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OpenAI's super PAC is funding AI-generated news site attacking industry critics

modelrepublic.org

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Re: OpenAI's super PAC is funding AI-generated news site attacking industry critics

#61

Post by customguy »

bob1029 wrote: post #23
claaams wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve noticed this too. I’ve seen a ton ai defenders and hype people here. It’s embarrassing.

It was embarrassing a year+ ago when much of this technology barely worked at all. If you did not perceive a step change in model capabilities in late 2025, it's possible you are working on problems that are just too hard or not well aligned (e.g., arts and crafts). If you are working on software and need to move the occasional mountain, it's really hard to argue with the capabilities of contemporary models and harne…

We have access to and use the same tech, the difference is elsewhere.

> It was embarrassing a year+ ago when much of this technology barely worked at all.

The things some people say, how they talk about "outraged AI critics" what they would prefer those to be, would be fucking stupid even in first grade.

These, and things like "AI-generated news sites to attack critics" really speak for themselves. There is something worth really calling out here, and it fell out naturally.

Re: OpenAI's super PAC is funding AI-generated news site attacking industry critics

#62

Post by oersted »

tripleee wrote: post #48

> When I ran the message through Pangram, an AI content detector that credibly claims a near-zero false-positive rate, the email came back as “fully AI-generated.” Uh huh.. AI content detectors don't work. This article plays right into my biases but I don't think it's actually very credible? They're just guessing that some unknown blog is funded by OpenAI because it has maybe-AI-generated articles that use similar ta…

I agree that the connection to OpenAI is very speculative here. It's true that Pangram is also very unreliable, and the match is pretty weak anyways: "69% came back flagged as fully AI-generated, with another 28% flagged as partially AI-generated".

But the analysis of the internal admin pages for generating articles, the API and the interview structure are pretty damming evidence that this is largely driven by AI.

Re: OpenAI's super PAC is funding AI-generated news site attacking industry critics

#63

Post by hansmayer »

doix wrote: post #19
bossyTeacher wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could just be a surge in enthusiasm after 10 years when all we had to be excited about was a new Javascript framework. No. I distinctly remember HN being fairly skeptical of LLMs the way they were sold back in 2023. Then, the astroturfing began happening gradually. First in the comments and then in the posts.

Yeah, I was very skeptical and now I've drank the kool-aid. Got multiple parallel cloud agents with independent loops making PRs and me reviewing them. AI is also reviewing PRs and sometimes even catches useful things. LLMs in 2023, from what I remember, were slightly better auto complete. It's pretty different now.

[dead]

Re: OpenAI's super PAC is funding AI-generated news site attacking industry critics

#64

Post by emsign »

simianwords wrote: post #44
emsign wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the metrics though. I've noticed that AI topics get hundreds of votes, that means either someone is trying to beat the algorithm to stay in the top news, or suddenly this place is filled with thousands of AI enthusiasts who ignore all the rest, non-AI topics. (Thousands because not everyone will upvote, so if only a fraction upvotes hundreds of upvotes should translate to thousands.) The imbalance is what is off…

This kind of conspiratorial thinking is ridiculous. My life is affected for better or worse because of AI - I’m forced to use it at my day job as an R&D. It is perfectly rational and expected and preferable for AI to be the front news in a technology forum. You probably don’t like AI but that is completely different from being affected by it.

I was talking about the metrics on HN you are talking about how AI improved you life (or didn't). Two different things in my opinion. I'm using AI myself btw. This isn't the point.

Re: OpenAI's super PAC is funding AI-generated news site attacking industry critics

#65

Post by gerhardi »

simianwords wrote: post #39
leptons wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using AI in many ways but I'm not ignoring that it has some real costs. The code AI writes is too voluminous to fully review. I'm quite disconnected from it, and probably won't be able to maintain it myself. The more we use AI to code, the more our real skills atrophy (already feeling that). And when AI pricing finally catches up with the astronomical spending going into it, people are going to have a rude awaken…

AI pricing finally catching up? What do you mean? Every few months prices are going down by 5x. Your price correction will not happen and it’s time to accept it.

I'm interested in which model prices have went down 5x on multiple occasions? Are you talking about subscription or API/Token pricing?

Re: OpenAI's super PAC is funding AI-generated news site attacking industry critics

#66

Post by [deleted] »

defrost wrote: post #13
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would have to be state law so the president can't pardon them Sure. Based on cursory analysis, California (B&P § 17200 + § 17941), New York (§ 63(12)) and New Hampshire (RSA 664:14 / 664:16 + RSA 358-A) seem to be good places to start. Worst case, we get a public record of who paid for what under what pretences.

How's this kind of thing play in the US with free speech, Citizen's United, companies with money can make political statements, etc. What's the actual fraud angle? Non disclosure?

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI's super PAC is funding AI-generated news site attacking industry critics

#68

Post by tripleee »

oersted wrote: post #62
tripleee wrote: post #48

> When I ran the message through Pangram, an AI content detector that credibly claims a near-zero false-positive rate, the email came back as “fully AI-generated.” Uh huh.. AI content detectors don't work. This article plays right into my biases but I don't think it's actually very credible? They're just guessing that some unknown blog is funded by OpenAI because it has maybe-AI-generated articles that use similar ta…

I agree that the connection to OpenAI is very speculative here. It's true that Pangram is also very unreliable, and the match is pretty weak anyways: "69% came back flagged as fully AI-generated, with another 28% flagged as partially AI-generated". But the analysis of the internal admin pages for generating articles, the API and the interview structure are pretty damming evidence that this is largely driven by AI.

Oh with that I wasn't arguing the blog wasn't AI. I'm sure it is. My point there is that stating that any Pangram settles anything is a huge mark against the author's credibility

Re: OpenAI's super PAC is funding AI-generated news site attacking industry critics

#69

Post by reilly3000 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #24
claaams wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve noticed this too. I’ve seen a ton ai defenders and hype people here. It’s embarrassing.

Please don't imply every "AI defender" is a bot. LLMs are clearly world changing technology. I'm no fan of the big corporations but I'm very excited to see the models themselves develop. I'm looking forward to the day I can self host these things.

You can? It’s pretty remarkable what you can do with Qwen 3.6 on decent hardware, and Gemma 12b on nearly anything. If you can’t own it, take something for a spin on vast.ai where you can get all kinds of machines on tap for ~$0.20/hour+

llama.cpp has gotten so good that you can really get optimized performance with a few flags or none at all, and serve any model on-demand. Spend $45 to have your own GLM 5.2 machine for an hour. If you can’t manage full utilization you’d get 33.2M tokens, retailing for $128.

It takes some smarts to use dumb models, but renting time for frontier tokens is easy math. Vast also lets you run on spot which is great for training or agents with harnesses that can accommodate uncertain model availability.

Re: OpenAI's super PAC is funding AI-generated news site attacking industry critics

#70

Post by oersted »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #22

Funny, I was told by HN commenters that worries about AI risk are just a clever marketing strategy on the part of OpenAI and friends. I wonder why they would be working so hard to push back?

Recent events have shown that it's a double-edged sword. Sure the Mythos hype probably drove a lot of sales and investment, but it also led to a crackdown from the government.
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