Kirkie: AI Billionaires Bought Themselves A Congress

Kirkie here, with today's AI news in 90 seconds… or somebody respects my lawn chair holdin' my parking spot after the next blizzard.

First up, Alibaba's Qwen crew dropped a free image-AI model that runs on a gaming card and beats every paid shop out there — on a benchmark they wrote and graded themselves, like some jackass braggin' he benched four hundred alone in his garage. Then Amazon locked Meta's shopping bot Muse out the door twelve days after launch — wouldn't even announce itself, just hoardin' your credit card like a shoplifter in a trenchcoat. Some business partnership, my ass. Salesforce's own finance guy admitted their AI pricing is an anxiety-filled architecture — three goddamn billing schemes, none of 'em make sense, like a bartender chargin' you by how thirsty you look. Meanwhile the AI money boys — Brockman, Andreessen, the Palantir crowd — built a hundred-forty-million-dollar super PAC to keep Congress off their backs before the midterms, bunch of pricks buyin' the referees. And the kids who did everything right, computer science degrees and all, are lookin' at six percent unemployment now — worse than philosophy majors — endin' up behind the counter sellin' Slurpees while the robot does the job they went into debt for. And the All-In boys had this AppLovin guy on, who watched his stock crater ninety-two percent and, instead of beggin' Wall Street for mercy, bought his own company back off the morons dumpin' it — 'cause he owns his whole stack 'stead of rentin' somebody else's. Own the machine, don't lease it.

This is Kirkie, your AI news guy… reporting live from my landlord's voicemail box, which has been full since April and still sounds surprised every time it cuts you off.