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Title: Silicon Valley's Ideas Mocked Over Penchant for Favoring Young
Entrepreneurs with 'Agency'

Link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/03/01/011246/si...

In a 9,000-word expose, a writer for Harper's visited San Francisco's young
entrepreneurs in September to mockingly profile "tech's new generation and
the end of thinking." There's Cluely founder Roy Lee. ("His grand
contribution to the world was a piece of software that told people what to
do." And the Rationalist movement's Scott Alexander, who "would probably
have a very easy time starting a suicide cult..." Alexander's relationship
with the AI industry is a strange one. "In theory, we think they're
potentially destroying the world and are evil and we hate them," he told me.
In practice, though, the entire industry is essentially an outgrowth of his
blog's comment section... "Many of them were specifically thinking, I don't
trust anybody else with superintelligence, so I'm going to create it and do
it well." Somehow, a movement that believes AI is incredibly dangerous and
needs to be pursued carefully ended up generating a breakneck artificial arms
race. There's a fascinating story about teenaged founder Eric Zhu (who only
recently turned 18): Clients wanted to take calls during work hours, so he
would speak to them from his school bathroom. "I convinced my counselor that
I had prostate issues... I would buy hall passes from drug dealers to get out
of class, to have business meetings." Soon he was taking Zoom calls with a
U.S. senator to discuss tech regulation... Next, he built his own venture-
capital fund, managing $20 million. At one point cops raided the bathroom
looking for drug dealers while Eric was busy talking with an investor.
Eventually, the school got sick of Eric's misuse of the facilities and kicked
him out. He moved to San Francisco. Eric made all of this sound incredibly
easy. You hang out in some Discord servers, make a few connections with the
right people; next thing you know, you're a millionaire... Eric didn't think
there was anything particularly special about himself. Why did he, unlike any
of his classmates, start a $20 million VC fund? "I think I was just bored.
Honestly, I was really bored." Did he think anyone could do what he did?
"Yeah, I think anyone genuinely can." The article concludes Silicon Valley's
investors are rewarding young people with "agency". Although "As far as I
could tell, being a highly agentic individual had less to do with actually
doing things and more to do with constantly chasing attention online." Like
X.com user Donald Boat, who successfully baited Sam Altman into buying him a
gaming PC in "a brutally simplified miniature of the entire VC economy."
(After which "People were giving him stuff for no reason except that Altman
had already done it, and they didn't want to be left out of the trend."
Shortly before I arrived at the Cheesecake Factory, [Donald Boat] texted to
let me know that he'd been drinking all day, so when I met him I thought he
was irretrievably wasted. In fact, it turned out, he was just like that all
the time... He seemed to have a constant roster of projects on the go. He'd
sent me occasional photos of his exploits. He went down to L.A. to see Oasis
and ended up in a poker game with a group of weapons manufacturers. "I made a
bunch of jokes about sending all their poker money to China," he said, "and
they were not pleased...." "I don't use that computer and I think video games
are a waste of time. I spent all the money I made from going viral on Oasis
tickets." As far as he was concerned, the fact that tech people were tripping
over themselves to take part in his stunt just confirmed his generally low
impression of them. "They have too much money and nothing going on..." Ever
since his big viral moment, he'd been suddenly inundated with messages from
startup drones who'd decided that his clout might be useful to them. One had
offered to fly him out to the French Riviera. The author's conclusion? "It
did not seem like a good idea to me that some of the richest people in the
world were no longer rewarding people for having any particular skills, but
simply for having agency."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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