10 ms·

The whole thing was a scam

993 points by guilamu 8mo ago

mentalgear 8mo ago
"On the very same day that Altman offered public support to Amodei [CEO of Anthropic], he signed a deal to take away Amodei’s business, with a deal that wasn’t all that different. You can’t get more Altman than that."
- imjonse 8mo ago
  He's young, he's got enough time to outdo himself.
mentalgear 8mo ago
PS: If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US, I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.
- dragonwriter 8mo ago
  > If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US It very clearly is, the present AI instance is far from the only recent case. > I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. They evaluate the propensity and ability to profitably engage in open corruption the same as they evaluate other capacities of the company. “Secure” isn't a binary category, and the risk here is much like any other risk. > When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent. That is the expected result of increasing perceived risk. yes, probably one of those “slowly and then all at once” things.
- ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
  >I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. 2025 was also the first year that the majority of stocks were traded off-market (i.e. hedgie darkpools, no public price discovery). ---- Hope ya'll bought your gold before Monday. #RemindMe2days [gold@5290USD, this post]
  - burner_ 8mo ago
    >2025 was also the first year that the majority of stocks were traded off-market (i.e. hedgie darkpools, no public price discovery). Do you have any sources for that?
    - throw-qqqqq 8mo ago
      It sounds quite plausible. Almost all equity ETFs do their balancing against dark pools or directly with market makers to avoid arbitrage and to ensure enough liquidity. Since index ETFs have more AUM than the underlying instruments (the “ETF tail wagging the dog”), this sounds like a natural evolution. There is nothing nefarious about this, it’s just how the markets work.
      - ProllyInfamous 7mo ago
        >nothing nefarious ... it’s just how the markets work. first_time.meme | Gold "up" 3.12% pre-Monday trading ($5411) #USDeflation #ThisGuyGetsIt
  - maxbond 8mo ago
    Trades in dark pools still get published to the consolidated tape; they're still part of price discovery. What's "dark" about them is that you don't see the order book, but people break up large orders into smaller orders to disguise their order size in lit markets too.
- foogazi 8mo ago
  > I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. It’s the best investment - just bribe your way to contracts
- jfengel 8mo ago
  It's bizarre seeing the outright bribery. A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. You couldn't give money directly to the candidate for personal use. Donations went to the campaign of the guy who already agreed with you. The FEC used to take a dim view of outright pay-for-service, even dressed up. This is new. And now people need to decide how they feel about that. They get one chance to say "no, that's not how we do things." Even if the administration suffers a blow this November, if they hear that this is mostly acceptable to their base, it will be what every politician does from here on.
  - wrqvrwvq 8mo ago
    In what sense is this new, other than a different side cares about the optics?
    - mikestew 8mo ago
      OP explained it clearly: “you couldn’t $1, now you can”. It would be helpful if you explained which part did you not understand. Alternatively, that barking sound I hear might be a sea lion.
  - specialist 8mo ago
    IANAL, IIRC: SCOTUS has very narrowly defined bribery as explicit quid pro quo. And sometimes not even then.
    - RajT88 8mo ago
      You recall correctly. And they did so, so they could take bribes with no consequences as long as they take them the right way.
      - nobody9999 8mo ago
        >And they did so, so they could take bribes with no consequences as long as they take them the right way. Yep. cf. Snyder v. United States[0] [0] https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scope-of-anti-bribery-law/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop...
- CamperBob2 8mo ago
  the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent To where?
  - ben_w 8mo ago
    Anywhere offering opportunity. I'm in Europe, I'd like to see it come here. The news I see suggests China's ahead of us in this race, but I don't know if that's for all talent, or if it was just an artefact of a lot of Chinese people in the US on work visas returning home. Or indeed whether the news about China doing well here was real or hallucinated by an LLM.
    - jakeydus 8mo ago
      If engineers in the US (i.e. me) want to find work in Europe, what can we do? I know that’s a googleable question but honestly I can’t help but think that there cannot be any European country that would want me and my family. Immigration is hard.
      - ben_w 8mo ago
        It is hard. I moved to Germany in 2018, and only just this month reached B1 level in the language; and that was a pre-Brexit move so I don't need to care about visa. The EU has a "blue card" scheme modeled on US green card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union) If language is your biggest barrier, pick a country whose language you already speak. As this clearly includes English, Ireland if you want specifically EU, and UK if you just want the continent (mainly London, but I spent a long time in Cambridge tech sector). Germany may still be an option even without being a native speaker (depending on your skills), but with all the difficulty everyone has today with AI messing with job hunting, get the contract before considering a move.
      - fernly 8mo ago
        Not that hard if you are in young to middle years and have any job experience. I asked Perplexity "If an American citizen, a trained engineer with some experience, desired to work abroad in the EU or an English-first nation, what are some good websites to check?" I suggest you do the same -- the reply lists a dozen promising sites. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/if-an-american-citizen-a-train-9bmuP5N0TJmLMn3swnSbMw https://www.perplexity.ai/search/if-an-american-citizen-a-tr...
- coldtea 8mo ago
  >I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. Investors just care for the returns. As long as they can identify and bet on the side doing the bribing, they're fine...
- ilamont 8mo ago
  > When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent. No, it's not inevitable. What you've described is the way a lot of authoritarian states work, such as China. China attracts plenty of capital and external talent, including people from other countries such as Taiwan and the United States. You have be all-in on the CCP's rules, though. Vietnam operates in a similar way. Untold billions of FDI in the past 20 years from Japan, the U.S. and China. Talk with top executives there, and you'll frequently find close connections or family ties with leaders in Hanoi.
  - iririririr 8mo ago
    china attract zero capital in the sense being discussed here, which would be VC. it attract lots of capex expenses like factories.
- danielparsons 8mo ago
  Bit melodramatic. The US still has the most talent, most capital, and best property protections of anywhere in the world. Name a country that (1) doesn't have any quid-pro-quo system with the govt, and (2) has pro-growth pro-capitalist policies.
  - RichEO 8mo ago
    I wonder if maybe those two things have a causal relationship
- bootsmann 8mo ago
  This has already happened, its a key reason why the dollar is down 15% since the new admin took power.
- amarant 8mo ago
  The logical conclusion to your analysis is that Musks companies must be a great investment. Musk already owns most of the government after all. And the US is still among the largest economies in the world.
- Aeolun 8mo ago
  > I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment I the problem is that from the companies’s side you just have a whole country to exploit, so I’m fairly certain the investments still work.
- direwolf20 8mo ago
  That means bribing the government is a very secure and profitable investment to invest in.
- cermicelli 8mo ago
  Well you think corruption is bad for the rich investors? I hope I can find that kind of optimism and live in a more corrupt world. Tldr; Rich people can bribe more, hence Rich people can be more rich+er.. I think a lot of poor tech multi-millionaires hate this in US but all rich billionaires must be loving it...
- therobots927 8mo ago
  The rational investors have been moving their money outside the US for approximately 15 months. Compare the chart of VEA to VTI.
- mountainriver 8mo ago
  This has pretty much always been happening, it’s more brazen under Trump
dist-epoch 8mo ago
> but after Brockman had donated 25M to Trump’s PAC > In capitalism, the market decides. > In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. Author is confused about what Capitalism is. It worked exactly as expected, Capital used itself to advance it's own needs - maximizing (own) growth. Capitalism is not about markets, it's about Capital. There is a reason why lobbying is an accepted practice in one of the most Capitalistic countries in the world, and generally forbidden in Socialist EU.
- NicuCalcea 8mo ago
  > generally forbidden in Socialist EU This is one of those cases where you wish your critics were right. One in 40 people in Brussels is a lobbyist, but apparently it's forbidden.
  - drcongo 8mo ago
    Very kind of you to only pick one error in the parent post to critique.
    - NicuCalcea 8mo ago
      I've been working with UK/EU lobbying data in recent months, so that's the one I felt competent to pick on. I thought I'd leave the nature of capitalism to someone else.
- jeremyjh 8mo ago
  Which prominent economist has argued that bribes are an essential part of Capitalism?
  - heavyset_go 8mo ago
    Which prominent priest has argued that god doesn't exist?
  - lm28469 8mo ago
    Someone came up with the "invisible hand of the free market" theory and become quite famous so I'd say we can add our own crackpot theories on top, apparently they don't have to be very well researched to stick around
ajshahH 8mo ago
> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter Transitioning? That happened post WW2. How many more wars in the Middle East do we need to convince people? Though, I think it’s hard for Marcus’ generation to see this. Odd given Vance’s connections to Thiel et al.
- georgemcbay 8mo ago
  > Transitioning? To be fair, there has been a notable recent shift in the sense that nobody even tries to hide what is going on anymore. We've moved beyond manufacturing consent to ass out corruption on full display, "try to stop me."
pton_xd 8mo ago
This https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230 https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230 is the simplest and most logical explanation as to what happened. The disagreement was over who would be the arbiter of "lawful usage" of the technology, the US government or Amodei.
- afthonos 8mo ago
