The whole thing was a scam

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

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

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 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...

Let that sink in!

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.

"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."

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.

> 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.

> 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.

"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.

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".

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

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.