Translating Sam

Gary Marcus published a piece titled "Translating Sam," framed around the question of what Sam Altman's endorsement of Dario is "really about." The post is dated September 15, 2026.

Marcus wrote that an afternoon event is expected to be a "big face-off about the supposed AI slowdown at Salesforce," and that Altman was supposed to speak at 5 p.m. ET. He wrote that many people are wondering what Altman is thinking, and pointed to a post on X from the previous day as an important clue, directing readers to a highlighted portion.

Marcus offered his own translation of that highlighted portion, writing that it means they will go as fast as they can without going to jail or being sued out of existence, but will call it "pacing" for optics. He added that anything reducing regulatory uncertainty is probably great for an IPO.

As a postscript, Marcus shared a quote he attributed to Elon Musk: "It's certainly some crazy 4d chess to say there's whatever a 10% chance of annihilating humanity. But by the way, um, how much allocation would you like in our IPO?"

The post also includes an embedded X post attributed to Elon Musk with the text "4D-Chess," timestamped 5:51 AM on September 15, 2026, showing 3.19M views, 1.03K replies, 1.6K reposts and 12.2K likes.