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I note that they use the Sam Altman quote.

"AI will most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there will be great companies.”

Is there any serious journalistic source suggesting that this was anything other than an offhand joke? This article links to a youtube clip of the comment with context removed, but hair raising comments.

Taking the most uncharitable view of any person, you could imagine someone who was evil enough to cause the end of the world after their own lifespan where they faced no inconvenience, but not the circumstances from the quote

The quote as it stands is preposterous enough that I don't think a human capable of functioning in society would seriously say such a thing.

Are people wilfully misinterpreting the comment, or do they truly believe this an actually held opinion? If so, can they explain how they think someone could hold an opinion like that?



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6lDZpvHAoo&t=527s

The question (7:35) is "Where would you like to see people investing more time?" And Sam seems to be saying AI safety, I guess? This is 2015, and he refers to founding OpenAI. Based on his actions since then, yeah, seems like it's not a joke to him. This is Altman we're talking about.


I think he means the end of the world as we know it. Which is probably true, but the timeline could be 20 years, 2000 years, or more.




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