What I don't understand is why the Democrats don't just come out hard against AI at this point. It is unpopular and the tech titans are openly Republicans.
Who kicked out whom? I might be missing some context here, to me it were tech bosses who turned to Trump after he won or after it was clear he was about to win.
Democrats turned on Elon during covid, as he was against lockdowns. This spread into wide distrust and complete sidelining and antagonism towards tech during the Biden administration. You can hear about it from Ben and Marc on their a16z podcast, when they explained why they are endorsing Trump.
This was despite the tech community being predominantly democrats. They turned to Trump, because the democrats shut them out completely and in some cases were highly antagonistic (crypto and elon companies).
> Democrats turned on Elon during covid, as he was against lockdowns. This spread into wide distrust and complete sidelining and antagonism towards tech during the Biden administration. You can hear about it from Ben and Marc on their a16z podcast, when they explained why they are endorsing Trump.
Look, a16z basically are talking their book. They went heavily into crypto, and when the Biden administration started taking actions against crypto, they started supporting Republicans.
This site is an unfair hit-piece because OpenAI had to do what was necessary to survive. A few tens of million isn't that big a deal compared to the billion that the fossil fuel industry donated.
By all means, one should not become too dependent on OpenAI, and actually should use open models too. I just don't think that other commercial players are going to be much cleaner.
I believe also a big factor that it is way easier to convince Trump that AI is a matter of national security, and to use geopolitical tools (NVIDIA GPU ban on China) to secure their market position as much as possible, and to make it more palatable to the public their corporate bailouts.
I think this is the direct consequence of the left being anti business. From Sam's previous writings, it doesn't seem like he was or is a huge Trump fan.
You are just playing a word game. The democrats are the left in the political arena of the US. If they are not what the left would be in some other country or what someone thinks the left should be is meaningless.
The left also specifically turned against AI, big tech and data center build out. They would be crazy not to go all in on the republican party just like Elon did.
Why use the loaded term anti-business when very, very few on the "left" of the USA are actually anti-business-commies-socialise-everything?
From my perspective at most there are attempts to curtail business practices untethered to any morality, which should be a net-positive for society. A completely theoretical pro-business political body would remove any and all obstacles to business: environmental regulations, labour protection, taxation, financial oversight, so on and so forth, I believe we can agree that such move would be detrimental to society at large while making businesses extremely rich, right?
The shift of framing that any attempt to curtail the bad downsides/externalities of untethered capitalism is being "anti-business" is either ignorant, misleading, or purely furthering an agenda. There's no way for capitalism to survive without oversight, its incentives are to minmax on a race to the bottom on anything possible that could give a business an edge, without rules around that the benefits of such a system are completely eroded, you create social fractures that are reflected into politics, exactly what's been happening in the USA even before Trump 1.
Perhaps this aggressive stance on being pro-business is part of the issue, and pursuing it above all else has steadily shown that society at large doesn't improve even though it fosters consumption, assets inflation, and the key economic metrics used to sell this idea.
While this stance is pursued the political power keeps getting accumulated into the hands of an elite detached from reality, uncaring for any social aspect since there's absolutely no moral incentive to think about the social contract when you can live in an ivory tower with the scales tilted to your favour, and among others like you who also don't care about any aspect that can make the life in society better for all. Improvements to society at large are coincidental, not intentional.
Capitalism is amoral, we need mechanisms that imbue some morality to it to avoid social fractures, the core issue is finding that line to balance, and which keeps shifting and needs iterative processes to rebalance when needed. The extremist version of pro-business-nothing-else-matters is clearly not the way you find a balance on anything, like any extremism it's almost by definition wrong when meeting reality.
I agree with everything you are saying except that the left is aggressively anti business that hurts broader society. The balance is clearly on the wrong end. What I mean is that, there seems to be an ideological push (and not a practical one) to curtail businesses without understanding the consequences of it.
Where you probably disagree is that you think the left is broadly on the correct side of this issue.
As an example, take the anti data centre push by the left.
This is just fake morality disguised as "moral capitalism" broadly coming from the black and white ideology that dictates all businesses are bad and require push back.
