Sam Altman was giving people access to GPT 4 APIs because they attended a conference.

"Lick my boots, in person, and you can be one of the privileged few" is very much the behaviour of a Communist dictatorship, not a capitalist corporation.

I can spin up an Azure VM right now in almost any country I choose... except China. That's the only one where I have to beg the government for permission.

How the world of enterprise sales works may come as an unpleasant surprise to you, then.

You've clearly not experienced the reality of enterprise then. You're opinions are based on a limited understanding and knowledge of real life situations when it comes to this sort of stuff.

I’ve only worked in big enterprise and big government for over two decades.

I know exactly how this works.

When someone has power, they will use it. In small, petty ways, or big “do me favours for access” ways.

Then you should know this is literally what every capitalist does!

Seems correct to me. This is a good assessment of the personalities involved.

> "Lick my boots, in person, and you can be one of the privileged few" is very much the behaviour of a Communist dictatorship, not a capitalist corporation

It's both, and more besides. Veblen goods are absolutely a thing in capitalism.

Not that "giving people access to GPT 4 APIs because they attended a conference" should be controversial enough to even get worked up about, let alone to compare to a dictatorship, but Google did much the same at developer conferences: I/O 2012 swag list included a Galaxy Nexus, a Nexus 7, a Nexus Q, and a Chromebox.