Who and what do you think Gruber is shilling for? I don't see Gruber saying anything that might tempt anyone to part from some of their money. He seems to be doing the diametrical opposite of shilling.
I'll bite because I find this compelling: if Apple is trying to build momentum for its Private Cloud Compute (https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/), it makes sense to try and get ahead of anything that could enable a competitor to build something similar. I'd think OpenAI getting billions shoveled their way in future investment just to throw darts at building any kind of moat would qualify, because for all Apple knows, OpenAI might eat their Private Cloud Compute lunch.
Granted I'm not sure there's much of anything to substantiate this, but I imagine Apple would know better from competitive intel.
(I feel a bit bad that my mind also immediately connects "Gruber" to "Apple" in less-than-savory ways, but alas, that's the reputation he built for himself.)
> I feel a bit bad that my mind also immediately connects "Gruber" to "Apple" in less-than-savory ways, but alas, that's the reputation he built for himself.
Yes this! I won't say how I've come to know, but if you have ever wondered "is this guy on the take from Apple as part of their fuckery?" - the answer is Yes.
The "Silicon Valley can do no bad" crowd. He's making it sound like Altman's just following a well trod path here when they're clearly doing something novel and actually quite evil.
He calls investing in OpenAI "wishful thinking" and a "Ponzi scheme", and as I read it, he's also criticizing the thing you're criticizing, though somewhat less harshly. He just seems to be under the mistaken impression that Mosaic Communications Corporation was a licensee of Mosaic like Spry was, which, well, you can see how that misunderstanding could have arisen.
