Accordit to reddit talk, Fable 5.1 is worse than Opus 4.6 and 8B models are smarter than Qwen 3.8 Max, I wouldn't take anything said there with any more reliability than an instagram short.
I don't agree with Palmer much, but he loves America and wants the best for it.
Though YC started well, it has since degraded startup culture and turned founding into a short-term, status-driven, sexist boys' club, full of get-rich-quick grifters, and now PG has left the country that made him so he'll never have to reckon with what he created.
Of course he would say this because he won't reckon with the idea that there's more to life than making number go up, all your silly morals or fealties are second to almighty "growth". He's too successful to ever have to think about it.
Can you point to some conclusive evidence that YC has degraded in the way you described other than some bad eggs, which is expected as they have scaled enormously.
A company whose first demo was completely fraudulent announces that its model beats GPT-5.5, on its own benchmark? I’m gonna wait a little before I trust this.
This whole company seems to optimize for raising money and impressing VCs. Lying about their products, ignoring consumer market to target enterprise, bragging about how they work their employees like slaves, and writing these posts full of intimidating technical jargon...
To be fair it does seem like most AI startups are now like this (particularly when it comes to constantly mentioning how hard they work and ignoring consumer markets).
Is it just me or does all that* seem pretty tame by today’s standards? Not saying it’s right, but it barely raises eyebrows. Sounds like a pretty typical startup demo.
* Based on the first comment in the link that claims to summarize the video.
This is inevitable when the primary incentive is to raise aggressively. Overall I dont find cognition blogs that jargony, there are definitely worse offenders
I highly respect many people at cognition but yeah that's put a sour taste in my mouth.
I want to work in the AI space on actual AI research, at any part of the stack. Even if I'm developing training infra - as long as people are advancing knowledge of what intelligence could be.
But it seems like either it's big labs or grifters, that's it, and even the big labs, at least publicly, seem very grifty at times. Not like I have the technical chops probably, but still.
I read the profile and didn't see anything really wrong. Why would PR companies have to believe in their clients? Why does he have to be held to higher moral standards than Sam Altman who’s a total lying snake?
The error you call out is hardly “serious”, as the whole argument is uninteresting. It is a stupid indefensible error but the argument about revenue being 20% or 30% lower than reported isn’t that central to his overall thesis. Stuff that matters is inference cost, profitability, actual training costs.
Author is assuming SpaceX is going to buy Cursor for $60B and I'm not sure why. Is there some reason?
To me it seems that SpaceX probably does not intend to buy, and is paying $10 billion for access to Cursor's data and talent, more importantly, the ability to add some sparkle to their IPO.
In my book, you are a hero if you sacrifice your own well-being for the utilitarian good of the public.
Many people here would call Putin's assassin a hero, the important distinguishing factor is whether it's a clear societal good or bad. If it's unclear then it's assumed bad.
I am not disagreeing with you here. But platitudes do nothing to convince people. You need to actually explain why the world is a better place with X politician in it, because it does actually matter.
Violence isn't going to give you the quick answer you think it will.
Once you start shooting, everyone starts shooting. Bystanders get hit. Companies start defending their businesses with private armies. The economy collapses. We all lose.
Countries high in political violence are the worst places in the world to live.
Like Anthropic? Due to Altman being a lying psychopath, most of the talent left OpenAI, which is now fighting for its life -- but now they can't claim to have moral high ground or the best researchers anymore; profitability's the only way out remaining to them.
Who knows? It could have always ended up this way anyway. But Altman had a pretty big role in summoning his own competition.
Is that an actual quote from simonw? He seems an unbiased observer and reporter of progress, I'd be sad to see him cheering this stuff on so callously.
Well, people who are not above a threshold of experience yet are not in a position to self-assess and course-correct if their long term learning is being affected. And even less so if there is pressure to be hyper-productive with the help of AI.
Speculating here but I think even seniors who rely on AI all the time and enjoy the enhanced output are going to end up with impostor syndrome over the things they suspect they can no longer do without AI, and FOMO about all the projects they haven't yet attempted with AI despite working as hard as they can.
It’s particularly interesting that Anthropic came out yesterday and basically said, yeah, this stuff cannot be held right.
One can argue, convincingly perhaps, that Anthropic isn’t right and/or is marketing, but what they’re saying could be complete BS but the fact that there is doubt suggests that most people believe that no one can hold it right exists.
I’m quite pro AI, but given the radical asymmetry between the upside vs the downsides (the upside is at best maximum bliss for all existing humans, which has a finite limit, while the downside is the end of humanity which is essentially infinitely bad), our march forward in this area needs to be at least slightly more responsible than what we are doing now.
Also the submitter's account is very new which makes me suspicious of self-promotion.
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