this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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Obligatory reminder that billionaires are not our friends. But also, donating to AI research in 2018 is quite a different matter than if he had done so in recent years. Most people in tech were somewhere between neutral and enthusiastic towards machine learning back then and few foresaw the monster it would become. Doubt he's as enthusiastic nowadays, considering what it did to Valve's hardware ambitions.
OpenAI, back then, was also a very different organization. They were mostly a non-profit, claiming to be a research organization who's goals were to ensure AI benefited all of humanity. Hell, I'd say Whisper, which that OpenAI did release, was very positive for humanity. It was when Sam Altman saw big dollar signs in GPT2+ that things started changing fast.
Very much this, in 2023 there was a falling out between Altman and the board of OpenAI over this, and Altman was kicked out. However some big shareholders (Microsoft) made a stink and reversed it.
I think many employees close to Altman also went to strike or theaten to leave. But I think he's bad for the (now) company. They should've stayed non-profit
Wellllllll, I dunno about this take seeing as he's still very enthusiastic about it as of less than a year ago, with some very.. hype-style statements about it.
https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/gabe-newell-says-ai-is-a-significant-technology-transition-on-a-par-with-the-emergence-of-computers-or-the-internet-and-will-be-a-cheat-code-for-people-who-want-to-take-advantage-of-it/
If you can mentally separate the technology from the capitalist orgy around trying to shoehorn LLMs into every possible thing, he's not wrong.
The technology has promise, but the reality of what it can be useful for is complete overshadowed by the hype frenzy declaring the end of all knowledge workers and creatives.
LLMs are significantly better at translation than anything we've been able to design, for instance. But that's not flashy, it doesn't generate seed funding or lure investors so it's largely not what people think of when they hear "AI".
Dude, he's just another greedy billionaire. The guy doesn't deserve all the glaze gets
Edit: He's also incredibly wrong, like all other AI cultists. LLMs are a useful tool but they're no where even close to the level of computers or the Internet.
LLMs are not, certainly.
But neural networks ("AI") can do pretty incredible things and the money being poured into LLMs is being spent on AI research (and all of the RAM/graphics cards in the world).
We're only seeing LLMs and image generators because it's what we have the most training data of. The Internet doesn't have hundreds of billions of MRIs or robotic motion plans, so those uses of AI take longer to appear.
Name one.
Predict protein structures better than any other methods.
The fun part about those other uses, like MRIs, is that it requires the work of skilled professionals and then apparently weakens the skill of those professionals, which sure sounds like a nasty downward spiral.
Using AI Made Doctors Worse at Spotting Cancer Without Assistance
This is effectively pitching potential snake oil to the uninformed, while ignoring every real-life issue in the medical industry and side effects it would cause.
Sure, tools make people worse at doing the thing without tools.
Using AutoCAD made draftsmen worse at drafting, that doesn't matter because there is no occasion where you need to draft complex plans without a computer. If AI diagnosis makes doctors worse at reading MRIs... that would only matter in a world where they're reading MRIs but also don't have access to a computer. There is no hospital that has a functional MRI machine that wouldn't be able to access these tools.
The important thing is that the doctors, when using these AI tools, are measurably more effective. The result is the thing that matters for public health, not any individual's ability to operate without their tools.
https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-ai-detects-pancreatic-cancer-up-to-3-years-before-diagnosis-in-landmark-validation-study/
Doubling the early detection rate of one of the most deadly types of cancers will result in many more lives being saved.
That's not AI. Those algorithms were pattern matching developed at Carnegie Mellon 15 years ago. so now they want to call it AI.
Radiologist and pathologist have always had a massive error rate because of human cognition bias.
Machine Learning isn't restricted to neural networks.
Seems like that's a bad thing and we should be happy that there are tools which improve their accuracy.
Are you confident that the American healthcare system wouldn't declare experts to be a redundancy and simply replace them with the AI? Not only would that fit with their well-known profit motive, it is explicitly what AI companies claim they want to do.
I would love to live in a utopia where AI can be used ethically, but it is dangerous to promote the assumption that it magically just will be.