You and I agree that there is a balance to be made.
To be honest, I'm more aligned with you than with the left at the moment. I feel there's been a knee-jerk reaction from a wave of massive change coming and the efforts are being directed to the wrong place.
For example: I don't agree that we should be curtailing the data center buildup, it bothers me because it's almost a stance of conservatism. While I do agree there's a need to closely monitor the situation with how AI develops, since in case it does pan out that it can, in a 5-10 years time frame, dislodge a big mass of labour without leaving room for those unemployed by a radical change it will create a lot of social strife.
I'm more in the camp of caution, and planning on how to address the scenarios that could be most damaging, while I also understand there's no stopping when the machinery gets going as it is, we can only work around it to adapt to a new reality.
> This is just fake morality disguised as "moral capitalism" broadly coming from the black and white ideology that dictates all businesses are bad and require push back.
But most businesses do tend to go towards "bad" (if we define it as showing no empathy towards their damages to society) because those are the incentives, being "good" has very little financial incentive, and financial incentives are absolute king in this era of hyperfinancialised capitalism. The incentives for creating good products only exist to manage finances, not out of a desire to create good products as a benefit in itself which as a consequence will sell well. If there's a way to increase revenue while minimising attrition of the customer base, even in detriment of a great product, it will be done, because the incentives are there for that.
I think we probably agree more than disagree, my belief is that we have wrong incentives if this is the system we will continue living under. I also believe we can continuously improve it, there's no end game in sight for the "perfect system", it's all experimentation and we ought to take into account the results of these experiments after 20-40 years, and be rational about what works and what doesn't. Whatever was the world in the 1980s when this era of hyperfinancialisation started is not the world in 2026, whomever was the winner of that change wants to keep the status quo because it benefits them while we do see fractures and issues arising from that.
There's a balance to be made, and it will always go against the interests of past winners who will try to pitch the world as it is as the best it can be, and that more of whatever was done to make them winners is the only way forward.
> But most businesses do tend to go towards "bad" (if we define it as showing no empathy towards their damages to society) because those are the incentives, being "good" has very little financial incentive, and financial incentives are absolute king in this era of hyperfinancialised capitalism
Its the reverse. Most businesses exist to serve consumer needs. The state comes in and tries to regulate because of possible externalities caused by the business.
The fact that businesses serve real demand of consumers means that most businesses don't go twards bad or show no empathy. It is in their interest to please the consumers. Ultimately the way you might see it is ideological.
The pushback against AI crucially misses the point that people actually want to use AI and their actual preference is such. What the left does here is assume (like you did) that by default, AI companies are bad and require regulation and pushback and they do it to an extent that is detrimental for everyone except the elites.
One might ask why? Why is it that the left wants, as a reaction, to curtail AI? It is ideological - assuming all businesses are bad by default. And also status quo preservation.
> Its the reverse. Most businesses exist to serve consumer needs. The state comes in and tries to regulate because of possible externalities caused by the business.
I agree, I should have phrased it as "big business" instead of just business, it's my mistake to not have been clear about that.
> The fact that businesses serve real demand of consumers means that most businesses don't go twards bad or show no empathy. It is in their interest to please the consumers. Ultimately the way you might see it is ideological.
Which leads me to this point, where I believe a lot of smaller to medium-sized businesses do need to provide good products for consumers to keep their edge. Where this starts to frail is when a business is too big, too detached from any controls, and instead starts to be the tail wagging the dog.
> The pushback against AI crucially misses the point that people actually want to use AI and their actual preference is such. What the left does here is assume (like you did) that by default, AI companies are bad and require regulation and pushback and they do it to an extent that is detrimental for everyone except the elites.
I don't disagree that people actually want to use AI, I do it and the tools have a lot of value. I disagree that big AI companies are not going to turn "bad" when given enough power, and I didn't mention regulation at all at this point, I said "caution, and planning".
> One might ask why? Why is it that the left wants, as a reaction, to curtail AI? It is ideological - assuming all businesses are bad by default. And also status quo preservation.
