Opinion
Sam Lessin: Elon Musk and Sam Altman deliberately lie to motivate followers
“I think that Elon and Sam Altman lie, right? I think they say things they know to not be true, to Get people to do things. Right. And like, go on like with them. I just believe that from what I've seen, like, I think they're both way too smart to believe what …”
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2031
Sam Lessin: A novel virus will definitely be invented using AI
“The main fear is that a novel virus is, you know, invented, and then crispered, and we have serious problems. Which will definitely happen.”
Opinion
Sam Lessin: AI labs seeking regulatory capture is cynical and anti-American
“I think it's very cynical for these companies to even try to switch the field of play from business to politics, right? Like, I think that's a very cynical, anti-American thing to do, to be like, okay, we're not going to play and compete in capitalism in a fai…”
Opinion
Sam Lessin: AI eliminates Silicon Valley's advantage over New York finance workers
“I'd actually argue the average person in Silicon Valley is not as smart as like the average person in New York finance, right? They're not the best marketers. They're not the best at anything. The advantage in Silicon Valley was actually knowing how to write t…”
Opinion
Lessin: The pro-Palestinian movement is winning the memetic information war
“Well, I think the most successful information warfare mimetic war right now is actually being won by, like, the pro-Palestinian crowd.”
Opinion
Sam Lessin: Backing founders with small children is generally a bad idea
“Parents of small children that is generally a bad idea. Not always, but generally a bad idea to back parents of small children.”
Opinion
Sam Lessin calls VCs the least sophisticated financiers on the planet
“I actually think that venture capitalists are probably the least sophisticated financiers, like on the planet. They just have hope, right? Like it's the only hopeful version of finance, right? Because it is like, you know, you're basically investing in people …”
Opinion
Sam Lessin: AI Is a Terrible Business with Almost No Monetizable Patterns
“I think the answer is almost none of them, and I think AI is a terrible business.”
Prediction Held up
Sam Lessin: People Will Kill Themselves and Others Because of AIs
“And like, at some point people are going to start killing themselves and each other because of AIs.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sam Lessin: OpenAI obviously stole O'Reilly Safari books to train models
“I think I saw this thing about Tim O'Reilly saying like, it's pretty obvious that like they stole all the proprietary information from Safari and like their books to like build it. And it's like, it's total. I'm sure it's true. We all know that they stole ever…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sam Lessin: I didn't rug anything on Jelly Jelly
“I didn't rug anything.”
Opinion
Sam Lessin: SoftBank is probably the worst investor in history
“Probably the worst investors in history. We've lost so much money in valuable companies because of SoftBank.”
Opinion
Sam Lessin: Men dominate top leadership because they are higher-beta risk-takers
“Because men have nothing to lose and are worthless, and therefore are very high beta, right? Like, it's just like, you just get more, like, the dumbest people in the world are men, and some of the smartest are. The highest risk takers are men. Guess what? It t…”
Opinion
Sam Lessin: Google has never had a high-performance culture
“Yes, Google has not had a high performance culture Like ever.”
Opinion
Sam Lessin: Google invented tech's low-work engineer culture
“So like this idea that it's work from home, Google invented the low work engineer culture.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Aug 2029
Lessin predicts OpenAI equity value is headed to zero
“Guys, I've been saying OpenAI zero the entire time. And I'm gonna keep saying it.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sam Lessin: AI Startups Will Yield Zero Value and Go Bankrupt
“And so if you're someone like me, who's in the camp of this is a great disruptive Business technology, and zero dollars will accrue to startups, and they're all going bankrupt. I am now a zealot for no fucking way, right?”
Opinion
Lessin: Most media business talent are 'B-players' and not talented
“You have the media business talent, which with a few exceptions, I have to say that because there are some people I like, they're bees, right? They're not very talented.”
Opinion
Sam Lessin: The AI revolution is fake outside of narrow applications
“I don't think the AI, I think the AI revolution is fake. We all know this.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Sam Lessin: Solana will surpass Ethereum in market capitalization
“I think Solana flips Ethereum.”
Insight
Sam Lessin: Operational 'number twos' are always expendable
“Those number twos are always expendable. They have to be.”
Opinion
Sam Lessin: LLMs have only two use cases: summarization and data laundering
“There really are two use cases. One is Dave's point, which is summarization, and the other is Brisk's case, which is data theft, right, and data laundering. Like, I agree those are the only use cases”
Opinion
Lessin: Big tech is better off cutting average nine-to-five engineers
“Most of like the line engineers and people who just kind of like, you know, show up in nine to five and crunch out small projects. They're just not that valuable and you're better off cutting them rather than doing whatever you possibly can to retain them.”
Insight
Sam Lessin: Universal scripting makes AI models interoperable, destroying provider margins
“When you get down to a lower level, because you can no longer have on-off APIs, because everything is scriptable, because these things can script any interface and interact anyway, as long as you have data sovereignty, meaning like it's your data, they're all …”
Sam Lessin