Was Jensen Taken Out Over Open Source? Sacks Says Anthropic's 'Safetyist' Allies Want Full Govt Control Over Models & Chips

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Was Jensen Taken Out Over Open Source? Sacks Says Anthropic's 'Safetyist' Allies Want Full Govt Control Over Models & Chips Was Nvidia’s Jensen Huang ousted in part because he was…

It appears that the walkback of all walkbacks may have begun - and whether Alice Huang was actually a Chinese spy is now under the microscope.

On Friday's All-In podcast, the tech bros weighed in. David Sacks - Trump's former AI czar, who now co-chairs the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology - spent most of the episode on Jensen Huang's ouster with Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg and Jason Calacanis. In their telling, Huang, the biggest corporate backer of open-source AI, was taken out by people who want the models and the chips under tighter control, and the spy story was the vehicle.

Sacks saved the sharpest version for the end of the show, after the hosts put up a post from Will Manidis claiming the "safetyist groupchats" were "in full jubilee mode" and that "the killing of the old king is complete." Asked who the safetyists were, Sacks said, "all the safetyist groups, the EAs, are deeply aligned with Anthropic, who's been funding all of them for years. And Anthropic's about to have this huge IPO."

"And then meanwhile, the main funder of the open source movement, which is Nvidia, just lost their CEO and founder," he continued. "So, I mean, obviously, who is going to defend open source now, nevermind finance it with Jensen gone. So, yeah, I can see why they're jubilant."

Recall that all of this began with a wholly inorganic push to cast AI as an existential threat to humanity, with Dario and Sam calling on Uncle Sam to Regulate them - right as Chinese open-weight models began performing 95% as well as closed-weight frontiers for 10% of the cost (roughly).

Sacks argued Huang's ouster does nothing for AI safety: "It's concentrating the market. I mean, Anthropic itself is saying winner take all." His read on the real agenda: "What they seem to want is, to your point, Friedberg, is extreme centralization of power in the hands of the government. They want all the models and all the chips to be controlled by the government.

"Notice how no one in…

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