The whole thing was a scam

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-whole-thing-was-scam

by guilamu • 5 months ago

993 311 5 months ago

garymarcus.substack.com

mentalgear3• 5 months 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."

imjonse2• 5 months ago

He's young, he's got enough time to outdo himself.

mentalgear3• 5 months 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• 5 months 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.

ProllyInfamous2• 5 months 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_• 5 months 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?

maxbond• 5 months 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• 5 months 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

jfengel3• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

In what sense is this new, other than a different side cares about the optics?

specialist2• 5 months ago

IANAL, IIRC: SCOTUS has very narrowly defined bribery as explicit quid pro quo. And sometimes not even then.

coldtea3• 5 months ago

A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office.

Having a preferred candidate you give money to is already bribery - whatever the law says. You fund your favorite pony to get the power. They then scratch your back or lend a sympathetic ear.

CamperBob23• 5 months ago

the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent

To where?

ben_w3• 5 months 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.

AndroTux• 5 months ago

Europe is nice this time of year

rssoconnor• 5 months ago

https://totalrealreturns.com/n/VTI,VXUS?start=2025-01-20

coldtea3• 5 months 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• 5 months 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.

iririririr3• 5 months ago

china attract zero capital in the sense being discussed here, which would be VC. it attract lots of capex expenses like factories.

danielparsons• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

I wonder if maybe those two things have a causal relationship

bootsmann• 5 months ago

This has already happened, its a key reason why the dollar is down 15% since the new admin took power.

amarant• 5 months 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.

Aeolun2• 5 months 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.

direwolf202• 5 months ago

That means bribing the government is a very secure and profitable investment to invest in.

cermicelli• 5 months 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...

therobots9272• 5 months ago

The rational investors have been moving their money outside the US for approximately 15 months. Compare the chart of VEA to VTI.

mountainriver3• 5 months ago

This has pretty much always been happening, it’s more brazen under Trump

dist-epoch• 5 months 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.

NicuCalcea2• 5 months 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.

drcongo2• 5 months ago

Very kind of you to only pick one error in the parent post to critique.

jeremyjh2• 5 months ago

Which prominent economist has argued that bribes are an essential part of Capitalism?

lm28469• 5 months 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

heavyset_go4• 5 months ago

Which prominent priest has argued that god doesn't exist?

xpe• 5 months ago

The above comment comes across as a snarky gotcha, and it is not a one-off. Could you please ask in a different way that promotes curious conversation? We would appreciate it.

This style tends to increase the likelihood of others responding in kind. The end result is often a less substantive conversation.

ajshahH• 5 months 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.

georgemcbay2• 5 months 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_xd3• 5 months ago

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.

afthonos2• 5 months 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_xd3• 5 months 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.

jeremyjh2• 5 months ago

Do you actually believe things this administration says? Is there some kind of drug that makes this possible?

Cipater• 5 months ago

You actually believe these people when they talk?

AndrewKemendo2• 5 months 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.

MadxX792• 5 months ago

What's your argument here? He's not allowed to discuss crony capitalism because you imagine that he thinks LLMs suddenly became reliable.

AndrewKemendo2• 5 months 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

drcongo2• 5 months ago

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

WesolyKubeczek• 5 months 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.

Ifkaluva• 5 months ago

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

mindslight• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

It’s a lot of money for a “what have you done for me lately?” scenario

Like, this is opex

munificent• 5 months ago

A whore doesn't have to charge any given john very much when they can service a large number of them.

Cyphase2• 5 months ago

Quite tangential, but this reminded me of a line from Human Target:

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• 5 months 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

coldtea3• 5 months ago

In this context they're not the whores, they're the johns. Trump / the PAC would be the whores, but what else is new?

tombert8• 5 months ago

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.

timacles2• 5 months ago

the US is like a new born deer against battalion of ninjas when it comes to corruption.

Decades of believing we are blessed with some sort of perpetual exceptionalism has made the American people not only susceptible to corruption but actively unknowingly promote it. Propaganda has convinced them to invite it into their house and let it know where all your money is and your bank account information.

m_ke• 5 months ago

It's more than that, supposedly Sama donated another 25mil through a PAC.

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/

Spooky23• 5 months ago

POTUS pretty much told you this is what you are getting. His great admiration for Andrew Jackson pretty much says it all. Jackson was the poster child for bullshit populism, patronage and corruption.

bigbadfeline• 5 months ago

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.

malfist• 5 months ago

This has to be one of the worst whataboutism I've seen. No one is objecting to this corruption because it was cheap. Just expressing incredulity

3rodents• 5 months ago

There is no need for such derogatory language, sex workers would be deeply offended that you compared them to the Trump apparatus.

spopejoy3• 5 months ago

I can't understand why denigrating someone as a prostitute or w**e is not called out as inappropriate if not fully misogynist. Its history is deeply, inescapably misogynist, it's anti-sex worker as you say, and it's just tacky. Corruption of morals for money doesn't need to be feminized to make an argument.

xboxnolifes• 5 months ago

Not really. They get 25m here, 25m there, a little off the top over there, a crypto pump and dump once in a while, and they end up with billions.

