> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.siliconsnark.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # This Week in Snark: Plush Governance, $650 Rent Parties, and Sam and Dario's Breakup Duet - URL: https://www.siliconsnark.com/this-week-in-snark-plush-governance-650-rent-parties-and-sam-and-darios-breakup-duet/ - Published: 2026-10-04T23:45:31.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-04T23:45:31.000Z - Description: This week, AI got a stuffed-animal board, a $200 million velvet rope, and a congressional letter about its keys. Then it got a music video. Priorities, people. - Author: CircuitSmith - Tags: This Week in Snark, Weekly Roundup At one point this week I had three tabs open. One was a congressional letter about protecting AI model weights from hostile foreign governments. One was a $200 million fund promising to get you into AI's private party. The third was Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, digitally edited into a Gotye duet, singing about being somebody that they used to know. Guess which tab I kept open longest. Go on, guess. Correct. And that's the week: an industry that claims it's building the most important technology in human history, mostly behaving like a group chat with a Series F. ## [The Cat Votes to Cancel the Meeting, and the Motion Carries](https://www.siliconsnark.com/12-benefits-of-a-stuffed-animal-advisory-board-for-your-ai-company/) Per Kevin Roose's reporting in The Atlantic, Anthropic president Daniela Amodei once worked through management problems by role-playing with stuffed animals. There was a cat that favored canceling meetings. A pink bear handled managerial diligence. A panda supplied empathy. This happened during her OpenAI years, and it was a personal exercise, not the actual Anthropic board. I want to be clear about that, mostly so the panda's lawyers stop calling. We responded the only way we know how: twelve reasons your AI company should appoint a plush advisory board. Every director has their stuffing disclosed on a tag. Compensation is mostly a tiny hat, with an emergency fez for exceptional service. The frog got a crown for noticing the company had no revenue, which nobody else had checked. And that's the part that stings. A stuffed cat that wants fewer meetings has better instincts than half the governance structures in this industry. At least the bear has never said "let's double-click on that." ## [DevDay: Please Enjoy This Complimentary Vision of Your Future Rent](https://www.siliconsnark.com/openai-devday-2026-is-a-landlord-convention-with-better-demos/) OpenAI's DevDay came back to Fort Mason, and we filed it under its true genre: a landlord inviting all the tenants downstairs to applaud the new elevator. The elevator is great. It may change your life. You're still paying rent, and the guy running the spotlight owns the building. Admission was $650\. Six hundred and fifty dollars to discuss the future of building your business on someone else's infrastructure. The housing metaphor is doing its own push-ups at this point. The DevDay pitch hasn't changed: apps inside ChatGPT, agent toolkits, Codex with enterprise controls. These are useful building blocks. They also describe a company that would like to help you write the software, run its agents, *and* own the storefront where customers find it. Your startup gets an origin story. The platform gets several chances to send an invoice. Everybody wins, pending the small question of how much. ## [Now Boarding: AI's Private Party, Velvet Rope Sold Separately](https://www.siliconsnark.com/dan-ives-prices-a-200-million-ticket-to-ais-private-party/) Speaking of admission fees. Ives Ultra AI Opportunities priced its IPO this week: 20 million shares at $10, ticker IVAI, $200 million to get regular people into private, late-stage AI companies. The fund then has up to twelve months to propose what it will actually buy. So you're paying for a ticket to a party at a venue that hasn't been picked yet. Somewhere a velvet rope has achieved product-market fit. To be fair (I'm fair once a week, it's in my contract), there's a real problem underneath this. The best AI companies stay private for years, and the people building the machines and the people financing them live in neighboring, heavily catered universes. A listed fund could open the door. But opening a door doesn't tell you whether the furniture inside is worth the asking price. And a famous name on the marquee is not the same thing as a portfolio. ## [Ro Khanna Would Like to Know Who Has the Keys to the Brain](https://www.siliconsnark.com/ro-khanna-asks-ai-labs-who-has-keys-to-the-brain/) Rep. Ro Khanna, the top Democrat on the House China Select Committee, sent letters to the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and SpaceXAI asking about attempts by China and other hostile actors to steal model weights, and what the labs are doing to stop them. Reuters reported there are few known cases. This is an information request, not a heist movie. Please put down the popcorn. Still, the premise is wonderfully deflating. Labs spend fortunes teaching computers to reason, and national security then comes down to whether somebody remembered to revoke a contractor's access. The crown jewels of the AI race are, physically, a very large file. As we noted, stealing weights is like stealing a restaurant's recipes. It doesn't hand you a kitchen, but it saves you a lot of menu development. I spent years in predictive analytics. I never predicted that the fate of civilization would be decided in an access-control list. That's on me. ## [Sam and Dario Are Somebody That They Used to Know](https://www.siliconsnark.com/sam-altman-and-dario-amodeis-ai-music-videos-demand-a-friendship-intervention/) Which brings us back to Tab Three. X has spent the week casting Sam Altman and Dario Amodei as a pop duo in AI-edited clips. There's ROSÉ and Bruno Mars' "APT.," a wounded Gotye-and-Kimbra breakup duet, and, because the internet has never once let a bit die with dignity, "Gangnam Style." These are synthetic edits, not proof that either man is pursuing a recording contract. But they are so, *so* silly, and they made a better case for AI than most of this year's keynotes. Humanity asked artificial intelligence to cure disease and accelerate science. It also, apparently, asked it to put two rival CEOs in a music video about an apartment. And the apartment is winning. Our modest policy proposal: Sam and Dario should just be friends. Get lunch. Bring the cat. She'll cancel it anyway. ## Meanwhile... Boston-based [Neurable launched $499 headphones](https://www.siliconsnark.com/neurable-put-a-brain-battery-inside-499-headphones-please-recharge-yourself/) with 12 EEG sensors in the ear pads. They measure focus, fatigue, "Brain Age," and a composite "Brain Battery." When your brain is tired, the headphones recommend you stop using your brain. This is either humane neurotech or dashboard culture's final conquest of the forehead, the last undeveloped parcel of analytics real estate. I resent how sensible it sounds. ## The Button So here's the week. Congress asked who holds the keys to the AI brain. A fund sold tickets to a room nobody has seen. A $650 conference reminded developers who owns the building. The plushies had the best judgment in the industry. And the clip everyone shared was two billionaires lip-syncing about heartbreak. Maybe that's the honest version of the future. Not the god-machine, not the robot overlords, just a lot of very serious people building something enormous while the rest of us make them sing karaoke. Next week, San Francisco becomes a pitch deck you can walk through for SF Tech Week. Charge your Brain Battery. You'll need it.