For some reason this reminds me of the olden days of Railroad Tycoons. Like those old timey movies where a bunch of land from the common folks is bought out for

For some reason this reminds me of the olden days of Railroad Tycoons. Like those old timey movies where a bunch of land from the common folks is bought out for super cheap prices because the guys building the railways know where the stations are going to be placed. This also helps make sense to me why so many SV types were jumping to the defense of Altman on X/Twitter. They are probably salivating at the potential investments that were in back-room discussions involving Altman and feel the need to prop those up. For example, there may have been literal billions agreed upon in principle but not yet signed amongst several ventures. The tarnishment of his reputation could scuttle much more than OpenAI if this report is correct. If I was a pure AI researcher and my entire goal in life was to build AGI - I would loathe to be in a company that was engaging in such shenanigans. I'm not for or against either side in this dispute but I can totally appreciate why each side would want to retain control of what has been built so far. It is just there is a fork in the road here and only one vehicle.