For star-struck podcaster Scott Galloway, the Vanity Fair Oscar party on Sunday conjured \u201cthe most aspirational environment I\u2019ve ever been in in my life\u201d. <\/p>\n
I certainly felt aspirational. I aspired to have fun in the beautiful, curvaceous new wing of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art \u2013 before my high heels began to hurt.<\/p>\n
Compared with the boring Oscars<\/a> ceremony, the party shimmered. Even stars like Al Pacino<\/a> and Larry David<\/a>, who often dart away early, were grinning and lingering. And who doesn\u2019t like to see Mick Jagger<\/a> devilishly dancing around with Jon Batiste<\/a>?<\/p>\n In one dimly lit spot, Jeff Bezos<\/a> and Lauren S\u00e1nchez Bezos were acting as passionate as a couple of teenagers; in another, Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet<\/a> and Kylie Jenner<\/a> were holding court across the bar from Kendall Jenner<\/a> and Jacob Elordi<\/a>. A gorgeous Jane Fonda<\/a> was, naturally, literally getting her feelings off her chest, sporting a \u201cBLOCK THE MERGER\u201d button on her deep-brown sequin gown \u2013 referring to the depressing marriage of Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery.<\/p>\n The party had a euphoric vibe. So I was startled when two famous guests had a bristling smackdown.<\/p>\n On one side of this black-tie duel was Jeremy O Harris, the 36-year-old playwright who shot to fame when he wrote the Tony-nominated Slave Play while still a student at Yale University\u2019s drama school. He is not one to bite his tongue. On the other was Sam Altman<\/a>, the sly chief executive of OpenAI<\/a>.<\/p>\n I was standing nearby as Harris animatedly lit into Altman for 10 or 15 minutes. The 40-year-old tech mogul seemed taken aback but responded calmly, holding his ground. Harris was upset about Altman\u2019s new deal with the Pentagon to provide AI for classified use.<\/p>\n Some online hailed Harris as a hero.<\/p>\n I called him after the party to hear the whole drama \u2013 a classic story of art rebuking commerce.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew that people around us at the party were taking notice, but I didn\u2019t know that it would become a thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n [\u00a0\u2018Humanity needs to wake up\u2019 to AI dangers, says Anthropic chiefOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Harris said he realised long ago, seeing \u201cwhat OpenAI was already doing to the brains of kids\u201d, that \u201cthis technology is dangerous. I think wilfully allowing dangerous technology to be onboarded by society is, in and of itself, evil\u201d. Even though it was a celebration, he said he could not ignore Altman \u201cwilfully allowing his technology to be an agent in global violences\u201d.<\/p>\n He said he told the powerful AI executive, \u201cI don\u2019t know how you can comfortably look at yourself in the mirror, knowing you just gave your technology over to a department that called themselves the Department of War, and which just killed 175.\u201d<\/p>\n Last month, Anthropic<\/a>\u2019s Dario Amodei refused to buckle when frat boy Pete Hegseth<\/a> had a hissy fit and threatened bogusly to declare Anthropic a \u201csupply-chain risk\u201d if Amodei didn\u2019t allow the Pentagon to use his AI in any way it wanted, as long as it was \u201clawful\u201d. (\u201cLawful\u201d has lost all meaning in the Trump administration.) Amodei did not want his AI to be used for surveillance of Americans or to run autonomous weapons without human oversight. Now Anthropic is suing the government over its designation as a national security risk \u2013 including a new brief filed in California on Friday night \u2013 and the case could very well end up in the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n Altman swooped into Hegseth and Anthropic\u2019s fight, offering to help smooth things over. But somehow Sneaky Sam simply got the contract by engaging in safety theatre while bending to the Pentagon\u2019s demands. In a leaked memo to his staff, Amodei fumed that Altman was spinning, gaslighting and undercutting Anthropic.<\/p>\n