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This HST quote seems severely outdated by now.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?
There are a lot of conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones, and the amusing thing to me is that there is a conspiracy of elites who are exerting large amounts of unelected control of the government, and who are actively working to keep you down to enrich themselves, and it's not even a secret.
We call these people "billionaires", and at this point they don't even bother hiding it. Trump had a streamlined bribery system with his stupid cryptocurrency and being in charge of a publicly traded company while in office, Musk bought his way in so he could be in charge of a new department and start defunding any organization that has ever tried to investigate him, and there are hundreds of examples.
Instead morons like Alex Jones will go on the radio and blame lizards or something, and then his listeners will take that and then start blaming Jews or Mexicans, while cheering on the actual conspiracy that's making their lives terrible.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
That's something that has bothered me about this entire administration, particularly the bizarre and disturbing involvement of the Diablo-cheating billionaire.
Everyone knew that a lot of politicians have been for sale, but I didn't realize how cheaply they were for sale. Musk able to buy his way into being in charge of an idiotic department with basically no regulation while still being allowed to CEO like five companies, and he did it for like $100 million. That's a lot of money, more than I'll ever be worth, but it's way less than I would think it would cost to buy the presidency, in charge of billions (and maybe trillions?) of dollars of sales and contracting.
We're still here mostly because these are the dollar store fascists. If they were really competent this would be the fourth reich already by now and all brown people would have been exterminated in concentration camps.
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.
> 25M isn’t even that much money. Not only are they whores, they’re cheap whores.
I don't know, Anthropic is providing 10K open source developers with $200 subscriptions to their bot, for up to 6 months. 200 * 10000 * 6 = $12 Million total. That's even cheaper, I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from all this.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
I think you’re making a major unspoken assumption which is that all of the downvotes / flags are from real users. HN has no form of identity verification and is functionally equivalent to 4chan. Theres no telling how many bot farms exist on here with the sole purpose of manipulating discourse to be favorable to the current US administration and also Israel.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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".
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...
In the past I've felt like some of the anti-Altman rhetoric on HN was overkill. It some cases it felt like piling on, and while there was definitely some shady stuff in the past, it seemed like folks were too quick to paste the "evil" banner on anything they disagreed with.
I was wrong, and I no longer think that. I now lump him in with the rest of the narcissistic sociopaths I see with so much power in the country. I'm honestly really curious what past Altman champions like paulg think of him now. I just don't see how this is the slightest bit defensible.
The "We Will Not Be Divided" pledge at https://notdivided.org/ (and discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188473 ) has 96 OpenAI signatories. Time for these people to show if their signatures actually meant something or were just meaningless theater. It's not like these people would have much of trouble getting jobs given they're AI experts with resumes to back it up. Signing that pledge and then staying at OpenAI after this would just look like rank hypocrisy to me.
"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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This 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.
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.
juleiie|1 day ago
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?
arttaboi|18 hours ago
skrebbel|13 hours ago
JohnCClarke|10 hours ago
But women are generally ignored in our society.
tombert|1 day ago
There are a lot of conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones, and the amusing thing to me is that there is a conspiracy of elites who are exerting large amounts of unelected control of the government, and who are actively working to keep you down to enrich themselves, and it's not even a secret.
We call these people "billionaires", and at this point they don't even bother hiding it. Trump had a streamlined bribery system with his stupid cryptocurrency and being in charge of a publicly traded company while in office, Musk bought his way in so he could be in charge of a new department and start defunding any organization that has ever tried to investigate him, and there are hundreds of examples.
Instead morons like Alex Jones will go on the radio and blame lizards or something, and then his listeners will take that and then start blaming Jews or Mexicans, while cheering on the actual conspiracy that's making their lives terrible.
isoprophlex|1 day ago
mentalgear|1 day ago
jfengel|1 day ago
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.
dragonwriter|1 day ago
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.
ilamont|1 day ago
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.
bootsmann|1 day ago
coldtea|1 day ago
Investors just care for the returns. As long as they can identify and bet on the side doing the bribing, they're fine...
Aeolun|15 hours ago
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.
amarant|1 day ago
direwolf20|13 hours ago
therobots927|7 hours ago
foogazi|1 day ago
It’s the best investment - just bribe your way to contracts
cermicelli|10 hours ago
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...
CamperBob2|1 day ago
To where?
danielparsons|1 day ago
ProllyInfamous|1 day ago
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]
Ifkaluva|1 day ago
m_ke|1 day ago
I'm sure the Crypto AI Czar (David Sacks) being a major Anthropic hater didn't hurt either
Or that Kushner put a billion in OpenAI recently
EDIT: wow they got in at a huge discount too and OpenAI bought stake in Thrive...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/thrive-capital-bought-shares-in...
https://openai.com/index/thrive-holdings/
awakeasleep|1 day ago
Like, this is opex
gwerbin|18 hours ago
Cyphase|1 day ago
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?"
xboxnolifes|23 hours ago
While the specifics may differ, this is neither their first time doing a deal like this nor will it be their last.
tombert|1 day ago
Everyone knew that a lot of politicians have been for sale, but I didn't realize how cheaply they were for sale. Musk able to buy his way into being in charge of an idiotic department with basically no regulation while still being allowed to CEO like five companies, and he did it for like $100 million. That's a lot of money, more than I'll ever be worth, but it's way less than I would think it would cost to buy the presidency, in charge of billions (and maybe trillions?) of dollars of sales and contracting.
mlinhares|17 hours ago
3rodents|1 day ago
coldtea|1 day ago
mindslight|1 day ago
munificent|1 day ago
bigbadfeline|1 day ago
I don't know, Anthropic is providing 10K open source developers with $200 subscriptions to their bot, for up to 6 months. 200 * 10000 * 6 = $12 Million total. That's even cheaper, I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from all this.
ltpajh|1 day ago
- 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.
pjc50|1 day ago
NetOpWibby|1 day ago
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).
burnt-resistor|21 hours ago
abraxas|17 hours ago
unknown|13 hours ago
[deleted]
jatora|16 hours ago
[deleted]
Kim_Bruning|1 day ago
ivan_gammel|1 day ago
kazinator|18 hours ago
It's just a variation on Snowball being chased off Animal Farm.
addandsubtract|1 day ago
caaqil|23 hours ago
therobots927|7 hours ago
ml-anon|1 day ago
[deleted]
stinkbeetle|1 day ago
jazzpush2|19 hours ago
arttaboi|18 hours ago
jatora|16 hours ago
losvedir|1 day ago
I'd love to hear if Anthropic actually would accept this deal, if offered.
conception|21 hours ago
mentalgear|1 day ago
imjonse|1 day ago
runlevel1|22 hours ago
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|19 hours ago
latexr|6 hours ago
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.
agentifysh|15 hours ago
https://x.com/alfcnz/status/1991210361769320820
CamperBob2|15 hours ago
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|14 hours ago
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.
insane_dreamer|4 hours ago
*has transitioned
underlipton|19 hours ago
dandellion|18 hours ago
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.
unknown|1 day ago
[deleted]
unknown|1 day ago
[deleted]
nacozarina|13 hours ago
moab|17 hours ago
ks2048|13 hours ago
You would think he might have something interesting technical to say... but no.
jacquesm|13 hours ago
You had your answer around the time that he decided to side with Altman when he could have kept his own counsel.
dongguanxianhao|14 hours ago
nutthugger|17 hours ago
vasco|14 hours ago
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.
metabagel|23 hours ago
stavros|21 hours ago
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.
SilverElfin|23 hours ago
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|19 hours ago
Good luck, democrats will put some of that easy money on their pockets and look the other way, like they always did.
lerp-io|1 day ago
fisherjeff|19 hours ago
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|18 hours ago
braza|15 hours ago
[1] - https://nautil.us/deep-learning-is-hitting-a-wall-238440/
Mordisquitos|11 hours ago
dana321|1 day ago
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.
jatora|17 hours ago
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.
unknown|1 day ago
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readthenotes1|1 day ago
georgemcbay|1 day ago
Not even trying to justify the switchover would have raised less eyebrows than giving it a clearly nonsense justification.
Ancalagon|16 hours ago
weare138|8 hours ago
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.
imjonse|1 day ago
> 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|1 day ago
Sure you could smear an opposition company, but just straight bribing the government is new, at this scale
micromacrofoot|1 day ago
dlev_pika|1 day ago
> 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
Paddyz|19 hours ago
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tjwebbnorfolk|18 hours ago
giancarlostoro|17 hours ago
Guy's the worlds most successful grifter who has world economies by the... anyway...
kgwxd|18 hours ago
archon810|18 hours ago
hn_throwaway_99|16 hours ago
I was wrong, and I no longer think that. I now lump him in with the rest of the narcissistic sociopaths I see with so much power in the country. I'm honestly really curious what past Altman champions like paulg think of him now. I just don't see how this is the slightest bit defensible.
The "We Will Not Be Divided" pledge at https://notdivided.org/ (and discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188473 ) has 96 OpenAI signatories. Time for these people to show if their signatures actually meant something or were just meaningless theater. It's not like these people would have much of trouble getting jobs given they're AI experts with resumes to back it up. Signing that pledge and then staying at OpenAI after this would just look like rank hypocrisy to me.
gwerbin|18 hours ago
fatata123|15 hours ago
[deleted]
d--b|15 hours ago
> 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.
seydor|1 day ago
zuminator|1 day ago
unknown|1 day ago
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wizardforhire|1 day ago
WesolyKubeczek|1 day ago
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.
croes|1 day ago
> 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|22 hours ago
unknown|1 day ago
[deleted]
ddoottddoott|1 day ago
[deleted]
dist-epoch|1 day ago
> 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|1 day ago
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.
jeremyjh|1 day ago
foxglacier|15 hours ago
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.
AndrewKemendo|1 day ago
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|1 day ago
encom|22 hours ago
I got baited into clicking another AI post.
drcongo|1 day ago
throwaway613746|1 day ago
[deleted]
7sigma|1 day ago
In oligarchy, connections and donations decide."
Who's gonna tell him there never was a difference?
trigvi|1 day ago
[deleted]
erelong|1 day ago
cyanydeez|1 day ago
whatthesmack|20 hours ago
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
nickdothutton|1 day ago
bloomingeek|1 day ago
ajshahH|1 day ago
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|1 day ago
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."
wosined|1 day ago
thr0away|1 day ago
asdfe3r343|20 hours ago
mpalmer|1 day ago
phtrivier|1 day ago
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.
max_|1 day ago
And they are the majority. Thats what Sam Altman understands
woah|1 day ago
mentalgear|1 day ago
kledru|1 day ago
NathanielK|1 day ago
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.
111111101101|1 day ago
Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads weren't fair play either.
esafak|1 day ago
pton_xd|1 day ago
afthonos|1 day ago
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.
jeremyjh|1 day ago
Cipater|13 hours ago