They're pretending like they didn't enter into this agreement last January and are completely entrenched in intelligence programs already. They are trying to make it look like they are stepping up in a time of need (time of need for the DoD), in reality they sold their soul to intelligence and the military a year ago.
I posted about this here after Sam made his tweet:
Sam Altman is lying and taking advantage of PR right now by saying that they've reached an agreement TONIGHT with the DoD. They've been approved for top secret use since last January...
He's lying, they entered into this agreement last January. We also found out two weeks ago that OpenAI was built into a government panel for a mass surveillance network that looked for high profile people, and politically important people when their IDs were uploaded[1]
Altman and Elon couldn't beat Dario on merit, so they went the regulatory route and got their friends at the DoD to help them out.. Capitalism and free markets eh, I can't say I feel bad for Dario though.
They've been using their most dangerous model, 4o, in classified systems since last January.. The same model that made a bunch of people lose their mind and commit violence.. funny how that works.
Yeah, I find it funny how we're now defending these AI companies, when they're clearly still an enemy of the working class.
They've made it incredibly clear their plans are to disenfranchise labor, and welcome in a world of God knows what with their technologies. Like they're making a stand on mass surveillance, this seems a bit like a red herring, cool they stop using their tools for war fighting, but continue to attack their fellow working working class?
All three of these companies are spending hundreds of millions to psyop decision makers across every industry to give your salary to them. Get out of here, with "We will not be divided" OpenAI, Google and Anthropic employees are not friends of labor and should not use our phrases.. or they'd sabotage and or quit.
And why is there no mention of how we caught OpenAI being used in government dashboards through Persona, only two weeks ago, that were directly connected to intelligence organizations and tools to identify if you are politician or high profile personds? OpenAI has been complicit in this since last January when 4o was the first model that qualified for "top secret operations"
(kind of weird how 4o went onto cause a bunch of people to go literally insane and commit crazy acts of violence yet is allowed to be used in the most sensitive aspects of government.. nothing to see here).
If the AI companies and the current administration are both enemies of the working class - I am not necessarily saying that they are, but for the sake of argument let's say that they are - then it probably makes strategic sense for the working class to encourage them to fight each other while supporting the side that is less dangerous. Which side is less dangerous to the working class, I do not know. My point is that there's not necessarily any strategic contradiction between defending the AI companies and supporting the working class.
I look at specific actions in context. What Anthropic did today was amazing in my eyes for reasons that are widely held and stated clearly by Anthropic.
At the same time, I might gesture at other actions they’ve done that fall short. This is not inconsistent; this is simply acknowledging miltidimensionality.
Or its just incredible marketing.. I don't really care about what LLMs do in a military context, they'd probably make a military less effective which is good in my opinion. I find it a pretty silly notion to use them outside of maybe signals intelligence, seems actually dumb as hell to use them for targeting. Other types of ML models in a military context worry me far more than neural network powered autocomplete.
I think we should worry way more about Anthropic's attack on the working class, Dario has been very clear those intentions, and we shouldn't be patting them on the back. We should be boycotting all of these companies that say [insert computer i/o career] is dead .
If you must use Think For Me SaaS use an Open Source model.
Maybe its replacing the simplistic forms of backend web development and the keast capable frontend devs. If your job was building with DaisyUI/Tailwind you're prob replaceable by this tech. People building their first SaaS are amazed (its literally heroin for non technical idea guys). But serious engineers I know, old heads, don't seem to be that impressed and neither am I.
I don't see it competing with anyone doing anything serious, outside of ML engineers and lets be honest, they always sucked at writing code, hated writing code so its not surprising how much they sing it's praise.
You are VC. Your opinion literally doesn't matter, you're high on your own supply. I go to lunches and dinners with people like yourself frequently and every VC and finance guy wont stop talking about their idiotic delusions of having an AI workforce (slaves). You people yearn for the days of slavery again, but without humans.
Have fun during the neo-French Revolution Mr. VC, hope you made enough to fill your safe room with treats!
Stoping trying to cope that AI/LLM augmented automation isn't to blame here. equities and profits are at all time highs, rates are still really low!! This has nothing to do with the cost of money.
