5 ms·

Seeing so much money rolling in, hard to not want a slice of the pie.

bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
Only hard if you're that kind of person. Not everyone is like that. And those kind of people have difficulty believing this.
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  Everyone is like that when the number is potentially in the trillions. There are just people who are like that and people who think they aren’t because they’ve never been within a digit grouping of it.
  - phito 2y ago
    There definitely are people who aren't like that. Not a lot for sure, but they exist.
  - mandmandam 2y ago
    There are many examples through history proving you wrong. * Frederick Banting sold the patent for insulin to the University of Toronto for just $1. * Tim Berners-Lee decided not to patent the web, making it free for public use. * Jonas Salk refused to patent the polio vaccine - "can you patent the sun?" * Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds could have easily sold humanity out for untold billions. * Chuck Feeny silently gave away $8bn, keeping only a few million. ... And in any case, this is an extreme situation. AI is an existential threat/opportunity. Allowing it to be sidestepped into the hands of Sam "sell me your retinal scans for $50" Altman is fucking insane, and that's putting it lightly.
    - arlcode 2y ago
      I'm very happy that the EU got into the game early and started regulating AI. It's way easier to adapt an existing framework one way or the other if the political part is already done. I don't trust the AI industry to be a good stewart even less then the tech industry in general and when the area where I live has a chance at avoiding the worst outcome (even if at a price) in this technological transition I'm taking it.
    - Clubber 2y ago
      Also, most of the robber barons of the early Industrial Revolution gave away all or most their wealth. https://factmyth.com/factoids/the-robber-barons-gave-most-of-their-fortunes-to-charity https://factmyth.com/factoids/the-robber-barons-gave-most-of... https://www.carnegie.org/about/our-history/gospelofwealth/ https://www.carnegie.org/about/our-history/gospelofwealth/
      - mattmaroon 2y ago
        Giving away much of one’s wealth is very different than choosing not to accumulate it in the first place. It’s hard to find someone who has gotten to a position where they might have a reasonable shot at becoming the world’s wealthiest person who doesn’t think they’d be a great steward of the wealth. It makes much more sense for a titan of industry to make as much as they can and then give much away than it does to simply not make it.
    - mattmaroon 2y ago
      These are all examples of people who were not even remotely looking at the sums of money involved in AGI, both in terms of investment required and reward. I used “trillions” rather than “billions” for a reason. Inflation adjust it all you want, none of these passed up 1/10th of this opportunity.
      - mandmandam 2y ago
        It's possible Tim Berners-Lee gave up hundreds of billions. Regardless, you've missed the point. Some people value their integrity over $trillions, and refuse to sell humanity out. Others would sell you out for $50. Or to put it another way: Some people have enough, and some never will.
        mattmaroon 2y ago
        It is not possible he could have thought that in 1992. It’s probably not even possible that he passed up one billion. Had he tried he’d likely have lost out to open standards like so many others did. You could prove me wrong easily. Find someone who raised (inflation adjusted) tens of billions, had the opportunity to make trillions, and declined. You can’t. You can likely take that down two orders of magnitude and still not succeed. People who did some work on their own and open sourced something small that turned into something huge are not even close to what we’re talking here. They didn’t turn down a trillion, they turned down $100k that turned into a trillion later. It isn’t about integrity. It’s about how humans rationalize. “Nobody is being hurt here.” “This can improve humanity.” “I’ll do good things with the money.” It’s easy to say people have “integrity” when you just define it as adhering to your belief system when the stakes seem low, not their belief system when the stakes are clearly high.
        mandmandam 2y ago
        > It isn’t about integrity. Oh, but it is. That's exactly what this is about. As pointed out much earlier in the thread, it's generally the people who lack integrity that fail to acknowledge or recognize it in others. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" - You don't have to be Jesus to understand the sense of this quote. Just be honest and observant.
  - bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
    What you're showing me is you don't know very many different people.
  - sgu999 2y ago
    Illustrating that part of the parent comment: > And those kind of people have difficulty believing this.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > Everyone is like that when the number is potentially in the trillions No, we're really not all like that. I stopped caring about money at 6 digits a decade ago, and I'm not even at 7 digits now because I don't care for the accumulation of stuff — if money had been my goal, I'd have gone to Silicon Valley rather than to Berlin, and even unexciting work would have put me between 7 and 8 digits by this point. I can imagine a world in which I had made "the right choices" with bitcoin and Apple stocks — perfect play would have had me own all of it — and then I realised this would simply have made me a Person Of Interest to national intelligence agencies, not given me anything I would find more interesting than what I do with far less. I can imagine a future AI (in my lifetime, even) and a VN replicator, which rearranges the planet Mercury into a personal O'Neill cylinder for each and every human — such structures would exceed trillions of USD per unit if built today. Cool, I'll put a full-size model of the Enterprise D inside mine, and possibly invite friends over to play Star Fleet Battles using the main bridge viewscreen. But otherwise, what's the point? I already live somewhere nice. > There are just people who are like that and people who think they aren’t because they’ve never been within a digit grouping of it. Does it seem that way to you because you yourself have unbounded desire, or because the most famous business people in the world seem so? People like me don't make the largest of waves. (Well, not unless HN karma counts…)
    - snapcaster 2y ago
      You think buying apple stock and bitcoin would put you on the radar of intelligence agencies? Wouldn't that grouping be some massive number of middle class millennials?
      - ben_w 2y ago
        Perhaps I wasn't clear. When I wrote: > perfect play would have had me own all of it I meant literally all of it: with perfect play and the benefit of hindsight, starting with the money I had in c. 2002 from summer holiday jobs and initially using it for Apple trades until bitcoin was invented, it was possible to own all the bitcoin in existence with the right set of trades. Heck, never mind perfect play, at current rates two single trades would have made me the single richest person on the planet: buying $1k of Apple stock at the right time, then selling it all for $20k when it was 10,000 BTC for some pizzas. (But also, the attempt would almost certainly have broken the currency as IMO there's not really that much liquidity).
- pdpi 2y ago
  It's a "courage isn't the absence of fear" sort of situation. I don't think there's many people out there who would not be tempted at all to take some of that money for themselves. Rather, people are willing and able to rise above that temptation.
  - causal 2y ago
    Ehh, there's a lot of space between "desperately in need" and "wanting to seize billions in equity".
vrighter 2y ago
What money? Aren't most (all?) AI companies are operating at a loss?
- jsheard 2y ago
  The ones selling the shovels are doing well, but otherwise yeah nobody is making any money. For the true believers that's just a temporary setback on the way to becoming trillionaires though.
  - alan-hn 2y ago
    I think the people getting salaries are doing just fine
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - opdahl 2y ago
    Well they are spending billions to make shovels that they are selling for millions (roughly).
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - jsheard 2y ago
      The shovel salesmen in this case are the likes of Nvidia, Huggingface and Runpod who are on the receiving end of the billions that AI model salesmen are spending to make millions in revenue. HF are one of the vanishingly few AI-centric startups who claim to already be profitable, because they're positioned as a money sink for the other AI-centric startups who are bleeding cash.
    - gklitz 2y ago
      5 billions in losses on 3.7 billions in revenue. So yes OpenAI is losing money, but they are looking at a valuation of 150 billion, so they could easily get investors to fund the losses, but of cause the case for investors has to be “invest and you can make a profit” which can be a tough sell if the mission isn’t aligned with making a profit for the company.

