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

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

The rational investors have been moving their money outside the US for approximately 15 months. Compare the chart of VEA to VTI.
This has pretty much always been happening, it’s more brazen under Trump
> 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.

> 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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...
Such high levels of corruption are not usually called "scam"
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.
I'll try not to be too flippant but... he thought the US ever _wasn't_ an oligarchy?
"But I believe in fair play. This wasn’t that."

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

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

"In capitalism, the market decides.

In oligarchy, connections and donations decide."

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

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

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?

Modern spin: In a closed society where everybody is guilty, the only crime is not being in power.
HST = Hunter S. Thompson, an American writer and journalist.
Well, the wives.

But women are generally ignored in our society.