It doesn't matter if AI is effective at reducing head count, it only matters that decision makers believe it will! If they go on twitter and see "SWE is dead" "4th industrial revolution is here" ect ect, they will eventually fall for the psyop and give half of their payroll to an AI company (or someone claiming they can do this)..
It will all backfire, probably, but in the meantime 400k SWEs have been laid off in the last 16 months while profits and equities are at all time highs. You can try to say its not AI, but I really think that's cope.
Go have lunch with a C-suite / decision maker in tech, they won't shut up about how all the jobs are going to be bots in the near future (and how rich it will make them). They are sincerly stupid but until then lives/families are going to get crushed and Dalio and Altman or similar people are going to continue to convince these people to give your salary to them..
Props to block for letting people keep their devices, and helping people out, its more than most companies but this absolutely has to do with AI BS. They've been itching to cut human labor out of the equation since slavery was crushed. They yearn for labor that doesn't demand a paycheck (slaves).
>Stoping trying to cope that AI/LLM augmented automation isn't to blame here.
It's not cope. The math just isn't mathing. the efficiencies advertiesed don't match the layoff proportions. The earning call employment counts don't match with the idea that they are "downsizing" as a company (meanwhile, what semblence of truth we have left in the job numbers DO suggest that we lost a lot of white collar jobs in 2024/5). The output error of deployed products don't match the sentiment that AI is leading to equal/higher quality software. The volume of litigation doesn't match this sentiment that "AI is here to stay".
This is less about whatever I personally think of AI (and especially its future) and more acknowledging that this is simply an irrational market. Yes, the market can indeed remain irrational longer than I can stay solvent. But that irrationality also has a time limit. I'm sure people in 1928 can point to how high its stocks were too.
Because it doesn't matter if it actually works, or is creating efficiencies. As long as they can justify making a huge % of labor unemployed, not just SWE. The more people laid off the less bargaining power labor has in the future.
This buys them time psyop everyone into believing that AI actually does make things easier, this includes convincing labor also. So when they go to hire everyone back in 18 months, or at least a percentage of them they can say well [insert job that required computer i/o] actually doesn't require as much skill as before (whether it does or not) so your salary is going to be 3/5ths of what it used to be, and if you don't accept there's a huge supply of desperate people. Its literally the exact same targeted operation that was pulled on factory workers in the mid to late 20th century.
The efficiencies will be gained in lower labor costs going forward, not actual productivity gains or better software.. They care about the quality of the work produced as long as they have houses in Vail/Aspen and a spot in the Bahamas..
Certain industries where quality matters, may survive on merit like medical equipment manufacturers or aviation... but will it, look at Boeing..
The ruling class is our enemy and we better start acting like that. We are going to need our generations French Revolution soon.
If we don't take this seriously, and see it for what it is, they are going to give us their own version of a war to fight, but it will be to accumulate resources for them overseas. Just like in the 20s young men and women will be so poor they'll do anything, they'll beg for a war. We need to make sure they don't channel that energy away from them, because they're going to get us to try the working class to go fight on their behalf in EU, MENA, and the Pacific again. It's the same playbook. I'll bet my last dollar on it.
I wonder if we can really repeat such revolution. Our communities are fractured and politics more partisan than ever. Be it collective bargaining or more, any fractured attempt to rebel will only end in failure. Perhaps by the working class eating itself alive a la Jay Gould (even if misattributed, the sentiment matches).
On the bright(?) side: traditional propaganda is absolutely abysmal for the youth these days. If they try to pull off this kind of recruitment, I see many Gen Z/Alpha deserting or outright choosing arrest. You can't screw over a man their entire life and expect them to want to fight and die for their country.
Hard to measure just yet, as it stands I think you're correct. But what if 100k drones (assembled in el segundo and painted with Chinese flags) pop out of shipping containers at the port of LA and kill a bunch of their families, beloved celebrities. I think they have the means to tilt popular opinion in any given direction relatively easily, but I do hope they fail (or don't even try something like this).
They've basically developed mind control algorithms that live on Instagram, its not that hard to steer culture in a certain direction.
While I agree with you for the most part about the youth. I hope so. I also see a decent amount of Gen Z that glorify things like looxsmaxxing, christain nationalism, eugenics. They are actually being programmed to like Nazism/fascism aesthetics but discarding the label at the same time. You'll see them behave like racial/national supremacists while at the same time they'd be extremely offended if you called fascist or racist.