Yes.
Nothing about this tool replaces experts any more than a calculator or computer can replace a human mathematician.
I don't assume that AI will always be used ethically (see: War, LLM propaganda bots, etc). Like every technology it is possible to do bad things with it and it will require regulations and laws addressing this.
Dismissing a technology because it is used by bad people, if you actually applied that standard consistently in your life, would have you living naked in a cave without access to fire or tools.
You don't need to believe in a utopia to understand that a world where 70% of pancreatic cancer is detected 3 years earlier is better than one where 30% of pancreatic cancer is detected 3 years earlier.
FauxLiving, I appreciate your guarantees about the future, but can you demonstrate why the for-profit medical and AI industries wouldn't cut corners if the AI behaved the way you hope it will?
First, this is a peer-reviewed result not me expressing my hopes.
Second, this application does not replace radiologists. It is a tool for radiologists in one specific type of diagnosis.
If you have some hypothetical future outcome in mind, then the burden of proof is on you to prove your position, not on me to disprove it.
The data shows that this system works.
That would lead to a legal liability. The reality is all radiology scans and pathology slide images are cross checked by software and if there is a discrepancy, another pathologist is consulted. This is because the error rate of pathologists and radiologists is conservatively 1% which is far too high.
There's a balance to be struck here. Relying on automation tooling wholesale will always make you worse. There's a reason that even though we have calculators, it's important to know the fundamental maths that would let you perform those same calculations yourself. For the majority of people, it's probably not critical, but if you need to validate that information, you cerainly want to be able to understand how the original conclusion was drawn.
The same goes for software engineering, where AI is seeing heavy use. People asking it to build who programs receive bug riddled and inefficient code, but software engineers who are using it for rapid prototyping or to reduce the work of rewriting common functions in different projects are going to be more effective because they understand what the resulting structure should look like.
AI is not a replacement for the human, and if there's a future for it, it will be assistive to the fundamentals and knowledge human specialists already posess. But that requires the continued education and development of skills within the industries these tools are deployed in.
Code generation and medical result generation are similar enough to compare (I think), but to expound on the point I was making to the other person I replied to: There is far less medical data online than there is code. We basically have every code textbook online. We have tons of examples to create scaffolds from. We don't have so much medical data, and the people promoting the tools to the medical field tend to be the tech bros who don't mention the caveats of what their products can do.
In other words, if AI could be good in medicine, it needs to be rolled out by none of the people who are currently pushing for it, and the caveats need to be explained in a way that none of them do. (It's not objective, it will not create new science like OpenAI CEO Sam Alman says, etc.) If AI boosters managed to convince the medical field of the same things, they have already convinced politicians and journalists of, I think the result would be rapid quality degradation of treatment, deskilling, lots of unnecessary death. And boosters that promote potential benefits without acknowledging that are being very reckless.
Nah, sorry, if Gabe looked at the LLM mess of the last 5+ years and is still pumping it as 'ermagerd this is technology that rivals the importance of the internet, or computers themselves' he is cooked on marketing hype.
It's still crap.
Its most promising commercial application in paid models (coding), is still writing code slower than professional coders, when actually measured in studies.
The only goals it's hit is makinh a few jerks more wealthy, move that wealth inequality needle more towards the billionaires, and set us up for the next global financial crisis that we'll all be bailing them out on and suffering global decades long recessions through.
I reckon 2027 it'll hit, that's looking like when the money guys will finally be completely out of wiggle room and there will be no more cash for the cash fire.
Right, he might be a little further down, but he’s absolutely still on the list. There are no good billionaires.
Why does this even come up?
Because lots of people worship Gabe despite the fact that he is ungodly wealthy.
I don't think anyone thinks that. What I mean is, its obvious they are not our friends.
Those who you call "worship Gabe" I don't think they are. In example I am a fan of what Valve as a company does. Gabe is just the manifestation and voice we have, so we talk about Gabe as a whole company in example. I do not think there is a "worship" involved or any cult in example. Often its just meme replies for the sake of jokes, that look like a worship..
