It’s hard not to notice the shocking number of AI companies that pretend they don’t care about money at all.

Companies raising billions. Companies paying their employees millions in salaries. Yet, constantly claiming they are ‘Non Profits’ and ‘Public Benefit Corporations’ and such.

The Duality of AI Tech Startups

The vast majority of AI Tech startups are raising money at an insane rate, paying their employees exorbitantly high salaries, and forecasting immense profitability.

At the same time, the majority of AI Tech startups are doing one or more of

1. Claiming to be Non Profits
2. Claiming to be Open Source and ‘just want to further the technology’
3. Claiming they are only in it for the greater good

Such a beautiful, delicious paradox.

Is this Virtue Signaling disease ever going away?

Nope, doesn’t seem like it.

Not only do AI Tech startups have to deal with allegations of greed, they also have to deal with the non-zero probability that AI will out-evolve humans and then AI will decide to wipe out humans.

AI Tech companies have to virtue signal like their life depends on it, because it does.

Why the attempt to pretend to not care about making money?

This is interesting. Our guess is that a lot of the newer technology companies in Silicon Valley do a lot of corrupt stuff (stealing data, invading people’s privacy, spying on children, spying on people) so they really got into the ‘pretend to be honest’ obsession.

Now you have AI which might destroy jobs and might even destroy the human race. So AI Tech startups are playing the ‘We are so altruistic, never mind that we might wipe out humanity’ game right from the start.

Why so much focus on being a Non Profit?

This one is straightforward. AI tech companies that become the Big 5/Big 10 Winners in the space will be Trillion dollar companies and perhaps even 10 Trillion dollar companies.

When the level of wealth is massive, then the need to pretend to not care about money also becomes massive. A Non Profit is the best way to pretend that the potential prize is not tens of trillions of dollars.

Earlier, weaker attempts to Virtue Signal by Tech Companies

Google started a lot of this ‘we are so pure and sweet’ BS with their ‘Do No Evil’ corporate mantra.

It’s probably that when some technology companies were doing things they realized were borderline shady, they decided that virtue signaling A TON was a good way to distract people from the dark underbelly of what they were doing. Surely, a company that keeps talking about ‘how much Good it is doing’ could not possibly be doing anything bad.

Yeah, people really are that stupid

So, AI companies – If you are doing shady stuff, just pretend you are a Non Profit and do a ton of virtue signaling. The dumb humans will fall for it hook, line, and sinker.