I predict we will have a false flag attack, probably with drones who's origins are impossible to track, but only after everyone has had a decent period of financial instability. Obama produced a movie about this very kind of attack lol.
I'm wondering what the heck will pay the bills on all that 'AI' hardware that's being put out there. So far the number of ideas that sound like an episode of some tech-horror show far outweigh the ones that sound like a Star Trek utopia.
They'll kill off whatever percentage of the working class they don't need like they did in WW2 during the last great depression, although I'd argue they have more efficient methods of purging the working class now. They'll make everyone so poor they beg to fight in a war, like in the 20s-30s.
Russia is already doing this, USA is gearing up for a war with Iran but can't see the USA wanting the PR of losing many soldiers, they could just increase the forces so basically every working class person is low paid potential cannon fodder.
The difference is that in Russia those who are willing to go to war have lived in poverty for decades already, those are not middle-class Muscovites who prefer to stay away from it (in terms of direct participation).
But another thing when a lot of middle-class citizens are plunged into poverty in the short term - that will look more dramatic and unpredictable.
Anthropic is by far the most evil company in tech, I don't care. Its worst than Palantir in my book. You won't catch my kids touching this slave making, labor killing brain frying tech.
This is a PR play by Anthropic, likely in coordination with the administration. They don't care, they just need the public to view them as a victim here, and then its business as usual.
I prefer they get shutdown, llms are the worst thing to happen to society since the nuclear bomb's invention. People all around me are losing their ability to think, write and plan at an extraordinary pace. Keep frying your brains with the most useless tool alive.
Remember, the person that showed their work on their math test in detail is doing 10x better than the guys who only knew how to use the calculator. Now imagine being the guy who thinks you don't need to know the math or how to use a calculator lol.
This is such a BS lie sold by pharmaceutical companies, "stimulants are safe for your child, amphetamines will actually calm them down". There's a thing called fast caffeine metabolizers, and 50% of people have this genetic variation and perfectly explains why some people can nap after having caffeine, also tolerance.
I digress, but you will never convince me otherwise, that the wide spread promotion of amphetamines in children/young adults is anything but an experiment of Empire. I attribute the somewhat significant economic edge US society has over the rest of the world is due to its addiction to amphetamines, and the ruling classes project to push them onto working class people to make them more effective workers.
Its no different than how the Nazi's used amphetamines to simulate their population or how imperialist Japan did the same. Lets stop spreading this BS lie that stimulants calm people with ADHD down.
The well-documented scientific basis for the “calming” claim for ADHD medications is that by stimulating brain regions involved in attention, motivation, and regulation of behavior, it can reduce impulsivity and restlessness, giving the appearance of calming a person down if they have deficits in the latter areas.
This has been shown to help many people (a large majority) with ADHD, and it’s also been shown to not provide general neurocognitive benefits to people without ADHD.
IOW, the benefits come from improving attention and reducing impulsivity in people who have deficits in those areas.
> “It is important to note that a robust body of literature exists that supports the positive effects of prescription stimulants on neurocognitive functioning in children and adults with ADHD (e.g., [14,54,55]), underscoring the importance of baseline impairments in performance relative to improved effects.”
Reconciling this with your opinions on the matter is left as an exercise, but there’s some pretty clear and unambiguous science here.
Yeah, but while they might not be convinced, some stranger that needs this information may stumble across it -- and it may do them good to read it. ADHD is no joke and stimulant medications are vitally important, as one component, in the treatment of ADHD.
Incredibly false. see my comments below, there are way more potential risks that should out weigh any potential benefits, there are non-stimulant based treatments for ADHD that are just as effective and don't require you to play russian roulette with your sanity. Your comment is ill informed and incredibly dangerous.
I did notice that, but as others have pointed out, the rest of the audience is likely more important than the idiosyncratic biases of the OP.
The OP message of "big pharma is lying to us!" is an appealing one for many people. Pointing out that, in fact, there is serious scientific evidence to the contrary on that exact topic is "worth trying".