  No, that’s not accurate at all, and in case you are genuinely confused: 1. Anthropic should be free to sell its services under whatever legal terms and conditions it wants. 2. The Pentagon should be free to buy those services, negotiate for different terms, refuse to buy those services, and terminate contracts subject to any termination clauses. You may or may not agree with what the Pentagon wants to do, but if things had stayed there, there would be no real issue. The problem is that the Pentagon is trying to bury Anthropic as a company, calling it a danger to the United States because it exerted its non-controversial right in (1). Any “explanation” that doesn’t address that is confused itself or trying to confuse the issue. I leave it to you as to which category the linked source falls under.
  - pton_xd 8mo ago
    1. Agree 2. Agree > The problem is that the Pentagon is trying to bury Anthropic as a company, calling it a danger to the United States because it exerted its non-controversial right in (1). My take is that the DoD very much wanted to continue using Claude. However, Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage. The DoD took this as a personal offense (how dare this guy, does he know who we are, etc) and lashed out in retaliation. The whole sequence of events makes sense when viewed under this lense.
    - otterley 8mo ago
      > Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage. So did Altman. The terms of each company’s agreement with the DoW are roughly the same when they come out of the wash. “Mr. Altman negotiated with the Department of Defense in a different way from Anthropic, agreeing to the use of OpenAI’s technology for all lawful purposes. Along the way, he also negotiated the right to put safeguards into OpenAI’s technologies that would prevent its systems from being used in ways that it did not want them to be.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-agreement-pentagon-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.PlA.QxlS.soAAwh3zAe08&smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-agreeme...
AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
What does this have to do with AI capabilities specifically? This is literally the politics of running massive business interests, which I understand is relevant for technology and everything… … but isn’t Gary Marcus’s whole game that AI is not capable and people are wrong/lying about AI tech capabilities? I feel like this is a handy moment for Gary where he can say he could basically ignore all of his previous claims (because they’re all technically wrong) and shift into “AI is bad for society because it’s more crony capitalism” or something kind of muddy argument.
- MadxX79 8mo ago
  What's your argument here? He's not allowed to discuss crony capitalism because you imagine that he thinks LLMs suddenly became reliable.
  - AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
    It’s a comment about who Gary Marcus is presenting himself as My intention is for other people to think what I believe which is Gary Marcus is a hack and has no business being listened to with respect to technical evaluation of AI because he’s not technically competent enough to do. The existence of his polemics waste everybody’s time and generally waste resources like we’re wasting right now. His entire schtick has been as the debunker in chief of claims of AI capabilities If you actually look at his polemics they increasingly have nothing to do with his original argument because his original argument not only is flawed but is ignorant of the technical capabilities
    - nickthegreek 8mo ago
      Then disassemble the argument the author is making and show people an alternative reality based take if you want to be taken seriously.
    - mold_aid 8mo ago
      What "technical competence" do you need to provide a technical evaluation, o person who is posting a comment to the "here's how I vibe-coded a fantasy football analytics service" forum? You think everyone here has a technically deep background?
drcongo 8mo ago
It's only a matter of time before an OpenAI killer drone accidentally targets Gary Marcus and Scam Altman says "oopsie".
- throwaway613746 8mo ago
  [dead]
WesolyKubeczek 8mo ago
"Is transitioning to oligarchy"? Really? I don't see how present continuous is justified here. It has always been an old boys club where connections and hand greasing decided it all. President Trump is the product of this system, not its creator or builder.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
Ifkaluva 8mo ago
25M isn’t even that much money. Not only are they whores, they’re cheap whores.
- mindslight 8mo ago
  It's a loss-leader. Once the patronage system has solidly taken hold, then they raise the prices. Our only consolation is that the fascist-supporting techbros are going to be victims of their own enshittification dynamic - they think they're paying customers, but they're actually the product. The autocracy will continue to increase its meddling to maintain its own political legitimacy. Moldbug's enlightened benevolent monarch who needn't care about politics is a pipe dream.
- awakeasleep 8mo ago
  It’s a lot of money for a “what have you done for me lately?” scenario Like, this is opex
- munificent 8mo ago
  A whore doesn't have to charge any given john very much when they can service a large number of them.
- Cyphase 8mo ago
  Quite tangential, but this reminded me of a line from Human Target: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tqvzt?start=872&mute=false https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tqvzt?start=872&mute=fal... "I'm sorry, you... You think I'm a prostitute?" looks at offered cash "A $40 prostitute?"
  - atmosx 8mo ago
    Cheap or not doesn’t matter. Sir Winston Churchill supposedly asked Lady Astor whether she would sleep with him for five million pounds. She said she supposed she would. Then he asked whether she would sleep with him for only five pounds. She answered,"What do you think I am?" His response was, "We've already established that; we're merely haggling over price."- Marcus Felson, Crime and Everyday Life, Second Edition, 1998
ltpajh 8mo ago
To summarize all nepotism indicators posted here by various people: - The Kushner family has invested in OpenAI. - OpenAI uses Oracle cloud. Ellison is close to Trump. - Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan (the “spy sheikh") has invested $500 million in World Liberty and is also invested in OpenAI. - Altman is a protege of Thiel, whose Palantir integrates the external AI at the Pentagon. - The scam occurs right before the Iran war starts. The Groq sale scam (where Trump Jr.'s 1789 Capital bought shares just months before the sale) occurred right before Christmas. So both were timed to be overshadowed by larger events or holidays.
- NetOpWibby 8mo ago
  Sweet, excellent idea for the government to tie itself to a bubble. If it doesn't pop while Trump's in office, his successor will inherit this mess, bubble will pop, and that person will have to deal with managing the fallout. The time to lock-in gainful employment is now (if you can).
  - tokai 8mo ago
    A bubble is just a great opportunity to pass more money to yourself and your friends.
    - specialist 8mo ago
      And then hoover up assets after the bubble pops. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- pjc50 8mo ago
  Don't overlook the media consolidation under Bari Weiss.
- burnt-resistor 8mo ago
  And JD Vance is Thiel's boy.
- mountainriver 8mo ago
  It feels like everyone is desperate to hate on Sam all the time. He’s made his mistakes but it feels way beyond what’s called for. There is this constant boogeyman narrative with him I find very disingenuous
dana321 8mo ago
I was scratching my head trying to work out the difference between the deal with anthropic, and the deal with openai. I asked gemini. The one detail was that the contract enforced the law with anthropic, but with openai it was legal uses. Sounds like hair splitting, but this article explains the real story.
kledru 8mo ago
I think he is right here, but it is interesting to see that Gary Marcus is transitioning to AI too (writing style...)
- NathanielK 8mo ago
  > But here’s the kicker > Let that sink in The biggest tell for AI writing is just being AI adjacent. I've started avoiding reading AI articles here because (surprise) they all feel like a chatGPT transcript.
imjonse 8mo ago
> In capitalism, the market decides. > In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. > It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter. One has to wonder on what planet Gary Marcus has lived so far.
- KaiserPro 8mo ago
  In his defence, previously money won, rather than bribing someone to get a competitor nuked from orbit. Sure you could smear an opposition company, but just straight bribing the government is new, at this scale
- micromacrofoot 8mo ago
  There was a long stretch where money would be more of a deciding factor than who you know, and I think we're crossing the threshold where who you know is becoming all that matters.
ddoottddoott 8mo ago
[flagged]
readthenotes1 8mo ago
A lot of rightfully righteous anger here. I'm amused that this wasn't the response when semiconductors from Taiwan were exempted from tarrifs. There, the bribe was much smaller...
- georgemcbay 8mo ago
  The corruption is never-ending, but I think with this case people were especially struck by some of the details like OpenAI claiming their "red lines" were exactly the same as Anthropic's. Not even trying to justify the switchover would have raised less eyebrows than giving it a clearly nonsense justification.
seydor 8mo ago
Such high levels of corruption are not usually called "scam"
- wizardforhire 8mo ago
  I’ve always heard it called “business as usual”
  - isoprophlex 8mo ago
    I still prefer "Scam", "Business as usual" Altman doesnt have the same ring to it...
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- zuminator 8mo ago
  The scam part is the fiction perpetrated on the American public that there was a bona fide dispute with Anthropic.
wosined 8mo ago
I wouldn't be surprised if after some time we found out that Amodei signed the same deal as well, and then he will go on a press tour about how he was forced to do it.
nickdothutton 8mo ago
I'll try not to be too flippant but... he thought the US ever _wasn't_ an oligarchy?
- bloomingeek 8mo ago
  Flippant be hanged! IMO, it all started with W Bush, who put the icing on that cake by invading Iraq based on a televised lie. He was "sneaky" but the current administration doesn't even try to sneak. The mid-terms may be our final chance to save our nation.
  - ml-anon 8mo ago
    Colin Powell must be shaking vials of yellow powder in his grave right now.
  - gyomu 8mo ago
    > The mid-terms may be our final chance to save our nation. I don’t understand anyone who believes that. What do you expect to happen during the midterms exactly that would bring the US back on some mythical track of rule of law, with a just and fair government? The corruption runs so deep, the institutions have been gutted, there are no good people in charge left. This ride is going to last a while, and the way out (if there’s one) looks nothing like the way in.
    - kelnos 8mo ago
      Yeah, that's the thing. Even in the most optimistic of dreams, Democrats won't end up with supermajorities in both the House and Senate. They can pass whatever bills they want, but Trump doesn't have to sign them. Sure, there will be things that Trump wants to do that he might actually need Congress for, and maybe there's room to make deals to advance some kind of progressive/liberal policies here and there. But I don't think this will slow Trump down too much, honestly. And in 2028? Who knows what the state of things will be by then. Maybe we'll end up with a non-shit president at the start of 2029, but what kind of executive branch will they be inheriting? It would take an entire presidential term, possibly two, to undo the damage Trump and his shit-heels have done. And even then, it will never be the same, not to mention reputational, economic, and scientific losses that will -- at best -- set us back decades (if not permanently).