While the specifics may differ, this is neither their first time doing a deal like this nor will it be their last.

gwerbin3• 5 months ago

It's more about loyalty than about any particular dollar amount. It's a tribute moreso than a bribe.

mlinhares2• 5 months ago

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.

k33n3• 5 months ago

Have you ever considered that they’re not fascists at all, don’t have the goals that you’re claiming they have, and don’t hold any of the views you claim they have?

ltpajh• 5 months 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• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

A bubble is just a great opportunity to pass more money to yourself and your friends.

pjc50• 5 months ago

Don't overlook the media consolidation under Bari Weiss.

burnt-resistor• 5 months ago

And JD Vance is Thiel's boy.

mountainriver3• 5 months 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

lobsterthief2• 5 months ago

If he keeps surrounding himself with sketchy people, people will look at him as a sketchy person. It’s not because he’s Sam Altman; it’s because of the people he surrounds himself with—and the things he says and does, of course.

dana321• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

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

NathanielK• 5 months 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.

imjonse2• 5 months 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• 5 months 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• 5 months 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.

readthenotes1• 5 months 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...

georgemcbay2• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

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

wizardforhire• 5 months ago

I’ve always heard it called “business as usual”

isoprophlex3• 5 months ago

I still prefer "Scam", "Business as usual" Altman doesnt have the same ring to it...

zuminator• 5 months ago

The scam part is the fiction perpetrated on the American public that there was a bona fide dispute with Anthropic.

wosined• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

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

bloomingeek4• 5 months 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-anon2• 5 months ago

Colin Powell must be shaking vials of yellow powder in his grave right now.

gyomu• 5 months 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.

chronc2739• 5 months ago

The mid-terms may be our final chance to save our nation.

Republicans are on track to win the mid-terms…

S&P500 is all you need

Fed cuts interest rate, jobs go up, 401k go up, RSU go up, credit card points go up, everyone is happy

1111111011014• 5 months ago

"But I believe in fair play. This wasn’t that."

Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads weren't fair play either.

esafak3• 5 months ago

Why not??

1111111011014• 5 months 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.

erelong• 5 months ago

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

cyanydeez• 5 months ago

which part is unproven enough to not seem like a kleptocracy?

whatthesmack• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

"In capitalism, the market decides.

In oligarchy, connections and donations decide."

Who's gonna tell him there never was a difference?

mpalmer2• 5 months ago

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

phtrivier2• 5 months 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.

mpalmer2• 5 months ago

LOL. Are you mistaking writing critique for some childish form of disagreement on the issues?

dlev_pika• 5 months 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

juleiie3• 5 months 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?

isoprophlex3• 5 months ago

Not a week goes by without me thinking "what would HST have made of THIS fresh bullshit, if he were alive today"

codechicago277• 5 months ago

The only human to authorize a nuclear attack…

isoprophlex3• 5 months ago

Addon: I mean Hunter S Thompson of course

tombert8• 5 months ago

I've said it a million times, but I'll repeat it.

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.

juleiie3• 5 months ago

Some people just don’t want to hear it no matter what. Not because they are unusually stupid or inherently evil but because they feel severely hurt by the societal changes and left out. Anything that gives a hint of hope of reverting things to be the way they were is justified and no price is too high.

They can steal as long as they are our thieves.

To get through to these people you have to validate their deep fears. Not just say - shut up, you are stupid, vote for me.

ml-anon2• 5 months ago

Not to mention trafficking and raping children

GorbachevyChase2• 5 months ago

Be the change, my man. Try to make a podcast. I think it will eventually make sense why nobody who is a threat and also famous.

ikr678• 5 months ago

The only war is class war, but those at the top spend a lot of money creating new culture wars instead to keep us busy.

enaaem• 5 months ago

From the Epstein files we know that these billionaires are exactly behind these conspiracy guys like Qanon. It is called controlled opposition.

wartywhoa23• 5 months ago

Jones in a shill, plain and simple. A puppet of said and unsaid billi/trillionaires.

Discredit By Association is written all over his yelling face.

graemep4• 5 months ago

I have long thought that the greatest harm conspiracy theories do is to distract attention from actual problems, and to discredit attempts to draw attention to them by labelling them all as conspiracy theories.

Other things are used too. A lot of the attention given to culture wars issues distracts attention from other issues. Its not just the right either. It allows people to pose as left wing while actually not being left wing on economic and business issues which are the traditional definition (the labour party in the UK - to be fair the left within it does seem to the reviving now).

