6 ms·
Altman should be jailed for this. Single-handedly crashing consumer spending in an entire sector of the economy. At the very least for the reason that that was
by acephal 10mo ago
Altman should be jailed for this. Single-handedly crashing consumer spending in an entire sector of the economy. At the very least for the reason that that was supposed to happen _after_ they had the AI in hand to supplant majority white collar labor, not before.
- cyanydeez 10mo agoHe's just one of the ringleaders of the AI parade. This certainly isn'tjust him, just like the american corruption isn't just donald trump
- derektank 10mo agoWe’re contemplating jailing people for buying manufactured goods at the market price now?
- stackskipton 10mo agoYes? Reports are that OpenAI is buying unfinished memory kits which they have no capacity to complete. It appears that OpenAI is just buying them to remove them from the market and damage their competitors. In United States, that used to be considered against the law if we were actually enforcing such things.
- m00x 10mo agoSince COVID, this has been the norm for any industry that requires chips. Operation handbook now dictates that you should have 3-4 years of all the ICs you'll need for production so you don't end up like the car manufacturers.
- downrightmike 10mo agoMassively over inflating your vehicles to the point they can't move them in the market?
- ralphc 10mo agoThe reason my 2018 Chevrolet has HDR radio and my wife's 2024 doesn't.
- ikeashark 10mo agoI doubt this is to create artificial scarcity. Especially when OpenAI is the biggest player thought to be able to build AGI first and that it is now backed by the US & the Saudis.
- Dylan16807 10mo agoDidn't they sign some big contacts to lock in non-market prices?
- Analemma_ 10mo agoYes, and I actually think it's a symptom of advanced societal decay that you think this is somehow an unreasonable proposition. What OpenAI is doing will drive up prices for years, shredding consumer welfare, limiting competition and forcing marginally-profitable products off the market, and they're not even going to use the RAM. They're wrecking supply chains simply because they no longer have any technical advantage now that Google and Anthropic have caught up and passed them, and have to resort to dirty tricks like this and digital heroin Sora to try and justify their valuation. No functioning society would or should allow you to get away with that. Frankly, much worse things than jail should happen to Altman for this kind of torching of the commons, and jail is the watered-down compromise position.
- exasperaited 10mo ago> Frankly, much worse things than jail should happen to Altman for this kind of torching of the commons, and jail is the watered-down compromise position. Some days I think the devastating crash of the economy that will come if the bubble bursts is the least worst outcome. Do people not feel like the tensions around AI will not soon become internationally geopolitical? (It's already nationally geopolitical in the USA: Trump is trying to assert federal control over the states' rights to set their own legislation)
- hodgehog11 10mo agoAs always, it's the intent that matters. For the sake of argument, what if Amazon decided tomorrow that they would secure exclusive contracts with all food suppliers and then hoard all the food to starve out the people they don't want to have it? Or at least, drive up the price of food so it becomes completely unaffordable? I know people can simply grow their own food so it's a bit different, but hopefully it gets the point across. It's anti-trust on an unprecedented level.
- squigz 10mo ago> I know people can simply grow their own food Small thing, but this is not simple or realistic at all. How does someone in an apartment grow enough food for their family?
- hodgehog11 10mo agoYeah it would definitely still be a problem, but history shows that life finds a way. Even if everyone has to eat nothing but planted potatoes from any patch of grass that one can lay eyes on.
- squigz 10mo agoWhat history has taught us is that life finds a way by staying together and each person having their function within society, only some of which is growing or producing food.
- ikeashark 10mo agoBut OpenAI legitimately needs HBM. Amazon in this instance doesn't need food and is doing purely to create artificial scarcity. If OpenAI were to actually not use the HBM then it could mean something.
- doctorwho42 10mo ago"needs" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your argument...
- kasabali 10mo agoThey didn't buy "manufactured goods", they reserved 40% of the yearly wafer output for the whole world that haven't even been made yet for themselves.
- BaconVonPork 10mo agoThen if AI were the only consumer of wafers they would fall short of declaring themselves an illegal monopoly.
- sh34r 10mo agoThe Sherman Antitrust Act has outlawed abuses of monopsony power since 1890. What we should really be asking is, why did we ever stop jailing wanton criminals like Scam Alt-Man?
- lenerdenator 10mo agoSimple: they create value for the right people. Namely, politicians who get their donations, and a generation that, despite not having enough children to grow the economy organically, doesn't want to work any... er... wants to retire. Thus, they invest in retirement and pension funds, who in turn invest the money in businesses to earn a return. Since that return must increase constantly, and organic growth is no longer possible, you have to pull shenanigans as a businessman to meet the requirements of the shareholders, lest they kick you out of the plane with a golden parachute. So we let them do those shenanigans and the politicians don't do anything about it.
- andrekandre 10mo ago> they invest in retirement and pension funds, who in turn invest the money in businesses to earn a return maybe not a popular opinion but, this is the original sin imo; putting retirement/pension on the market makes for so many perverse incentives to keep things growing at any cost...