111111101101 8mo ago
"But I believe in fair play. This wasn’t that." Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads weren't fair play either.
- esafak 8mo ago
  Why not??
  - 111111101101 8mo ago
    Because the models aren't going to be recommending products in their conversations. The ads will be visually separate from the model's output.
    - esafak 8mo ago
      As they first were in Google. Were you around then?
      - 111111101101 8mo ago
        > As they first were in Google. So because you saw it once in one company, it will happen in every company? By that logic, wont Claude eventually get ads too, even though they are saying that they wont? Even now, Google ads wrap around the content, they don't mess with the search results. > Were you around then? Yes. I was around for AltaVista, WebCrawler, and Lycos too. None of those were LLMs.
        esafak 8mo ago
        I think it is a good bet that Claude will eventually get ads too, if they don't drop the consumer segment. Ads are free money; most don't care.
        111111101101 8mo ago
        I think most would care if their AI buddy starts shilling products mid-conversation. People would lose trust, instantly. That's why the Super Bowl ads were unfair. It's not going to happen like that. That would be stupid. Say what you like about Sam Altman but he's not stupid.
erelong 8mo ago
sounds likely and plausible but also like an "unproven conspiracy theory"
- cyanydeez 8mo ago
  which part is unproven enough to not seem like a kleptocracy?
- whatthesmack 8mo ago
  I can't believe I had to scroll this far down to see something slightly critical of this conspiratorial post and collection of HN comments. Everyone here needs to take a deep breath, step back, and remind yourselves that everything you're claiming is unproven and is a conspiracy theory. The language of the contracts is not publicly available
7sigma 8mo ago
"In capitalism, the market decides. In oligarchy, connections and donations decide." Who's gonna tell him there never was a difference?
- trigvi 8mo ago
  [dead]
mpalmer 8mo ago
Is this a blog post or someone's notes for a blog post?
- phtrivier 8mo ago
  It's a short and quick blog post. Bloggers used to do that once in a while (before twitter made it the only allowed mode of expression to please the advertisers.) Other posts from G.Marcus are much longer. Go read them, but be prepared for some "adversarial thinking" if you strongly believe in the scaling hypothesis. Might border on "bubble popping ". You're all for free speech and the free market of idea, so it won't be a problem. However, he has a low threshold for bullshit. And SamA is probably not getting any higher in his esteem this week.
  - mpalmer 8mo ago
    LOL. Are you mistaking writing critique for some childish form of disagreement on the issues?
    - phtrivier 8mo ago
      I think, in the middle of all the grandiose proponents of "AGI is coming any time soon", "AI is going to cure cancer", "LLMs will fix climate change", "ChatGPT will bring back your estranged lover", etc... Some critique has to be a bit harsh. "The data center has no clothes", in a way ? I agree that the author gets a bit childish when he goes into name dropping of people who used to disagree with him and don't any more - there's probably some background drama that I'm not particularly interested in. Still. I believe having both Gary Marcus and Dwarkesh Panel in a timeline, in chronological fashion, whiteout and algo to tell me who's right, is one of the perks of substack.
dlev_pika 8mo ago
> In capitalism, the market decides. > In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. > It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter. I thought this was already pretty clear - since Elmo bunny hopped on Trump’s rally stage
juleiie 8mo ago
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. This HST quote seems severely outdated by now. They have already been caught, committed all the sins of stupidity and some more. All of it to the clapping mob of people who yearn for some kind of social revenge. And it’s happening everywhere these last years. Who could possibly know we have so many wife beaters?
- isoprophlex 8mo ago
  Not a week goes by without me thinking "what would HST have made of THIS fresh bullshit, if he were alive today"
  - codechicago277 8mo ago
    The only human to authorize a nuclear attack…
    - ChrisMarshallNY 8mo ago
      Hunter Thompson? Not saying he wouldn't have banged on the button, for all he was worth, but no one in their right (or even severely sick) mind would ever let him near it.
      - fuzzfactor 8mo ago
        Looks like he's referring to Harry S. Truman. Probably doesn't know who Thompson was. I'll never forget Thompson speaking at my school as the war in Vietnam was drawing to a close. He did not mince words.
        dredmorbius 7mo ago
        For the benefit of any others unfamiliar: Thompson: The man who invented gonzo journalism, writing beginning in the 1950s for numerous publications but most notably Rolling Stone, best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, serialised in RS, published as a book, and the basis of two films, Where the Buffalo Roam (loose adaptation, 1980) and more faithfully in 1998 under the original name, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
woah 8mo ago
Seems pretty unimportant and inconsequential though because LLMs don't work anyway because they aren't logic-based symbolic AI, right?
- mentalgear 8mo ago
  I know you trying to mock Marcus, but the reality is that all the big LLM providers have been shifting to integrating symbolic reasoning into their models for over a year now since they noticed that scale-alone is a dead-end. Also DeepMind's AlphaFold, which won the nobile price, is neuro-symbolic AI - so I think both of those points very much justify Marcus's long criticism of pure subsymbolic LLM "AI" as a path to real causal reasoning.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
thr0away 8mo ago
ਚੋਰ ਮਚਾਏ ਸ਼ੋਰ
addandsubtract 8mo ago
This is only a surprise to HN, because all the other threads about the corrupt US regime have been flagged before. I guess now is a good time as any to start paying attention. Who would've thought that attention is all you need?
- ml-anon 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- stinkbeetle 8mo ago
  When you say "HN", do you mean you? Who else was surprised? The place is full of people constantly commenting about how bad the US is, how corrupt the government is, how terrible CEOs (particularly Altman) are, late stage capitalism, etc., etc.
  - LoganDark 8mo ago
    You know those people have existed since practically forever, right? You learn to tune it out and then you never notice if they start being less wrong.
    - wslh 8mo ago
      I don't want to spoil Marty Supreme (2025), but there's a provocative line delivered by Kevin O’Leary (yes, the Shark Tank guy): "I was born in 1601. I’m a vampire. I’ve been around forever."
    - XorNot 8mo ago
      It's the surface details problem: people post nice sounding things on the internet but don't think about them and do the nostradamus thing of predicting everything because caused by everything. If you predict a corrupt cartel in "the US" will do a thing, then on a long enough timescale you'll eventually be right in general but wrong about every significant detail. (also the people with this opinion don't seem to do anything with it - it doesn't appear to motivate them to vote, organize, think critically or come up with compromises - they simply turn out to belittle people on the internet while actually acting to normalize new excesses).
Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
This is one of the few interpretations that make sense of this timeline at this time. I'd be cautious since it's still speculation. But discovery is going to be interesting.
- ivan_gammel 8mo ago
  This interpretation is kinda obvious to anyone who has seen similar schemes in other countries. It‘s done almost by the book, except there‘s no criminal case against Anthropic management or shareholders, because USA is not yet there.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
croes 8mo ago
> In capitalism, the market decides. > In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. > but after Brockman had donated 25M to Trump’s PAC Sounds like they paid Trump and the government, can it get more capitalistic? Oligarchy and capitalism don’t contradict each other
- 127 8mo ago
  Free market capitalism and corporatocracy are two opposite things. (Free markets don't exist without strong institutions and regulation)
  - heavyset_go 8mo ago
    They're both capitalism
    - 127 8mo ago
      You are against private property rights? Because abolishing the right to owns things is the only way to prevent any form of capital accumulation.
      - heavyset_go 8mo ago
        Of course not, workers' rights to own and democratically control capital is paramount.
  - coliveira 8mo ago
    Only in the minds of people who make capitalism a religion. It has always been like this, early capitalism was even worse with dirty money buying every politician they could get their hands on. Just read anything about the US in the end of the 19th century.
  - croes 8mo ago
    Real free market capitalism is a real as working communism and have both the same underlying problem: people. They lie and cheat to accumulate power
losvedir 8mo ago
It's interesting this thread is all about how the deal is basically the same therefore corruption. And the other thread is all about how it's subtly different therefore OpenAI has no model red lines. I'd love to hear if Anthropic actually would accept this deal, if offered.
- conception 8mo ago
  It’s corruption and a different deal.
  - drawnwren 8mo ago
    OAI and USG have publicly stated deal is materially different. On what basis does anyone think the deal is the same?
    - Aeolun 8mo ago
      Because Altman says the deal is the same.
      - drawnwren 8mo ago
        No he has clearly said there are differences. He has said that the points around what it may be used for are the same. HOWEVER, he has also stated that the definitions and enforcement are left to US law in the OAI contract. These were left to Anthropic in theirs.
lerp-io 8mo ago
when market is small its just donations
max_ 8mo ago
The docile donkeys that sheepishly use such products don't really care. And they are the majority. Thats what Sam Altman understands
SilverElfin 8mo ago
Yep. The political donation was the main thing. But let’s not forget AI Czar David Sacks has been crying about Anthropic being woke for a couple years. He has probably been trying to kill every single non right wing AI company. After years of whining about lawfare on the All In podcast, these people are all too happy to engage in the worst kind of lawfare. There is a cabal of extremists steering technology contracts in this administration and among their donors. The names are familiar - Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Elon Musk, David Sacks, Palmer Luckey, etc. A future administration will need to purge all their companies from our government and investigate them for corruption and treason.
