AI Wars
Matt Levine's magic mixture of phrases from Jun 30 & Jul 1st newsletter about Meta's poaching of OpenAI employees
I don’t know, man, Mark Zuckerberg has found the least creative imaginable way to recognize and reward top talent (give them $100 million), and it sounds pretty good to me.
One possibility is that Meta is the extremely cushy semi-retirement home for OpenAI researchers: You do good work at OpenAI, you make a name for yourself, and then when you get tired you take Zuckerberg’s bag of cash, go to Meta, and sit around with your fellow extremely well-paid ex-OpenAI researchers reminiscing about the glory days when you used to do AI research instead of just polishing your Ferraris.
Much more informative one for me on Jul 2nd issue: * The Stocks Will Be Tokenized *
- About US public vs private stock markets, regulations and consumer protections.
But I personally would not have predicted this future. Instead of regulators imposing disclosure and trading rules to make crypto more like the stock market, the financial industry seems to be finding a way to get rid of disclosure and trading rules in the stock market, to make the stock market more like crypto.
- Is bribery securities fraud? Can consumer capitalism win where rule of law fails
But, of course, the point is that everything is securities fraud, and it is generally much easier to sue on behalf of shareholders than it is to sue on behalf of people who care about the rule of law or freedom of the press. Caring about the rule of law or freedom of the press is a little passé in the US in 2025, but everyone still cares about shareholders.
- Enron ??!??!
Very few corporate parodies are funny, and obviously tastes will vary, but I found this ad much, much funnier than it ought to be. And yet the jokes are mostly subtle, except when the CEO character says “we can fire up the engines of this Titanic and fly it over the iceberg.” Meanwhile, Enron’s careers page is completely straight. I feel like some people will miss the joke and apply? (Or it’s not a joke???) And get hired? And actually go work at Enron 2.0? And this might be the future of work?