Happy 4th America! 🇺🇸

The Narrative Strategy of Sam Altman on CNBC today…Some notes from discussing this ‘we will give America 5% of OpenAI’ idea…

1 - Strategically it makes sense for OpenAI to Invite This

Matrix-multiplication / inference is a commodity… but OpenAI is actually in a WORSE place than utilities which are regulated / have regulatory capture AND there are geographic realities / limits on shipping energy. The only way for an OpenAI to ‘win’ / generate long-term profit is regulatory capture, so why not invite it… this has never been more apparent with the open-source global models coming online

2 - OpenAI has the least to lose / most to gain…competitively smart PR move

They are now behind Anthropic in the ‘pure play’ race… and unlike Google and Meta don’t have actually profitable real business… so a 5% dilution to them is nothing really…. It is worth 5% to hurt their competitors if they can drive the meme.

3 - The deal for America sounds way better than any practical reality.

I actually like the ‘trump accounts’ / deal Americans broadly into the market … but 5%… that is like $100 bucks per person, maybe $150 at a 1T valuation… and these ‘dividends’… of what? A non-profitable company — even if you buy ‘massive growth story…. This isn’t needle moving in any practical way, it just sounds good and is something Bernie and Trump can weirdly both like for different reasons….

Upshot — good on Sam Altman as a cynical political strategist - makes total sense…. Drives AI exceptionalism story, ‘so dangerous’, etc.. in a politically advantaged way…

But on the eve of America’s 250th Birthday … shame. Deeply anti-American, anti-Freedom, anti-Capitalist… and highly dangerous behavior to anyone who actually believes in American values…. And it is exactly the type of outcome starting with bank bailouts everyone worried about in 2008 don’t give mice cookies

Welcome to Vox Americanus. I'm Sam Lessin, and I built this -- my real name, on purpose.

I want to know what real Americans actually think about the hard things. Everywhere else, the moment a conversation matters it drowns in bot armies, fake accounts, foreign actors, and anonymous flamers -- and you can no longer tell who's even a person, let alone get a real read on the country.

Here, everyone is a verified, real American posting under their legal name. That's the whole bet: real people can have real, civil dialogue about the things we disagree on most -- the kind where you can take a hard position and be taken seriously instead of written off.

I kinda wish the big platforms would offer this / allow people to validate their national identities & driver's licenses and then badge who is real and who isnt... but since that doesn't seem the direction - let's try something new.

So welcome - share ... Let's find out what we actually think... and what a civil discussion with fellow cititzens actually looks like.