Last update: Sunday 6/14/26 12:04am
This little satire is about the impact of Sam Altman‘s superpower, his extraordinary capacity to drive hitherto sane competitors, including Satan, to losing their minds and their souls in ever more costly attempts to beat him in ever more complex games. His most prominent current competitorsj, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk, are competing with him in the biggest game to date.
Introduction
This introduction explains the image of this blog note, an explanation that provides a framework for subsequent segments of the satire. - Satan is loudly shouting: "I have leverage!!!"
- Around and below him are crowds of smaller devils. You can barely see them, but they are all screaming “No Sam!” … “Hell no!” … “No Sam!” … “Hell no!”. They are referring, of course, to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. Rumor has it that he sold his soul to the devil three times for a much higher price each time.
- Satan bought Sam's soul the first time in late 2020. When Satan came back a year later to collect his prize, Sam first thanked him for the tip about scaling laws, then Sam pointed to the fine print at the bottom of the contract. Satan had not noticed it before, but the fine print clearly specified an absurd condition that could never be met. Satan was shocked because he himself had invented fine print a long time ago for this same purpose. Sam offered to sell his soul again, but for a much higher price because OpenAI had a much higher market value than a year ago.. Satan reluctantly agreed to pay the higher price for Sam's soul in a second contract.
- Two years thereafter in late 2022, when Satan came for Sam’s soul a second time shortly after the release of ChatGPT on GPT 3.5, Sam called Satan's attention to yet another impossible condition in even finer print in a font Satan had never seen before at the bottom of the contract. At first glance, it looked like a fancy border, but no, it was a bizarre, but legible font.
Although OpenAI's market value was still surging, Sam conceded that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) was just a little bit out of reach. "That's what you think" the devil muttered under his breath. Nevertheless, he signed a third contract for Sam's soul, the highest price he had paid for a soul in over one hundred years. The third time had to be the charm ... but it wasn't.
- When Satan came back the third time in late 2023 and saw Sam pointing to the bottom of the contract, he flapped his wings loudly and bellowed: “Keep your damned soul!!! Just give me all of my money back. I am not a neurotic twit like the fools you are accustomed to gaslighting."
- Sam calmly responded, "Shall I repay you in cash, check, or crypto?" To which the devil sneered: "Crypto, that’s one of my best inventions!!!".
Indeed, Satan is not a neurotic twit because he does not keep on repeating the same behavior while anticipating a different outcome. One of the few pleasures he and his fellow devils derive from their eternal damnation is torturing humans and other species damned by The Almighty with sadistic games the devils teach their victims to play. Winning these games will reduce their torture.
Of course, the victims never win and suffer greater torture as penalties for their losses. Satan imagined the unbearable chaos of Sam Altman spending an eternity in hell, beating all the devils at their own games, then torturing them as penalties for their losses.
Satan has leverage because if he and his lesser brethren refuse to accept more souls damned by The Almighty to eternal torture, The Almighty would have to create a new choir of highest level angels, who would be tested, fail, fall from The Almighty's grace into a new hell, etc, etc, etc. Satan was confident that The Almighty would not want to run that infamous epic all over again.
The remainder of this note is about the impact of Sam's superpower, his extraordinary capacity to drive otherwise sane competitors, including Satan, to losing their minds, then their souls in ever more costly attempts to beat him in ever more complex games that he's never played before. Satan recovered his sanity. Unfortunately, the same cannot yet be said for his most prominent current competitors, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk, who are currently competing with Sam in a game called “History’s Biggest IPO”.
1) HSM’s engagement with an Autocrat
Editor’s note — Many of the assertions made by the characters in the introduction to this note were satirical exaggerations and/or blatant fabrications. But the most important statements made by HSM in this final section can be verified by links to reliable sources. As Jon Stewart famously noted, sometimes the behavior of today’s leaders becomes so absurd that the best we can do in satire is to just replay the videos and reread the transcripts of what they have said and done.
