Welcome back, Founders & Operators. This week: Launching our WhatsApp Community, Pope Jensen vs. Leo on AI Safety, and upcoming events.
LAUNCHING OUR WHATSAPP COMMUNITY
We’re excited to launch our new interactive community channel. We opted for a WhatsApp community to give you all a more seamless way to interact with the platform and with each other, find resources, share perspectives, and more.
Same spirit as our gatherings - be humble, be kind. No selling or soliciting. Use it to share resources, ask for advice, etc. We will approve new member requests based on your previous community engagement. If you’re not approved and think you should be part of the group chat, email us.
UPCOMING EVENTS
ROOFTOP SOCIAL | Th Oct 1 | SoHo 630-830 PM
After our Oktoberfest excursion to Watermark, we’re back at our favorite SoHo rooftop this Thursday. Come join for drinks and conversation with fellow founders & operators. With friends from Mistral, SpaceX, and more.
FOUNDERS COFFEE & CO WORKING | Th Oct 8 | West Village 8-11 AM
We’re back at our favorite West Village outpost for coffee, matcha and co-working with fellow founders.
More power to you.
We’re working on new formats and are always excited to find new venues, co-hosts, and ways to engage. Let us know what you’d like to see.
And we’re also happy to give you the platform to run your own event with us. Drop us a note at [email protected] or share in the WhatsApp group.
AI SAFETY: POPE JENSEN VS LEO?
Pope Leo has entered the chat.
The AI safety debate continues to escalate. This week, Jensen Huang went on a media tour to explain that Nvidia will take care of AI safety, and that it’s just an engineering problem.
The ‘just an engineering problem’ frame prompted the Pope to point out that there are broader ethical and humanist concerns that make AI safety more than just ‘an engineering problem’.
Jensen’s latest communication strategy might well backfire. It is hard to argue with the fact that AI in its current shape poses ethical, governance and policy challenges. Reducing it to an engineering problem is likely to trigger backlash, so now might be a good time to pivot and reframe.
Jensen’s media blitz was probably tightly coordinated with the White House, where President Trump is hosting an AI dinner on Tuesday to rally the troops and quell the debate. The goal is clear: have the industry fall in line behind the Administration’s position on ‘AI is safe, let's keep pushing’. Protect allies (Oracle, SoftBank, Nvidia), the economic growth driven by the AI buildout, and the stock market rally. The White House is spending major energy and resources on this, including Trump grabbing dinner with Dario on Sunday. However, the discord within the AI industry, and between the industry and policy-makers, is likely to persist beyond White House reunions.
While the federal push for the data center buildout continues, the dynamics at the State level are more nuanced, with even some Republican states like Florida and Texas pushing new restrictions on data centers ahead of the midterms. Learn more in our interactive Data Center State Policy tool.
COMMUNITY RESOURCES
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See you soon,