She was, at one time, a normal person, with normal friends and normal parents. However unlike most other “new money” billionaires she acquired her wealth without the corrupting influence of being a master of the universe business person where everyone in your circle is falling over themselves to gas up your ego.

With no clear options the only visible path to building a modicum of wealth is timing the next big crypto rugpull, hitting a 5 leg parlay, ripping a shiny charizard etc...

We can (and should) try and regulate away this kind of gambling but the underlying problem remains.

Just because I own the land does not mean I can open an abattoir next to an elementary school.

Using land in different ways results in externalities that affect those around it.

The people of a community should have some right to protect themselves from those externalities. How that happens in practice is a deeply flawed, messy, ugly process, but collectively deciding where to draw the line is part of living together as a community.

Instead we ended up with an ad fueled dopamine/outrage slot machine.

We're seeing the same thing happen with AI on a condensed timeframe. Yes, its useful. Yes, it lowers barriers and amplifies what individuals can do, just like the early internet did.

However, the same pattern will repeat itself because the exact same forces that bent the arc of the internet towards its current state haven't gone anywhere; if anything they've just become stronger.

So many of their products oscillate around the bar of profitability but so few reach the level of materially affecting Google’s bottom line that they can continually pop in and out of existence like subatomic particles.

Meanwhile the developers on these projects work towards their products brief moment in the sun so they can leverage it to move up and out, leaving it to die on the vine.

It’s a chaotic way to run a company, a decent way to make a living as a developer, and a shit way to build any kind of legacy, either as a company or as an individual.

Thus, your compute is significantly more expensive than AI. Thankfully your taste is also part of your package deal, and is where you deliver real the value over an LLM.

“Mythos is too dangerous to release.”

“OpenAI offers a bounty if you can get ChatGPT to teach you how to do a bioterroism.”

“Agentic agents will replace entire categories of jobs. They’ll just be like, gone”

This is all signaling to their customers; no not you on their $20/month plan, the governments and corporations of the world who have deep pockets, fat to trim, and borders to defend and expand.

It’s no surprise that people don’t like AI. It’s not for people.

If a cop says your problems go away for $100, you pay it, because the downside is huge by comparison. The problem is the cop getting away with it, not that you paid the bribe.