Posted by __rito__ 12/10/2025
The company has changed and it seems the mission has as well.
> The original “non‑profit, open, patents shared” promise now reads almost like an alternate timeline. Today OpenAI is a capped‑profit entity with a massive corporate partner, closed frontier models, and an aggressive product roadmap.
A non trivial amount of people get laid off, likely due to a finanical crisis which is used as an excuse for companies scale up use of AI. Good chance the financial crisis was partly caused by AI companies, which ironically makes AI cheaper as infra is bought up on the cheap (so there is a consolidation, but the bountiful infra keeps things cheap). That results in increased usage (over a longer period of time). and even when the economy starts coming back the jobs numbers stay abismal.
Politics are divided into 2 main groups, those who are employed, and those who are retired. The retired group is VERY large, and has alot of power. They mostly care about entitlements. The employed age people focus on AI which is making the job market quite tough. There are 3 large political forces (but 2 parties). The Left, the Right, and the Tech Elite. The left and the right both hate AI, but the tech elite though a minority has outsized power in their tie breaker role. The age distributions would surprise most. Most older people are now on the left, and most younger people are split by gender. The right focuses on limiting entitlements, and the left focuses on growing them by taxing the tech elite. The right maintains power by not threatening the tech elite.
Unlike the 20th century America is a more focused global agenda. We're not policing everyone, just those core trading powers. We have not gone to war with China, China has not taken over Taiwan.
Physical robotics is becoming a pretty big thing, space travel is becoming cheaper. We have at least one robot on an astroid mining it. The yield is trivial, but we all thought it was neat.
Energy is much much greener, and you wouln't have guessed it... but it was the data centers that got us there. The Tech elite needed it quickly, and used the political connections to cut red tape and build really quickly.
I know that "X is destroying democracy, vote for Y" has been a prevalent narrative lately, but is there any evidence that it's true? I get that it's death by a thousand cuts, or "one step at a time" as they say.
I suggest reading [1], [2], and [3]. From there, you'll probably have lots of background to pose your own research questions. According to [4], until you write about something, your thinking will be incomplete, and I tend to agree nearly all of the time.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding
[2]: https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/08/12/anne-applebaum-autocracy-inc/
[3]: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/08/us-democratic...
[4]: "Neuroscientists, psychologists and other experts on thinking have very different ideas about how our brains work, but, as Levy writes: “no matter how internal processes are implemented, (you) need to understand the extent to which the mind is reliant upon external scaffolding.” (2011, 270) If there is one thing the experts agree on, then it is this: You have to externalise your ideas, you have to write. Richard Feynman stresses it as much as Benjamin Franklin. If we write, it is more likely that we understand what we read, remember what we learn and that our thoughts make sense." - Sönke Ahrens. How to Take Smart Notes_ - Sonke Ahrens (p. 30)
1. https://karpathy.ai/hncapsule/2015-12-08/index.html#article-...
I scrolled to the bottom of the hall of fame/shame and saw that entry #1505 and 3 F's and a D, with an average grade of D+ (1.46).
No grade better than a D shouldn't average to a D+, I'd expect it to be closer to a 0.25.
That's interesting. I wouldn't have thought that a decent generic forward future predictor would be possible.
They were right, Duolingo.
Forecasting and the meta-analysis of forecasters is fairly well studied. [1] is a good place to start.
>In February 2023, Superforecasters made better forecasts than readers of the Financial Times on eight out of nine questions that were resolved at the end of the year.[19] In July 2024, the Financial Times reported that Superforecasters "have consistently outperformed financial markets in predicting the Fed's next move"
>In particular, a 2015 study found that key predictors of forecasting accuracy were "cognitive ability [IQ], political knowledge, and open-mindedness".[23] Superforecasters "were better at inductive reasoning, pattern detection, cognitive flexibility, and open-mindedness".
I'm really not sure what you want me to take from this article? Do you contend that everyone has the same competency at forecasting stock movements?
I linked to the Wikipedia page as a way of pointing to the book Superforecasters by Tetlock and Gardner. If forecasting interests you, I recommend using it as a jumping off point.
> Do you contend that everyone has the same competency at forecasting stock movements?
No, and I'm not sure why you are asking me this. Superforecasters does not make that claim.
> I'm really not sure what you want me to take from this article?
If you read the book and process and internalize its lessons properly, I predict you will view what you wrote above in a different different light:
> Gotta auto grade every HN comment for how good it is at predicting stock market movement then check what the "most frequently correct" user is saying about the next 6 months.
Namely, you would have many reasons to doubt such a project from the outset and would pursue other more fruitful directions.