I agree directionally with this but it drives me nuts how much special pleading there is about what high-profile companies like OpenAI do, vs. what low-profile industry giants like Cisco and Oracle have been doing for a whole generation. The analysis can't credibly start and end with what OpenAI is doing.
Cisco and Oracle didn’t start out as non-profits claiming to be focused on the betterment of mankind. This is no different than Google dropping the do no evil and getting roasted for it.
Also, you’re suggesting because a company got away with bad behavior in the past we should never expect better of any other company going forward?
> Also, you’re suggesting because a company got away with bad behavior in the past we should never expect better of any other company going forward?
No, they are saying it is frustrating to see the focus on OpenAI rather than, for example, Cisco and Oracle, in an article with this particular title. On the topic of “supercomputers for autocrats”, a reader may be interested in what Oracle is up to.
The problem is that we don't. We see the same thing in politics - we focus so much on "us vs them" and while the "them" is uniquely damaging, we lose sight of the fact that there is a lot of overlap in how they're both really damaging.
Corporate news media hyperfocuses on the clickbait, rage-inducing, enagement-farming stories. And passes over companies like Oracle because they spend a ton on advertising (i.e. they kiss the ring)
> We can focus on more than a single thing at a time.
This is not the point. You are correct that we can focus on more than one thing at a time and that’s why different articles are about different things. This article is about “Building supercomputers for autocrats” and it is odd that it focuses on a single aspect of that topic.
the nonprofit line has not been believ{ed,able} or relevant for what, in tech, may as well have been a century by now. had this happened around the time the veil was lifted, that would have been something worth discussing, but this was announced last month. it is now only meaningfully addressable along the same avenue as any other american tech giant getting comfy with the us govt's controversial foreign relations.
I think it's worth discussing AI specifically being used by authoritarian governments, because it is so suitable for surveillance and repression. And worth discussing OpenAI as a leader in the field, investing in such collaborations.
It's worth talking about the others too for sure.
Not every article or essay needs to talk about all of them. Sure, it would be improved if it at least mentioned in passing what is known of any other large corporations making specifically AI deals with authoritarian governments. (Such as all of them with Israel).
But not every article needs to talk about everything. The argument that a given article or point should not have been made because it didn't talk about other things -- usually will result in less talk about any of the things, not more. And that's often the intent of such an argument.
It's strange anyone believed their intentions to begin with. Ive said it here often and I'll say it again- When they say they want to change the world for the better, stop and ponder their alignment. Even better, stop and realize someones public alignment does not equal their true intentions... Change might always happen, but it doesn't mean its "good" for humanity.
High tech has been selling huge computer systems and advanced technology to the UAE for decades. The original intent of the AMD GloFo spinoff was to put a leading-edge fab in Abu Dhabi until that ran into the realities of doing anything in a desert with bad supply chain considerations and no fresh water.
Most of the declarations of that sort are usually just spin for their people by the government when they make plans to buy out some high-tech company. We saw this with Global Foundries, we're seeing this with Resilience, and we'll eventually see it with some other company down the line (likely OpenAI or Novo Nordisk). The government has to provide its native people the illusion of providing jobs, if not actually provide the jobs. Because not every Emirati can work in ADNOC in a high-paying air-conditioned office.
Politics is the art of the possible, eh? It is annoying but we can be grateful that people are at least attempting to organise around principles, even if the principle is obviously not what motivates them. In this case the woman is obviously mostly writing this because she doesn't like OpenAI specifically, but she has an argument and it is a good one.
> Denouncing X should also mean denouncing actors close to X, for a given domain space F(actor).
Nobody has time for that.
For example, one common target for activists is Nestlé. Most people barely have time to think about Nestlé at all, and of those who do, I think most are oblivious that e.g. Maggi is a brand that Nestlé owns.
I could probably do this XKCD but about activists and company names instead of geochemists and olivine/feldspar/quartz: https://xkcd.com/2501/
Let's say Joe and Jane are both illegally parked. It is not "special pleading" to point out that Joe is illegally parked. That's not the meaning of the phrase.
