to understand how their work relates to Jevon's Paradox. Being ignorant of it at this point is hardly excusable.

Yeah we need to ban profit because GPT can do grade school math

Your type of thinking is just reinforcing why AI safety research needs to exist.

> What would Sam do or not do, for profit?

Sam is smart and commands genuine loyalty and respect. If it’s troublesome for Sam to do it, then we can fix that with laws. We are good at that!

The problem with OpenAI wasn’t/isn’t any one person. The problem is the structure. Fix that, stop pretending you’re an altruistic outfit and then we can sensibly talk about regulation.

This comment reads like an OpenAI employee typed this...

Ha, read my comments over the past days. I was giving a strong benefit of doubt to the board.

Well, you could be bitter, twisted, and cynical

I like you better being generous....