But this never ends well. Even if there's never a conversation about it, directly, the implication is there.

I don't care about TBPN, specifically. I just really, really wish we had a better way for media to fund itself independently. (And I say this as someone who pays for some media, but not nearly enough. I don't have $10/mo for every outlet that deserves it.)

EDIT: sama basically said what I said he would: https://x.com/sama/status/2039773740586918137

The core of the information they present isn't much different than what you'd hear on Dwarkesh or other industry podcasts, the presentation is some weird mix of ESPN and Mad Money that I personally don't get, but maybe makes sense to a US audience.

I don't see why that is interesting to OpenAI, but maybe I'm missing something.

I don't buy it. The leaked emails and actions of OpenAI's leadership point to a cynical growth machine.

The winner of this AI cycle will fund the lobbies that decide the politics of the future. OpenAI gives me a 'must escape the permanent underclass' energy. Not the energy I want from possibly the most influential people of the near future.

"I'm also excited to bring their amazing comms and marketing instincts to the team. They've helped many brands market online and because they have a strong pulse on where the industry is going, their comms and marketing ideas have really impressed me. I can't wait to leverage their talent outside of the show [...]."

So there's a large acquihire component here. Maybe the dominant component.

This is one of those moments where I turn out to be entirely out-of-touch with the rest of humanity, because I cannot imagine being able to spend 3 hours every day watching some livestream news show!

Is this is the younger alternative to having Fox News playing on the TV all day?

Their mission statement: Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence—AI systems that are generally smarter than humans—benefits all of humanity.

Even if it’s legit and I’m just old enough to not understand modern aesthetics, why would OpenAI be spending any sort of money on media at all?

This is genuinely sad to see; people do not have a sense of autonomy and identity, it seems.

This is not what a company on the precipice of AGI or even one that has faith in LLMs being a consistent growth driver across the industry would realistically do.

Is this a good investment financially? I don't know and seeing as I have never heard of TBPN before this post, I am not the right person to gauge that.

But any investment, be it in building your own Social Networks (Sora 2), a news show or anything else beyond model training is frankly, to me at least, a clear admission that OpenAI does not see nearly as much value in models as they have been selling investors on.

Considering the rest of the economy, that is more terrifying than any "AI will kill us" prediction.

If OpenAI believed even a tenth of what they have tried to sell investors, governments and the public on, they'd not have a penny to invest in anything akin to this, plain and simple.

Wow, what’s next?

Ecommerce giants owning major newspapers? An aerospace company owning a microblogging platform? Startup accelerators owning tech news aggregators?

This sounds like a fake podcast they would make fun of on Silicon Valley

Edit: it gets even better, "Coogan is co-founder of meal replacement company Soylent"

https://youtu.be/MesrrYyuoa4?t=235

As a viewer I don’t think this is in my interest as I think they will get a lot less prestige guests now. They have interviewed some huge names recently.

Without attention you're nothing.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/35L5nxL7VSmHIuaArgdCx1

They are intentionally making something like Bloomberg TV, with a very specific tech news audience and with some of the playbook of twitch streamers - growing via clipping -- but a look and feel of Cable news shows.

They mention squawk box on CNBC many times, as competition, in the interview and that they have no problem with filling ad inventory for their 3+ hours of programming a day.

I thought this was supposed to be the year of "focus". They just shut down one money pit (Sora) but apparently still have money to buy some random tech podcast most people have never heard of?

At this point I don't feel sorry for them, they deserve everything that's coming for them.

I mean litteraly, with all the AI podcasts out there just get it to do it. It was going to take all our jobs anyways or something.

> Source: OpenAI bought TBPN, which was set to generate $30M in 2026, for "low hundreds of millions of dollars"; OpenAI says TBPN will be editorially independent

wut