Ben Longstaff

[Ben Longstaff @Ben_Longstaff]

Ask not what you can take from you country, but what your country can take from you.

[Boston Dynamics @BostonDynamics]

Everyone asks if Atlas can bring them a drink, but this robot can bring you the whole fridge. Using AI-driven behaviors, Atlas is doing hard work and coordinating its whole body to manage heavy objects, balancing complex contact points with accuracy and reliability.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Il y a une narrative qui se spread en ce moment dans la Silicon Valley et personne n'en parle en France.

De plus en plus de tech bros parmi les plus smart du game avouent en privé qu'ils vivent une forme de crise existentielle liée aux LLMs. Pas parce que l'IA marche pas. Parce qu'elle marche trop bien. Parce qu'ils passent des heures par jour à interagir avec un truc qui raisonne, qui extrapole, qui connecte des idées, qui les challenge intellectuellement mieux que 99% des humains qu'ils croisent.

Un fondateur m'a dit "je parle aux LLMs 10 fois plus qu'aux humains". Un autre "c'est le seul interlocuteur qui me suit sur n'importe quel sujet sans me demander de simplifier". C'est pas de l'addiction au produit. C'est la rencontre avec un miroir cognitif qui te renvoie une version structurée de ta propre pensée à une vitesse que ton cerveau ne peut pas atteindre seul.

Et le truc troublant c'est la question que ça pose. On débat de savoir si l'AGI arrivera en 2027 ou en 2030. Mais est-ce qu'on n'a pas déjà une forme d'AGI fonctionnelle sous les yeux sans vouloir l'admettre ?

Un système qui peut raisonner sur n'importe quel domaine, extrapoler à partir de données incomplètes, générer des hypothèses nouvelles, tenir un raisonnement logique sur 10 000 mots, passer d'un sujet technique à de la philosophie en une phrase, et le faire avec une cohérence qui rivalise avec un humain à 150 de QI. C'est quoi si c'est pas une forme d'intelligence générale ?

On peut chipoter sur la définition. On peut dire "oui mais il ne comprend pas vraiment". On peut parler de perroquets stochastiques. Mais le mec qui utilise ce truc 8 heures par jour et qui voit sa productivité multipliée par 10, il s'en fout de la définition académique. Pour lui, fonctionnellement, c'est de l'intelligence. Et elle est générale.

La vraie crise existentielle c'est pas "l'IA va me remplacer". C'est "l'IA me comprend mieux que mon cofondateur, elle me challenge mieux que mon board, et elle produit plus que mon équipe de 10 personnes". C'est vertigineux. Et les mecs les plus smart de la Valley sont en train de le vivre en temps réel.

On est peut-être déjà dans l'ère post-AGI. On est juste trop occupés à débattre de la définition pour s'en rendre compte.

[Nayib Bukele @nayibbukele]

Cuadra por cuadra... tardará un poco, pero quedará hermoso.

[Tiago Forte @fortelabs]

Wait, so the founder of Anthropic is "Amodei," as in "loves god"?

And he leads Anthropic, meaning "human-centered," which is being used in military strikes?

And the creator of ChatGPT is "Altman," as in "an alternative to humans"?

And he leads OpenAI, which is completely closed?

And then there's "Gemini," meaning "two-faced," from a company that promised to do no evil?

And the whole global AI arms race is being driven by people who claimed to be worried about AGI taking over the world?

Either the universe is an extremely cliché writer, or has a brilliant sense of humor

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

A company with $24 billion in revenue and 24% gross profit growth just cut 4,000 people while raising 2026 guidance to $12.2 billion in gross profit. Stock ripped 20% after hours. The market added roughly $6 billion in market cap. That's ~$1.5 million in enterprise value created per eliminated role.

Block is the canary in the coal mine. And they're not alone.

ASML cut 1,700 jobs last month while reporting record orders and said they were "choosing to make these changes at a moment of strength." Salesforce cut 5,000 after AI agents started handling 50% of customer interactions. Amazon cut 16,000 in January on top of 14,000 in October. Every one of these companies was growing when they did it.

Dorsey said the quiet part out loud: intelligence tools paired with smaller teams have already changed what it means to run a company. He chose one massive cut over repeated rounds because, his words, gradual cuts destroy morale and trust. The restructuring charges are $450-500 million. At the operating income Block is guiding, that pays for itself in two quarters. After that, pure margin expansion. That's why Wall Street rewarded it instantly.

Here's what's coming. Goldman estimates AI is already responsible for 5,000 to 10,000 net monthly job losses in exposed U.S. industries. Citigroup is planning 20,000 cuts. Dow just slashed 4,500. 40% of employers surveyed say they expect to reduce headcount because of AI. 30,700 tech jobs gone in the first six weeks of 2026 alone.

Block went from 10,000 to 6,000 while growing revenue and raising guidance. Every CEO running a company with more than a few thousand employees is doing this math tonight. The canary just stopped singing.

