5 ms·
Which is a good thing. Self-serving motives are more reliable than altruistic ones.
by oefrha 3mo ago
Which is a good thing. Self-serving motives are more reliable than altruistic ones.
- nubg 3mo agoVery interesting take
- broodbucket 3mo agoLook at how far OpenAI has drifted from their original mission. Everything comes back to greed, so it's ideal for the world if selfish motives happen to coincide with what's good for the world, like advancements in open models
- spongebobstoes 3mo agocan you elaborate? the original mission was "advance digital intelligence in a way that benefits all of humanity" I don't see an inconsistency. money is pragmatic, the mission needs money
- threethirtytwo 3mo agoEvery company on the face of the earth has a mission statement involving some bs goal that sounds altruistic. For a good example look at googles mission statement. The real mission statement for most companies is to make as much money as possible.
- spongebobstoes 3mo agoGoogle is only a good example because you can point to major inconsistencies between their mission and their actions OpenAI might have the same flaw, but you need to demonstrate it, not just assume it
- roenxi 3mo agoIt's a standard take since it is how markets tend to work. They aren't powered by altruism, it is a big system for turning greed into good results. We don't have all this stuff because people suddenly woke up one morning and decided to be nice.
- breezybottom 3mo agoYes but there's more to the world than markets.
- wqaatwt 3mo agoOn aggregate mainly because humans often tend to behave “irrationally” due to various reasons though
- lelanthran 3mo agoI don't understand what is interesting about it: it's the default. Markets don't run on altruism.
- FooBarWidget 3mo agoThe standard is applied very inconsistently. Nobody accuses the local bakery of being motivated by profit, and that they don't bake bread for you out of altruism.
- woctordho 3mo agoAnd humans don't run on markets.
- throw1234567891 3mo agoNeither on altruism.
- wqaatwt 3mo agoMostly they kind of do since we do live in an utopian society of unlimited abundance. Extremely few people can afford to (or want to) spend a very large number of working hours without ever getting anything directly in return for it.
- idiotsecant 3mo agoI think you made a typo of saying do instead of don't and totally reversed your argument
- AlecSchueler 3mo agoIsn't it the entire basis of capitalism?
- amelius 3mo agoYou mean more predictable, not more reliable.
- rrvsh 3mo agoCould you explain? (asking in good faith)
- IshKebab 3mo agoI don't think so. I can confidently predict that altruism will give you a very unreliable income stream in the vast majority of cases.
- threethirtytwo 3mo agoDisagree. It’s More reliable.
- intended 3mo agoThe world runs on incentives. Altruism/Self-serving are down stream of that. Wikipedia is altruistic, and serves humanity quite well.
- theturtletalks 3mo agoOpen-source is also altruistic. If DeepSeek does become self-serving once they get the top spot, it doesn’t take away from the altruistic contributions that they made towards open models.
- brookst 3mo agoAnd ultimately the motivation for those contributions just doesn’t matter, except to those who like to anthropomorphize company and argue about their souls.
- wqaatwt 3mo ago> Open-source is also altruistic Contributing to it might not necessarily be. Most open source development is funded by large companies after all and from their perspective it can function as a cost saving measure. Allowing them to focus on their core products and removing the possibility of their rivals from getting a competitive advantage due to having a superior low level stack under their product. Which is why open source is so successful in areas where software is a cost-center but mostly failed for consumer products (since spending resources on them would actually be altruistic unlike e.g. Linux kernel development)
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- localdeclan 3mo agoAgreed