Otherwise, if we just abandon the concept of rational thought, we end up with people like the current president of the US, the guy in charge of Health and Human Services, and so on. There are, as philosophers put it, "facts of the matter", and we need to keep reminding people of that if we want to even achieve the minimal level of valid response shown in the movie Idiocracy. Currently, the United States is not actually achieving that level.
Not everything can be understood through p values and studies with 13 PARTICIPANTS undergoing a ONLY TWO EXPERIMENTS each, nor should the observed effects on 13 PEOPLE (half placebo) be extrapolated out to justifying safety for hundreds of millions of people. Next time you want to prove a point, take the time to research good sources, and not just ask an llm use your brain for once.
Please go put your kid on amphetamines for 15 years and let me know how that works out for them..
Do you care how much incidents of psychosis it causes on a yearly basis?
I said that the Ruling class (aka these professors) are pushing an agenda, and then you choose to provide evidence published by the ruling class to support that agenda.
Often prescribed to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, the risk was highest in those taking 30 mg or more of dextroamphetamine (which corresponds to 40 mg of Adderall),
The researchers identified 1,374 cases of individuals presenting with first-episode psychosis or mania, compared to 2,748 control patients with a psychiatric hospitalization for other conditions like depression or anxiety. They conducted a comparison analysis of stimulant use over the preceding month and accounted for other factors, including substance use, in order to isolate the effects of stimulants.
They found the attributable risk percentage among those exposed to any prescription amphetamine was nearly 63 percent and for high dose amphetamine was 81 percent. These findings suggest that among people who take prescription amphetamine, 81 percent of cases of psychosis or mania could have been eliminated if they were not on the high dose. While a significant dose-related risk increase was seen in patients taking high doses of amphetamine, no significant risk increase was seen with methylphenidate (Ritalin) use, which is consistent with previous research, including a 2019 study led by Moran.
Among 1,374 case subjects and 2,748 control subjects, the odds of psychosis and mania were increased for individuals with past-month prescription amphetamine use compared with no use (adjusted odds ratio=2.68, 95% CI=1.90–3.77). A dose-response relationship was observed; high doses of amphetamines (>30 mg dextroamphetamine equivalents) were associated with 5.28-fold increased odds of psychosis or mania
I don't care, the drug isn't safe. I've seen it permanently change many people. I don't care if they handpicked <100 individuals to prove safety. The doses cited above >40mg are pretty typical.
It's almost like ... you work with your doctor to identify an effective treatment that balances the costs and benefits for your particular situation.
This applies to most medicines and it's why we have a set of people trained to navigate those tradeoffs. You seem focused only on the negatives of ADHD meds, which are real, without acknowledging that for some patients there are large benefits too. That seems kind of myopic.
I think your take is a bit alarmist, if I were to be generous. On one hand, ya it's a pharmaceutical empire, but on the other, that empire's conduct is as detrimental to the people that actually do need those medications as they are to the people that might not. Nobody should be forcing their kids to take anything, but if a kid is struggling, it should be an accessible option, and it will probably help them get by in a system not designed for them. There's no reason to suggest that the general case is that a parent or some company is force feeding their kid meth.
I'm one of those people that could have benefited from it MUCH earlier, it's also incredibly boring if you get the right one. I have no idea what they really do for people who don't have ADHD, but for me it basically lets me get places on time and have a passably productive day. It's also not that trivial to get depending on where you live, and potentially expensive.
> Please go put your kid on amphetamines for 15 years and let me know how that works out for them..
Please tell someone who's gone from having 7 jobs in 7 years to 1 job for 3 years that they don't need it.
We can have issues with the implementation, that's fine
Well I'm glad you haven't had any major side effects, just know you're playing Russian roulette with your sanity, and the way you perceive reality.. I'm not exaggerating here, give it a decade..or don't
And you're kind of confirming my original thesis, that its a class of drugs created by the ruling class for the working class to make the best workers for capital/ruling class, which it seems to have accomplished that in your case...
Among 1,374 case subjects and 2,748 control subjects, the odds of psychosis and mania were increased for individuals with past-month prescription amphetamine use compared with no use (adjusted odds ratio=2.68, 95% CI=1.90–3.77). A dose-response relationship was observed; high doses of amphetamines (>30 mg dextroamphetamine equivalents) were associated with 5.28-fold increased odds of psychosis or mania
> And you're kind of confirming my original thesis, that its a class of drugs created by the ruling class for the working class to make the best workers for capital/ruling class, which it seems to have accomplished that in your case...
