I have made a commitment to reduce my overly long and excessively hedged comments on here, so, if I may: What the heck. Is this a belated April fools joke?
This is not what a company on the precipice of AGI or even one that has faith in LLMs being a consistent growth driver across the industry would realistically do.
Is this a good investment financially? I don't know and seeing as I have never heard of TBPN before this post, I am not the right person to gauge that.
But any investment, be it in building your own Social Networks (Sora 2), a news show or anything else beyond model training is frankly, to me at least, a clear admission that OpenAI does not see nearly as much value in models as they have been selling investors on.
Considering the rest of the economy, that is more terrifying than any "AI will kill us" prediction.
If OpenAI believed even a tenth of what they have tried to sell investors, governments and the public on, they'd not have a penny to invest in anything akin to this, plain and simple.
With intense competition for enterprise contracts coming from Anthropic, I thought this was OpenAI's time to get _less_ memey, not more. What the hell are they thinking?
Had to double check this wasn’t a late April Fools joke. Each weird acquisition or product launch feels like an implicit admission that anything like “AGI” is never coming.
I bet OpenAI genuinely believes they're using their money to help free media exist. And TBPN genuinely believes this is the right choice for economic freedom so they can continue to operate. I bet they even had a convo such as "we'll never tell you what to say," and both sides genuinely believed it.
But this never ends well. Even if there's never a conversation about it, directly, the implication is there.
I don't care about TBPN, specifically. I just really, really wish we had a better way for media to fund itself independently. (And I say this as someone who pays for some media, but not nearly enough. I don't have $10/mo for every outlet that deserves it.)
There's no way a popular show like that needs money, they were probably millionaires already with sponsorships. Why are we pretending these people are poor or need help to survive?
> I just really, really wish we had a better way for media to fund itself independently.
I agree, but this is 100% not the right model. Altman is not the right person to be in control of a media organisation. He shows little willing to understand anything of how the world works currently, let alone something out of his wheel house.
You can unfortunately see this across the media spectrum. There seem to be basically two paths:
1. Cozy up to the big money in your industry, have them on for PR interviews with easy questions, and eventually get sponsored / acquired by them. I hesitate to even call this journalism, it’s more just sponsored entertainment.
2. Build a personal brand as someone known for being particularly critical / investigative / etc. This will undoubtedly make you far less money, and you’ll probably end up shilling ads for gold coins in between asking for Patreon supporters.
I’ve always wondered if a government-funded (in a way that cannot be manipulated) organization whose sole purpose is to criticize everyone would ever work. It might even need to be run anonymously.
What does this even mean? Who is being "genuine"? This is far to naive a take for a company thats burning through hundreds of millions of dollars, and constantly striving to set the tone of AI and their own supremacy.
As a viewer I don’t think this is in my interest as I think they will get a lot less prestige guests now. They have interviewed some huge names recently.
To be honest, until a month ago, I hadn't even heard of TBPN or seen any of their content. But, seemingly, out of nowhere, they managed to get all the leaders in AI to appear in their programming.
The core of the information they present isn't much different than what you'd hear on Dwarkesh or other industry podcasts, the presentation is some weird mix of ESPN and Mad Money that I personally don't get, but maybe makes sense to a US audience.
I don't see why that is interesting to OpenAI, but maybe I'm missing something.
OpenAI is the most well-capitalized startup in history, and simultaneously in the center of the most hated cycle in tech (AI) since the mechanized loom.
Isn't the arbitrage these guys ran using their VC connections pretty obvious? TBPN is one of the few professionalized-with-a-team media outlets that offers a positive view of AI vs. the doomer stance of all other media (by a factor of like 100 to 1).
Total audience size is irrelevant if a good percentage of the people in that audience are tech influencers/billionaires, regardless of how niche and mainstream-irrelevant outside of X that TBPN is.
Media properties, like sports teams, are different than other businesses. To the people who own them, influence can be far more important than cashflows. Hence why a surprisingly large percentage of 19th century newspapers in many countries are still under the control of the families who founded them (just look at the NY Times).
While acquiring a youtube channel with 50K subs for hundreds of millions is definitely dotcom bubble-esque nonsense and will be viewed as such looking back, it makes total sense to me why its happening.
Dwarkesh gets far more technical and in the weeds than TPBN. It’s very different. I can’t listen to TPBN though it seems fun but I’ll relisten to Dwarkesh episodes more than once.
Conspiracy theory: they recorded a guest with egregious dirt on OpenAI and this money is to bury it. I have no proof and it's implausible but it makes more sense than the stated reasons.