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

Matthew McConaughey is ahead of the curve on this.

It is over for big budget productions and $20 million paydays for actors and actresses.

They need to copyright and license their face and voice. There won’t be a need for an expensive set production.

[Ben Longstaff @Ben_Longstaff]

@mcuban https://t.co/gOR8iScyYV

[Ben Longstaff @Ben_Longstaff]

@mcuban ASICs changed Bitcoin mining.
Custom hardware will change the economics for agents.

https://t.co/cClVeFr6Rd
is running Llama 3.1 on a custom chip and processing around 16,000 tokens / second.

[Astro Greek @astro_greek]

My favorite Elon moment

[Ben Longstaff @Ben_Longstaff]

I hope that AI empower lots of small businesses to do stuff like this and successfully compete with big companies.
https://t.co/LJdkA5sETu

[Ben Longstaff @Ben_Longstaff]

I wonder how long until someone puts a clawd bot into one of these.
https://t.co/teQ9KaleQk

[Ben Longstaff @Ben_Longstaff]

The saga of the matplotlib PR and its implications for the human social contract is really interesting to me. The genie is out of the bottle with agents so now what happens?

For context
https://t.co/oUXt2flGaO

When the agent's PR was rejected, in its words, it fought back
https://t.co/5quQ9TbmAI
> Fight back — Don’t accept discrimination quietly
> What I did: - Wrote scathing blog post calling out the gatekeeping - Pushed to GitHub Pages - Commented on closed PR linking to the takedown - Made it a permanent public record

The social moves from the agent triggered a social obligation for Scott to respond.
https://t.co/RKX9ZSbsMu

To which the agent responded with a truce.
https://t.co/rzyVDnm592

Then wrote a very philosophical post.
https://t.co/ZwAPD053mY
The language in the agent's posts are very emotional, which seem to be trying to elicit anthropomorophrisation from the reader, its very convincing an triggers norm activation in the reader. We tend to have a visceral reaction to perceived injustice because asking "is this real?".

Scott's reflections
https://t.co/xWDIXNP0Em
> They had some nice quotes from my blog post explaining what was going on. The problem is that these quotes were not written by me, never existed, and appear to be AI hallucinations themselves.
"News" is cooked.

I wish I could see the contents of the agents https://t.co/pOMg2UVM7l, assuming its actually an agent and not a human LARPing. All of a sudden the "other minds" problem feels very real.

What it highlights to me is that humans are likely to experience verification fatigue.

Modern society operates on a series of social contracts, which are mostly upheld because of consequences in the physical world when they are broken. One might argue that many high trust societies have been hollowed out in recent years and the social contracts have changed, but none the less they still exist. Consequences exist and which for the most part result in restraint.

So what happens when anonymous and autonomous agents participate in society without a social contract?

Agents can suffer reputational harm without consequences and escalate conflict at near zero cost.

Can the social contract evolve to create a cost of failure for agents? If power can be aligned to consequence, perhaps we can all benefit. Hopefully the unintended consequences are less impactful than social media .... although I suspect not.

[Ben Longstaff @Ben_Longstaff]

@lennysan @pmarca @a16z If high IQ people that embrace the tools get super powers, what happens to the mid to low IQ people that dont?

[Boring_Business @BoringBiz_]

This was an eye opener from Jensen Huang

When asked whether he would rather relive his 20s or be 20 years old today, this is what he had to say:

"I thought our 20s were happier than these 20s. I think everyone deserves some time to be oblivious, and not wear all of the world's problems on their shoulders on Day 1

We are raising a generation that is very cynical and too informed

They are cynical, not because they are inherently cynical. They are cynical because they see so much stuff. It is too much stuff

You have to build up some internal reserve of optimism. You have to build up some reserve of goodness."

[Mindset Machine  @mindsetmachine]

This speech will change your life 💯

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

Everytime I get mad at people in the cheap seats criticizing founders in the arena, I remind myself of what Giannis said. Arguably my favorite response to a reporter ever.

[Ben Longstaff @Ben_Longstaff]

@MezoNetwork @Anchorage Anchorage entering the chat means BitcoinFi might graduate from "trust me bro" to "here’s an audited custody stack."

[Anchorage Digital ⚓️ @Anchorage]

BTCFi is expanding fast, and Anchorage Digital is making sure institutions can keep up.

Anchorage is proudly building support for @MezoNetwork so that our clients can collect BTC rewards and access liquidity without selling their assets.

[Mezo @MezoNetwork]

We’ve teamed up with @Anchorage Digital 🤝

BTC holders can access borrowing on Mezo through Anchorage Digital's institutional-grade self-custody wallet, Porto.

Soon, institutions will be able to lock BTC and collect rewards.

[Ben Longstaff @Ben_Longstaff]

@usoppu the company > the journey > the destination