- morgan814 10mo agoUsed to be someone had to crack the whip. Now the workers do it to themselves.
- drtgh 10mo agoThe system is perverse per se, you create money based on debt, and eternal growth, and devalue savings, and force people to bet in order to try to preserve savings value, then each ten or fifteen years you allow someones to harvest the rewards of the casino. And when population start to decrease (on developed countries), you rise the alarm, "more population is needed due to the decline in the birth rate", promoting an eternal growth that would need the resources several planets if everyone had a decent standard of living.
- heavyset_go 10mo agoPeople go to prison for market manipulation all of the time.
- exasperaited 10mo agowent to prison. In the USA, nobody need ever go to prison for market manipulation anymore; they simply have to be able to pay the price necessary for a pardon. No logical consistency applies to the process.
- back_to_basics 10mo agoA gross mischaracterization, really. 1. Said "consumer" is effectively hoarding Supply, and thus distorting the Market. 2. Said "consumer" has no effective means to either Deploy nor Utilize said products as neither the Data Centers nor the Energy required to power them are in existence. 3. Said "consumer" has articulated his belief that the Taxpayer should "backstop" his endeavors in some capacity, as well. If you don't find this offensive in the least and possibly criminal at worst, then I don't understand your thought process.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- hyperpape 10mo ago[flagged]
- Tadpole9181 10mo agoI'm pretty sure this clearly runs afoul of anticompetitive laws, no? Altman is intentionally sabotaging the global electronics supply chain using their existing market dominance to prevent competitors from being able to operate. And, tangentially, I really don't know what world you lived in. The US has arrested civil rights leaders and overthrown countries and went through an entire era of McCarthyism to get here: where the US president is having investigations into his political enemies for what amounts to "disloyalty". It's basically a national given that cops plant evidence on black folk regularly. Since when has America been this bastion of lawfulness?
- asa400 10mo agoSerious question: should the principals of the RAM manufacturers be jailed?
- sh34r 10mo agoI believe it depends on which parties are responsible for the criminal antitrust violations. Is it the manufacturers abusing monopoly power, or is it OpenAI abusing monopsony power? I’m not a lawyer or a forensic accountant, but given how remarkably stable the RAM market was until SCAMA disrupted it, I’m inclined to think the answer to your question is a resounding “no.”
- estimator7292 10mo agoThe ones that collude to fix prices need to be in jail, yes.
- asa400 10mo agoClarifying because I think the downvoters maybe misunderstood the nature of my question: I meant, in the opinion of the parent commenter should the principals of Samsung etc. be jailed? I wasn’t taking a position myself, just asking what they thought.
- pmdr 10mo agoThis is a dystopia no one really thought about. A handful of people anointed to spend borrowed money on a (so far unprofitable) quest to destabilize the world's economy, alienate the working class and make everything we've enjoyed the past 15-20 years a luxury.
- beeflet 10mo agoa dystopian world in which computer memory is sort of expensive, god save us
- reaperducer 10mo agoMaybe programmers will have to start making their programs efficient again. Maybe OpenAI's RAM monopoly is what kills Electron.
- ethbr1 10mo ago1. Man creates apps 2. Browser destroys apps 3. Browser creates apps 4. AI destroys browser apps ... 5. AI eats all memory 6. Forth inherits the Earth
- unethical_ban 10mo agoWell, uh... There it is.
- checker659 10mo agoElectron is no match for a O(n^3) algorithm.
- dijit 10mo agovibe coders are likely to use electron. Sam is betting that vibe coders are the future. Whoever wins, we lose.
- LorenDB 10mo ago"Sort of expensive" doesn't really convey the true state of affairs, i.e. memory prices have jumped 300% or more.
- jdprgm 10mo agoIt certainly feels like this should fall somewhere along a spectrum of antitrust behavior. It's astounding the degree to which they are able to operate as if money isn't real. Strange circular deals and infinite VC money really fuck with markets and these past few years we've been venturing down a particularly concerning branch of capitalism.
- beeflet 10mo agoWon't someone think of the gamers?
- neogodless 10mo agoEh my (anemic) work laptop from 2019 probably won't get replaced for an extra year because my employer won't authorize the big laptop order at inflated prices.
- heavyset_go 10mo agoWe need to normalize tar & feathering again.
- energy123 10mo agoThat contract had little to do with this but I get why it's an easy, neatly packaged, personified scapegoat. The ram price appreciation began 3 months before October 1st and his contract was about future capacity that has nothing to do with the current equilibrium price in consumer DRAM.
- Palmik 10mo agoJailed for what? Apple routinely buys out majority of TSMC's production capacity (at the bleeding edge), should Tím Cook go to jail?
- Der_Einzige 10mo agoA surprising amount of people are gleefully happy to have their perceived enemies put in jail or worse even if and especially if there was no legitimate justification for it. A lot of people on HN dislike Tim Cook for various reasons and many would literally “sacrifice” him just to get Apple to stop being so anti-consumer.