AI, "Humanity", and Dr. Manhattan Syndrome
The article discusses the disconnect between AI executives' lofty ideals about 'humanity' and their actual engagement with real people. It highlights a significant political donation made by OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman, and critiques the abstract way tech leaders often approach social issues. The author compares these executives to Dr. Manhattan from 'Watchmen', suggesting that their elevated perspective leads to a detachment from the individual struggles of people.
- ▪Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president, made a $25 million donation to MAGA Inc., one of the largest political donations of 2025.
- ▪The article critiques the tendency of tech executives to discuss 'humanity' in abstract terms while neglecting real people's issues.
- ▪The author compares AI executives to Dr. Manhattan, suggesting their elevated perspective leads to a disconnect from individual suffering.
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| Original publisher | Hacker News (AI / LLM) |
| Canonical URL | https://www.personfamiliar.com/p/ai-humanity-and-dr-manhattan-syndrome |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 19:18:27 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T19:19:56.939Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T19:19:56.939Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | db8P6qVuUlt7 |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
AI, "Humanity", and Dr. Manhattan SyndromeA communications interventionJim ProsserFeb 24, 20262658Share“If I’m to have a symbol, it shall be one I respect.”Back in January, it came to light via FEC reporting that OpenAI’s president and co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife had made a monumental $25 million donation to MAGA Inc. last September—one of the largest individual political donations of 2025.When interviewed by WIRED about his newfound political largesse, Brockman explained the check in rather grand terms. “This mission, in my mind, is bigger than companies, bigger than corporate structures,” he said. “We are embarking on a journey to develop this technology that’s going to be the most impactful thing humanity has ever created.”The word that sticks out to me here is “humanity”.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hacker News (AI / LLM).
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