- coliveira 8mo ago
  > A future administration will need to purge all their companies Good luck, democrats will put some of that easy money on their pockets and look the other way, like they always did.
metabagel 8mo ago
Can someone ELI5?
- stavros 8mo ago
  Sam Altman "donated" a bunch of money to US government officials. US government officials said "we're thinking of ruining Anthropic if they don't play ball". Sam Altman publicly said "oh no, don't do that, that's terrible, they're right to not play ball". Sam Altman signed a deal to play ball after he said that, and it turned out he had been working on this deal even before the US government officials said the thing about ruining Anthropic.
  - lobsterthief 7mo ago
    Great summary, thank you for taking the time
encom 8mo ago
Fell For It Again-award I got baited into clicking another AI post.
runlevel1 8mo ago
How disappointing it is to see how easily some leaders in our industry abandon their principles, and how cheaply they sell out their fellow man. The tech industry was never perfect. It was never a charity. But there was a time, several years ago now, when people were more driven to build things that delighted others.
- coliveira 8mo ago
  That was always a lie. Gates became the richest pedo in the world building a monopoly of bad software and destroying other people's businesses. Since then things only got worse.
asdfe3r343 8mo ago
How is elon differnt? Every billionaries is the same . grow up people
Paddyz 8mo ago
[dead]
- gwerbin 8mo ago
  I feel the same way about this as I feel about Trump himself. Nobody should be surprised or disappointed, you shouldn't have expected any different.
  - Paddyz 8mo ago
    [dead]
  - computably 8mo ago
    Well, I'm not surprised, although I think I'm still within my rights to be disappointed. What's unfortunate is I expect some people to be surprised.
- kgwxd 8mo ago
  Tool assisted. And I'm not talking about the AI.
- archon810 8mo ago
  It was Greg and Anna Brockman who donated, not Altman. But close enough to the goal post.
- tjwebbnorfolk 8mo ago
  Convincing naive people that you're building AI because you love people is the fastest route to power. You have it backwards. There was never any "arc".
- giancarlostoro 8mo ago
  S(c)am Altman has had this messed up story arc the entire time, the problem is most people are unaware. Remember when he declared himself the chairman of Y Combinator, they deleted it from YC's blog / website, he filed as YC's chairman with the SEC for years despite not actually being chairman. This was after he stepped down as CEO. Then there's all the sketchiness surrounding some companies he sold. Guy's the worlds most successful grifter who has world economies by the... anyway...
underlipton 8mo ago
This is the guy you want controlling the technology that will determine humanity's future?
- dandellion 8mo ago
  > will determine humanity's future According to him. These are same people that said we'd have self driving cars by 2017. That we'd be able to buy things with BitCoin. But here we are, it's 2026 and all of it has turned out to be a lot less revolutionary and world changing than advertised. We're just barely getting the internet as it was advertised before the dot com bubble, and to be honest, it kinda sucks. AI can do some cool stuff, but I'm very sceptical about all the hype.
jazzpush2 8mo ago
Just cancelled my chatgpt subscription.
- arttaboi 8mo ago
  That's a wrong move I guess (you willingly take pain but no one else suffers). The right one would be to get an Anthropic subscription. And an even better one would be to donate to the Democrats.
  - jatora 8mo ago
    Ah yes the paragons of virtue who dont also insidiously continue dismantling the country in their own way lol.
  - direwolf20 8mo ago
    An even better one would be to run for office on the platform of not being a piece of shit like everyone else. Democrats aren't good.
  - jazzpush2 8mo ago
    I already have an Anthropic sub. There is not a single Democrat candidate I agree with or would gladly donate to. That party is almost as much of a joke as the Republicans are, and they all fuck kids anyways. Besides, that money would only end up being spent on an absentee, self-obsessed, do-nothing Governor who wants to play more corrupt politics like his Aunt. Scam artists across the board.
fisherjeff 8mo ago
Honestly, this makes me almost feel better about the whole situation. I had been finding it super unsettling: Like, why would DoD go nuclear over wanting to build fully autonomous weapons… with Claude? But no, it’s just run-of-the-mill Trump administration corruption. Phew!
- deaux 8mo ago
  Unfortunately the article is wrong, the OpenAI deal relents on exactly what Anthropic wouldn't. The OpenAI deal is "you can do anything that's 'legal'". This is the same as "zero restrictions", in the real world. Anthropic was offered the same and said "no, these two usecases are not allowed, period".
  - fisherjeff 8mo ago
    Haggling with DoD over contract terms and losing out is utterly routine. Ending up labeled a supply chain risk as a result is not.
kazinator 8mo ago
> It’s one thing for the government to reject Anthropic’s terms—and entirely another to banish them permanently and, absurdly and punitively declare them a supply chain risk. Worse, they did it in favor of someone else who took pretty similar terms and happened to have given more campaign contributions. It's just a variation on Snowball being chased off Animal Farm.
abraxas 8mo ago
The oligarchic system is not only poisonous to economic growth but also incredibly hard to dislodge. Most of you are American and likely thinking that this is an aberration that will be rectified come next election cycle but I believe you are going to get disappointed. People who scaled the government buildings in a coup attempt are not going to give up power willingly. And now they have coerced your oligarchs to come to their side and those who fail the loyalty test like Amodei are getting punished. You are not approaching Russia style kleptocracy. You're already there.
- jatora 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- GeorgeWBasic 7mo ago
  jatora, your honest comment is flagged and your account seems to be dead.
moab 8mo ago
How does Brockman sleep at night? These guys used to seem like standup ethical guys. It seems no amount of intellectualism is enough to ward off the poison of wealth.
- nutthugger 8mo ago
  (standup that's for sure)
- dongguanxianhao 8mo ago
  With a bottle of fentonol in his mouth.
- vasco 8mo ago
  It's the other way around, people who are good people will "drop" from the race way before they get to this stage. So it's more that only psychopaths will continue to push up the mountain when they already have many hundreds of lifetimes worth of wealth. Imagine being in that situation and still wanting to be involved in backstabbing power games rather than enjoy time with your kids.
- ks2048 8mo ago
  I've also noticed that he is the CTO of the one of the most important tech companies in the world, and none of his tweets are remotely technically interesting - just banalities. You would think he might have something interesting technical to say... but no.
- jacquesm 8mo ago
  > These guys used to seem like standup ethical guys. You had your answer around the time that he decided to side with Altman when he could have kept his own counsel.
jatora 8mo ago
"In capitalism, the market decides. In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter" I honestly can't understand how anyone sees things this way. The US isn't transitioning at all. It is and has been a complete oligarchy for at least 70 years. I've taken to discounting any political talking-head that wont consistently acknowledge and push that axiom as THE fundamental assumption of all political discourse.
jatora 8mo ago
Did everyone forget Anthropic is already partnered with Palantir?
Ancalagon 8mo ago
ABAB: All Billionaires Are Bad
foxglacier 8mo ago
Can someone explain what the drama is? From what I can tell, OpenAI donated to Trump's campaign then won a contract with his government. Anthropic lost that contract because they had some morality redlines they refused to relax. Where exactly is the badness in there? Is there evidence the donation cause them to win the contract? Seems like the evidence is that their competitor backed out, no? I suspect this is a conspiracy theory feeding on people's pre-existing hatreds.
braza 8mo ago
I cannot take Gary seriously anymore since it's an article about deep learning hitting a wall [1]. [1] - https://nautil.us/deep-learning-is-hitting-a-wall-238440/ https://nautil.us/deep-learning-is-hitting-a-wall-238440/
- Mordisquitos 8mo ago
  What does it matter whether the author can be "taken seriously"? How does his (mistaken?) 2022 assessment of the progress of deep learning have any bearing on his comments on possibly unethical and corrupt business actions of OpenAI's leadership?
d--b 8mo ago
> In capitalism, the market decides. > In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. > It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter. The US probably always was like that. Now they just don’t bother hiding it.
agentifysh 8mo ago
I just can't take Gary seriously anymore after reading this thread: https://x.com/alfcnz/status/1991210361769320820 https://x.com/alfcnz/status/1991210361769320820
- CamperBob2 8mo ago
  LOL. "I often remind clowns (his word) of my PhD from MIT when I was 23, my tenure at NYU 30 (sic), my six books, publications in Science and Nature, or the machine learning company that I founded and sold to Uber. Sometimes I mention my Senate testimony." He should get together with Musk and commiserate about how worldly success is no substitute for adoration on Twitter. That said, I doubt he's wrong about the nature of this debacle. A thousand years from now, the ghosts of Altman and Amodei are still going to wander the earth in search of ways to dunk on each other.
concinds 8mo ago
> It’s one thing for the government to reject Anthropic’s terms—and entirely another to banish them permanently and, absurdly and punitively declare them a supply chain risk. Worse, they did it in favor of someone else who took pretty similar terms and happened to have given more campaign contributions. Marcus is so overrated. He's not even good at straight factual reporting. The terms were not "pretty similar". He missed the whole point of the recent controversy. > Anthropic deserves a chance at EXACTLY the same terms No, those terms are bullshit.
nacozarina 8mo ago
Every ‘model provider’ should be labeled a severe supply-chain risk, get real.
weare138 8mo ago
In capitalism, the market decides. In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter. As someone from genx I can definitively confirm this is how it always worked. If you're younger do not delude yourselves into thinking this is all somehow new and things were better in the past. They weren't.
latexr 8mo ago
> In capitalism, the market decides. No, capital (i.e. money) decides. It’s called capitalism not marketism. The difference is important because it means that if you’re already rich (or are perceived as such, and thus can get loans, extensions, and the like) you can continue to survive longer than the alternatives.
insane_dreamer 8mo ago
> It sure look like the US is transitioning* from the former to the latter. *has transitioned

