Sam Altman says the AI utopia is already here — in a manifesto aimed at raising money from the Saudis. On the real vs imagined manifestations of modern AI.
Nicely detailed account of Altman BS machine. Basically, he’s just breathing another big puff of hot air into the generative AI bubble. Have you read Empire of AI by Karen Hao?
I managed to read the whole thing without screaming, but it wasn't easy. I'll point out that there is one way to reconcile the horrors of what has already been done, and who these ghouls are partnering with, with their claims of freedom and public control and gentleness. That's if you understand that the people who benefit, who freely decide what the bounds are and how to enhance the upside and minimize the downside, who enjoy the gentleness of it all, are all the REAL people of the world--rich white men. Sure, others will suffer, 99% of humans not to mention everyone else, will suffer but we are of no importance.
How I wish you were a SciFi writer and had made all of this up. Each time I think these creatures have hit rock bottom or gone off the chart, they dig a bigger pit or go even further off. Dante was limited with only 9 circles of hell. Altman & Co are developing hundreds more. 😳🤬
On the other hand what's the last company to generate 10 billion in revenue with a product that is not even 3 years old? His blogs are very dumb but GPT-5 will be used for half an hour a day by millions of young users.
To even keep up with the funding of xAI, he will even need funding from the Chinese. While Elon Musk out funds him, Anthropic and splinter startups from it will be out competing him for AI talent. Open AI will have to go IPO fast, just give Microsoft 35% equity, and copy Mistral, get into the compute game.
I don't have to tell you that they will also have to do Ads very well to become profitable by 2029. Do they have the capacity to do all the things they are trying to do with poor retention of their AI talent?
That's precisely the point of my post! All the more reason for us to call BS on Altman's visions of the future that are now spiraling off into pure fantasy land, and look at how he's building his power and capital base, which institutions OpenAI will be beholden to, and so on.
As always Brian, brilliantly done. Even me, an AI bull, can smell Altman's bullshit from a mile away, and more people need to understand he was literally trained to ABR - Always be Raising - in pursuit of a single, solitary goal: absolute monopoly, then exit. We must be aware of who he is if we are to engage with him or his products
I'm a tech journalist who has no time for the AI fantasists - Altman, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Bezos etc etc I've invented an acronym for them (absolutely required in the biz) which I'm sharing with you for free in the hope of spreading it:
If I could suggest an edit it would be changing it to Emotionally Stunted Pseudo-intellectuals, as the r word is considered a slur by those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Certainly use a version with ‘stunted’ if appropriate but I’m afraid I disapprove of mutilating the language. There’s probably someone somewhere who considers ‘pseudo’ a slur (and I know for a fact that most of Trump’s cabinet regard ‘intellectual’ as a slur)
Harvard Business Review: Generative AI offers a once-in-a-generation chance to reduce the cost and complexity of enterprise IT—liberating organizations from rigid workflows and enabling work to be reimagined from scratch.
Robots become commonplace. But also fusion power, quantum computers, and cures for many diseases. Peter Thiel finally gets his flying car. Cities become clean and safe. Even in developing countries, poverty becomes a thing of the past, thanks to UBI and foreign aid.
Perhaps a fully robotic economy run by superintelligences would be able to reproduce itself in less than a year, so long as it didn’t start to run out of raw materials.‡
• Yet that seems like it could be a dramatic underestimate. Plants and insects often have “doubling times” of far less than a year—sometimes just weeks! Perhaps eventually the robots would be so sophisticated, so intricately manufactured and well-designed, that the robot economy could double in a few weeks (again assuming available raw materials).
Plants and insects are operating under many constraints that superintelligent designers don’t have. For example, they need to take the form of self-contained organisms that self-replicate, instead of an economy of diverse and more specialized vehicles and factories shipping materials and equipment back and forth. Besides, bacteria and other tiny organisms reproduce in hours.
We broke down that weird 9-minute Sam Altman and Jony Ive video
'The Future Of Cheap, Scalable Digital Labor'—Marc Benioff
Deepmind chief predicts AI could cure all diseases within a decade
Nvidia's Huang Jenson always has an AI personal tutor with him: 'That feeling should be universal’
DeepSeek's Mysterious AI Update Sparks Hype… and Concern
Anthropic CEO says AI could cause up to 20% unemployment within five years.
AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies.” –Sam Altman
AI can handle your “digital laundry and dishes,” Suleyman
Artificial Intelligence and Laundry Operations
There are cures for most diseases, an end to poverty, unprecedented global sta- bility, and the Dow Jones just passed one million
Vibe coding, in my understanding, is the practice of building software products using AI tools, guided more by aesthetics, trend-chasing, and emotional resonance on social media, rather than a clear understanding of user needs or meaningful problem-solving.
Vibe coding is SaaSOH: software as sleight-of-hand.
Nicely detailed account of Altman BS machine. Basically, he’s just breathing another big puff of hot air into the generative AI bubble. Have you read Empire of AI by Karen Hao?
Tech book of the year so far, hands down.
Fantastic book. Saw her speak at the book release a few weeks back. Very insightful!
He interviewed her about it a few weeks back:
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/dismantling-the-empire-of-ai-with?r=43i04m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Cool. Thanks. I've listened to three recent podcast interviews with her but somehow missed this one.
Brother, if this is the Singularity I am *very* disappointed.
You and me both, my friend.