It's ideological, and dogmatic, which is why I disagree with the current position of the left for pushing back extremely without giving other avenues on how to develop it. I don't agree at all with pushing back without taking into account the reality: these tools are here to stay, their uses are still being discovered, we will settle into a new reality.
> A completely theoretical pro-business political body would remove any and all obstacles to business: environmental regulations, labour protection, taxation, financial oversight, so on and so forth, I believe we can agree that such move would be detrimental to society at large while making businesses extremely rich, right?
This assumes that all obstacles and regulations are to the benefit of the environment and people and that the regulation results in intended consequences.
In modern western countries regulation is very often ideological and actively harms the populace and economy. Case in point Germany and their green and anti nuclear hysteria, which resulted in total reliance on coal.
Which is why I exactly pointed out that "finding the line" should be a iterative process, it's just natural the pendulum will swing for correcting past mistakes.
I don't know why you assumed I'm stating as if finding where these regulations lie to be a static thing, I thought I left a lot of nuance so this tired line wouldn't be played against the core of my argument... I didn't assume the current regulations are perfect, nor that there can be a perfect line, but that the process of finding this should exist, and that the answer will never lie in either extreme.
Hope it's even clearer now.
Edit: and also, "ideological" is a non-sequitur, even the criticism of it as you've done is ideological in nature...
Typical theoretical grand standing to cover for your ideology. Obama got great mileage from speaking like this. But it does nothing to convince anyone anymore.
Thought-terminating clichés are quite boring, and don't foster any discussion, I'd like to see more thought instead so curiosity could live and perhaps this comment thread could go somewhere where we both give into each other's argument but alas seems it's not possible to extract that from you, only tiresome one-liner platitudes.
It is sad though, this is the kind of discussion I do enjoy having with clever people.
What I don't understand is why the Democrats don't just come out hard against AI at this point. It is unpopular and the tech titans are openly Republicans.
The tech titans are openly republicans because the democrats kicked them out.
Who kicked out whom? I might be missing some context here, to me it were tech bosses who turned to Trump after he won or after it was clear he was about to win.
Democrats turned on Elon during covid, as he was against lockdowns. This spread into wide distrust and complete sidelining and antagonism towards tech during the Biden administration. You can hear about it from Ben and Marc on their a16z podcast, when they explained why they are endorsing Trump.
This was despite the tech community being predominantly democrats. They turned to Trump, because the democrats shut them out completely and in some cases were highly antagonistic (crypto and elon companies).
> Democrats turned on Elon during covid, as he was against lockdowns. This spread into wide distrust and complete sidelining and antagonism towards tech during the Biden administration. You can hear about it from Ben and Marc on their a16z podcast, when they explained why they are endorsing Trump.
Look, a16z basically are talking their book. They went heavily into crypto, and when the Biden administration started taking actions against crypto, they started supporting Republicans.
Not everything needs to be complicated.
With comments like yours and AI hating voters like you, it's no surprise that Democrats will keep losing.
This site is an unfair hit-piece because OpenAI had to do what was necessary to survive. A few tens of million isn't that big a deal compared to the billion that the fossil fuel industry donated.
By all means, one should not become too dependent on OpenAI, and actually should use open models too. I just don't think that other commercial players are going to be much cleaner.
I believe also a big factor that it is way easier to convince Trump that AI is a matter of national security, and to use geopolitical tools (NVIDIA GPU ban on China) to secure their market position as much as possible, and to make it more palatable to the public their corporate bailouts.
I think this is the direct consequence of the left being anti business. From Sam's previous writings, it doesn't seem like he was or is a huge Trump fan.
There's practically no "left" in the US.
why wouldn't you consider AOC / Bernie the left?
Two out of 535 easily meets the definition of "practically none".
And maybe a few more, so maybe around 1%
Can you vote for them?
You are just playing a word game. The democrats are the left in the political arena of the US. If they are not what the left would be in some other country or what someone thinks the left should be is meaningless.
After visiting the page and reading it, it’s clear that Brockman’s $25 million contribution is the statement contribution.