993 points by guilamu 8mo ago

"On the very same day that Altman offered public support to Amodei [CEO of Anthropic], he signed a deal to take away Amodei’s business, with a deal that wasn’t all that different. You can’t get more Altman than that."

imjonse 8mo ago
He's young, he's got enough time to outdo himself.

mentalgear 8mo ago

PS: If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US, I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.

dragonwriter 8mo ago
> If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US It very clearly is, the present AI instance is far from the only recent case. > I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. They evaluate the propensity and ability to profitably engage in open corruption the same as they evaluate other capacities of the company. “Secure” isn't a binary category, and the risk here is much like any other risk. > When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent. That is the expected result of increasing perceived risk. yes, probably one of those “slowly and then all at once” things.
ProllyInfamous 8mo ago
>I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. 2025 was also the first year that the majority of stocks were traded off-market (i.e. hedgie darkpools, no public price discovery). ---- Hope ya'll bought your gold before Monday. #RemindMe2days [gold@5290USD, this post]
- burner_ 8mo ago
  >2025 was also the first year that the majority of stocks were traded off-market (i.e. hedgie darkpools, no public price discovery). Do you have any sources for that?
  - throw-qqqqq 8mo ago
    It sounds quite plausible. Almost all equity ETFs do their balancing against dark pools or directly with market makers to avoid arbitrage and to ensure enough liquidity. Since index ETFs have more AUM than the underlying instruments (the “ETF tail wagging the dog”), this sounds like a natural evolution. There is nothing nefarious about this, it’s just how the markets work.
    - ProllyInfamous 7mo ago
      >nothing nefarious ... it’s just how the markets work. first_time.meme | Gold "up" 3.12% pre-Monday trading ($5411) #USDeflation #ThisGuyGetsIt
- maxbond 8mo ago
  Trades in dark pools still get published to the consolidated tape; they're still part of price discovery. What's "dark" about them is that you don't see the order book, but people break up large orders into smaller orders to disguise their order size in lit markets too.
foogazi 8mo ago
> I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. It’s the best investment - just bribe your way to contracts
jfengel 8mo ago
It's bizarre seeing the outright bribery. A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. You couldn't give money directly to the candidate for personal use. Donations went to the campaign of the guy who already agreed with you. The FEC used to take a dim view of outright pay-for-service, even dressed up. This is new. And now people need to decide how they feel about that. They get one chance to say "no, that's not how we do things." Even if the administration suffers a blow this November, if they hear that this is mostly acceptable to their base, it will be what every politician does from here on.
- wrqvrwvq 8mo ago
  In what sense is this new, other than a different side cares about the optics?
  - mikestew 8mo ago
    OP explained it clearly: “you couldn’t $1, now you can”. It would be helpful if you explained which part did you not understand. Alternatively, that barking sound I hear might be a sea lion.
- specialist 8mo ago
  IANAL, IIRC: SCOTUS has very narrowly defined bribery as explicit quid pro quo. And sometimes not even then.
  - RajT88 8mo ago
    You recall correctly. And they did so, so they could take bribes with no consequences as long as they take them the right way.
    - nobody9999 8mo ago
      >And they did so, so they could take bribes with no consequences as long as they take them the right way. Yep. cf. Snyder v. United States[0] [0] https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scope-of-anti-bribery-law/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop...
CamperBob2 8mo ago
the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent To where?
- ben_w 8mo ago
  Anywhere offering opportunity. I'm in Europe, I'd like to see it come here. The news I see suggests China's ahead of us in this race, but I don't know if that's for all talent, or if it was just an artefact of a lot of Chinese people in the US on work visas returning home. Or indeed whether the news about China doing well here was real or hallucinated by an LLM.
  - jakeydus 8mo ago
    If engineers in the US (i.e. me) want to find work in Europe, what can we do? I know that’s a googleable question but honestly I can’t help but think that there cannot be any European country that would want me and my family. Immigration is hard.
    - ben_w 8mo ago
      It is hard. I moved to Germany in 2018, and only just this month reached B1 level in the language; and that was a pre-Brexit move so I don't need to care about visa. The EU has a "blue card" scheme modeled on US green card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union) If language is your biggest barrier, pick a country whose language you already speak. As this clearly includes English, Ireland if you want specifically EU, and UK if you just want the continent (mainly London, but I spent a long time in Cambridge tech sector). Germany may still be an option even without being a native speaker (depending on your skills), but with all the difficulty everyone has today with AI messing with job hunting, get the contract before considering a move.
    - fernly 8mo ago
      Not that hard if you are in young to middle years and have any job experience. I asked Perplexity "If an American citizen, a trained engineer with some experience, desired to work abroad in the EU or an English-first nation, what are some good websites to check?" I suggest you do the same -- the reply lists a dozen promising sites. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/if-an-american-citizen-a-train-9bmuP5N0TJmLMn3swnSbMw https://www.perplexity.ai/search/if-an-american-citizen-a-tr...
coldtea 8mo ago
>I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. Investors just care for the returns. As long as they can identify and bet on the side doing the bribing, they're fine...
ilamont 8mo ago
> When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent. No, it's not inevitable. What you've described is the way a lot of authoritarian states work, such as China. China attracts plenty of capital and external talent, including people from other countries such as Taiwan and the United States. You have be all-in on the CCP's rules, though. Vietnam operates in a similar way. Untold billions of FDI in the past 20 years from Japan, the U.S. and China. Talk with top executives there, and you'll frequently find close connections or family ties with leaders in Hanoi.
- iririririr 8mo ago
  china attract zero capital in the sense being discussed here, which would be VC. it attract lots of capex expenses like factories.
danielparsons 8mo ago
Bit melodramatic. The US still has the most talent, most capital, and best property protections of anywhere in the world. Name a country that (1) doesn't have any quid-pro-quo system with the govt, and (2) has pro-growth pro-capitalist policies.
- RichEO 8mo ago
  I wonder if maybe those two things have a causal relationship
bootsmann 8mo ago
This has already happened, its a key reason why the dollar is down 15% since the new admin took power.
amarant 8mo ago
The logical conclusion to your analysis is that Musks companies must be a great investment. Musk already owns most of the government after all. And the US is still among the largest economies in the world.
Aeolun 8mo ago
> I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment I the problem is that from the companies’s side you just have a whole country to exploit, so I’m fairly certain the investments still work.
direwolf20 8mo ago
That means bribing the government is a very secure and profitable investment to invest in.
cermicelli 8mo ago
Well you think corruption is bad for the rich investors? I hope I can find that kind of optimism and live in a more corrupt world. Tldr; Rich people can bribe more, hence Rich people can be more rich+er.. I think a lot of poor tech multi-millionaires hate this in US but all rich billionaires must be loving it...
therobots927 8mo ago
The rational investors have been moving their money outside the US for approximately 15 months. Compare the chart of VEA to VTI.
mountainriver 8mo ago
This has pretty much always been happening, it’s more brazen under Trump

dist-epoch 8mo ago

> but after Brockman had donated 25M to Trump’s PAC > In capitalism, the market decides. > In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. Author is confused about what Capitalism is. It worked exactly as expected, Capital used itself to advance it's own needs - maximizing (own) growth. Capitalism is not about markets, it's about Capital. There is a reason why lobbying is an accepted practice in one of the most Capitalistic countries in the world, and generally forbidden in Socialist EU.

NicuCalcea 8mo ago
> generally forbidden in Socialist EU This is one of those cases where you wish your critics were right. One in 40 people in Brussels is a lobbyist, but apparently it's forbidden.
- drcongo 8mo ago
  Very kind of you to only pick one error in the parent post to critique.
  - NicuCalcea 8mo ago
    I've been working with UK/EU lobbying data in recent months, so that's the one I felt competent to pick on. I thought I'd leave the nature of capitalism to someone else.
jeremyjh 8mo ago
Which prominent economist has argued that bribes are an essential part of Capitalism?
- heavyset_go 8mo ago
  Which prominent priest has argued that god doesn't exist?
- lm28469 8mo ago
  Someone came up with the "invisible hand of the free market" theory and become quite famous so I'd say we can add our own crackpot theories on top, apparently they don't have to be very well researched to stick around

ajshahH 8mo ago

> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter Transitioning? That happened post WW2. How many more wars in the Middle East do we need to convince people? Though, I think it’s hard for Marcus’ generation to see this. Odd given Vance’s connections to Thiel et al.

georgemcbay 8mo ago
> Transitioning? To be fair, there has been a notable recent shift in the sense that nobody even tries to hide what is going on anymore. We've moved beyond manufacturing consent to ass out corruption on full display, "try to stop me."

pton_xd 8mo ago

This https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230 https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230 is the simplest and most logical explanation as to what happened. The disagreement was over who would be the arbiter of "lawful usage" of the technology, the US government or Amodei.

afthonos 8mo ago
No, that’s not accurate at all, and in case you are genuinely confused: 1. Anthropic should be free to sell its services under whatever legal terms and conditions it wants. 2. The Pentagon should be free to buy those services, negotiate for different terms, refuse to buy those services, and terminate contracts subject to any termination clauses. You may or may not agree with what the Pentagon wants to do, but if things had stayed there, there would be no real issue. The problem is that the Pentagon is trying to bury Anthropic as a company, calling it a danger to the United States because it exerted its non-controversial right in (1). Any “explanation” that doesn’t address that is confused itself or trying to confuse the issue. I leave it to you as to which category the linked source falls under.
- pton_xd 8mo ago
  1. Agree 2. Agree > The problem is that the Pentagon is trying to bury Anthropic as a company, calling it a danger to the United States because it exerted its non-controversial right in (1). My take is that the DoD very much wanted to continue using Claude. However, Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage. The DoD took this as a personal offense (how dare this guy, does he know who we are, etc) and lashed out in retaliation. The whole sequence of events makes sense when viewed under this lense.
  - otterley 8mo ago
    > Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage. So did Altman. The terms of each company’s agreement with the DoW are roughly the same when they come out of the wash. “Mr. Altman negotiated with the Department of Defense in a different way from Anthropic, agreeing to the use of OpenAI’s technology for all lawful purposes. Along the way, he also negotiated the right to put safeguards into OpenAI’s technologies that would prevent its systems from being used in ways that it did not want them to be.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-agreement-pentagon-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.PlA.QxlS.soAAwh3zAe08&smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-agreeme...

