Austin Chen, founder of Manifund, a nonprofit grantmaker tied to effective altruism, announced he hired Caroline Ellison, who served prison time for fraud connected to Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX collapse. Ellison, 31, will work on the platform and philanthropic research after being released from federal custody in January; Chen framed the decision as giving her a second chance despite public backlash from some commenters and FTX victims.
Jacob Coxon's viral resignation from Anthropic exposed an ecosystem of AI doomers—intellectuals and donors who believe superintelligent AI will destroy humanity. The episode examines who funds this movement, how they control media narratives, and argues their apocalyptic thesis is logically flawed, comparing their influence tactics to Sam Bankman-Fried's regulatory playbook.