AI Inference, Open Models, Security Threats, and Social Security Funding

Key Quotes

"NVIDIA has agreed to buy grok's assets for 20 billion in cash making this by far nvidia's largest ever purchase and one of the biggest acquisitions in the ai space ever and let me go ahead and preface this grok with a q not the uh not very good ai chatbot from x ai twitter elon musk no this is the inference company g r o q so the pseudo acquisition and i'll get to that here in a second covers grok's hardware and ip for their inference chips and grok says it has signed a non exclusive licensing agreement with nvidia for its inference technology"

The author explains that NVIDIA's acquisition of Groq's assets for $20 billion is a significant event in the AI space. The author clarifies that "Grok" in this context refers to the inference company, not the chatbot from X AI. This transaction involves hardware and intellectual property for inference chips.

"so nvidia avoided the formal federal oversight by using a license plus higher model paying to essentially just acquire all of grok's assets and ip and their technology while hiring most of their important senior staff without technically buying the entire company so this structure bypasses the normal federal oversight allowing the deal to close without the mandatory federal antitrust review required for traditional multi billion dollar acquisitions by leaving the shell of grok intact to operate and its grok cloud platform intact nvidia maintains a legal appearance of competition while effectively absorbing a key rival's core talents ip and most importantly their very impressive lpu chips"

The author details how NVIDIA structured the deal to bypass federal antitrust review by using a licensing and hiring model rather than a direct acquisition. This approach allowed NVIDIA to acquire Groq's assets, intellectual property, and key personnel while maintaining the appearance of competition. The author highlights that this effectively absorbs a rival's core capabilities, including their LPU chips.

"so the social security administration or ssa office of the chief actuary has warned that faster than expected ai driven job loss would create lower than projected payroll tax income which would worsen social security's funding gap so this is something it was actually going to be in a footnote in the 2026 ai prediction and roadmap but i mentioned this last january that the future of work yes i do believe in the long run ai is going to take away many more jobs than it does create but i think what we've already seen is a shift toward a gig work economy i think there's going to be way fewer traditional 9 to 5 full time employment roles in the future and way more essentially gig economy or you know everyday business leaders who maybe aren't entrepreneurs at heart i think they're going to have multiple businesses and what this ultimately does aside from dramatically changing what the future of work looks like well it also here in the us it does greatly take away safeguards like social security"

The author discusses the warning from the SSA regarding the potential impact of AI-driven job loss on Social Security's funding. The author believes that AI will lead to fewer traditional jobs and more gig economy roles, which could diminish the payroll tax base. This shift, according to the author, poses a risk to social safety nets like Social Security.

"according to a report from the information nadella told engineering managers that copilot's integrations with gmail and outlook quote unquote don't really work and are not smart flagging a core user experience failure for microsoft's consumer ai assistant so the report says nadella has effectively become the company's top product manager for ai focusing his time previously devoted to other duties instead on improving copilot and related office ai features reportedly nadella is highly active in a private team's channel of about 100 senior engineers working on copilot posting detailed critiques and sending bug reports directly to product groups working on the consumer chatbot"

The author reports that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has personally become involved in improving Copilot due to internal reports of its underperformance, particularly with Gmail and Outlook integrations. The author notes Nadella's direct engagement with engineers, providing critiques and bug reports. This indicates a significant focus from leadership on addressing user experience failures in Microsoft's AI assistant.

"so the information also reported that copilot's concrete contribution to microsoft's bottom line remains unclear and the company has been sparse with business metrics for the copilot series this one to me although on the surface is kind of shocking right the ceo of one of the largest companies in the world essentially becoming a product manager seems shocking right but when you look at the trends i don't think it is i think it's actually a very smart move from satya nadella i've said this before on the show microsoft pre gen ai they were second biggest company in the world they eventually overtook apple but they've started to kind of slip a little bit especially if compared to one of their chief rivals in google"

The author points out that Microsoft has not clearly communicated the financial impact of Copilot, making its contribution to the company's bottom line uncertain. The author views Nadella's direct involvement as a strategic move, especially when compared to Google's competitive actions in the AI space. This suggests that Microsoft is prioritizing AI development and performance to maintain its market position.