Victor Shammas

Associate Professor of Sociology in Norway—with a global perspective. Research on punishment, social theory, and the political economy of technology.

[Victor Shammas @VictorLShammas]

Dario Amodei seems to want to capture a share of the value customers generate using Anthropic's models. Imagine if a power company charged more for electricity because you used it for particularly valuable work. This kind of outcome-based pricing would be pure techno-rentierism.

[Guillermo Flor @guilleflorvs]

Dario Amodei: some tokens Claude produces are worth a few cents, others could be worth tens of millions of dollars.

His examples:

1. Telling someone to restart their Mac: the model has said it 10 million times, worth a dollar or less
2. Telling a pharma company to move an aromatic ring to the other end of a molecule: potentially tens of millions
3. Expect pay-for-results pricing, or labor-like pricing by the hour
4. It's a new industry, so many models will be tried

Today pricing is simpler: per the S-1, usage-based pricing was 80% of H1 2026 revenue and subscriptions 20%.

Full breakdown here:
https://t.co/3qXeT1P6XB

[Victor Shammas @VictorLShammas]

Amodei's pricing idea is, of course, part of a larger story: AI firms first enclosed the cultural and intellectual commons as training data, and now they want a cut of what we produce with the models they built from it. I wrote about that here: https://t.co/jNiQogREFD

[Victor Shammas @VictorLShammas]

Dario Amodei seems to want to capture a share of the value customers generate using Anthropic's models. Imagine if a power company charged more for electricity because you used it for particularly valuable work. This kind of outcome-based pricing would be pure techno-rentierism.

[Guillermo Flor @guilleflorvs]

Dario Amodei: some tokens Claude produces are worth a few cents, others could be worth tens of millions of dollars.

His examples:

1. Telling someone to restart their Mac: the model has said it 10 million times, worth a dollar or less
2. Telling a pharma company to move an aromatic ring to the other end of a molecule: potentially tens of millions
3. Expect pay-for-results pricing, or labor-like pricing by the hour
4. It's a new industry, so many models will be tried

Today pricing is simpler: per the S-1, usage-based pricing was 80% of H1 2026 revenue and subscriptions 20%.

Full breakdown here:
https://t.co/3qXeT1P6XB

[Victor Shammas @VictorLShammas]

AI companies increasingly want to build pets or companions, not impersonal tools. AI anthropomorphization is a design choice we should be deeply suspicious of. https://t.co/KhiBC3bUug

[Tony Annett @tonyannett]

The fact that financial markets are reacting poorly to Lula’s victory is a sure sign that markets are not some amorphous intelligence but simply a bunch of right wing traders who follow the herd. We forget that at our peril.

[Dennison @DennisonBertram]

Claude now determines what public information you're allowed to have.

This is a perfectly legitimate task, and I haven't suggested nor asked for anything nefarious. It's just information gathering.

Claude has decided I'm not allowed to have that (public) information.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Free speech king!

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory” — Obama

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

One of the world’s largest private equity firms just issued a report concluding: “Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech.”

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

Elon Musk has cemented his record as the largest individual political donor in modern American history.

Musk poured $446 million of his own money into this year’s midterm elections, mostly aimed at preserving the Republican Party’s control of Congress. https://t.co/8vEBOJHTKR

[Evan @daviddunn177]

She wasn’t expecting that answer.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

El-Sayed: "We had a little debate. Or I had a debate and he just pointed at me and said, 'He's Muslim.'"

[John Ganz @lionel_trolling]

El-Sayed clearly has years of sports TV and radio informing his debating style and it works

[New Left EViews @NewLeftEViews]

The rise of mass short-form video content has been an unmitigated disaster.

[Gabriel Zucman @gabriel_zucman]

ICE is hunting down immigrants with the help of Palantir.

In six months, Palantir’s founder, @PeterThiel, will be able to start spending unimaginable sums of money —completely tax-free — to bankroll the political causes dear to his heart.

He'll be able to do it thanks to a tax-avoidance scheme he’s been building for more than 20 years, at a staggering cost to the American taxpayer.

Let me explain. 🧵

[Christiane Amanpour @amanpour]

Navi Pillay, a great Nobel winner for today. A human rights defender. And a South African woman of colour.

In 2014, I asked how her experience struggling against apartheid informed her work. She said she learned to “be persistent & be totally positive that you will win one day.”

[Zijing Wu @zijing_wu]

Almost the entire AI industry now treats ARR as its key financial metric - not revenue. It's extremely easy to manipulate, and there's not even a standard definition. One lab's math can be completely different from another's. Insane how that’s tolerated.

[Victor Shammas @VictorLShammas]

AI companies have figured out how to turn “mere” tools into something closer to companions, and so to turn the use-value of being helped by an instrument into the feeling of being understood by a particular someone. https://t.co/KhiBC3bmEI

[Jonas Gahr Støre @jonasgahrstore]

On behalf of the Norwegian Government, I would like to congratulate the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, Navi Pillay. This is a highly relevant award when the international legal order is under severe pressure.

[Morten N. Støstad @MortenStostad]

An extremely relevant paper, given the renewed concern that wealth taxes lead to massive out-migration:

The Norwegian wealth tax "exodus", discussed in global media, never happened. At most 100 individuals left. Tax revenue increased by +71.5%. No changes in business activity.

[Søren Mau @sorenmau]

Roskilde University has fired professor Michelle Pace for opposing genocide. Academic freedom is under severe pressure in Denmark.