Maybe it's just me but as soon as something like this, that should be independent, is owned by something it reports on, it becomes something you need to automatically trust less.
TBPN, OpenClaw and Astral - that's 3 high profile acquisitions in a month. I smell a PR push to be seen as the 'good guys'.
I don't buy it. The leaked emails and actions of OpenAI's leadership point to a cynical growth machine.
The winner of this AI cycle will fund the lobbies that decide the politics of the future. OpenAI gives me a 'must escape the permanent underclass' energy. Not the energy I want from possibly the most influential people of the near future.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 69.6 ms ] threadThis is not what a company on the precipice of AGI or even one that has faith in LLMs being a consistent growth driver across the industry would realistically do.
Is this a good investment financially? I don't know and seeing as I have never heard of TBPN before this post, I am not the right person to gauge that.
But any investment, be it in building your own Social Networks (Sora 2), a news show or anything else beyond model training is frankly, to me at least, a clear admission that OpenAI does not see nearly as much value in models as they have been selling investors on.
Considering the rest of the economy, that is more terrifying than any "AI will kill us" prediction.
If OpenAI believed even a tenth of what they have tried to sell investors, governments and the public on, they'd not have a penny to invest in anything akin to this, plain and simple.
You need something completely different, which they haven’t figured out.
But this never ends well. Even if there's never a conversation about it, directly, the implication is there.
I don't care about TBPN, specifically. I just really, really wish we had a better way for media to fund itself independently. (And I say this as someone who pays for some media, but not nearly enough. I don't have $10/mo for every outlet that deserves it.)
EDIT: sama basically said what I said he would: https://x.com/sama/status/2039773740586918137
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_eWdX4qBUyQ3D
I agree, but this is 100% not the right model. Altman is not the right person to be in control of a media organisation. He shows little willing to understand anything of how the world works currently, let alone something out of his wheel house.
1. Cozy up to the big money in your industry, have them on for PR interviews with easy questions, and eventually get sponsored / acquired by them. I hesitate to even call this journalism, it’s more just sponsored entertainment.
2. Build a personal brand as someone known for being particularly critical / investigative / etc. This will undoubtedly make you far less money, and you’ll probably end up shilling ads for gold coins in between asking for Patreon supporters.
I’ve always wondered if a government-funded (in a way that cannot be manipulated) organization whose sole purpose is to criticize everyone would ever work. It might even need to be run anonymously.
What does this even mean? Who is being "genuine"? This is far to naive a take for a company thats burning through hundreds of millions of dollars, and constantly striving to set the tone of AI and their own supremacy.
As a viewer I don’t think this is in my interest as I think they will get a lot less prestige guests now. They have interviewed some huge names recently.
The core of the information they present isn't much different than what you'd hear on Dwarkesh or other industry podcasts, the presentation is some weird mix of ESPN and Mad Money that I personally don't get, but maybe makes sense to a US audience.
I don't see why that is interesting to OpenAI, but maybe I'm missing something.
Isn't the arbitrage these guys ran using their VC connections pretty obvious? TBPN is one of the few professionalized-with-a-team media outlets that offers a positive view of AI vs. the doomer stance of all other media (by a factor of like 100 to 1).
Total audience size is irrelevant if a good percentage of the people in that audience are tech influencers/billionaires, regardless of how niche and mainstream-irrelevant outside of X that TBPN is.
Media properties, like sports teams, are different than other businesses. To the people who own them, influence can be far more important than cashflows. Hence why a surprisingly large percentage of 19th century newspapers in many countries are still under the control of the families who founded them (just look at the NY Times).
While acquiring a youtube channel with 50K subs for hundreds of millions is definitely dotcom bubble-esque nonsense and will be viewed as such looking back, it makes total sense to me why its happening.
Even if it’s legit and I’m just old enough to not understand modern aesthetics, why would OpenAI be spending any sort of money on media at all?
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2021-10-05...
Wow, what’s next?
Ecommerce giants owning major newspapers? An aerospace company owning a microblogging platform? Startup accelerators owning tech news aggregators?
I don't buy it. The leaked emails and actions of OpenAI's leadership point to a cynical growth machine.
The winner of this AI cycle will fund the lobbies that decide the politics of the future. OpenAI gives me a 'must escape the permanent underclass' energy. Not the energy I want from possibly the most influential people of the near future.
https://sfstandard.com/2026/04/01/openai-ai-kids-safety-coal...