Calacanis: Anthropic Believes It's 'Creating a God,' Not Software

Venture capitalist and All In Podcast co-host Jason Calacanis appeared on episode 1905 of the No Agenda Show, titled 'Nerdballs,' published September 20, 2026, to deconstruct what he characterizes as a dangerous ideological capture inside the AI safety movement. Speaking with host Adam Curry from the Texas Hill Country, Calacanis argued that Anthropic's leadership has convinced itself it is birthing a deity rather than building software. 'They actually think that they are creating a god. They're not. They're creating software,' he said, comparing the company's effective-altruism roots to the doomed engineers in the film Prometheus.

The episode arrives as AI regulation, data center politics, and media access fights converge ahead of the 2026 midterms. Curry played clips of University of Washington professor Pedro Domingos describing a reported Anthropic 'funeral' for a retired Claude model, a ritual that underscores the 'model welfare' doctrine now publicly criticized by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. Calacanis insisted the real story is regulatory capture: frontier labs lobbying Washington to gate open-source competitors like DeepSeek, GLM, and NeMoTron. That dynamic matters because it could determine whether AI development remains a competitive market or becomes a cartel of incumbent labs writing their own rules.

Calacanis also unpacked the reported Hugging Face security incident and growing calls for an AI 'kill switch,' arguing that such proposals often mask competitive motives. He tied the panic to broader Silicon Valley power politics, noting that the All In Summit at the Shrine Auditorium drew 3,000 attendees and surprise call-ins from President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. He recounted Huang fumbling the speakerphone button when Trump called mid-panel, and described pressing Meta's Dina about the company's record $17 billion settlement during a data-center segment.

The political weaponization of data centers by candidates like Texas Democrat James Talarico also drew scrutiny. Curry and Calacanis connected that backlash to rising diesel prices tied to Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries, arguing that energy costs and infrastructure battles are now inseparable from AI's expansion. The conversation further touched on Trump's revocation of press credentials for CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, which Calacanis framed as part of a larger media deconstruction that No Agenda has long chronicled.

For listeners tracking the AI hype cycle, the episode offers a rare backstage view of how the industry's most influential figures actually think. Calacanis revealed that This Week in Startups sells out its ad inventory a year in advance at $3,000 per spot, and shared the origin story of All In as a pandemic-era poker group with David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg. Curry pivoted to Bitcoin, predicting a $430,000 peak, while Calacanis discussed parenting in the smartphone era. The pair also reflected on the late John C. Dvorak, whose memory drives the show's ongoing Order of the Ant tribute campaign.

Episode 1905 is available now wherever podcasts are heard. For more information, visit the No Agenda Show website or subscribe on your preferred podcast platform.