Talking for me personally at least, I like in example that their goals mostly align with mine, relatively speaking from the entire gaming companies. I wouldn't call myself a worship, but its the only gaming company I want to spent my money on. And its the only company that supports what I value (Open Source, Linux, PC, the way lot of things are handled in Steam). Just talking for myself here.
I was of course using the word "worship" in a non literal way. Let me rephrase to be more literal:
It comes up because there are many people who give Gabe a pass on being a billionaire because it is convenient for them. The choice between Gabe being a billionaire and Valve doing the awesome work for open source is a false choice and a nonsequiter. Gabe should not get a pass for his downright unethical amount of wealth just because he is the CEO of a company you like. Yet he very often does in gaming communities full of people who are, otherwise, in favour of eating the rich. For clarity, eating the rich is also not used literally.
You can appreciate the things Valve does and condemn Gabe for hoarding his vast wealth at the same time.
Lol, I think we had this discussion before. Nice to meet you again. :p
I mean I understand this position of yours. And yes, there can't be rich people without poor people, so in that sense I agree being rich is evil by definition. But there is a difference in how to get rich, either by exploiting the weak or those who need it, or by creating good products people WANT to spend money on willingly, without getting exploited. They can get rich this way, which is not really unethical to me. Its a bit of paradox with this (my) argumentation.
I don't think that Gabe is an evil person, or soulless like other CEOs. Especially because Gabe / Valve makes money by creating good products on a free and open market. Other CEOs make money by selling their soul and users to investors (remind you, Valve and Gabe doesn't have investors).
However, there is something I hate Valve (and Gabe) for actually, and that is having lootboxes AND item market in Steam and their games available. If anything, this is what would I call the most evil thing and exploit Valve (and therefore Gabe) does.
You say that Gabe has earned his wealth ethically. In the next paragraph you defeat your own stance by providing an example of how he earned it unethically. We can agree on this point.
I would further say that no one can earn a billion dollar net worth ethically. No one, not even Gabe. Hence, to the root of the conversation, why this comes up.
I don't think the majority of his money comes from those exceptions. Without the lootboxes and the item market, Valve (and Gaben) would probably make most of the amount of money they do right now. Just because I don't like that part does not defeat my previous argument. My point is, the examples about item market and lootboxes in some of their games are not core to their strategy and their business does not stand on those legs.
Or is your argumentation that Gaben is a bad person, just because of these two points and everyone who hates him hate him for that? Are these the central points you are calling him an evil person? I don't think so. That's not the core issue. Your core issue is, that he is rich. So it does not matter in what ways he earns his money. Therefore reasoning alone how he earned his money is meaningless to discuss at this point. You just try to find a justification and point to it, after i pointed it out. Therefore I don't know how rational it is to hate a person just for being rich (which is the main issue here, because you say nobody can get rich ethically).
I did not assert that he is evil in this conversation, nor did I assert that I or anyone else hates him, justified or otherwise.
Nor did I ever try to use or define "rich", or that "rich" people are evil or that they deserve to be hated.
I believe that a billion dollars of net worth while there are starving and homeless people is an unethical act. I also believe that no one can accumulate a billion dollars of net worth ethically. I hope I have made that stance clear.
I believe that this conversion alone acts as a good explanation of why the original commenter made their comment. I hope it's been cleared up.
Because a lot of people equate "some are less harmful than others" with "I fucking love this guy and think he's a harmless saint!"
It’s 2026, open a window.
I'm on Linux, I do not use Windows.
They're still called windows in Linux.
Those are applications, not the operating system. (Edit: I mean yes, you are right. I just desperately try to dodge it anyway.)
Just one of the reasons Windows should have had its trademark removed.
You forgot to say the distro, but it’s ok I know it’s Arch.
I don't know if I am allowed to say that, because I use EndeavourOS which is almost exactly Arch. Maybe I should start doing that with an asterisk attached to it, as I use Arch, BTW*.
^*EndeavourOS
thx, bro
ha, gotta give you that one :)
(obligatory - same here)