AndrewKemendo 8mo ago

What does this have to do with AI capabilities specifically? This is literally the politics of running massive business interests, which I understand is relevant for technology and everything… … but isn’t Gary Marcus’s whole game that AI is not capable and people are wrong/lying about AI tech capabilities? I feel like this is a handy moment for Gary where he can say he could basically ignore all of his previous claims (because they’re all technically wrong) and shift into “AI is bad for society because it’s more crony capitalism” or something kind of muddy argument.

MadxX79 8mo ago
What's your argument here? He's not allowed to discuss crony capitalism because you imagine that he thinks LLMs suddenly became reliable.
- AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
  It’s a comment about who Gary Marcus is presenting himself as My intention is for other people to think what I believe which is Gary Marcus is a hack and has no business being listened to with respect to technical evaluation of AI because he’s not technically competent enough to do. The existence of his polemics waste everybody’s time and generally waste resources like we’re wasting right now. His entire schtick has been as the debunker in chief of claims of AI capabilities If you actually look at his polemics they increasingly have nothing to do with his original argument because his original argument not only is flawed but is ignorant of the technical capabilities
  - nickthegreek 8mo ago
    Then disassemble the argument the author is making and show people an alternative reality based take if you want to be taken seriously.
  - mold_aid 8mo ago
    What "technical competence" do you need to provide a technical evaluation, o person who is posting a comment to the "here's how I vibe-coded a fantasy football analytics service" forum? You think everyone here has a technically deep background?

drcongo 8mo ago

It's only a matter of time before an OpenAI killer drone accidentally targets Gary Marcus and Scam Altman says "oopsie".

throwaway613746 8mo ago
[dead]

WesolyKubeczek 8mo ago

"Is transitioning to oligarchy"? Really? I don't see how present continuous is justified here. It has always been an old boys club where connections and hand greasing decided it all. President Trump is the product of this system, not its creator or builder.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

Ifkaluva 8mo ago

25M isn’t even that much money. Not only are they whores, they’re cheap whores.

mindslight 8mo ago
It's a loss-leader. Once the patronage system has solidly taken hold, then they raise the prices. Our only consolation is that the fascist-supporting techbros are going to be victims of their own enshittification dynamic - they think they're paying customers, but they're actually the product. The autocracy will continue to increase its meddling to maintain its own political legitimacy. Moldbug's enlightened benevolent monarch who needn't care about politics is a pipe dream.
awakeasleep 8mo ago
It’s a lot of money for a “what have you done for me lately?” scenario Like, this is opex
munificent 8mo ago
A whore doesn't have to charge any given john very much when they can service a large number of them.
Cyphase 8mo ago
Quite tangential, but this reminded me of a line from Human Target: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tqvzt?start=872&mute=false https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tqvzt?start=872&mute=fal... "I'm sorry, you... You think I'm a prostitute?" looks at offered cash "A $40 prostitute?"
- atmosx 8mo ago
  Cheap or not doesn’t matter. Sir Winston Churchill supposedly asked Lady Astor whether she would sleep with him for five million pounds. She said she supposed she would. Then he asked whether she would sleep with him for only five pounds. She answered,"What do you think I am?" His response was, "We've already established that; we're merely haggling over price."- Marcus Felson, Crime and Everyday Life, Second Edition, 1998

ltpajh 8mo ago

To summarize all nepotism indicators posted here by various people: - The Kushner family has invested in OpenAI. - OpenAI uses Oracle cloud. Ellison is close to Trump. - Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan (the “spy sheikh") has invested $500 million in World Liberty and is also invested in OpenAI. - Altman is a protege of Thiel, whose Palantir integrates the external AI at the Pentagon. - The scam occurs right before the Iran war starts. The Groq sale scam (where Trump Jr.'s 1789 Capital bought shares just months before the sale) occurred right before Christmas. So both were timed to be overshadowed by larger events or holidays.

NetOpWibby 8mo ago
Sweet, excellent idea for the government to tie itself to a bubble. If it doesn't pop while Trump's in office, his successor will inherit this mess, bubble will pop, and that person will have to deal with managing the fallout. The time to lock-in gainful employment is now (if you can).
- tokai 8mo ago
  A bubble is just a great opportunity to pass more money to yourself and your friends.
  - specialist 8mo ago
    And then hoover up assets after the bubble pops. Lather, rinse, repeat.
pjc50 8mo ago
Don't overlook the media consolidation under Bari Weiss.
burnt-resistor 8mo ago
And JD Vance is Thiel's boy.
mountainriver 8mo ago
It feels like everyone is desperate to hate on Sam all the time. He’s made his mistakes but it feels way beyond what’s called for. There is this constant boogeyman narrative with him I find very disingenuous

dana321 8mo ago

I was scratching my head trying to work out the difference between the deal with anthropic, and the deal with openai. I asked gemini. The one detail was that the contract enforced the law with anthropic, but with openai it was legal uses. Sounds like hair splitting, but this article explains the real story.

kledru 8mo ago

I think he is right here, but it is interesting to see that Gary Marcus is transitioning to AI too (writing style...)

NathanielK 8mo ago
> But here’s the kicker > Let that sink in The biggest tell for AI writing is just being AI adjacent. I've started avoiding reading AI articles here because (surprise) they all feel like a chatGPT transcript.

imjonse 8mo ago

> In capitalism, the market decides. > In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. > It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter. One has to wonder on what planet Gary Marcus has lived so far.

KaiserPro 8mo ago
In his defence, previously money won, rather than bribing someone to get a competitor nuked from orbit. Sure you could smear an opposition company, but just straight bribing the government is new, at this scale
micromacrofoot 8mo ago
There was a long stretch where money would be more of a deciding factor than who you know, and I think we're crossing the threshold where who you know is becoming all that matters.

ddoottddoott 8mo ago

[flagged]

readthenotes1 8mo ago

A lot of rightfully righteous anger here. I'm amused that this wasn't the response when semiconductors from Taiwan were exempted from tarrifs. There, the bribe was much smaller...

georgemcbay 8mo ago
The corruption is never-ending, but I think with this case people were especially struck by some of the details like OpenAI claiming their "red lines" were exactly the same as Anthropic's. Not even trying to justify the switchover would have raised less eyebrows than giving it a clearly nonsense justification.

seydor 8mo ago

Such high levels of corruption are not usually called "scam"

wizardforhire 8mo ago
I’ve always heard it called “business as usual”
- isoprophlex 8mo ago
  I still prefer "Scam", "Business as usual" Altman doesnt have the same ring to it...
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
zuminator 8mo ago
The scam part is the fiction perpetrated on the American public that there was a bona fide dispute with Anthropic.

wosined 8mo ago

I wouldn't be surprised if after some time we found out that Amodei signed the same deal as well, and then he will go on a press tour about how he was forced to do it.

nickdothutton 8mo ago

I'll try not to be too flippant but... he thought the US ever _wasn't_ an oligarchy?

bloomingeek 8mo ago
Flippant be hanged! IMO, it all started with W Bush, who put the icing on that cake by invading Iraq based on a televised lie. He was "sneaky" but the current administration doesn't even try to sneak. The mid-terms may be our final chance to save our nation.
- ml-anon 8mo ago
  Colin Powell must be shaking vials of yellow powder in his grave right now.
- gyomu 8mo ago
  > The mid-terms may be our final chance to save our nation. I don’t understand anyone who believes that. What do you expect to happen during the midterms exactly that would bring the US back on some mythical track of rule of law, with a just and fair government? The corruption runs so deep, the institutions have been gutted, there are no good people in charge left. This ride is going to last a while, and the way out (if there’s one) looks nothing like the way in.
  - kelnos 8mo ago
    Yeah, that's the thing. Even in the most optimistic of dreams, Democrats won't end up with supermajorities in both the House and Senate. They can pass whatever bills they want, but Trump doesn't have to sign them. Sure, there will be things that Trump wants to do that he might actually need Congress for, and maybe there's room to make deals to advance some kind of progressive/liberal policies here and there. But I don't think this will slow Trump down too much, honestly. And in 2028? Who knows what the state of things will be by then. Maybe we'll end up with a non-shit president at the start of 2029, but what kind of executive branch will they be inheriting? It would take an entire presidential term, possibly two, to undo the damage Trump and his shit-heels have done. And even then, it will never be the same, not to mention reputational, economic, and scientific losses that will -- at best -- set us back decades (if not permanently).

