Degens and Degenettes,

Welcome to your weekly dose of The Radical Moderate - a smorgasbord of the ideas we’ve been discussing, the money moves we’re making, and fun things that are going on in the community. Share with a buddy if you want. :)

P.S. Shout out to our very own Nick Urbani who just got engaged while on a trip to Southeast Asia, shoot him a note in the discord if you haven’t already!

Take Of The Week

If you’re a pleb and still haven’t seen the latest episode, go check it out. But the take of the week is less of a take and more of a question around Humane AI’s pin and what it means for society.

A little background on the pin itself: it was essentially created by former Apple execs as a wearable device that acts as a mobile AI assistant. It’s worn like a lapel pin and you can interact with it through voice commands and gestures. Sort of like a Siri that actually works.

I think the consensus (for everyone maybe except Arman), is that the pin is more dystopian than awesome. If you have any sort of platform in society today, you’re already at an insanely high risk of being cancelled for something or another. Maybe someone hears you make an off-hand comment about the homeless dude that always hangs outside the office. Or maybe someone catches you scratching your ass in public. Immediately, how the world views you is flipped upside down.

Now imagine if you were being recorded at all times. You’re at your local bar, tossing back a couple with your friends, but the entire time you’re worried about the guy next to you with his AI pin recording everything you say and do. Sounds like an awful way to live.

People are already censored enough, do we really want to live in an even greater extreme of the paradigm were already in? I’m not here to answer, but something to consider…

What We’re Talking About This Week

Sam Altman being forced out of OpenAI. Truth be told, it seems like nobody knows what the hell is going on. Everyone has their theories, myself included, but we’re still waiting for the shoe to drop.

Timeline of the events so far:

• Friday, November 17: The board gives Altman the boot.

  • OpenAI published a blog post stating Altman had been fired due to not being “consistently candid in his communications with the board.” Sounds like corporate talk for “f*ck off, you’re outta here.”

    • President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman drops the mic and quits over X basically saying, “based on today’s news, I quit.”

• Saturday, November 18: Daddy Nadella at Microsoft finds out, and is absolutely furious. Pushes the board to reinstate Altman.

  • Paul Graham said it best: “When a misbehaving child knows he’s going to have to give in and do what he’s told, the final stage of resistance is to do it really slowly.”

• Sunday, November 19: Altman shows up to OpenAI’s headquarters… wearing a guest badge. Just a final twist of the knife by the Board of Directors before their hand is forced by Nadella and the powers that be.

This story has been wild. I’ve been following it relatively closely over the past few days and am interested to see where the dust settles.

Shill Of The Week

Alfalfa NFTs! We dropped some collectibles on Optimism, which are tidbits of our most popular episodes. Guns and porn, Bankless layer-zero, ETH to $50K, and more. It’s a cool way to engage with the community and we’re stoked to be working with Lucas and the lads over at Pods.media to make this happen!

Tweet Of The Week

Onwards and upwards. Love you all,

Alfalfa Intern