Del Johnson

"The Most contrarian thinker in VC" & Father of Modern Venture Capital. VC, Angel, LP. prev: @Google @Oracle @ucberkeley @Columbialaw

[Del Johnson @DelJohnsonVC]

@mhlakhani @ZaidJilani @VCBrags U.S. Venture capital hasn't been able to outperform European VC for the past 20 years. The Thiel Andreessen generation of VC took one of the greatest engines of economic growth and American ingenuity, and turned it into an old world rent extraction scheme.
https://t.co/quGiFwkrhR

[David Z. Morris @davidzmorris]

As we all discover together how crazy Effective Altruism is, recall that its most visible media boosters - Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias - have been guiding the Democratic Party for years.

@voxdotcom had an entire vertical, paid for by EA, written by EAs, to promote EA.

[Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz]

A lot of people claim that Effective Altruism is not a predatory cult, but I do think that is undeniably how it operates in the Bay Area

[Dr. Émile P. Torres (they/them) @xriskology]

Gebru and I have been way ahead of the curve on this, for years. If you don’t know about TESCREAL, read the article linked below! It is absolutely essential for making sense of what’s going on right now, how we got here, and what’s like to happen. Pfff.

[Del Johnson @DelJohnsonVC]

@HQNewsNow Is your official stance pro buying an island in the Pacific to do eugenicist genetic experiments? https://t.co/l8TVE7TsBo

[Del Johnson @DelJohnsonVC]

@HQNewsNow https://t.co/RFffELFIiB

[@timnitGebru (@dair-community.social/bsky.social) @timnitGebru]

"What I encountered was an apocalyptic death cult"

If you listened to us for the past 10+ years, you wouldn't have given them the benefit of the doubt.

If you listened when we outlined their cult recruitment practices, we wouldn't have to say this over & over again.

[Del Johnson @DelJohnsonVC]

@HQNewsNow You got negatively polarized into supporting the Sam Bankman Fried people.

[@timnitGebru (@dair-community.social/bsky.social) @timnitGebru]

"What I encountered was an apocalyptic death cult"

If you listened to us for the past 10+ years, you wouldn't have given them the benefit of the doubt.

If you listened when we outlined their cult recruitment practices, we wouldn't have to say this over & over again.

[Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz]

“A low p(doom) is low status”. A big problem rn is that a lot of the discourse around these consequential issues is being shaped by ppl desperately posturing for status in whatever is perceived to be the latest Silicon Valley in group.

DC is a fucked up city but at least it values intellectual diversity. In SF it feels like too many people won’t speak their mind lest they get disinvited from Dwarkesh’s birthday party or whatever

[Dr. Émile P. Torres (they/them) @xriskology]

The whole conversation right now about an ASI-caused extinction event is so deeply fucked. I explain why here: https://t.co/2r8kY0O5sx

[Andrew Orlowski @AndrewOrlowski]

All six were created by and are staffed by Effective Altruism networks. So too is AISI, incredibly, and an Effective Altruist is the UK Prime Minister’s official advisor on AI.

This is what full spectrum media dominance looks like, and how an artificial consensus can be created.

[Yohei @yoheinakajima]

call me old school but I worry about third party evaluators with a history of receiving undisclosed gifts from those they are evaluating

[Valida Pau @validapau]

Rumble, the media company backed by Peter Thiel and JD Vance that hosts Trump's Truth Social, turned itself into a neocloud after acquiring Germany's Northern Data.

A few months after it relaunched as Rum, it signed a $13.7B with an unnamed AI customer. That customer is Anthropic.

Anthropic is also getting a warrant to buy Rum's shares, tied to how much computing power it eventually buys.

[@timnitGebru (@dair-community.social/bsky.social) @timnitGebru]

Instead of clear eyed, fact based opinions like this one, politicians like Bernie Sanders are taking their cues from literal dooms day eugenicist cults, and so many on the 'left' are taking their cues from him.

Listen to this instead 👇👇👇

[Lina Khan @linamkhan]

Law enforcers already have authority to charge companies and their CEOs for creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, or defective products. We shouldn’t let discussions about new legal regimes distract from the fact that there’s no AI exemption from laws already on the books — a point @FTC emphasized repeatedly during my tenure.

1. There is an extensive set of laws that govern dangerous and defective products. For example, releasing unvetted AI models or agents can violate consumer protection laws. Shipping flawed AI tools without implementing adequate measures to detect and stop rogue or defective AI agents can be an “unfair or deceptive” act or practice under the FTC Act (and analogous state laws). And some state AGs are already exploring holding AI firms and their CEOs criminally liable when their models participate in criminal activity.

2. Existing laws also prohibit “unfair methods of competition.” This covers instances where AI firms appropriate the competitively sensitive information of their customers, including through tracking their use of various tools. It can also cover instances where firms pursue dangerous behavior, aware that doing so may compel rivals to do the same.

As the Supreme Court has noted: “A method of competition which casts upon one's competitors the burden of the loss of business unless they will descend to a practice which they are under a powerful moral compulsion not to adopt, even though it is not criminal, was thought to involve the kind of unfairness at which the [unfair methods of competition] statute was aimed."

3. The highly concentrated and interconnected structure of these markets could be creating major risks and conflicts of interest. We had started investigating these partnerships and cross-investments across the stack (and released a preliminarily overview of some findings: https://t.co/jJ5cS3Pin3).

Both federal and state enforcers should be scrutinizing these opaque relationships and inter-dependencies. We are already seeing how these relationships could undermine accountability. For example, OpenAI could face liability given the Hugging Face incident, but Hugging Face being bought up by Nvidia means that we’re unlikely to see it file a lawsuit over this — given Nvidia’s strong incentive to see OpenAI continue full speed ahead.

4. As AI tools dramatically change the landscape of cybersecurity risks and hacks, all businesses should be doubling down on having core security protections in place. Firms that fail to invest in adequate data security measures or fix known vulnerabilities can also be breaking the law. A recent analysis showed that around 1/3 of Fortune 100 companies do not even have a way to notify them about security issues. During my @FTC tenure, we sued firms for poor data security practices and held CEOs liable when they were personally responsible.

https://t.co/nwZ5Av8fOK

https://t.co/KjRye8y9SY

5. As policymakers consider new legal regimes, we should be looking to lessons from prior efforts to govern major sectors, such as banking and other networks, platforms, and utilities. Tools like structural separations, nondiscrimination, and supervision could be key, and there’s a rich history of what works and what doesn’t. But we can and must pursue any new efforts alongside enforcing existing laws.

[Dr. Émile P. Torres (they/them) @xriskology]

These people are all linked via a convoluted network of incestuous connections. I wrote about this in more detail here: https://t.co/F3dXThNgYZ

[Zack Korman @ZackKorman]

We don't need more effective altruist safety people supervising Anthropic, a company of effective altruist safety people. It's not independent oversight if they're all ideologically aligned.

[The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas @AnandWrites]

The AI CEOs are demonstrating one of the core WINNERS TAKE ALL moves:

By naming, and framing their way, a social problem they’ve also caused, they appoint themselves leaders of the search for solutions when they should be asking for the society’s mercy.

[Julia Turc @juliarturc]

Day 1: Anthropic employee quits to work at METR.
Day 2: Anthropic nominates METR as "third-party evaluator".

[Dr Heidy Khlaaf (هايدي خلاف) @HeidyKhlaaf]

How is Anthropic pushing regulatory capture? Here they promote METR, a "voluntary" third-party auditor that is not only ideologically and financially tied, but carries out their audits through unscientific means such as "CoT" and cherry-picks evidence to reinforce an idea of AGI.