But to repeat claims (as per this Futurism article) that he’s the Bernie Madoff or Sam Bankman-Fried of our age without proving he has the IQ he says he has (which some of us don’t believe he has), or providing evidence he’s the world’s biggest sociopath (as that’s who you’d have to be to knowingly defraud major investment funds of hundred of billions of dollars, funds that likely hold the retirement funds of hundreds of millions of people) seems just a little unfair. After all, if Sam can barely code and misunderstands basic machine learning concepts, which I totally believe (as that would seem to be a fundamental requirement to believing AI actually works and is actually capable of intelligence in its current form), that would seem to indicate his IQ is on the low side and that he thus believes that his AI works and is actually intelligent.

If this is the case, then even though all of his investors will most likely eventually lose Billions (and likely Tens of Billions, and maybe Hundreds of Billions) of dollars on “AI” that will never work, it’s not fraud because he might actually be dumb enough to believe every word of what he’s selling. Fraud, like many major US crimes, requires intent (and, in Sam’s case, would require understanding what his firm’s offering actually does vs. what he seems to believe it does).

18 U.S. Code § 1341 starts off with “Whoever, having devised or INTENDing to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses …”. He didn’t devise the scheme of raising venture capital and private equity, so that doesn’t apply. If he believes his garbage actually delivers intelligence (even though it doesn’t), and will work better with bigger models and better data centres funded by the money he’s trying to raise (even though it won’t), he’s not intending to defraud either. Which means that he’s not a Madoff (who devised a Ponzi scheme with the intent to defraud) or a Sam Bankman-Fried (who willfully misused crypto funds for his hedge funds and pay personal debts).

He’s just a showman peddling his digital puppet theatre (who is blissfully unaware of how bad it is) and if you’re dumb enough to fall for it, that’s on you, not him!

If you’re looking for real fraud, maybe look to your federal government?

PS: I never thought I’d feel the need to defend an individual who I see as one of the biggest scourges of the digital age! But when there are a lots of individuals out there actively defrauding consumers with knowledge and intent every single day and getting away Scott free without any effort whatsoever to even formally recognize the fraud, that was a really unfair byline.