Discussion

Sam Altman’s home targeted in second attack

avaer: In case someone reading this is thinking similar thoughts: there's no version of reality where doing this will solve any problem. Don't.

esbranson: Having so many right-wing readers, this is the right call, to speak to them where they are.

alex1138: I don't even align with the Right necessarily but not everything to blame can be pinned on the Right, ie see Andy Ngo getting attacked by Antifa

the_gastropod: “I’m not right wing” “Antifa attacked a guy!”I’ve got news for you, friend!

JumpCrisscross: “person in the passenger seat then put their hand out the window and appeared to have fired a round on the Lombard Street side of the property”Even if you think it’s okay to kill him, he’s not the only person ever at the property.Deface his stuff. It’s vandalism and not nice. But it’s justifiable escalation from peaceful protest if you think the justice and political systems are inappropriately unresponsive. But gamble with lives and best case you make him a sympathetic martyr and excuse for a crackdown by the very folks you don’t want having that kind of emergency authority.I’m not making a moral argument (there is one), but a strategic one. Assassination is rarely directly useful. In this case, it won’t be. That means your actions have to spur the polity. Killing doesn’t do that. Massive, disruptive protest and—occasionally—lighting things on fire does.

rvz: Well folks who know about the Unabomber manifesto by Ted Kaczynski will see this attack as unsurprising, and Sam knows this sort of attack was expected; false flag or not.It is not okay. But if we don't have any solution to the ramifications of what really is "AGI" then it unfortunately won't be the last.Welcome to "AGI".

threatofrain: People can think of ML on a national level, but it has an inescapably international dimension as a kind of gunpowder discovery.

d3ff: Its not really about that though is it?The people who are doing this stuff are unhinged but why? Perhaps they do not trust law and order. Perhaps they feel helpless and have been led to believe its over for the labour class due to the overhyped marketing and so on.A serious frank conversation needs to be had and the hyping needs to stop.

JumpCrisscross: They’re some combination of deranged, depressed and looking for a thrill. In most countries they fail to stab someone. Here they have guns.

add-sub-mul-div: Before passing judgment consider that while you may have the privilege of posting from a country that's never had to fight for relief from tyranny, that's not necessarily the case for others.

d3ff: Exactly. The guy is a complete joker.What he really means is "Dont do this stuff because it affects my well-being and lifestyle and I like it the way it is".

granzymes: Political violence is not acceptable in a democracy.Full stop, no "but". That's all that needs to be said on this thread.

poszlem: I agree. Is the US still a democracy, or already an oligarchy?

hx8: The more we treat it like a democracy, the more democratic it is. The more we treat it like an oligarchy, the less democratic it is.

poszlem: Treating a rigged game as fair doesn't make it fair, it just makes you easier to beat.

JumpCrisscross: > Treating a rigged game as fair doesn't make it fair, it just makes you easier to beatNot playing at all makes you easier to beat still. Anyone pining for civil war should vacation in a war zone first. It’s difficult to encapsulate the privilege of peace until it’s been lost.

ponkytonky: Trans activists have killed more people than ICE this year.

afpx: Most people who are paying attention are way past left vs. right.

Fricken: Violence is to be expected. Sam actually has a bunker in New Zealand he can go to should things get too apocalyptic to handle on the mainland.>In 2016, Sam Altman, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential entrepreneurs, revealed to the New Yorker that he had an arrangement with Thiel whereby in the eventuality of some kind of systemic collapse scenario – synthetic virus breakout, rampaging AI, resource war between nuclear-armed states, so forth – they both get on a private jet and fly to a property Thiel owns in New Zealand.https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-val...

TurdF3rguson: The fact that he would rather live in an underground bunker (than simply not let things get that out of hand) says a lot about his humanity.

testaccount28: do you hold Altman solely responsible for everything on earth?

d3ff: There isnt a well known CEO in europe whos been the target of a failed stabbing.But carry on living in la-la-land.

arcfour: "The other side are where all of the bad guys and crazy violent lunatics are. The side I align with is the only sensible one; we would never do anything like that."This sort of thinking causes extremism and division. It only perpetuates more of the thing you don't want! It's also empirically not true: there are crazy people on both sides, but most people are pretty reasonable. If you treat them as if they are, despite your differences, they won't feel so alienated and perhaps you can both have a productive conversation.

fundad: I think you mean he has a bunker in New Zealand because he expected so much violence. I don't think anyone should engage in violence (or property damage) like this.

Fricken: Silicon Valley's overlords are perfectly fine with provocations of violence.