Not sure what you mean - Brockman and Sam are practically the same ideologically.
The left also specifically turned against AI, big tech and data center build out. They would be crazy not to go all in on the republican party just like Elon did.
Why use the loaded term anti-business when very, very few on the "left" of the USA are actually anti-business-commies-socialise-everything?
From my perspective at most there are attempts to curtail business practices untethered to any morality, which should be a net-positive for society. A completely theoretical pro-business political body would remove any and all obstacles to business: environmental regulations, labour protection, taxation, financial oversight, so on and so forth, I believe we can agree that such move would be detrimental to society at large while making businesses extremely rich, right?
The shift of framing that any attempt to curtail the bad downsides/externalities of untethered capitalism is being "anti-business" is either ignorant, misleading, or purely furthering an agenda. There's no way for capitalism to survive without oversight, its incentives are to minmax on a race to the bottom on anything possible that could give a business an edge, without rules around that the benefits of such a system are completely eroded, you create social fractures that are reflected into politics, exactly what's been happening in the USA even before Trump 1.
Perhaps this aggressive stance on being pro-business is part of the issue, and pursuing it above all else has steadily shown that society at large doesn't improve even though it fosters consumption, assets inflation, and the key economic metrics used to sell this idea.
While this stance is pursued the political power keeps getting accumulated into the hands of an elite detached from reality, uncaring for any social aspect since there's absolutely no moral incentive to think about the social contract when you can live in an ivory tower with the scales tilted to your favour, and among others like you who also don't care about any aspect that can make the life in society better for all. Improvements to society at large are coincidental, not intentional.
Capitalism is amoral, we need mechanisms that imbue some morality to it to avoid social fractures, the core issue is finding that line to balance, and which keeps shifting and needs iterative processes to rebalance when needed. The extremist version of pro-business-nothing-else-matters is clearly not the way you find a balance on anything, like any extremism it's almost by definition wrong when meeting reality.
I agree with everything you are saying except that the left is aggressively anti business that hurts broader society. The balance is clearly on the wrong end. What I mean is that, there seems to be an ideological push (and not a practical one) to curtail businesses without understanding the consequences of it.
Where you probably disagree is that you think the left is broadly on the correct side of this issue.
As an example, take the anti data centre push by the left.
This is just fake morality disguised as "moral capitalism" broadly coming from the black and white ideology that dictates all businesses are bad and require push back.
You and I agree that there is a balance to be made.
To be honest, I'm more aligned with you than with the left at the moment. I feel there's been a knee-jerk reaction from a wave of massive change coming and the efforts are being directed to the wrong place.
For example: I don't agree that we should be curtailing the data center buildup, it bothers me because it's almost a stance of conservatism. While I do agree there's a need to closely monitor the situation with how AI develops, since in case it does pan out that it can, in a 5-10 years time frame, dislodge a big mass of labour without leaving room for those unemployed by a radical change it will create a lot of social strife.
I'm more in the camp of caution, and planning on how to address the scenarios that could be most damaging, while I also understand there's no stopping when the machinery gets going as it is, we can only work around it to adapt to a new reality.
> This is just fake morality disguised as "moral capitalism" broadly coming from the black and white ideology that dictates all businesses are bad and require push back.
But most businesses do tend to go towards "bad" (if we define it as showing no empathy towards their damages to society) because those are the incentives, being "good" has very little financial incentive, and financial incentives are absolute king in this era of hyperfinancialised capitalism. The incentives for creating good products only exist to manage finances, not out of a desire to create good products as a benefit in itself which as a consequence will sell well. If there's a way to increase revenue while minimising attrition of the customer base, even in detriment of a great product, it will be done, because the incentives are there for that.
I think we probably agree more than disagree, my belief is that we have wrong incentives if this is the system we will continue living under. I also believe we can continuously improve it, there's no end game in sight for the "perfect system", it's all experimentation and we ought to take into account the results of these experiments after 20-40 years, and be rational about what works and what doesn't. Whatever was the world in the 1980s when this era of hyperfinancialisation started is not the world in 2026, whomever was the winner of that change wants to keep the status quo because it benefits them while we do see fractures and issues arising from that.
