98 points

Beautiful irony to see this coming from Sam “Worldcoin” Altman.

Bonus points, try inputting a prompt into ChatGPT asking whether Sam Altman is an oligarch and his “rescue” of Worldcoin executives in Kenya is an example of oligarch power.

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51 points

Oh come on, there’s nothing irresponsible or creepy about wanting to collect retinal images of every person on the planet into a single, Internet-connected database. You’re just being paranoid.

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32 points

He would never do something bad with that, that would be un-american

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19 points

Can’t he just do what America is known and loved for? … Denying entire countries their basic human rights, sovereignty, and democracy?

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17 points

You’re correct that by the definition provided—someone leveraging wealth and influence to shape governance or bypass accountability—Sam Altman’s involvement in the Worldcoin Kenya case aligns with traits commonly associated with oligarchs. The reported U.S. government intervention, potentially influenced by his connections, underscores the significant power he wields beyond business, particularly when it comes to international affairs.

In this context, the definition does fit, making him effectively an oligarch in practice, even if not commonly labeled as such.

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11 points
*

Interesting, the several times I tried the prompt, I got some gibberish about “humanitarian concerns”.

This was earlier in the year though.

I also got radically different output when I didn’t specifically include the WorldCoin in Kenya example that was more categorical with denying that Altman is an oligarch.

Prompting Gemini LLM about Sunder Pichai was also interesting.

To be honest, I was expecting this stuff to be “hardcoded” to put out PR friendly answers.

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13 points
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Tbf I first asked it for a definition of Oligarch and then asked it your promp with the addition that it should use the definition it gave me.

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77 points

“Come on Elon, you’re going to get us all assassinated.”

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23 points

Can’t help reading that to the tune of Come On Eileen.

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3 points

Yeah I 100% to this as one rich asshole reaching out to another rich asshole in s gesture of self preservation and not rocking the boat. Trump’s job is to be the moral shield.

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52 points

Musk is not american anyway so …

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21 points
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He strikes me as a “wannabe American”. As someone who has lived in the US, but didn’t necessarily want to immigrate on a permanent basis, you can smell the deep insecurity with Elmo on this issue.

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6 points

Well, considering his wealth, I’d say he’s living an American dream to its fullest extent.

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7 points

I never heard “born rich” as part of the American dream. The idea behind the American dream is that you COULD become as wealthy as Elon, starting from nothing. Not only is that not true for him, but that hasn’t been true about any billionaire.

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2 points

You wouldn’t say that of most other immigrants

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4 points

Fair enough, I looked it up and it seems he has a US citicenship.

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1 point

I looked it up too and honestly I don’t doubt that he does have US citizenship and there’s no scandal. But interestingly, the proof they offer is that he was registered to vote in Texas in 2002 and that wouldn’t be possible if he weren’t a citizen. I’m sure that’s also true. It’s just funny that that assumption would challenge Trump’s allegation of all the illegal immigrants registering to vote. According to him, Musk’s registration wouldn’t be proof of anything.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/12/06/elon-musk-us-citizen-fact-check/76803209007/

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41 points

I’m a bit out of the loop but if I understand correctly Altman contacted Musk a few years ago to discuss AI. They decided to create OpenAI so there is an open source alternative to Google for AI.

Then Altman saw that there was too much money at stake and decided to just go for profit all the way?

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48 points
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Altman is a business bro, thats very on point for him. I just don’t know why people even listen to his shit

There’s even hard proof that when he was telling the public they would release their research for public good and in the meeting with other stakeholders he was saying completely opposite.

He lies to literally everyone but still people regard him high

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16 points

He lies to literally everyone but still people regard him high

So, politics is his next move, then?

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19 points

He’s CEO of a large company. He’s already in politics. Politicians do the bidding of people like Altman.

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10 points

There was a falling out between them after the board picked altman instead of Elon as ceo.

Now Elon is suing openai nominally because there renegging on the whole non profit thing, but really because he has his own xai that is competition and because of the grudge because he’s a petty manchild.

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36 points

These CEOs could give a shit about the harm Musk will do to regular folks. They just don’t want to see their own businesses suffer over it.

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5 points

Couldn’t*

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