I agree in general, but I think some important context here is that the author of this post was previously on the OpenAI board (the board that fired Sam Altman).
This was an excellently researched book - the 2012 edition has a lot of additional documentation that really highlighted the level of support IBM threw behind the railway logistics planning.
Computer: 1. One who computes; a calculator, reckoner; spec. a person employed to make calculations in an observatory, in surveying, etc. [OED, 1923]
Punch cards held tables of records, and the unit record equipment were nowhere close to the modern meaning of ‘computer’. (The human computers were probably Turing-complete, though.)
Do Cisco and Oracle engage in the same kind of Orwellian double speak of claiming they are supporting democracy by giving even more power to autocratic dictators?
I mean, I think OpenAI really opened themselves up to being singled out when they framed this as being about, like, promoting democracy when it’s clearly just a cash grab.
> what high-profile companies like OpenAI do, vs. what low-profile industry giants like Cisco and Oracle have been doing
Not that I disagree but you're whatabouting your way into an argument, and you used to be against it [0]. And you're not even doing it to establish a pattern or bring up some history, it's just for the sake of it.
It's an analysis about OpenAI. You agree that the author is not wrong but immediately detract from the credibility of the analysis because they haven't included a specific "whatabout"?
It does meet the legal definition. If the International Criminal Court isn’t qualified to decide what is and isn’t a genocide - who is? Because they have called it a genocide. It was a genocide back in January 2024 when the ICC first spoke on this, and since then there has been another year and a half of ongoing genocidal action - targeting of civilians, denial of aid, deliberate starvation and water depravation. These are facts. They are visible in 4K if you have the stomach to watch them.
>Because they have called it a genocide. It was a genocide back in January 2024
They did not. Go read the ruling. They declared the claim "plausible" and ordered Israel to take actions to preserve evidence and take steps to ensure one did not occur. That is not equivalent to declaring that one did occur or was occurring. It was essentially a type of injunction, not a conviction of any kind.
>> In January, the ICJ delivered an interim judgement - and one key paragraph from the ruling drew the most attention: “In the Court’s view, the facts and circumstances... are sufficient to conclude that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible.”
>> This was interpreted by many, including some legal commentators, to mean that the court had concluded that the claim that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza was “plausible”.
>> This interpretation spread quickly, appearing in UN press releases, statements from campaign groups and many media outlets, including the BBC.
>> In April, however, Joan Donoghue, the president of the ICJ at the time of that ruling, said in a BBC interview that this was not what the court had ruled.
>> Rather, she said, the purpose of the ruling was to declare that South Africa had a right to bring its case against Israel and that Palestinians had “plausible rights to protection from genocide” - rights which were at a real risk of irreparable damage.
>> The judges had stressed they did not need to say for now whether a genocide had occurred but concluded that some of the acts South Africa complained about, if they were proven, could fall under the United Nations’ Convention on Genocide.
So what you’re saying is that you were wrong when you said “it literally doesn't meet the legal definition”?
Because you’ve just cited the ICJ saying it was plausible back in january 2024. So, will you be retracting your incorrect statement that it does not meet the legal definition?
Meanwhile, a UN special committee, as well as amnesty international, have both concluded it’s a genocide.
But you got me, the ICJ hasn’t concluded it’s DEFINITELY a genocide. Just that if the actions alleged are true, it’s a genocide.
In the mean time, 80% of homes in gaza have been destroyed. Uncountable war crimes have been documented. The ICJ ordered the halt of the rafah offensive and israel ignored that order. Refugee camps were bombed. People seek aid and are shot. People are killed for delivering aid. Water is withheld.
If by some technicality it does not get ruled as a genocide by the ICJ, it hardly matters. It’s an atrocity of genocidal proportions and that is why people keep calling it a genocide. Oh, and because it’s also a literal genocide.
They didn't actually declare the genocide claim plausible, but rather the Palestinian's right to be protected from genocide. At least that was the then-president's interpretation -
> “It did not decide - and this is something where I'm correcting what's often said in the media... that the claim of genocide was plausible,” said the judge.
> “It did emphasise in the order that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide. But the shorthand that often appears, which is that there's a plausible case of genocide, isn't what the court decided.”