I managed to read the whole thing without screaming, but it wasn't easy. I'll point out that there is one way to reconcile the horrors of what has already been done, and who these ghouls are partnering with, with their claims of freedom and public control and gentleness. That's if you understand that the people who benefit, who freely decide what the bounds are and how to enhance the upside and minimize the downside, who enjoy the gentleness of it all, are all the REAL people of the world--rich white men. Sure, others will suffer, 99% of humans not to mention everyone else, will suffer but we are of no importance.
How I wish you were a SciFi writer and had made all of this up. Each time I think these creatures have hit rock bottom or gone off the chart, they dig a bigger pit or go even further off. Dante was limited with only 9 circles of hell. Altman & Co are developing hundreds more. 😳🤬
[Quietly pondering the 10th, AI-generated level of hell.]
Alchemy.... turning bullshit into gold...
Correct. "The major players in AI (OpenAI, Meta, Google, Microsoft) are above all bent on concentrating power and capital." Say no more ...
On the other hand what's the last company to generate 10 billion in revenue with a product that is not even 3 years old? His blogs are very dumb but GPT-5 will be used for half an hour a day by millions of young users.
To even keep up with the funding of xAI, he will even need funding from the Chinese. While Elon Musk out funds him, Anthropic and splinter startups from it will be out competing him for AI talent. Open AI will have to go IPO fast, just give Microsoft 35% equity, and copy Mistral, get into the compute game.
I don't have to tell you that they will also have to do Ads very well to become profitable by 2029. Do they have the capacity to do all the things they are trying to do with poor retention of their AI talent?
That's precisely the point of my post! All the more reason for us to call BS on Altman's visions of the future that are now spiraling off into pure fantasy land, and look at how he's building his power and capital base, which institutions OpenAI will be beholden to, and so on.
As always Brian, brilliantly done. Even me, an AI bull, can smell Altman's bullshit from a mile away, and more people need to understand he was literally trained to ABR - Always be Raising - in pursuit of a single, solitary goal: absolute monopoly, then exit. We must be aware of who he is if we are to engage with him or his products
I'm a tech journalist who has no time for the AI fantasists - Altman, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Bezos etc etc I've invented an acronym for them (absolutely required in the biz) which I'm sharing with you for free in the hope of spreading it:
Emotionally Retarded Pseudo-Intellectuals (ERPI). Got it?
If I could suggest an edit it would be changing it to Emotionally Stunted Pseudo-intellectuals, as the r word is considered a slur by those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Certainly use a version with ‘stunted’ if appropriate but I’m afraid I disapprove of mutilating the language. There’s probably someone somewhere who considers ‘pseudo’ a slur (and I know for a fact that most of Trump’s cabinet regard ‘intellectual’ as a slur)
If they had any understanding of history, they would know that every moment is a potential singularity.
May 2025 is peak AI hype. Here is the evidence:
Harvard Business Review: Generative AI offers a once-in-a-generation chance to reduce the cost and complexity of enterprise IT—liberating organizations from rigid workflows and enabling work to be reimagined from scratch.
https://www.bondcap.com/report/pdf/Trends_Artificial_Intelligence.pdf
AI- 2027. Sci fi. Or is it?
Headline.
Obviously, all of this is hard to predict.
2029:Transformation
Robots become commonplace. But also fusion power, quantum computers, and cures for many diseases. Peter Thiel finally gets his flying car. Cities become clean and safe. Even in developing countries, poverty becomes a thing of the past, thanks to UBI and foreign aid.
Perhaps a fully robotic economy run by superintelligences would be able to reproduce itself in less than a year, so long as it didn’t start to run out of raw materials.‡
• Yet that seems like it could be a dramatic underestimate. Plants and insects often have “doubling times” of far less than a year—sometimes just weeks! Perhaps eventually the robots would be so sophisticated, so intricately manufactured and well-designed, that the robot economy could double in a few weeks (again assuming available raw materials).
Plants and insects are operating under many constraints that superintelligent designers don’t have. For example, they need to take the form of self-contained organisms that self-replicate, instead of an economy of diverse and more specialized vehicles and factories shipping materials and equipment back and forth. Besides, bacteria and other tiny organisms reproduce in hours.
We broke down that weird 9-minute Sam Altman and Jony Ive video
'The Future Of Cheap, Scalable Digital Labor'—Marc Benioff
Deepmind chief predicts AI could cure all diseases within a decade
Nvidia's Huang Jenson always has an AI personal tutor with him: 'That feeling should be universal’
DeepSeek's Mysterious AI Update Sparks Hype… and Concern
Anthropic CEO says AI could cause up to 20% unemployment within five years.
AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies.” –Sam Altman
AI can handle your “digital laundry and dishes,” Suleyman
Artificial Intelligence and Laundry Operations
There are cures for most diseases, an end to poverty, unprecedented global sta- bility, and the Dow Jones just passed one million
AI 2027
https://open.substack.com/pub/themanagementconsultant/p/the-indie-hustlers-shell-game-in?r=2hnkm&utm_medium=ios
Vibe coding, in my understanding, is the practice of building software products using AI tools, guided more by aesthetics, trend-chasing, and emotional resonance on social media, rather than a clear understanding of user needs or meaningful problem-solving.
Vibe coding is SaaSOH: software as sleight-of-hand.
The trick is in the crowd, not in the code.
But buzz is not value!
Commercial viability is not proof of impact!
How have investors not caught on to him yet? Are they paying attention at all?
Does this song capture the moment? Fake Blues - https://open.spotify.com/track/6PI9qBgUpyWpVVtD9yRGPH?si=bAr8k_PmTiuU1seXOSpwLA&context=spotify%3Asearch%3Afake%2Bblues