There's a balance to be made, and it will always go against the interests of past winners who will try to pitch the world as it is as the best it can be, and that more of whatever was done to make them winners is the only way forward.
> But most businesses do tend to go towards "bad" (if we define it as showing no empathy towards their damages to society) because those are the incentives, being "good" has very little financial incentive, and financial incentives are absolute king in this era of hyperfinancialised capitalism
Its the reverse. Most businesses exist to serve consumer needs. The state comes in and tries to regulate because of possible externalities caused by the business.
The fact that businesses serve real demand of consumers means that most businesses don't go twards bad or show no empathy. It is in their interest to please the consumers. Ultimately the way you might see it is ideological.
The pushback against AI crucially misses the point that people actually want to use AI and their actual preference is such. What the left does here is assume (like you did) that by default, AI companies are bad and require regulation and pushback and they do it to an extent that is detrimental for everyone except the elites.
One might ask why? Why is it that the left wants, as a reaction, to curtail AI? It is ideological - assuming all businesses are bad by default. And also status quo preservation.
> Its the reverse. Most businesses exist to serve consumer needs. The state comes in and tries to regulate because of possible externalities caused by the business.
I agree, I should have phrased it as "big business" instead of just business, it's my mistake to not have been clear about that.
> The fact that businesses serve real demand of consumers means that most businesses don't go twards bad or show no empathy. It is in their interest to please the consumers. Ultimately the way you might see it is ideological.
Which leads me to this point, where I believe a lot of smaller to medium-sized businesses do need to provide good products for consumers to keep their edge. Where this starts to frail is when a business is too big, too detached from any controls, and instead starts to be the tail wagging the dog.
> The pushback against AI crucially misses the point that people actually want to use AI and their actual preference is such. What the left does here is assume (like you did) that by default, AI companies are bad and require regulation and pushback and they do it to an extent that is detrimental for everyone except the elites.
I don't disagree that people actually want to use AI, I do it and the tools have a lot of value. I disagree that big AI companies are not going to turn "bad" when given enough power, and I didn't mention regulation at all at this point, I said "caution, and planning".
> One might ask why? Why is it that the left wants, as a reaction, to curtail AI? It is ideological - assuming all businesses are bad by default. And also status quo preservation.
It's ideological, and dogmatic, which is why I disagree with the current position of the left for pushing back extremely without giving other avenues on how to develop it. I don't agree at all with pushing back without taking into account the reality: these tools are here to stay, their uses are still being discovered, we will settle into a new reality.
> A completely theoretical pro-business political body would remove any and all obstacles to business: environmental regulations, labour protection, taxation, financial oversight, so on and so forth, I believe we can agree that such move would be detrimental to society at large while making businesses extremely rich, right?
This assumes that all obstacles and regulations are to the benefit of the environment and people and that the regulation results in intended consequences.
In modern western countries regulation is very often ideological and actively harms the populace and economy. Case in point Germany and their green and anti nuclear hysteria, which resulted in total reliance on coal.
Which is why I exactly pointed out that "finding the line" should be a iterative process, it's just natural the pendulum will swing for correcting past mistakes.
I don't know why you assumed I'm stating as if finding where these regulations lie to be a static thing, I thought I left a lot of nuance so this tired line wouldn't be played against the core of my argument... I didn't assume the current regulations are perfect, nor that there can be a perfect line, but that the process of finding this should exist, and that the answer will never lie in either extreme.
Hope it's even clearer now.
Edit: and also, "ideological" is a non-sequitur, even the criticism of it as you've done is ideological in nature...
Typical theoretical grand standing to cover for your ideology. Obama got great mileage from speaking like this. But it does nothing to convince anyone anymore.
Thought-terminating clichés are quite boring, and don't foster any discussion, I'd like to see more thought instead so curiosity could live and perhaps this comment thread could go somewhere where we both give into each other's argument but alas seems it's not possible to extract that from you, only tiresome one-liner platitudes.
It is sad though, this is the kind of discussion I do enjoy having with clever people.