The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 583 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 13 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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 …”
Brit Morin: Deel CEO allegedly recruited Rippling employee as paid spy
“Keith O'Brien, who was the man allegedly spying for deal while working at Rip Lane had to
Put out an affidavit today, and he basically, like, came forward and just was like, all right, here's the truth.
Alex, how do you pronounce his name?
Boise, Boise, the CE…”
Khosla: Open-source AI models will die due to massive training costs
“It is costing an order of magnitude more to train, and that's why I don't think open source models will be viable because of the training costs.”
Wolfe: Europe Is Screwed by Demographics and Failure to Assimilate
“I think that Europe is fucked, and there are bright lights of amazing entrepreneurs that are doing the very thing that Europe has historically not done, which is risk taking. The floor for Europe is higher than the US, so people do not fall through that, but t…”
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.”
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…”
Anthropic has completely overtaken OpenAI in revenue
“So I'm just curious how you reconcile what you were saying about the costs and everything with just the unprecedented growth that Anthropic has seen and the like flippening with open AI where it has just completely overtaken open AI from a revenue perspective.”
Lessin: Trial revealed Altman paid Brockman $10M from family office
“It was revealed that Altman, because it was a nonprofit back then, was paid Greg ten million dollars out of his, like, own family office and kept it from Elon, and so all these sort of alliances were being formed beneath the surface, and it just seemed like a …”
Morin: Anthropic is raising at an $800B valuation
“And Anthropic this week, I heard, is also now raising at an eight hundred billion.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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 …”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
Morin: Elon Musk bought $40 billion in 'house ads' to buy America
“He bought forty billion in house ads for himself so he could buy America.”
Khosla: Open source AI models will not be viable due to training costs
“It is costing an order of magnitude more to train, and that's why I don't think open source models will be viable because the training costs.”
Sam Lessin: Google has never had a high-performance culture
“Yes, Google has not had a high performance culture Like ever.”
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.”
Morin: FTC Chair Lina Khan has completely stopped US tech innovation
“Yeah, she's been successful in completely stopping the innovation cycle in the United States so that nobody can get acquired.”
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.”
Khosla: AI will eventually make almost all professional human expertise essentially free
“One of my big forecasts is almost all expertise will be free.”
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?”
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.”
Dave Morin: Trump Media SPAC is the most insane pump-and-dump ever
“This is like the world's most insane pump and dump of all time, like.”
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.”
Sam Lessin: Operational 'number twos' are always expendable
“Those number twos are always expendable. They have to be.”
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”
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.”
Dave Morin: Anthropic Is the Anti-Free Speech AI Company
“Sam, we've always known that Anthropic is the anti-free speech company.”
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: AI labs are definitely stealing and training on user data
“Oh, no, to be clear, they're definitely stealing all my data as we go. There's no question about that.”
Brit Morin: Tesla Robotaxis Will Deploy Instantly Once Legalized
“It's gonna be so pervasive that they're self-driving cars. Actually self-driving on all the roads instantly as soon as it's legal to do so.”
Jessica Lessin: Prominent media lists are driven by corporate sponsorship
“So it's not just clicks though. The business interests that circulate these lists are intense. And this is how I know it. Because I was wandering the streets of Davos, Switzerland, as one does with friends of mine. And all of a sudden they look at their watch …”
Sam Lessin: Early Salesforce was unintegrated one-off software builds
“So the story I've heard, and someone can correct me in comments, I'm sure someone will, is that when he started Salesforce, it was billed as like this cloud CRM. And this platform, but it was total bullshit. He basically went to a bunch of people and sold them…”
Dave Morin argues anyone under 21 should be banned from social media
“Probably under 21, you shouldn't be allowed to be on social media. It's that bad for mental health.”
Dave Morin argues that Roblox should be completely banned
“And Roblox, like, I actually think Roblox should just be banned.”
Eric Schmidt invested in Anthropic through a relationship with Dario Amodei's wife
“Her romantic turned business relationship with Eric Schmidt that led to the, his investment in Danthropic to crossing paths briefly with Jeffrey Epstein in terms of pitching him on her company.”
AI model leads are insecure because switching costs are too low
“What matters is that no lead is secure. And projections don't mean anything, right? And so I think that's the real story is it's too easy to switch. Leads don't matter. It's going to be impossible to financially price any of this stuff.”
Global liquidity of AI models will drive prices to zero sustainable profit
“AI is globally liquid with no borders and is easy to transport. So you're going to get the lowest cost provider. There's no money to make.”
SpaceX is priced like a meme stock driven by media headlines
“Like SpaceX is a meme. It's a great meme. It's an awesome meme. Like, SpaceX, like Moderna, has every ability to pop out headlines that people are going to go nuts for. But, you know, it isn't that dissimilar from a GME, not in that they don't do amazing thing…”
Stanford: The concept of websites will disappear very quickly
“This concept of websites is going to disappear very quickly before we know it.”
Lessin: Traditional American pathways of hard work and schooling have run out
“Historically, if you were an IQ 100 person and worked hard, you'd do fine. If you had a shovel, then it was like, oh, just go to school, and you'll do fine, because there was so much demand for, like, intellectual jobs. Those stories have run out on the capita…”