6.1 - CC: AI Business

Artificial Intelligence Policy

Author

Prof. Jack Reilly

Published

S2026

🧠 Think:

What monetizable product is it that AI companies make? Is it cost-effective, given labor, compute, and energy costs? Absent venture capital, how profitable is it likely to be short-, medium-, and long-term?

📖 Read:

Paterson, Cal. “Building LLMs is probably not going be a brilliant business” Blog post.
Leaked Google Memo: “We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI” (You don’t need to read the paywalled “Timeline” portion)

🎧 Listen:

Dario Amodei, 2026. “Something Will Go Wrong: Anthropic’s Chief on the Coming AI Disruption” Interesting Times with Ross Douthat New York Times Podcasts.

🌐 Browse:

Thompson, Ben. “AI’s Uneven Arrival”. Blog post.
Olson, 2026. “The Week Anthropic Tanked the Market and Pulled Ahead of Its Rivals”
Jin, 2025. “Anthropic Is on Track to Turn a Profit Much Faster Than OpenAI” Wall Street Journal.
“Researchers created an open rival to OpenAI’s o1 ‘reasoning’ model for under $50”
The Economist: “Will the bubble burst for AI in 2025, or will it start to deliver?” and “The very real constraints on artificial intelligence in 2025”
Zuckerberg, Mark. “Open Source AI is the Path Forward”
Glazer, “Why AI Risks Are Keeping Board Members Up at Night” Wall Street Journal
“Apple Engineers Show How Flimsy AI ‘Reasoning’ Can Be” Wired.

📝 Submit:

Discussion question to course chat

Tip

“📖 Read”, “🎧 Listen”, and/or “📺 Watch” items are required content for the day, and should be read/heard/watched before class on that day.
“🌐 Browse” items should be briefly looked at but do not need to be read deeply unless you want to
“📚 Additional Resources” do not need to be looked at; they are there to serve, if useful, as further references for your debates, final projects, and general edification later.