Bill Maher: “I’m not a Christian, but they are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria. They’ve killed over 100,000. They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christians of an entire country. Where are the kids protesting this?”
Grok 4 is the first time, in my experience, that an AI has been able to solve difficult, real-world engineering questions where the answers cannot be found anywhere on the Internet or in books.
And it will get much better.
Perplexity founder Aravind Srinivas explains the “user is never wrong” philosophy of Larry Page
Aravind recounts a story of Larry Page’s meeting with the CEO of Excite. Excite was the #2 search engine behind Yahoo at the time, and they were interested in buying Google. The two CEOs compared the search results of their products side-by-side.
When Google’s results were clearly better, Excite’s CEO tried to excuse his product’s performance: “If you typed the query this way, it would’ve worked.”
Aravind believes this is an important difference in philosophy between Google and Excite. Larry Page believed that a search engine should give high quality answers regardless of what the user typed:
“You do all the magic behind the scenes so that even if the user was lazy, even if there were typos… they still got the answer and they love the product.”
Today Google dominates search, and most people have never heard of Excite.
Aravind believes the best AI products will adopt this same philosophy and that “prompt engineering” won’t be a long-term thing.
“I think you want to make products work where a user doesn’t even ask for something. You know that they want it and you give it to them… People are lazy and a better product should be one that allows you to be more lazy, not less. Products need to have some magic to them, and the magic comes from letting you be more lazy.”
Video source: @lexfridman (2024)
“Male depression is nearly always a result of learned helplessness, but health providers treat it like female depression and try to make men feel loved instead of powerful.” — @AdamLaneSmith
What Elon Musk just did in his $97 billion bid for OpenAI is genius.
The previous go-private price was $40 billion.
He’s playing chess.
Here’s why.
Delaware courts apply something called the “Revlon” rule to M&A bidding situations.
When a board decides to sell a company, their legal fiduciary duty shifts to getting the highest price for shareholders.
But OpenAI isn’t a normal company.
It started as a nonprofit, then created a for-profit arm, OpenAI LP, to raise investment. That structure creates a legal gray area.
Musk’s bid isn’t just about buying OpenAI. It’s about forcing a decision.
If OpenAI’s board even considers transitioning fully into a for-profit company, Musk’s bid puts them in a position where they might have to apply Revlon rules, maximizing value just like any other corporate sale.
It’s a strategic move that could expose whether OpenAI is still mission-driven or if it’s already just another big tech company playing by Wall Street rules.
And that’s the real play.
Musk is challenging OpenAI’s leadership on both a legal and ethical level, testing whether their decisions align with their original vision or the financial incentives of investors like Microsoft.
Sam Altman and OpenAI’s board rejected Musk’s offer outright. But that response raises more questions than it answers.
You see, they probably have a duty to create a special committee, consider all offers and entertain an auction.
If OpenAI isn’t a company that can be bought, why did they take billions in investment?
If they are a company that can be bought, why turn down $97 billion?
Either way, Musk has put them in a position where they have to justify their existence, not just to him, but to the Delaware Chancery Court.