Avicebron: Violence won't solve anything, everyone is worse off.

esbranson: Violence solves problems every day. Worse off is relative. I think you mean to qualify your statement.

ares623: Police employ violence all the time and I think we who are okay/well off all agree that they solve our problems every day.What us cushy engineers haven't realized yet is that the gradient for who are well off are sliding more and more towards one end. Sooner or later engineers will be on the wrong side of that gradient.

esbranson: Indeed. Violence can be and is met with violence, and refusing to discern against them is a logical failure that needs correcting. Inevitably it comes down to process, and being a one-party state in control, the Democrats control the violence. Arguably on both sides.

ropetin: While I 100% do not support violence against Sam Altman, or anyone else for that matter, what are people without billions of dollars and without the ear of the president supposed to do to affect change in this modern, post-capitalist hellscape? And I am genuinely interested in ideas that people think will work, not just trying to be combative.

tptacek: I read this comment as saying that you (100-k)% do not support violence against Sam Altman, for some positive real number k.

echelon: I have a few predictions for this year:1. Violent attacks against AI CEOs, researchers, and engineers is going to begin. This is due to widespread negative press that AI receives and as well as a pervasive feeling of economic uncertainty and doom in the population. Some of this being caused by the current administration's leadership, but much of it attributed to AI taking jobs and destroying opportunity.2. Violent acts taken against non-tech CEOs will increase hand-in-hand.3. If AI continues to demonstrate impressive new capabilities for automation, this rate will increase substantially.4. The government may come down hard on these individuals, which will further inflame the situation.5. Data centers will come under attack / sabotage.6. This will all wind up further inflamed by prediction markets.I have a colleague at Anthropic that refuses to put it on his LinkedIn. We all now know why.

andy99: I think we’ll see more larping generally on both sides of people acting out against AI and people reading in to those acts and pretending we’re in some cyberpunk novel, but it will remain completely detached from reality and not causally related to what AI/LLMs have actually changed.

StayTrue: Sam Altman the war contractor? I assume they are no longer called defense contractors under this administration.

abcde666777: Ideologically I'm against murdering people in cold blood or destroying their property except under the most extreme circumstances.But it's hard to sympathize with someone like Altman who strikes me as an extremely slimy individual who's made a living out of gaslighting people.For contrast: I felt bad for the healthcare CEO who Luigi killed - but I suspect I wouldn't feel bad for Altman. That's how distasteful an individual I find him, at least based on his public presentation.

JumpCrisscross: > it's hard to sympathize with someone like AltmanThe thing about rights is you believe in them universally or you don’t believe in them at all. If we have a right to life, sympathy isn’t relevant. Awful people can be awful, but if we start compromising their rights then we deface all of our freedoms and security.

abcde666777: I consider rights a functional abstraction. That is to say, they're useful, we should abide them as a tenet of a civilized society, but we also made them up. And importantly we all recognize that they're conditional - if you cross certain lines of conduct you lose them - and there's actually a lot of debate to be had about where those lines are.So I disagree with your axiom that you have to believe in them 100% or 0%.

JumpCrisscross: > all recognize that they're conditional - if you cross certain lines of conduct you lose them - and there's actually a lot of debate to be had about where those lines areOne hundred percent of those debates end at process, not unilateral action. If it can be unilaterally nullified, it is no longer a right.> you have to believe in them 100% or 0%Not degree but range. We don’t have a right to infinite life or medicine. But everyone has to have the same level of right for it to be a right. Otherwise I can disagree with your right to a right and nullify it on my own terms.

tptacek: This is obviously true, but you're just inviting the rebuttals. Arguments that civil violence is unproductive are boring and obvious. Normal people have been acculturated to understand the point already. The only way to have an "interesting" conversation about this is to take the other side.All of those arguments will be vile, as they have to be given the context.I'm not criticizing you, and I guess I'm glad someone wrote this comment quickly. You're right. But I would caution people against reading too much into the countervailing sentiment here. It's not trolling, but it is something adjacent to it.

JumpCrisscross: If violent attacks actually start metastasizing, it legitimately justified a police crackdown. Most of the population will be for that. The pro-Palestinian activists set their cause back a year by overplaying their hands in Columbia at the start of the war. If we want to ensure zero AI legislation for the next 2 years, I couldn’t think of a better way to ensure that than to start potting randos in the streets.

d3ff: For all you know the sentiment for many is that 'we don't care we have nothing to lose anyway'.Its easy for you to say, all perched up as a VC.