111111101101 8mo ago

"But I believe in fair play. This wasn’t that." Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads weren't fair play either.

esafak 8mo ago
Why not??
- 111111101101 8mo ago
  Because the models aren't going to be recommending products in their conversations. The ads will be visually separate from the model's output.
  - esafak 8mo ago
    As they first were in Google. Were you around then?
    - 111111101101 8mo ago
      > As they first were in Google. So because you saw it once in one company, it will happen in every company? By that logic, wont Claude eventually get ads too, even though they are saying that they wont? Even now, Google ads wrap around the content, they don't mess with the search results. > Were you around then? Yes. I was around for AltaVista, WebCrawler, and Lycos too. None of those were LLMs.
      - esafak 8mo ago
        I think it is a good bet that Claude will eventually get ads too, if they don't drop the consumer segment. Ads are free money; most don't care.
        111111101101 8mo ago
        I think most would care if their AI buddy starts shilling products mid-conversation. People would lose trust, instantly. That's why the Super Bowl ads were unfair. It's not going to happen like that. That would be stupid. Say what you like about Sam Altman but he's not stupid.

erelong 8mo ago

sounds likely and plausible but also like an "unproven conspiracy theory"

cyanydeez 8mo ago
which part is unproven enough to not seem like a kleptocracy?
whatthesmack 8mo ago
I can't believe I had to scroll this far down to see something slightly critical of this conspiratorial post and collection of HN comments. Everyone here needs to take a deep breath, step back, and remind yourselves that everything you're claiming is unproven and is a conspiracy theory. The language of the contracts is not publicly available

7sigma 8mo ago

"In capitalism, the market decides. In oligarchy, connections and donations decide." Who's gonna tell him there never was a difference?

trigvi 8mo ago
[dead]

mpalmer 8mo ago

Is this a blog post or someone's notes for a blog post?

phtrivier 8mo ago
It's a short and quick blog post. Bloggers used to do that once in a while (before twitter made it the only allowed mode of expression to please the advertisers.) Other posts from G.Marcus are much longer. Go read them, but be prepared for some "adversarial thinking" if you strongly believe in the scaling hypothesis. Might border on "bubble popping ". You're all for free speech and the free market of idea, so it won't be a problem. However, he has a low threshold for bullshit. And SamA is probably not getting any higher in his esteem this week.
- mpalmer 8mo ago
  LOL. Are you mistaking writing critique for some childish form of disagreement on the issues?
  - phtrivier 8mo ago
    I think, in the middle of all the grandiose proponents of "AGI is coming any time soon", "AI is going to cure cancer", "LLMs will fix climate change", "ChatGPT will bring back your estranged lover", etc... Some critique has to be a bit harsh. "The data center has no clothes", in a way ? I agree that the author gets a bit childish when he goes into name dropping of people who used to disagree with him and don't any more - there's probably some background drama that I'm not particularly interested in. Still. I believe having both Gary Marcus and Dwarkesh Panel in a timeline, in chronological fashion, whiteout and algo to tell me who's right, is one of the perks of substack.

dlev_pika 8mo ago

> In capitalism, the market decides. > In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. > It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter. I thought this was already pretty clear - since Elmo bunny hopped on Trump’s rally stage

juleiie 8mo ago

In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. This HST quote seems severely outdated by now. They have already been caught, committed all the sins of stupidity and some more. All of it to the clapping mob of people who yearn for some kind of social revenge. And it’s happening everywhere these last years. Who could possibly know we have so many wife beaters?

isoprophlex 8mo ago
Not a week goes by without me thinking "what would HST have made of THIS fresh bullshit, if he were alive today"
- codechicago277 8mo ago
  The only human to authorize a nuclear attack…
  - ChrisMarshallNY 8mo ago
    Hunter Thompson? Not saying he wouldn't have banged on the button, for all he was worth, but no one in their right (or even severely sick) mind would ever let him near it.
    - fuzzfactor 8mo ago
      Looks like he's referring to Harry S. Truman. Probably doesn't know who Thompson was. I'll never forget Thompson speaking at my school as the war in Vietnam was drawing to a close. He did not mince words.
      - dredmorbius 7mo ago
        For the benefit of any others unfamiliar: Thompson: The man who invented gonzo journalism, writing beginning in the 1950s for numerous publications but most notably Rolling Stone, best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, serialised in RS, published as a book, and the basis of two films, Where the Buffalo Roam (loose adaptation, 1980) and more faithfully in 1998 under the original name, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

woah 8mo ago

Seems pretty unimportant and inconsequential though because LLMs don't work anyway because they aren't logic-based symbolic AI, right?

mentalgear 8mo ago
I know you trying to mock Marcus, but the reality is that all the big LLM providers have been shifting to integrating symbolic reasoning into their models for over a year now since they noticed that scale-alone is a dead-end. Also DeepMind's AlphaFold, which won the nobile price, is neuro-symbolic AI - so I think both of those points very much justify Marcus's long criticism of pure subsymbolic LLM "AI" as a path to real causal reasoning.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

thr0away 8mo ago

ਚੋਰ ਮਚਾਏ ਸ਼ੋਰ

addandsubtract 8mo ago

This is only a surprise to HN, because all the other threads about the corrupt US regime have been flagged before. I guess now is a good time as any to start paying attention. Who would've thought that attention is all you need?

ml-anon 8mo ago
[flagged]
stinkbeetle 8mo ago
When you say "HN", do you mean you? Who else was surprised? The place is full of people constantly commenting about how bad the US is, how corrupt the government is, how terrible CEOs (particularly Altman) are, late stage capitalism, etc., etc.
- LoganDark 8mo ago
  You know those people have existed since practically forever, right? You learn to tune it out and then you never notice if they start being less wrong.
  - wslh 8mo ago
    I don't want to spoil Marty Supreme (2025), but there's a provocative line delivered by Kevin O’Leary (yes, the Shark Tank guy): "I was born in 1601. I’m a vampire. I’ve been around forever."
  - XorNot 8mo ago
    It's the surface details problem: people post nice sounding things on the internet but don't think about them and do the nostradamus thing of predicting everything because caused by everything. If you predict a corrupt cartel in "the US" will do a thing, then on a long enough timescale you'll eventually be right in general but wrong about every significant detail. (also the people with this opinion don't seem to do anything with it - it doesn't appear to motivate them to vote, organize, think critically or come up with compromises - they simply turn out to belittle people on the internet while actually acting to normalize new excesses).

Kim_Bruning 8mo ago

This is one of the few interpretations that make sense of this timeline at this time. I'd be cautious since it's still speculation. But discovery is going to be interesting.

ivan_gammel 8mo ago
This interpretation is kinda obvious to anyone who has seen similar schemes in other countries. It‘s done almost by the book, except there‘s no criminal case against Anthropic management or shareholders, because USA is not yet there.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

croes 8mo ago

> In capitalism, the market decides. > In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. > but after Brockman had donated 25M to Trump’s PAC Sounds like they paid Trump and the government, can it get more capitalistic? Oligarchy and capitalism don’t contradict each other

127 8mo ago
Free market capitalism and corporatocracy are two opposite things. (Free markets don't exist without strong institutions and regulation)
- heavyset_go 8mo ago
  They're both capitalism
  - 127 8mo ago
    You are against private property rights? Because abolishing the right to owns things is the only way to prevent any form of capital accumulation.
    - heavyset_go 8mo ago
      Of course not, workers' rights to own and democratically control capital is paramount.
- coliveira 8mo ago
  Only in the minds of people who make capitalism a religion. It has always been like this, early capitalism was even worse with dirty money buying every politician they could get their hands on. Just read anything about the US in the end of the 19th century.
- croes 8mo ago
  Real free market capitalism is a real as working communism and have both the same underlying problem: people. They lie and cheat to accumulate power

losvedir 8mo ago

It's interesting this thread is all about how the deal is basically the same therefore corruption. And the other thread is all about how it's subtly different therefore OpenAI has no model red lines. I'd love to hear if Anthropic actually would accept this deal, if offered.

conception 8mo ago
It’s corruption and a different deal.
- drawnwren 8mo ago
  OAI and USG have publicly stated deal is materially different. On what basis does anyone think the deal is the same?
  - Aeolun 8mo ago
    Because Altman says the deal is the same.
    - drawnwren 8mo ago
      No he has clearly said there are differences. He has said that the points around what it may be used for are the same. HOWEVER, he has also stated that the definitions and enforcement are left to US law in the OAI contract. These were left to Anthropic in theirs.

lerp-io 8mo ago

when market is small its just donations

max_ 8mo ago

The docile donkeys that sheepishly use such products don't really care. And they are the majority. Thats what Sam Altman understands

SilverElfin 8mo ago

Yep. The political donation was the main thing. But let’s not forget AI Czar David Sacks has been crying about Anthropic being woke for a couple years. He has probably been trying to kill every single non right wing AI company. After years of whining about lawfare on the All In podcast, these people are all too happy to engage in the worst kind of lawfare. There is a cabal of extremists steering technology contracts in this administration and among their donors. The names are familiar - Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Elon Musk, David Sacks, Palmer Luckey, etc. A future administration will need to purge all their companies from our government and investigate them for corruption and treason.