I don't take amphetamine specifically, methylphenidate, which seems to have no pronounced influence on the apparently correlation based study outcome. Taking these drugs however is not something I approach lightly, but it's also not something I do for anyone else. If anything, it helps me maintain my own adult life. The job is an incidental but important factor.
I've heard anecdotal reports from many people with ADHD symptoms that stimulants (caffiene, ritalin, street drugs) do help them focus. And quite a few from people with ADHD symptoms that stimulants make things much worse. And there's also reports that the stimulants help with focus but cause other problems.
If you're using chemical interventions for ADHD symptoms, you've got to be evaluating the response as well as getting feedback from the patient. Starting with small doses when possible is probably advisable.
Many symptoms can be addressed by behavioral and environmental/situational changes rather than chemical intervention, but chemical interventions can be effective for many, even if they're not effective for all.
stimulants help everyone focus if dosed correctly!! I never said that it doesn't have that effect. I'm just arguing its very bad for the brain, and it mostly just benefits your employer/future employer at the risk of you going literally insane. Its a tool for Empire/Capital. Its very common for Empires to dose their working class on stimulants to achieve certain goals. It may help you but you're also risk of getting amphetamine induced psychosis, which should void any potential gain for any reasonable person..
"Mostly benefits your employer" my ass. ADHD isn't just "ugh, I don't like doing my job". Things you want to do, or need to do, even enjoy doing, and fully intend to do end up constantly pushed to the side when you're unmedicated. You end getting into difficult situations because you've managed to procrastinate taking the 10 minutes it takes to renew your car's registration for 6 months. You struggle to maintain relationships, both friendly and romantic, because people interpret your inability to focus on them as disinterest. You lose sleep, and not just a little, because you lay in bed and simply cannot focus on going to sleep long to actually do so. So you stay up until completely exhausted, but guess what? That doesn't align with anybody else's schedule.
Then you take a pill, and all of these problems just disappear. If you want to work out, you can just go to the gym and work out. No weird little ritualistic hacks, just "I want to do X, I shall do X". You receive a wedding invitation, and you can just spend the 10 minutes making travel arrangements, rather than procrastinating it for months. You can see that a load of laundry needs to be done, and just spend the 5 minutes loading the washing machine, rather than having to push past your brain screaming like you're trying to stick pins in your eye.
> stimulants help everyone focus if dosed correctly!!
The science contradicts that. You need to re-read my original comment and its references and respond more seriously, if you're genuinely interested in the topic.
My experience is different. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, but I never took medicine. I took amphetamines recreationally at uni, and the sense of calm and focus and relaxation it gives you is quite material. I think it stimulates the part of the brain that enables you to focus and relax.
I did briefly see a psychiatrist and took amphetamines under his care, but ultimately decided that I didn't want the hassle of medical supervision, so preferred non-medical treatments.
But the experience made clear to me that meds do have a role. I suppose I use coffee as a mild stimulant. Although it's so mild, I'd never really think of it in that way.
> I attribute the somewhat significant economic edge US society has over the rest of the world is due to its addiction to amphetamines
Over here in Europe getting prescription stimulants against ADHD is a fairly straightforward process. Or, at least, that's what I gathered from a conversation I recently had with a person taking them - they had no difficulties in this regard.
As an outsider I think one of the many reasons is the sheer amount of (often unreported) hours Americans put into work annually (and pay for that in their health).
For this same reason South Korea recently overtook Japan in terms of GDP per capita.
By this measure the mentioned countries (descending):
I never said its the only factor, but its typical for Empires of the last 150 years to get their populations hooked on stimulants, whether this is outright intentional (probably), or a side effect of growing Empires is up for debate.
Do your school counselors in elementary school work with psychiatrists to get parents to get children hooked in 5th grade because they are a more active than other kids?
I posted about this here after Sam made his tweet:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189756
Source: https://defensescoop.com/2025/01/16/openais-gpt-4o-gets-gree...
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