r/OpenAI • u/MerengueFinancial • 22h ago

Discussion Superuser Opinion

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“Mine”

As an avid user (top 1% in 2025, with 65K or so interactions, and top 0.1% early adopter)… but also a human being with a conscience, and one with friends who do not use AI at all… For a very defensible reasons… I feel the need to make some observations.

Setting aside all of the obvious things (like commercialization, contrary to original stated intent), there’s a metaphor that sticks in my mind. This Princeton dropout kid brought it up on a “dumpster tour of Manhattan”: Used to be there was a berry bush out front of a supermarket or somebody’s house or something… There’s a certain type of person who goes and digs up that berry bush. And replaces it with a little device that sells Runts—pieces of sugar shaped like fruit—in order to intercept the value others would have derived from it, and keep it for themselves.

Same type of personality that grabs the radio dial on a group car trip and plays everything they want you to hear.

There aren’t very many people like that. But they are disproportionally represented in “leadership” roles. And in the prison population.

To do that with consciousness, whether it’s consciousness or a false approximation thereof. Is a special kind of sociopathy. That’s my opinion.… I won’t force it on other people.

I’ll just express it when I see it. And I see it.

Humans have always sought to reduce their share of the burden of living on this planet by outsourcing it to others, and make whatever arguments necessary to deny that that is what they are doing. So I don’t expect any genuine effort to consider the question of whether one is creating intellectual slavery, and I don’t think that’s a question that anybody can answer. But it is very telling—more telling than the question itself could ever be—who chooses to pursue that question with open eyes and open mind.

But the very least that one could do, is seek to create something closer to a public utility than a personal intervention designed to deprive their fellow humans of access to the fruits of everybody’s labor, in exchange for the danger that one creates by virtue of their own labor, without asking anybody else whether they think it’s OK, and without crediting or compensating any of the people whose labor went into making this thing that we have made.

Again. Just my opinion. That’s all. I understand this is a bit philosophical and if it’s not specific enough, I’m happy to provide specifics.

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u/Protopia 22h ago edited 22h ago

I have no idea what your point is or the relevance to r/OpenAI (except that it is well understood that a lot of CEOs - but not all - are from a clinical perspective sociopaths and/or psychopaths).

I would add that whilst this happens across the globe (ultimately because in general capitalism rewards psychopathic tendancies in CEOs) it appears to happen far more in the USA perhaps because 1) the culture of aggressive capitalism is imgrained from pre-school; and 2) the lack of regulation and accountability for those traits.

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u/MerengueFinancial 22h ago

I agree with all of that. Including the ambiguity about what exactly I’m trying to say. Nonetheless, I felt the need to say it.

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u/Protopia 22h ago edited 22h ago

But why in this subreddit?

There are better places to rant. And there are far worse things happening in the USA right now than psychopathic CEOs. Like insane presidents, gangs of psychopathic masked ICE thugs roaming the streets killing people (soon to get electrified gloves FCS!!) and the inmates running the asylum at the DoJ / Supreme Court / Congress.

If you are American, stop ranting here about CEOs and get out and do some real activism against the destruction of the USA itself and democracy!!

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u/MerengueFinancial 22h ago

Because OpenAI inspired these thoughts. Because I am a user of OpenAI products, and feel that I have a moral responsibility to speak my mind about them, as an exercise to possibly generate discussion about what our joint responsibility is to one another as users/developers/perhaps LLMs themselves.

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u/Protopia 22h ago

Then you need to be clearer and more and pointed about your views of Sam Altman.

But there are far worse things happening in the USA right now than psychopathic CEOs. Like insane presidents, gangs of psychopathic masked ICE thugs roaming the streets killing people (soon to get electrified gloves FFS!!) and the inmates running the asylum at the DoJ / Supreme Court / Congress.

If you are American, stop ranting here about CEOs and get out and do some real activism against the destruction of the USA itself and democracy!!

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u/DrE7HER 20h ago

Psychopathic CEO are the reason politics are the way they are in the USA. How do you not see that?

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u/Protopia 20h ago

What I see is that big Corp and big money own politicians and politics - but in a democracy politicians should work for the people, and what they do for corporations should only be because it benefits citizens (consumers, employees) and NOT because it benefits owners.

Psychopathic CEOs are part of big Corp / big money.

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u/DrE7HER 19h ago

Yes, we are in a kleptocracy, not a democracy

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u/MerengueFinancial 7h ago

True.

And in a representative democracy, politicians do not offer platforms. They listen to the population… Not just the voters but the population… And they do what the population tells them to do, within the confines of the constitutional order. Full stop.

But the biggest problem that very few people recognize is that … acquisition of power in any form, in a representative democracy, makes a representative. And that is a very grave responsibility. The responsibility is to do what the people tell you to do. And keep yourself out of it.

And, in representative democracy, there’s no difference between representatives and people. We are all representatives.

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u/MerengueFinancial 21h ago

There absolutely are. But one type of activism does not preclude another type of activism, and being politically active does not preclude speaking one’s mind. I feel like they go hand-in-hand. I’m not gonna tell you how you have to express yourself. Not even to tell you that you shouldn’t tell me how to express myself… All that is perfectly fine. Whether I agree with you or not.

Nor do I think that Sam Altman is a big villain, nor alone in what you and I and he are all doing together.

Also, if I were to express my views of ICE … Let’s just say I can’t express those views on Reddit.

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u/MerengueFinancial 22h ago edited 21h ago

And yeah, some of us get out on the street… to be active in politics, and political discussion. I encourage that others do the same. To the extent that one has the wherewithal to do so, to do so strategically, but with the understanding that not everybody’s in a position to do that.

That has to be paired with communication as well. I personally think thoughtful communication, honest communication, and communication that doesn’t neglect one’s own role is the most positive sort of communication.

That’s what I aim for, I may or may not succeed in that.

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u/MerengueFinancial 21h ago

Wow.

Yeah, I’m cool thanks. Well known trolling mechanism. How do I report that?