coliveira 8mo ago
> A future administration will need to purge all their companies Good luck, democrats will put some of that easy money on their pockets and look the other way, like they always did.

metabagel 8mo ago

Can someone ELI5?

stavros 8mo ago
Sam Altman "donated" a bunch of money to US government officials. US government officials said "we're thinking of ruining Anthropic if they don't play ball". Sam Altman publicly said "oh no, don't do that, that's terrible, they're right to not play ball". Sam Altman signed a deal to play ball after he said that, and it turned out he had been working on this deal even before the US government officials said the thing about ruining Anthropic.
- lobsterthief 7mo ago
  Great summary, thank you for taking the time

encom 8mo ago

Fell For It Again-award I got baited into clicking another AI post.

runlevel1 8mo ago

How disappointing it is to see how easily some leaders in our industry abandon their principles, and how cheaply they sell out their fellow man. The tech industry was never perfect. It was never a charity. But there was a time, several years ago now, when people were more driven to build things that delighted others.

coliveira 8mo ago
That was always a lie. Gates became the richest pedo in the world building a monopoly of bad software and destroying other people's businesses. Since then things only got worse.

asdfe3r343 8mo ago

How is elon differnt? Every billionaries is the same . grow up people

Paddyz 8mo ago

[dead]

gwerbin 8mo ago
I feel the same way about this as I feel about Trump himself. Nobody should be surprised or disappointed, you shouldn't have expected any different.
- Paddyz 8mo ago
  [dead]
- computably 8mo ago
  Well, I'm not surprised, although I think I'm still within my rights to be disappointed. What's unfortunate is I expect some people to be surprised.
kgwxd 8mo ago
Tool assisted. And I'm not talking about the AI.
archon810 8mo ago
It was Greg and Anna Brockman who donated, not Altman. But close enough to the goal post.
tjwebbnorfolk 8mo ago
Convincing naive people that you're building AI because you love people is the fastest route to power. You have it backwards. There was never any "arc".
giancarlostoro 8mo ago
S(c)am Altman has had this messed up story arc the entire time, the problem is most people are unaware. Remember when he declared himself the chairman of Y Combinator, they deleted it from YC's blog / website, he filed as YC's chairman with the SEC for years despite not actually being chairman. This was after he stepped down as CEO. Then there's all the sketchiness surrounding some companies he sold. Guy's the worlds most successful grifter who has world economies by the... anyway...

underlipton 8mo ago

This is the guy you want controlling the technology that will determine humanity's future?

dandellion 8mo ago
> will determine humanity's future According to him. These are same people that said we'd have self driving cars by 2017. That we'd be able to buy things with BitCoin. But here we are, it's 2026 and all of it has turned out to be a lot less revolutionary and world changing than advertised. We're just barely getting the internet as it was advertised before the dot com bubble, and to be honest, it kinda sucks. AI can do some cool stuff, but I'm very sceptical about all the hype.

jazzpush2 8mo ago

Just cancelled my chatgpt subscription.

arttaboi 8mo ago
That's a wrong move I guess (you willingly take pain but no one else suffers). The right one would be to get an Anthropic subscription. And an even better one would be to donate to the Democrats.
- jatora 8mo ago
  Ah yes the paragons of virtue who dont also insidiously continue dismantling the country in their own way lol.
- direwolf20 8mo ago
  An even better one would be to run for office on the platform of not being a piece of shit like everyone else. Democrats aren't good.
- jazzpush2 8mo ago
  I already have an Anthropic sub. There is not a single Democrat candidate I agree with or would gladly donate to. That party is almost as much of a joke as the Republicans are, and they all fuck kids anyways. Besides, that money would only end up being spent on an absentee, self-obsessed, do-nothing Governor who wants to play more corrupt politics like his Aunt. Scam artists across the board.

fisherjeff 8mo ago

Honestly, this makes me almost feel better about the whole situation. I had been finding it super unsettling: Like, why would DoD go nuclear over wanting to build fully autonomous weapons… with Claude? But no, it’s just run-of-the-mill Trump administration corruption. Phew!

deaux 8mo ago
Unfortunately the article is wrong, the OpenAI deal relents on exactly what Anthropic wouldn't. The OpenAI deal is "you can do anything that's 'legal'". This is the same as "zero restrictions", in the real world. Anthropic was offered the same and said "no, these two usecases are not allowed, period".
- fisherjeff 8mo ago
  Haggling with DoD over contract terms and losing out is utterly routine. Ending up labeled a supply chain risk as a result is not.

kazinator 8mo ago

abraxas 8mo ago

The oligarchic system is not only poisonous to economic growth but also incredibly hard to dislodge. Most of you are American and likely thinking that this is an aberration that will be rectified come next election cycle but I believe you are going to get disappointed. People who scaled the government buildings in a coup attempt are not going to give up power willingly. And now they have coerced your oligarchs to come to their side and those who fail the loyalty test like Amodei are getting punished. You are not approaching Russia style kleptocracy. You're already there.

jatora 8mo ago
[flagged]
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
GeorgeWBasic 7mo ago
jatora, your honest comment is flagged and your account seems to be dead.

moab 8mo ago

How does Brockman sleep at night? These guys used to seem like standup ethical guys. It seems no amount of intellectualism is enough to ward off the poison of wealth.

nutthugger 8mo ago
(standup that's for sure)
dongguanxianhao 8mo ago
With a bottle of fentonol in his mouth.
vasco 8mo ago
It's the other way around, people who are good people will "drop" from the race way before they get to this stage. So it's more that only psychopaths will continue to push up the mountain when they already have many hundreds of lifetimes worth of wealth. Imagine being in that situation and still wanting to be involved in backstabbing power games rather than enjoy time with your kids.
ks2048 8mo ago
I've also noticed that he is the CTO of the one of the most important tech companies in the world, and none of his tweets are remotely technically interesting - just banalities. You would think he might have something interesting technical to say... but no.
jacquesm 8mo ago
> These guys used to seem like standup ethical guys. You had your answer around the time that he decided to side with Altman when he could have kept his own counsel.

jatora 8mo ago

"In capitalism, the market decides. In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter" I honestly can't understand how anyone sees things this way. The US isn't transitioning at all. It is and has been a complete oligarchy for at least 70 years. I've taken to discounting any political talking-head that wont consistently acknowledge and push that axiom as THE fundamental assumption of all political discourse.

jatora 8mo ago

Did everyone forget Anthropic is already partnered with Palantir?

Ancalagon 8mo ago

ABAB: All Billionaires Are Bad

foxglacier 8mo ago

Can someone explain what the drama is? From what I can tell, OpenAI donated to Trump's campaign then won a contract with his government. Anthropic lost that contract because they had some morality redlines they refused to relax. Where exactly is the badness in there? Is there evidence the donation cause them to win the contract? Seems like the evidence is that their competitor backed out, no? I suspect this is a conspiracy theory feeding on people's pre-existing hatreds.

braza 8mo ago

I cannot take Gary seriously anymore since it's an article about deep learning hitting a wall [1]. [1] - https://nautil.us/deep-learning-is-hitting-a-wall-238440/ https://nautil.us/deep-learning-is-hitting-a-wall-238440/

Mordisquitos 8mo ago
What does it matter whether the author can be "taken seriously"? How does his (mistaken?) 2022 assessment of the progress of deep learning have any bearing on his comments on possibly unethical and corrupt business actions of OpenAI's leadership?

d--b 8mo ago

> In capitalism, the market decides. > In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. > It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter. The US probably always was like that. Now they just don’t bother hiding it.

agentifysh 8mo ago

I just can't take Gary seriously anymore after reading this thread: https://x.com/alfcnz/status/1991210361769320820 https://x.com/alfcnz/status/1991210361769320820

CamperBob2 8mo ago
LOL. "I often remind clowns (his word) of my PhD from MIT when I was 23, my tenure at NYU 30 (sic), my six books, publications in Science and Nature, or the machine learning company that I founded and sold to Uber. Sometimes I mention my Senate testimony." He should get together with Musk and commiserate about how worldly success is no substitute for adoration on Twitter. That said, I doubt he's wrong about the nature of this debacle. A thousand years from now, the ghosts of Altman and Amodei are still going to wander the earth in search of ways to dunk on each other.

concinds 8mo ago

> It’s one thing for the government to reject Anthropic’s terms—and entirely another to banish them permanently and, absurdly and punitively declare them a supply chain risk. Worse, they did it in favor of someone else who took pretty similar terms and happened to have given more campaign contributions. Marcus is so overrated. He's not even good at straight factual reporting. The terms were not "pretty similar". He missed the whole point of the recent controversy. > Anthropic deserves a chance at EXACTLY the same terms No, those terms are bullshit.

nacozarina 8mo ago

Every ‘model provider’ should be labeled a severe supply-chain risk, get real.

weare138 8mo ago

In capitalism, the market decides. In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter. As someone from genx I can definitively confirm this is how it always worked. If you're younger do not delude yourselves into thinking this is all somehow new and things were better in the past. They weren't.

latexr 8mo ago

> In capitalism, the market decides. No, capital (i.e. money) decides. It’s called capitalism not marketism. The difference is important because it means that if you’re already rich (or are perceived as such, and thus can get loans, extensions, and the like) you can continue to survive longer than the alternatives.

insane_dreamer 8mo ago

> It sure look like the US is transitioning* from the former to the latter. *has transitioned