The Wild Rise and Fall of Leopold Aschenbrenner

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Until a week ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner was hailed as the "Nostradamus of AI". A 24-year-old former OpenAI researcher whose 165-page manifesto, Situational Awareness, convinced Silicon Valley and Wall Street that superintelligence was coming faster than anyone expected, his hedge fund ballooned to over $20 billion. Then, it came crashing down.

In this episode of Power User, WSJ reporter Berber Jin joins me to break down the meteoric rise and fall of Leopold Aschenbrenner, from his early days in the effective altruism movement and FTX's Future Fund, to his controversial exit from OpenAI, to the margin calls, Citadel bailout, and chaos that unfolded the very same week he got married

We discuss what Aschenbrenner's spectacular blowup tells us about Silicon Valley, AI hype, and the rush to bet billions on AI.

Follow Berber Jin (Wall Street Journal): https://twitter.com/berber_jin

Read Berber's story: https://www.wsj.com/finance/leopold-aschenbrenner-situational-awareness-ai-fund-597633d3

​​The Insane Collapse of Silicon Valley's 'Nostradamus of AI'

Taylor Lorenz’s Power User

​​The Insane Collapse of Silicon Valley's 'Nostradamus of AI'

The Insane Collapse of Silicon Valley's 'Nostradamus of AI'

The Insane Collapse of Silicon Valley's 'Nostradamus of AI'