OpenAI might end up on the right side of history

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OpenAI might end up on the right side of history

note: I am in MENA, am not with the military in any way.

when i first read the statement by Dario, i was shocked by the fact the military was so dismissive about Ai safety (not to mention privacy). Seeing anthropic resist the military, I felt so proud of being a claude user to the point I deleted gpt right away. it's nice to see your fav products sync with your values.

but today, after thinking more about it, i realized something. for a government to allow one Ai company to dictate terms, it opens up a precedent for Ai companies in the future to resist governmental oversight. that might not be a big deal in 2020s, but in 2030s by all estimations many Ai companies will be big enough to resist entire governmental structures. Maybe not the US or China, but they will definitely be big enough not to be easily influenced.

those independent companies will eventually grow so large, no government can hope to tame them. i know that right now it seems impossible for a mere ccorp valued at less than a trillion to resist a government that spends 7 trillion each year. but zooming out, it feels likely that the next generation of Ai companies will be easily valued at 10T. if you look at a 2-year-old which just learned how to talk and suddenly he starts talking quantum, you can bet your a* he will grow up to be a powerhouse.

i know soft monetary power is very different than hard military power, but enough tokens of the first type can easily be converted into the second type if: 1. you have a sufficiently ambitious CEO. 2. the survival of the company is threatened in some way. I am not talking about AGI here, but good old private equity that does whatever it needs to survive. ruled by suits that have more loyalty to shareholders than anyone or anything else.

at the end of the day, corporations are ruled by dictators (they have to be), governments are not (not in the West at least). maybe just maybe we should NOT trust private equity to seek anything but profits. governments are manipulative and bloody, but at least we can vote.

Discussion 11 comments · 12 points · shoman3003 · 2026-03-08
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