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History's Greatest IdiotsAuthor: History's Greatest Idiots
This hilarious history podcast explores the epic failures, disasters, and terrible decisions that have shaped our world, providing us with memorable lessons to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Hosts Lev and Derek uncover the funniest blunders, scandals, spectacular mistakes, and jaw-dropping screw-ups from the dawn of time to today. Perfect for history buffs who love a little comedy with their knowledge! New episodes bi-weekly featuring famous disasters, military blunders, political scandals, and legendary bad life choices. Educational entertainment at its finest! Language: en Genres: Comedy, Comedy Interviews Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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ChatGPT and the $500 Billion House of Cards (Season 6 Episode 13)
Episode 10
Sunday, 1 February, 2026
How does a Stanford dropout convince the world he's building God, burn through billions whilst destroying the planet, get fired for lying, come back more powerful than ever, and still somehow convince investors to hand over even more money? And how is it all about to come crashing down?In this episode of History's Greatest Idiots, we explore the spectacular rise and looming collapse of Sam Altman's empire at OpenAI, the company that promised us artificial general intelligence and delivered us a very expensive chatbot that makes things up.The Golden Boy Who Dropped Out: Sam's precocious childhood and his first Apple Mac at age 8. How he built Loopt, a location-sharing app so revolutionary it was basically Find My Friends but worse and earlier. His real talent was not building successful companies, it was convincing people he could. How he rose through Y Combinator before being quietly forced out in 2020.The Birth of OpenAI (Or: How to Rebrand "We Want All The Money" as "Saving Humanity"): Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit with Elon Musk, pledging $1 billion but only collecting $130 million. The Paperclip Maximizer thought experiment and why two billionaires decided to build God to stop God from destroying us. The quiet transition from nonprofit to "capped profit" company in 2019. ChatGPT's explosive launch in 2022, hitting 100 million users in two months and making Sam the face of AI.The Controversies (Or: Everything You Need To Know About Why This Was Always Doomed): Training GPT-3 used enough energy to power 358 UK homes for an entire year, and that's just one model. AI data centres consuming electricity equivalent to entire countries whilst carbon offsets do precisely nothing. The brain drain to Anthropic as safety researchers flee, including the head of OpenAI's own safety team. The board firing Sam for lying, 500 employees threatening to quit, and Sam returning five days later more powerful than ever. OpenAI never making a single penny of profit whilst 95% of its 800 million users pay nothing.The Bubble Bursting: OpenAI projected to lose $14 billion in 2026 and potentially go bankrupt by mid-2027. Tech stocks making up 40% of the market whilst AI companies desperately raise billions they cannot justify. America's power grid buckling under the strain of data centre demand. Microsoft losing $357 billion in market value in a single day last week. Why the entire AI boom might crash harder than the dot-com bubble.This is the story of how Silicon Valley's biggest ever AI project convinced the world it was saving humanity whilst simultaneously cooking the planet, haemorrhaging cash, and losing its own safety researchers to a rival company.https://www.patreon.com/HistorysGreatestIdiotshttps://www.instagram.com/historysgreatestidiotsArtist: Sarah Cheyhttps://www.fiverr.com/sarahcheyMusic: Andrew Wilsonhttps://www.instagram.com/andrews_electric_sheep
