Sam Altman says OpenAI wants to sell intelligence like a utility
During a recent appearance at BlackRock in Washington, D.C., OpenAI’s Sam Altman, shared his vision for the future of AI. At one point saying, “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”
Altman was describing a world where AI becomes a foundational infrastructure, something woven into everyday life so deeply that consumers and businesses simply “plug into” it the same way they rely on electricity, Wi-Fi or running water.
ever since feudalism fell, dipshits all over the world have had one thing in mind: bring it back. now they’re almost there. and the peasants are all too ready to give it back.
Literally the future capitalism has always wanted; all common resources seized from the public for the good of private equity.
No, we wont
The dude changes his pricing model everytime he’s interviewed. Dude has no idea what he wants to do, so long as it’s billable.
He just wants money
I would like to popularize his alter ego, scam fartman. I cannot speak my level of disdain for this welfare queen.
I was heartened by college graduates booing these assholes.
I’m not anti-AI, but anti whatever fresh hell they are unloading unto the masses. This is something that requires careful planning to ensure we don’t devastate resources or stall critical think skills and knowledge.
This is one of the hardest points for me to articulate, trying to convince everyday folks including families and friends that these Technologies are actively making us dumber.
Wiring up a solar and battery array, and then wiring up an entire miniature rack mount full of tech myself using ‘AI’ was absolutely critical in understanding the Nuance between different products and between different wiring schemes, but I realized after about 3 months that I was spending at least 15 times a day asking about the ampacity of different wire gauges (“how much current can this gauge of wire carry safely? What about that gauge of wire?”) Before I finally just made a table of common wire gauges in both aluminum and copper, and then printed it out and tacked it onto my wall like it was still 1997.
I reduced my net time spent querying by at least 20% in the past month by looking at my patterns.
This isn’t a brag. This is me admitting that I got stupid and then I’m forgetting the power isn’t knowing stuff but in having that knowledge at our fingertips, and that asking some mega Data Center two states away to boil half their freshwater and brown out half their town so that I can be told that I really do have to up my wiring material, makes me feel gross.
Seriously. I’ve used it a couple times at work (in education) solely because i needed to fit a rubric in our LMS and the fucking UI to do it means I would’ve spent an hour, whereas the API just filled shit in as placeholders and editing was faster than creating.
Otherwise, I do my work by hand. I even set up excel sheets to do stuff for me like flag grade patterns or grade exams with a typed-in key. It’s almost fun, but I work with so many people who insist that “claude can do it” but then can’t have a followup conversation about what we supposedly discussed via email.
stall critical thinking skills and knowledge
That’s the point. They want people dumb so they can sell “intelligence” to people.
This is fine.
Well ofcourse first step to this is to cultivate an environment where most people lose their skills or don’t train them at all. So I bet each time someone uses AI for exams they have a little orgasm.
Don’t get me wrong, I am open to the idea of AI tools as productivity enhancers, especially local models with open weights. But the OP puts what these tech bros want more aptly then I ever could, they want to monopolize on intelligence and skills.
I’ll sell Sam Altman an ounce of dignity, only a small 1 billion dollar fee.
Putting aside that what they sell is not even inteligence: if they are providing a utility, then let’s regulate them like a utility, e.g. electricity distribution
The wording also struck a nerve because many AI models were trained on enormous amounts of publicly available internet data such as books, articles, forums and creative work created by millions of people who were never directly compensated.
That’s much too kind. We were never indirectly compensated, either.
…you didn’t get your check?
Came just in time for me and has solved so many issues. I’d suggest calling about it. Anyway, gotta run, christening party for the new boat!
and creative work created by millions of people who were never directly compensated.
That’s much too kind. We were never indirectly compensated, either.
We were never even asked for permission to use our works and words.
Stealing your original work so you can pay for a regurgitated version of it.
Snake oil salesman is saying that snake oil is a cure for everything.
So basically a world in which the only ideas that exist are approved by AI companies? I know evocations of 1984 have been a cliche for ages but
They don’t have intelligence, they have spicy AutoCorrect
Technically spicy autocorrect is still AI. But technically a simple checkers program on a $5 Chinese gaming console is also AI, as long as it implements just some small aspect of intelligence. That technicality is exploited like crazy by the LLM hypers.
so… even if it’s not complete AGI, it’s still extremely helpful for many industries, and extremely disruptive. There are long ways to go with it, but even these intermediate products are massive.
Having said that, it’s also in a bubble or the peak of the hype cycle. That doesn’t mean it’s nothing though. It will cause massive upheaval.
ah “disruptive”
It’s so useless for niche topics it’s not even funny… which is the only thing I’d ever want actual AI for in the first place.