Only hard if you're that kind of person. Not everyone is like that. And those kind of people have difficulty believing this.

mattmaroon 2y ago
Everyone is like that when the number is potentially in the trillions. There are just people who are like that and people who think they aren’t because they’ve never been within a digit grouping of it.
- phito 2y ago
  There definitely are people who aren't like that. Not a lot for sure, but they exist.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  There are many examples through history proving you wrong. * Frederick Banting sold the patent for insulin to the University of Toronto for just $1. * Tim Berners-Lee decided not to patent the web, making it free for public use. * Jonas Salk refused to patent the polio vaccine - "can you patent the sun?" * Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds could have easily sold humanity out for untold billions. * Chuck Feeny silently gave away $8bn, keeping only a few million. ... And in any case, this is an extreme situation. AI is an existential threat/opportunity. Allowing it to be sidestepped into the hands of Sam "sell me your retinal scans for $50" Altman is fucking insane, and that's putting it lightly.
  - arlcode 2y ago
    I'm very happy that the EU got into the game early and started regulating AI. It's way easier to adapt an existing framework one way or the other if the political part is already done. I don't trust the AI industry to be a good stewart even less then the tech industry in general and when the area where I live has a chance at avoiding the worst outcome (even if at a price) in this technological transition I'm taking it.
  - Clubber 2y ago
    Also, most of the robber barons of the early Industrial Revolution gave away all or most their wealth. https://factmyth.com/factoids/the-robber-barons-gave-most-of-their-fortunes-to-charity https://factmyth.com/factoids/the-robber-barons-gave-most-of... https://www.carnegie.org/about/our-history/gospelofwealth/ https://www.carnegie.org/about/our-history/gospelofwealth/
    - mattmaroon 2y ago
      Giving away much of one’s wealth is very different than choosing not to accumulate it in the first place. It’s hard to find someone who has gotten to a position where they might have a reasonable shot at becoming the world’s wealthiest person who doesn’t think they’d be a great steward of the wealth. It makes much more sense for a titan of industry to make as much as they can and then give much away than it does to simply not make it.
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    These are all examples of people who were not even remotely looking at the sums of money involved in AGI, both in terms of investment required and reward. I used “trillions” rather than “billions” for a reason. Inflation adjust it all you want, none of these passed up 1/10th of this opportunity.
    - mandmandam 2y ago
      It's possible Tim Berners-Lee gave up hundreds of billions. Regardless, you've missed the point. Some people value their integrity over $trillions, and refuse to sell humanity out. Others would sell you out for $50. Or to put it another way: Some people have enough, and some never will.
      - mattmaroon 2y ago
        It is not possible he could have thought that in 1992. It’s probably not even possible that he passed up one billion. Had he tried he’d likely have lost out to open standards like so many others did. You could prove me wrong easily. Find someone who raised (inflation adjusted) tens of billions, had the opportunity to make trillions, and declined. You can’t. You can likely take that down two orders of magnitude and still not succeed. People who did some work on their own and open sourced something small that turned into something huge are not even close to what we’re talking here. They didn’t turn down a trillion, they turned down $100k that turned into a trillion later. It isn’t about integrity. It’s about how humans rationalize. “Nobody is being hurt here.” “This can improve humanity.” “I’ll do good things with the money.” It’s easy to say people have “integrity” when you just define it as adhering to your belief system when the stakes seem low, not their belief system when the stakes are clearly high.
        mandmandam 2y ago
        > It isn’t about integrity. Oh, but it is. That's exactly what this is about. As pointed out much earlier in the thread, it's generally the people who lack integrity that fail to acknowledge or recognize it in others. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" - You don't have to be Jesus to understand the sense of this quote. Just be honest and observant.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
  What you're showing me is you don't know very many different people.
- sgu999 2y ago
  Illustrating that part of the parent comment: > And those kind of people have difficulty believing this.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > Everyone is like that when the number is potentially in the trillions No, we're really not all like that. I stopped caring about money at 6 digits a decade ago, and I'm not even at 7 digits now because I don't care for the accumulation of stuff — if money had been my goal, I'd have gone to Silicon Valley rather than to Berlin, and even unexciting work would have put me between 7 and 8 digits by this point. I can imagine a world in which I had made "the right choices" with bitcoin and Apple stocks — perfect play would have had me own all of it — and then I realised this would simply have made me a Person Of Interest to national intelligence agencies, not given me anything I would find more interesting than what I do with far less. I can imagine a future AI (in my lifetime, even) and a VN replicator, which rearranges the planet Mercury into a personal O'Neill cylinder for each and every human — such structures would exceed trillions of USD per unit if built today. Cool, I'll put a full-size model of the Enterprise D inside mine, and possibly invite friends over to play Star Fleet Battles using the main bridge viewscreen. But otherwise, what's the point? I already live somewhere nice. > There are just people who are like that and people who think they aren’t because they’ve never been within a digit grouping of it. Does it seem that way to you because you yourself have unbounded desire, or because the most famous business people in the world seem so? People like me don't make the largest of waves. (Well, not unless HN karma counts…)
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    You think buying apple stock and bitcoin would put you on the radar of intelligence agencies? Wouldn't that grouping be some massive number of middle class millennials?
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Perhaps I wasn't clear. When I wrote: > perfect play would have had me own all of it I meant literally all of it: with perfect play and the benefit of hindsight, starting with the money I had in c. 2002 from summer holiday jobs and initially using it for Apple trades until bitcoin was invented, it was possible to own all the bitcoin in existence with the right set of trades. Heck, never mind perfect play, at current rates two single trades would have made me the single richest person on the planet: buying $1k of Apple stock at the right time, then selling it all for $20k when it was 10,000 BTC for some pizzas. (But also, the attempt would almost certainly have broken the currency as IMO there's not really that much liquidity).
pdpi 2y ago
It's a "courage isn't the absence of fear" sort of situation. I don't think there's many people out there who would not be tempted at all to take some of that money for themselves. Rather, people are willing and able to rise above that temptation.
- causal 2y ago
  Ehh, there's a lot of space between "desperately in need" and "wanting to seize billions in equity".

vrighter 2y ago

What money? Aren't most (all?) AI companies are operating at a loss?

jsheard 2y ago
The ones selling the shovels are doing well, but otherwise yeah nobody is making any money. For the true believers that's just a temporary setback on the way to becoming trillionaires though.
- alan-hn 2y ago
  I think the people getting salaries are doing just fine
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- opdahl 2y ago
  Well they are spending billions to make shovels that they are selling for millions (roughly).
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - jsheard 2y ago
    The shovel salesmen in this case are the likes of Nvidia, Huggingface and Runpod who are on the receiving end of the billions that AI model salesmen are spending to make millions in revenue. HF are one of the vanishingly few AI-centric startups who claim to already be profitable, because they're positioned as a money sink for the other AI-centric startups who are bleeding cash.
  - gklitz 2y ago
    5 billions in losses on 3.7 billions in revenue. So yes OpenAI is losing money, but they are looking at a valuation of 150 billion, so they could easily get investors to fund the losses, but of cause the case for investors has to be “invest and you can make a profit” which can be a tough sell if the mission isn’t aligned with making a profit for the company.