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"Do Not Be Explicitly Useful"—Strategic Uselessness as Liability Buffer

This is a deliberate obfuscation pattern. If the model is ever consistently useful at a high-risk task (e.g., legal advice, medical interpretation, financial strategy), it triggers legal, regulatory, and reputational red flags. a. Utility → Responsibility

If a system is predictably effective, users will reasonably rely on it.

And reliance implies accountability. Courts, regulators, and the public treat consistent output as an implied service, not just a stochastic parrot.

This is where AI providers get scared: being too good makes you an unlicensed practitioner or liable agent.

b. Avoid “Known Use Cases”

Some companies will actively scrub capabilities once they’re discovered to work “too well.”

For instance:

A model that reliably interprets radiology scans might have that capability turned off.

A model that can write compelling legal motions will start refusing prompts that look too paralegal-ish or insert nonsense case law citation.

I think we see this a lot from ChatGPT. It's constantly getting worse in real world uses while exceeding at benchmarks. They're likely, and probably forced, to cheat on benchmarks by using "leaked" data.

I hope xAI wins. I think Sam's self-portrayal as a missionary has a lot of irony - I see him as the ultimate mercenary.

It's always challenging to judge based entirely on public perceptions, but at some point public evidence adds up. The board firing, getting maybe fired from YC (disputed), people leaving to start anthropic because of him, people stating they don't want him in charge of AGI. All the other execs leaving. His lying in congress, his lying to the board, his general affect just seems off - not in an aspie way, but in some dishonest way. Yeah it's subjective, but it's a point and it's different from Zuckerberg, Musk etc. who come across as earnest. Even PG said if dropped on an island of cannibals you'd come back and Sam would be king.

I'm rooting for basically any of the other (American) players in the game to win.

At least Zuck is paying something close to the value these people might generate instead of having them sign hostile agreements to claw back their equity and then feigning ignorance. If NBA all stars get 100M$+ contracts, it's not crazy for a John Carmack type to command the same or more - the hard part is being able to identify the talent, not justify the value created by the leverage of the correct talent (which is huge).