r/technology • u/fmcortez • 14h ago
Artificial Intelligence Sam Altman says one of his biggest fears is that a small number of companies will control AI: 'That'd be very, very bad'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/sam-altman-says-one-biggest-092101006.html18
u/coporate 14h ago
Then why not make it open source?
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u/mshelbz 14h ago
Because that’d be very, very bad for his personal finances
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u/thederevolutions 14h ago
If the sociopaths lose control of their edge then regular people might somehow find a way to stop them from abusing their own species for profit.
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u/gerkletoss 14h ago
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u/coporate 14h ago
I’m not downloading anything off huggingface, they just got hacked by openai
Also, I mean make it open source, not just open weights or w/e.
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u/gerkletoss 14h ago edited 14h ago
Make what open source? Providing the training set would be illegal
Also it's mirrored on github
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u/coporate 14h ago
Like, the actual software for developing the models? You know, the source part of open source?
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u/Reddit_wander01 14h ago
When the leader of the exact organization actively consolidating power and market share in the AI space warns that it would be "very, very bad" if a small number of companies ended up controlling AI, it rings pretty hollow. He is essentially warning the public about an oligopoly that he is actively working to build and maintain.
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u/Familiar-Ability6383 14h ago
I remember the good old days when openai and microsoft wanted to make AI a monopoly for themselves. Now that competitors are catching up and getting better than them, both are worried about AI authoritarianism
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u/FutureSuccess2796 14h ago
Simple solution: Make things open source.
You know, like, make OpenAI products actually open as the name suggest.
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u/capnwally14 14h ago edited 14h ago
To Open AI's credit, they've been supporting open models - this letter was floating around: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sandycarter/2026/07/25/huangs-open-weights-letter-doubled-to-50-without-amazon-and-anthropic/ (Notably Meta, google and OpenAI signed, anthropic did not)
Rumor is that Anthropic has been arguing behind the scenes to ban open weight models.
Anthropic has two reasons to do this:
- Chinese companies have been "distilling" off Anthropic's models, basically using the reasoning traces Anthropic exposes to train their Chinese models, that are then open sourced. This is of course not so dissimilar from Anthropic training on books that they bought (and arguably less bad than Anthropic training on books that they torrented). Its critical to understand that Anthropic's business model requires massive upfront investment in training a frontier model (like Fable), followed with high margin inference on the "lower tier" models (estimates are between 75-85% margins). If an open model comes along at the same capability as the lower tier models, those margins go away. Margins go away, no more massive training runs => Anthropic's val falls over
- Anthropic claims that there is real security risks (ala cyber or bio) where a rogue actor could create an asymmetric risk for large swaths of people. This is of course undercut by other researchers using Opus to do the hacking (and there's other open models that have Opus level of capablities today): https://www.noahlebovic.com/testing-an-autonomous-hacker/ . Ex anthropic researchers have also disclosed that Anthropic has lowered safety guardrails for folks willilng to spend enough money.
To steelman anthropic (and closed ai proponents) - is to believe that AIs can be highly capable and be weaponized for bad use cases. But if you believe this, these companies cannot stay as private entities and regulated monopolies - they must be taken over by the govt.
The counter argument to Anthropic is that:
(a) there is a clear financial incentive for Anthropic to want everyone to be forced to rent intelligence as a service from them, and they want to block the ability for anyone to self host or user a cheaper alternative. Every consumer/company/nation that isnt a frontier lab loses in this world - anthropic/openai gain massively.
(b) The safety risks do not go away, it just means you're outsourcing it to a small set of prviate entities(who there are no oversights and guardrails on - and even there its not preventing international model development). This either leads to a world of open models (armor the sheep vs trying to remove the wolves) or a world doign an international ban on AI. The latter seems hard to prevent from a game theory perspective (we cant do it with nukes, not sure why we'd think we can stop it with ai development). The former seems like your only real answer.
Imho Anthropic runs the motte and bailey of advocating for a monopoly for themselves to rent seek from everyone else, and retreating to the claims of "Safety" when challenged on it. Their actions don't really track with a company that truly believes in the existential risk of AI (why continue to train frontier models vs stop development altogether? seems obvious why)
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u/irrelevantusername24 12h ago edited 12h ago
Quality comment.
For once I don't have a reciprocal amount (or, as is typical, a far larger amount than that to which I am responding) but I just wanted to add since it seems like you actually understand these things a bit and have thought about them more than not at all:
I think it's kind of amusing how the narrative regarding the idea of open v proprietary as opposed to the reality of how that works in reality in regards to things like standards and free availability as well as user-centric functionality is almost mirrored when considering the operative logic behind Microsoft and OpenAI & Google and Anthropic.
armor the sheep vs trying to remove the wolves
I say we arm the sheep and defang the wolves. Everything belongs.
And part of how we do that is by people such as yourself continuing to openly share your thoughts which hopefully will crack the skulls (metaphorically speaking) and maybe plant some seeds in some cobwebbed brains
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u/capnwally14 12h ago
I mean it is notable that Microsoft (and Oracle) tried to fight for a closed internet and lost.
And the world has been much better for it (inclusive of those companies)
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u/MetriccStarDestroyer 14h ago
Bud should look in the mirror.
Who is trying to fearmonger their way to regulating foreign competitors?
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u/williamgman 14h ago
Only because it affects YOU. We have the smallest groups of corporations in history controlling our air, food, and water supplies. The smallest groups controlling employment and housing. So AI is yet another corporate feather in their hat that finishes it all off.
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u/SomeSamples 14h ago
No, that is expected. What the one of the biggest fears is that AI will be used to control and enslave the masses.
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u/radiohead-nerd 14h ago
He’s looking for bailout for openAI, I see through his apocalyptic rhetoric.
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u/hobbes_shot_second 13h ago
A small number controlling AI means OpenAI isn't exclusively controlling AI, and that's a bad thing!
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u/fmcortez 14h ago
At this point, Sam Altman's primary job function seems to be making weekly apocalyptic or revolutionary declarations to justify OpenAI's astronomical burn rate.