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The whole thing was a scam

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: The whole thing was a scam

#21

Post by jeremyjh »

dist-epoch wrote: post #5

> 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 Capit…

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

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#22

Post by drcongo »

NicuCalcea wrote: post #12
dist-epoch wrote: post #5

> 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 Capit…

> 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.

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

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#23

Post by pton_xd »

afthonos wrote: post #15
pton_xd wrote: post #7

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 thin…

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.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#24

Post by ben_w »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #14
mentalgear wrote: post #3

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.

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

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.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#25

Post by MadxX79 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #10

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 claim…

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

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#26

Post by ltpajh »

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.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#27

Post by jakeydus »

ben_w wrote: post #24
CamperBob2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

If engineers in the US (i.e. me) want to find work in Europe, what can we do? I know that’s a googleable question but honestly I can’t help but think that there cannot be any European country that would want me and my family.

Immigration is hard.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#28

Post by AndroTux »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #14
mentalgear wrote: post #3

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.

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

Europe is nice this time of year

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#29

Post by dana321 »

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.

Re: The whole thing was a scam

#30

Post by wrqvrwvq »

jfengel wrote: post #13
mentalgear wrote: post #3

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.

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 t…

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