This isn't accurate, genocide isn't among the charges that the ICC is trying to prosecute Netanyahu for. Khan's initial list of charges included extermination, but that was rejected by the pre-trial chamber.
Do you mean the ICJ? They haven't made any finding of genocide either, but it's a possible outcome of the current case.
While the ICJ hasn’t concluded it is genocide, they have clearly contradicted the post I was responding to that said this does NOT fit the legal definition of genocide. If it didn’t fit, they would not have ordered israel to act to prevent acts of genocide.
If the irish don’t think it fits, why do they keep calling it a genocide?
They want to expand the definition of genocide to include blocking aid (already a war crime, and something israel is consistently doing). They want to do this not because they have any doubt that a genocide is occurring, but because the current definition makes it too easy for supporters of this genocide to sew doubt allowing the genocide to continue.
Definition
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
> The only people that say something isn't genocide are those that support genocide.
I don’t think you meant to phrase it this way. The point in the sibling comment is spot on. If I may, I suspect you want to replace the word “something” with “a credible genocide”.
> broad consensus
Unfortunately, the consensus comes from an unreliable narrator. (That doesn’t make it wrong, just untrustworthy.)
I mean, that's pretty clearly false. Very recently, a certain orange man and his (until this past week) peppy sidekick have been referring to the predicament of Afrikaner farmers as genocide - I'm pretty sure you would agree with me that that isn't the case in actual reality. Therefore, I'm pretty sure you would agree there are some claims of genocide that are in fact false and made for cynical political reasons.
Was dropping the atomic bomb on Japan "genocide"? Was firebombing Dresden "genocide"? We could probably even agree that these were ethically wrong, even perhaps war crimes, but nobody calls them genocide, because they aren't.
Correct. The public consensus doesn't call them genocides, while calling other events as genocides. The only people going against the public consensus are this seeking to commit genocide.
>If four ICC judges are sanctioned by the corrupt Trump administration because of their rulings that it is a genocide
They have done no such thing. The only ruling thus far was basically equivalent to a grand jury indictment. There has been no ruling that the Gaza conflict is or was a genocide, only that the claim was plausible enough to proceed through the legal process. It came with an order to preserve evidence and produce reports for the court and take steps to ensure a genocide did not occur.
There was no ruling that a genocide is or was occurring. That is false. I expect you to retract your claim.
> There was no ruling that a genocide is or was occurring. That is false. I expect you to retract your claim.
The ICC specifically ordered Israel to introduce immediate measures to prevent genocide. That is the exact wording of the order. [1] A trial will happen once the president and/or generals of the IDF set foot on European land, or once they are extradited, which they likely will never do.
Both the ICC and the ICJ came to the same conclusion that the blockades of humanitarian aids, the destruction of religious and medical institutions, combined with military rocket strikes against civilians are evidence that Israel is "destroying Palestinians in Gaza", and that it is genocide.
Additionally, multiple NGOs have come to the same conclusion, including Amnesty International [2] and the ECCHR [3]
> The ICC specifically ordered Israel to introduce immediate measures to prevent genocide.
Can you quote the order you're referring to? That doesn't sound right, ICC would have no authority (under its own rules) to issue injunctive orders of that sort.
> Both the ICC and the ICJ came to the same conclusion ... that it is genocide.
ICJ made no such finding (so far) - the finding at this stage was that Palestinians had a "plausible right" to be protected from genocide, not that one is occurring.
This doesn't sound right for the ICC either, since it's at the pre-trial stage where they don't make such findings of fact.
Even the Irish, who can’t be accused of being pro-Israel, recognize that the genocide accusation is bunk. The Irish solution is to try to redefine the term to fit their agenda. About par for the course.
The irish literally call it genocide. They want an expansion to include blocking aid as genocide, so that deniers like yourself can’t
deny so flippantly
The Irish call it genocide, but find that nobody agrees with them. Well, because the definition doesn’t agree with them. So they want to change the definition. As you yourself just admitted, it’s not a genocide as per the definition. Otherwise, there would be no need to change it so that “I can’t be flippant”