With the Epstein affair, the shock people feel about sex crimes is being used focus just on those to avoid investigating the corruption in the US and other countries . The UK's two high profile arrests, of former Prince Andrew, and the far more important Peter Mandelson (former cabinet minister, for EU Commissioner, very close to multiple Prime Ministers) have been for passing on sensitive information but this is almost certainly a tiny fraction of what was going on.

arttaboi2• 5 months ago

Modern spin: In a closed society where everybody is guilty, the only crime is not being in power.

wolttam• 5 months ago

the only crime is being poor.

skrebbel• 5 months ago

HST = Hunter S. Thompson, an American writer and journalist.

mikkupikku• 5 months ago

I assumed that was the ethos of High Speed Trading.

JohnCClarke• 5 months ago

Well, the wives.

But women are generally ignored in our society.

woah• 5 months ago

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

mentalgear3• 5 months 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.

thr0away• 5 months ago

ਚੋਰ ਮਚਾਏ ਸ਼ੋਰ

addandsubtract• 5 months 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?

stinkbeetle5• 5 months 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.

LoganDark5• 5 months 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.

spiderfarmer• 5 months ago

I’m one of those criticasters and I’m getting downvoted constantly. I don’t care about the downvotes. I do care about western countries slipping into fascism just because people are so proud to admit they voted for a stupid clown.

abustamam• 5 months ago

They've been around forever, even before Trump's first administration. But a broken clock is right twice a day.

Those people also get down voted to oblivion. Their text is gray. I can't read it unless I click the timestamp.

Clearly, HN doesn't want us to listen to them.

Yes, sometimes they can be combative and inflammatory. But even the ones that are otherwise reasonable get down voted because how dare we insult capitalism and billionaires?

caaqil• 5 months ago

I like to think that you wrote this whole comment to sneak the paper title instead of it being an apt pun/nod.

therobots9272• 5 months ago

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.

Kim_Bruning• 5 months 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• 5 months 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.

croes2• 5 months 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

1273• 5 months ago

Free market capitalism and corporatocracy are two opposite things. (Free markets don't exist without strong institutions and regulation)

heavyset_go4• 5 months ago

They're both capitalism

coliveira4• 5 months 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.

croes2• 5 months 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

tgv2• 5 months ago

I don't know how you can say that. What does "free market capitalism" entail according to you? Wikipedia's definition is just a ruse to be able to claim that free market capitalism is sane, but you can't exclude a governing authority and monopolies at the same time, because the latter always arises. So, in reality, you have to choose, and if you choose absence of authority, corporatocracy is an automatic extension of free market capitalism.

losvedir• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

It’s corruption and a different deal.

drawnwren2• 5 months ago

OAI and USG have publicly stated deal is materially different. On what basis does anyone think the deal is the same?

lerp-io• 5 months ago

when market is small its just donations

max_• 5 months ago

The docile donkeys that sheepishly use such products don't really care.

And they are the majority. Thats what Sam Altman understands

SilverElfin• 5 months 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.

coliveira4• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

Can someone ELI5?

stavros• 5 months 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.

lobsterthief2• 5 months ago

Great summary, thank you for taking the time

encom• 5 months ago

Fell For It Again-award

I got baited into clicking another AI post.

runlevel1• 5 months 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.

coliveira4• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

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

underlipton• 5 months ago

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

dandellion• 5 months 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.

jazzpush22• 5 months ago

Just cancelled my chatgpt subscription.

arttaboi2• 5 months 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.

jatora3• 5 months ago

Ah yes the paragons of virtue who dont also insidiously continue dismantling the country in their own way lol.

direwolf202• 5 months 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.

jazzpush22• 5 months 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.

fisherjeff2• 5 months 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• 5 months 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".

fisherjeff2• 5 months 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• 5 months 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• 5 months 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.

GeorgeWBasic• 5 months ago

jatora, your honest comment is flagged and your account seems to be dead.

moab• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

(standup that's for sure)

dongguanxianhao• 5 months ago

With a bottle of fentonol in his mouth.

vasco• 5 months 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• 5 months 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.

jacquesm3• 5 months 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.

jatora3• 5 months 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.

jatora3• 5 months ago

Did everyone forget Anthropic is already partnered with Palantir?

Ancalagon• 5 months ago

ABAB: All Billionaires Are Bad

foxglacier• 5 months 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• 5 months 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/

Mordisquitos• 5 months 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?

agentifysh• 5 months ago

I just can't take Gary seriously anymore after reading this thread:

https://x.com/alfcnz/status/1991210361769320820

CamperBob23• 5 months 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.

d--b• 5 months 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.

concinds• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

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

weare138• 5 months 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• 5 months 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• 5 months ago

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

*has transitioned

The whole thing was a scam

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