If [Altman] had more time he’d read Deep Research reports in preference to most other things. I’m sorry, what? Really?
I wonder whether his consistent messaging pattern of being impressed with mediocre LLM outputs (e. g. this) and wanting to spend time reading them is just more lies to hype up OpenAI’s products, or whether he’s one of the people from that section being brainwashed by ChatGPT. The latter would be really funny (perhaps lethally so).
What Is Musk Thinking?
When the whole DOGE thing was happening, a salient-to-me possibility was that Musk (with Trump’s approval) was deliberately wrecking existing systems of checks and balances in order to grab power (see e. g. this angle). It didn’t matter much what DOGE actually did, what mattered is ensuring that Musk was known to be allowed to march his own people into major government institutions and take control. All the rambling about debt was just signaling for the right-wing supporters, the talk about government efficiency a personally plausible excuse. And once he grabbed enough unchecked institutional power, then he could wield it to steer AI policy, to a much greater extent than if he just started doing that from the get-go.
I didn’t consider this particularly likely, because I already modeled Musk as a fairly incoherent actor. Now this interpretation seems disproven, so… I guess he’s even more incoherent than previously suspected?
I wonder whether his consistent messaging pattern of being impressed with mediocre LLM outputs (e. g. this) and wanting to spend time reading them is just more lies to hype up OpenAI’s products, or whether he’s one of the people from that section being brainwashed by ChatGPT. The latter would be really funny (perhaps lethally so).
When the whole DOGE thing was happening, a salient-to-me possibility was that Musk (with Trump’s approval) was deliberately wrecking existing systems of checks and balances in order to grab power (see e. g. this angle). It didn’t matter much what DOGE actually did, what mattered is ensuring that Musk was known to be allowed to march his own people into major government institutions and take control. All the rambling about debt was just signaling for the right-wing supporters, the talk about government efficiency a personally plausible excuse. And once he grabbed enough unchecked institutional power, then he could wield it to steer AI policy, to a much greater extent than if he just started doing that from the get-go.
I didn’t consider this particularly likely, because I already modeled Musk as a fairly incoherent actor. Now this interpretation seems disproven, so… I guess he’s even more incoherent than previously suspected?
Creating a big intrusive disruption can also be a smokescreen for other activity, such as access to IT systems and confidential information.
Maybe Musk wanted to destroy one specific institution, and everything else was just a collateral damage.
And collecting government data on your competitors certainly doesn’t hurt.