HSM: Ladies and gentlemen of the tech and general press. I stand before you, not as a prosecutor, but as an interlocutor in a discussion of the most consequential deficiencies in the character of Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic.
I and my fellow devils are justly famed for our relentless efforts to corrupt your souls. But as consequence of recent tech, social, and governance upheavals, self-corruption has become a far more potent driver of your degradation.
Those of you older than a certain age no doubt recall the Rolling Stones’ strident “Sympathy for the Devil”. Today, however, it’s my turn to offer you a bit of low key sympathy from the Devil.
As one who labored mightily to excel, but for failing was forever damned, I understand how difficult it is to live up to one’s ideals. But I am honestly perplexed by the failure of this nation’s press to hold Mr. Amodei and other leaders accountable for their misdeeds. So accountability is what this discussion will address.
Mr. Amodei, correction, Dr. Amodei earned his science degrees and post graduate training from three of the world’s greatest centers of scientific research — CalTech, Stanford, and Princeton. Nevertheless, the eminence of his intellectual provenance has been shrouded by conflicts among his three recurring social roles — nerd, idealist, and autocrat. Thus he stands in the witness docket bearing a face whose conflicted expression cannot be deciphered. It will also prove useful to distinguish his professional roles: scientist and engineer.
We will consider the five contexts wherein Dr. Amodei has either studied or been employed in this discussion. In each case, I will present facts — supported by citations of reliable sources — that imply a role. Then I will challenge the morality of the role that Dr. Amodei assumed. (Tee-hee.) Forgive me, but the supreme irony of self-corruption always triggers my devilish giggle.
Of course, each of you will draw your own conclusions; but by the end of this discussion, my far-from-modest hope is that most of you will move your positions much closer to my positions.
(a) Nerd (scientist) ➡ Idealist ➡ Autocrat … Spring 2002 Dario’s manifesto
(b) Nerd (scientist) … Fall 2003 to 2015
(c) Nerd (engineer)/Idealist … 2015 to 2023
"scaling Laws .. engineering unguided by science
No proof that constitutional Conditioning is effective
(d) Nerd(engineer)/Idealist 2024 to 2025
Quote Amazon and Anthropic
(e) Autocrat/Nerd(engineer) … 2026
Fortune magazine … fatwas
DARPA/ARPA-H find/fix flaws in infrastructure 2025
Repeal of AI safety
Vatican washing
1) Claude's Vatican Washing
A few days ago, the editor of this blog encountered an article that reported that Anthropic was now valued at $900 billion. Of course, one of the drivers of this sudden upsurge in its evaluation was its promotion of agentic capabilities that would allow large corporations to replace substantial portions of their entry level white collar staff.
Not just big tech corporations, but all large corporations would could easily increase their profits by reducing staff via substantial reductions in salaries and benefits. And not just at entry levels. Millions of Americans might be replaced by agents.
This represented a serious deviation from Anthropic's prior posture as a public benefits corporation dedicated to providing a form of generative AI that would not harm humans. Dr. Dario Amodei, Anthropic's CEO and primary spokesperson, seemed to think that he was now 'Saint Dario de Amodei' -- a person who believed that he was so good that it was unthinkable that he could do anything wrong.
The editor was pondering this notion of a self-canonized ‘Saint Dario' when he encountered an article in The Guardian, 5/30/26, that suggested that Anthropic was engaging in “Vatican washing” by placing one of its founders next to the Pope Leo XIV as the Pope announced his first encyclical, an advocation that AI models be used to benefit humanity rather than to increase its suffering.
The editor had not yet read the encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas,
but the quasi-official TL;DR published by the OSV News, 5/5/26, declared that AI models should not be used to cause people to lose their jobs. Instead, it should be used to help people do their jobs better. So the editor decided to write a data driven critique of Anthropic’s blatant Vatican washing.
IPO
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