I get (incorrectly) accused of writing undisclosed sponsored content pretty often, so I'm actually hoping that the visible sponsor banner will help people resist that temptation because they can see that the sponsorship is visible, not hidden.
> I'm currently planning to avoid sponsorship from companies that I regularly write about for that reason.
ah so if it's not "regular" (which is completely arbitrary), then it's fine to call yourself independent while directly taking money from people you're talking about?
glad we cleared up the ambiguity around your ethical framework
Comments* moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47096253, which has the original source.
We will add the current link to the toptext there as well.
(* except for the ones that only make sense in current context - that's the intention at least)
The actual content: https://xcancel.com/karpathy/status/2024987174077432126
Why is this linking to a blog post of what someone said, instead of directly linking to what they said?
[1] https://x.com/karpathy/status/2024987174077432126
(Prefer the xcancel link [1] someone posted in this thread.)
[1] https://xcancel.com/karpathy/status/2024987174077432126
[flagged]
Rubbish. Simon is a good independent voice in capturing the llm zeitgeist.
Simon Willison claims to be an "Independent AI researcher"[1]:
but then at the top of this article:
> Sponsored by: Teleport — Secure, Govern, and Operate AI at Engineering Scale. Learn more
not exactly a coherent narrative, is it?
[1]: https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net
I wrote a little note about that here - it even opens with "I value my credibility as an independent voice" https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/19/sponsorship/
I get (incorrectly) accused of writing undisclosed sponsored content pretty often, so I'm actually hoping that the visible sponsor banner will help people resist that temptation because they can see that the sponsorship is visible, not hidden.
> I value my credibility as an independent voice
not enough to not take their money though?
insipid
I'm currently planning to avoid sponsorship from companies that I regularly write about for that reason.
> I'm currently planning to avoid sponsorship from companies that I regularly write about for that reason.
ah so if it's not "regular" (which is completely arbitrary), then it's fine to call yourself independent while directly taking money from people you're talking about?
glad we cleared up the ambiguity around your ethical framework
You're welcome to stop reading me if you think my ethics are irreversibly corrupted and you can no longer trust my writing.
Thankfully most of my readers are better at evaluating their information sources than you are.
to stop reading would imply I ever started
from my point of view: it never was writing, it's a deliverable
and it ends up here with such monotonous regularity that the community appears to be beginning to regard it as spam
You know I helped popularize "slop"? I get credited by Wikipedia as an "early champion": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop