Better Offline

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron delivers a simple message: if Dario Amodei truly believes that Anthropic is building dangerous AI, he should stop any and all cybersecurity model training runs, halt his IPO, limit Claude to only the safest possible functions, or shut the fuck up.

Anthropic “80% gross margins” story https://www.ft.com/content/4564e6a5-69e9-40a6-bf0f-a888f2f4f002?syn-25a6b1a6=1
Overcharging story:
theinformation.com/newsletters/applied-ai/anthropic-customers-find-errant-charges-auditing-startup-says
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Ed Zitron is joined by computer science professor and writer Cal Newport and journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker to get the word out that the narrative about existential risk from AI is driven by a religious cult of effective altruists and rationalists.
AI Is Already In Dangerous Hands newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-already-in-dangerous-hands/
Adam
https://bsky.app/profile/adambecker.bsky.social
https://www.youtube.com/@DreamingAgainstTheMachine
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-becker/more-everything-forever/9781541619593/

Cal
Podcast & Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@CalNewportMedia/
Newsletter: https://calnewport.com
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Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/
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Ed's Socials:
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Email Me: ez@betteroffline.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through the nonsensical, pro-AI lab scare campaign driven by former researcher Jacob Coxon, how the media keeps falling for AI safety grifts, and how dangerous AI is already in the wrong hands - those of Anthropic and OpenAI.

WIRED interview with Coxon: https://archive.md/2026.09.10-091328/https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-researcher-quits-jacob-coxon-ai-fears-humanity/
Thread on Hubinger and Coxon: https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3mv4suhyexc2g
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Email Me: ez@betteroffline.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron walks you through how society continues to manage rather than deal with crises, and how the AI bubble is yet another crisis resulting from a failure to deal with the complexity of the real world.
Last Week’s Newsletter: Hyperscale Normalization https://www.wheresyoured.at/hyperscale-normalization/
This week’s newsletter: Concentration Risk https://www.wheresyoured.at/concentration-risk/
Hypernormalization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how 80% of Anthropic and OpenAI’s enterprise revenues come from the top 1% of its customers, and how the entire AI bubble is a series of different concentration risks supported by venture capital and debt.

Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/hyperscale-normalization/
Ramp Data: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1w5i9t4/ramp_80_of_openai_and_anthropics_enterprise/
Terrible Groundbreaker piece: https://www.groundbrkr.com/p/the-teaser-period-why-the-ai-boom - please note that many of the numbers in this piece are wrong and it’s written by Claude, but the overall thesis is useful.

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Email Me: ez@betteroffline.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.