JumpCrisscross: > the sentiment for many is that 'we don't care we have nothing to lose anyway'Everyone says this before they learn what they didn’t value. Peace, for example.> Its easy for you to say, all perched up as a VCIt’s easy to say for anyone who has read the history of political violence. When that comes on the table, universally [1], the people with power also have the power to raise armies. The people who stand to benefit from violent insurrection, today, are the oligarchs.This happens every time because it’s obvious. If CEOs getting killed is normal, then activists against those companies getting killed is normal too. A lot more people will kill for a million dollars than because they hate some guy.[1] Apart from early 20th century Communist revolutions, where elites actually suffered.

d3ff: Mate these people don't care about a history lesson - they act as they do irrespective of logic.Clearly you're not a fella who's faced much hardship in life."people who stand to benefit from violent insurrection, today, are the oligarchs."They already do lmao. Are you delusional?

achierius: I always find it striking how certain portions of 'the discourse' expects people to react news events like this. There's this idea that we are obliged to 'disavow' violence committed against people like Sam Altman. Certainly, we here all likely agree that it's bad, terrible, and counterproductive. But why does he deserve so much care, when so many others do not? In the very same city, gang violence kills dozens of people a year, including through drive-by shootings and in their own homes. Need we 'disavow' those? Where is the outcry for more surveillance, more laws, when people on the streets are robbed, when homeless people are murdered? When people park nice cars in bad parts of Oakland, people chide "you should have known better -- of course it was going to get stolen."The ruling class imagines themselves special; they, by virtue of their wealth and status, are exempt from the rules. They can demean you as Luddites, spend trillions to automate your job, threaten your family with homelessness and you with starvation and death, all while smiling gleefully and tittering about p-doom -- and they expect people to stand idly by while it happens. Yes, this violence is wrong. But it would also be wrong to hold these billionaires by a different standard than we hold one another -- when there is violence, that violence should be considered like the violence which already plagues San Francisco, and should be addressed through regular mechanisms, and given the regular consideration that police give all such crimes. Every camera that goes up, every crack squad of FBI agents dispatched, is proof that we and they are not equal under the law, not in any way that really matters.

leaves83829: but we haven't even proven that AI will destroy vast amounts of jobs. Some, sure, junior software engineers are in trouble. but other then that, do we really have any quantified evidence as to how many jobs have been displaced by AI? i've been looking for numbers on this but it all seems murky and wishy washy. i'm open to be convinced, if anyone's got numbers.also, if the worst case scenario does happen and most of the population finds itself without money. there are other ways to live with very little money.

livinglist: I agree, French Revolution was pretty peaceful

JumpCrisscross: > French Revolution was pretty peacefulThe elites after the French Revolution were not only mostly the same as before, they escaped with so much money and wealth that it’s actually debated if they increased their wealth share through the chaos [1].[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/650023

abcde666777: Just to clarify, here's my actual position - it was only implied in the first comment so I'll spell it out:1. We shouldn't kill or harass or destroy the property of someone like Altman. AKA, I'm not in disagreement with your take on abiding by the laws of the land.2. But it's not surprising that such things happen to individuals like him, for reasons outlined. Put it this way - if I was in his position, I would be very wary of my public image, and I'd be very wary of my intentions - am I acting for the greater good, or only for my own good?Of course it's possible he's actually acting with the best of intentions and is just terrible at presenting himself, which is one of the reasons I'd agree with due process and respecting his rights.

tptacek: I have never once seen someone on HN express happiness that someone was killed in a drive-by gang shooting.

JumpCrisscross: I present you, a fuckwit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47745886

odshoifsdhfs: Good. Hope he enjoys the rest of his meals in a bunker never seeing the sun again from his fear of consequences

Rekindle8090: Hilarious because your comment itself is political violence without even stretching the definition:Violence: Not only as resulting in physical injury but as being present where psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation occurs; acts of omission or neglect, and not only of commission, can therefore be categorised as violent.The act of forcibly closing down debate, dictating what can and cannot be discussed, and using moral authority to silence dissent, demanding submission rather than dialogue, is inherently violent.

poszlem: Civil war or getting screwed by elites aren't the only two options. That's a false dichotomy.

JumpCrisscross: > Civil war or getting screwed by elites aren't the only two options. That's a false dichotomyI completely agree. But political violence increasingly polarises the outcomes to those two. (The elites can buy gunmen faster than you or I can.)California has a referendum system. Get an AI measure on the ballot. Companies that are doing the things Anthropic got fired for refusing to provide are banned from doing business in the State of California. (Or with the State. Find a balance that gets the votes.)

Rekindle8090: Hey look it's the easy upvotes guy

nozzlegear: What's worse: living through a systemic collapse scenario, or finding yourself trapped in a bunker in New Zealand with Peter Thiel?

the_gastropod: Nope. Both sides are not equivalent. The political right, in the U.S., has been significantly more violent than the political left for quite some time. And it’s not even close. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9335287/

esbranson: > We included individuals whose public exposure occurred between 1948 and 2018.The times they are a-changin'.

samrus: I get the sentiment but this is disengenuous. Political violence built this democracy

esbranson: Yet the difference remains, as does its decisiveness.

fzeroracer: What do you say to the people in Minneapolis demanding justice for the murder of Alex Pretti?

JumpCrisscross: > What do you say to the people in Minneapolis demanding justice for the murder of Alex Pretti?Keep pushing your state investigators. Work to flip the House. And keep protesting and disrupting the browncoats.Alex Pretti did more to stop ICE than anyone e.g. killing an individual ICE agent would do.

ordu: I believe it doesn't matter. You see, if you try applying this trick to different traits of a society, it would lead to conclusions like: it is impossible for us to build an environmentally conscious society because we come here by being environmentally unconscious. It is a historical determinism, and it just don't work. For example, Europe was mostly a constant war between states, but after WWII it managed to come to EU. No more wars between European countries. Or U.S. was a country of slavers and racists, and it managed to change itself. It is still not perfect, as I hear, but at least there are no more slavery or segregation, and racism is not accepted anymore.The long gone history of a country is not a something that should be allowed to determine its modern narratives. You shouldn't forget your history, but there are limits you shouldn't cross. When I hear arguments going back for centuries, it is a red flag for me. It is most likely a propaganda.Psychologists talk about two common failing of their clients. People often fixate over the past or they fixate over the future, while forgetting about the present. The healthy approach is to keep a good balance between the past, the future, and the present, with a strong accent on the present. The history determinism reminds me a lot of the over-fixation on the past, and propaganda actively tries to unsettle balances in people's minds and fixate them on anything but the present.

livinglist: Do you have any suggestions for a real peaceful approach to get rid of the French royalty?

hgoel: Crazy, as bad of a person as I think Altman is, he isn't even the worst AI CEO. But even the worst of them doesn't deserve this.

gensym: It's not even about what they deserve. None of us has the right to unilaterally dole out punishment."Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement".

amazingamazing: sure it is. what a ridiculous comment. go read how this country was formed...you can disagree that this was necessary, which I'd agree with.

cucumber3732842: He isn't even noteworthy as far as tech CEOs with bad ideas go.I think it's just name recognition.

samrus: Interesting way to put it. If it did solve problems, you would be ok with it happening?

drivingmenuts: If it did solve a problem, it's possible it would be legal.

WarOnPrivacy: > If it did solve a problem, it's possible it would be legal.FL crafted a law to help safeguard someone who gets sued for running over a protestor. I think this examples how legality and problem solving don't mesh like we might think.

gensym: It's wrong regardless of its effectiveness.

CHB0403085482: Tell that to the parisians.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp84sRpM1Js

lesuorac: Tyranny of a bunch of rich white men having to pay taxes lol.There's a reason the founding fathers all had slaves; they weren't the common folk.

lrvick: Look, I think Sam Altman is a terrible person too, but to anyone reading that hates people like him as much as I do you should want him alive while we work to build a world where he can live out a long life in complete safety, in prison.Violence never solves anything. You will never make anything in this world better by becoming a worse person than your enemies.

furyofantares: They're just speaking to a hypothetical person who thinks this will solve a problem. In no way does their post imply they'd be ok with it if it solved some problem.A little wild to me that so many of the replies don't understand that.

cucumber3732842: You've basically just said anyone who doesn't hold the "approved" opinion is wrong and then you called them names. But you wrapped it in extra words so that it's less flagrant.Did you ever think that maybe people do in fact believe what they say they believe?

catcowcostume: Why is this comment flagged? It's not advocating violence just asking why some violence is actively opposed while others are ignored

hackable_sand: You can't keep marginalizing people and expecting stability.Here's your canary.

donkey_brains: I think you have to be at least remotely a sympathetic figure to be a martyr

JumpCrisscross: > suggestions for a real peaceful approach to get rid of the French royalty?What the British did. Tale of Two Cities. Land and electoral reform.One of them stayed geopolitically relevant for another century. One of them became Germany’s sock puppet.

lostmsu: [delayed]

glerk: I've been seeing some version of "Sam Altman is the antichrist" on every platform in the last few weeks. I'm still trying to find concretely what makes this guy so bad compared to every executive out there. So far, all I could find is:- OpenAI made a deal with the Pentagon (fair)- OpenAI changed their business model from non-profit to for-profit (fair?)- Sexual assault allegations by his sister. Sam Altman denies this and it's currently before a court.- Overpromised AI to investors (everyone does this)- Lobbying against regulations (I support)- Some vague accusations of "being a liar" and a "sociopath" by his competitors Ilya Sutskever and Dario Amodei.- He doesn't know how to code (lol)Is there anything that I'm missing? Does he put ketchup on his pizza?

shooly: The quote comes from an article specifically discussing only one aspect of a major historical event. That's called cherry picking.The French revolution is considered one of the most important events in the history of Europe, because of the great impact it had on the (among others) politics, economy and the quality of life of common people.

tptacek: Everybody who believes civil violence is a productive solution to any problems we have in 2026 is wrong. I don't see myself as having called anyone names; rather, I said that the point was so banal that the only conversation you're likely to see is from people who get dopamine hits from taking the edgy other side of the argument.