"We see a future where intelligence is a utility like electricity or water and people buy it from us on a meter." - Sam A.

This gives me very Gavin Belson vibes.

Intelligence is pretty overrated when it comes to making predictions about the future, especially when the person making the prediction has financial motivations for saying one thing or another. Everyone on your list fits that bill, with the added downside that most are extremely partisan in their worldviews.

I'd suggest instead reading books by historians, especially ones that are fairly old and have focused on a particular topic. IMO, breadth is more useful for looking at long timelines.

I find the people you listed deranged. Their view of our future is dark, paranoid and worse than the present.

I wouldn't say I enjoy listening to anyone smart. It can be interesting to see what different people have to say, regardless of where their IQ puts them on the curve. Quite often I find that smart people celebrities such as the ones you mention only have insight to offer in one area and are pretty out of touch with life in the general population.

I would recommend picking multiple sources who are in a specific field/topic that you're interested in. Try to get opposing viewpoints.

My experience after 45y on earth:

Smart people don't listen to others, others listen to smart people.

So, I don't listen to anyone. There is so much words and so less meaning. As soon some one opens his mouth, words and tone tend to manipulate (steer) another. I hear, but don't listen :)

>> I am pretty smart

Then listen to someone who’s wise!!!

To echo your list of four famous people:

Elon Musk, George Hotz, John Carmack, Jim Keller.

Check out their podcasts with Lex Fridman, especially the earlier ones. And George has a nice blog: https://geohot.github.io/blog

Focus on the ideas, not the person talking. Also, you're probably smarter than these people in at least one way.

> Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Dario and SamA

These are all frankly horrific people. Absolute nightmare blunt rotation.

They have some pretty abhorrent views, find better people to listen to, please!

Peter Diamondis is smarter than me I like the xprize. Fei Fei Li is smarter than me I like her humanistic approach to AI.

Sam Harris. Richard Dawkins.

I'd tell you, but that would jeopardize my uniquely advantaged understanding of how business and world economics are going to evolve in the next 3, 5 and 10 years.

Good luck!

> SamA

Not sure about the rest but you should be skeptical about anything that serial grifter says.

This is the guy so out of touch he thought it was a good look to post about how having LLMs summarize your children’s lives to you in a podcast was a “cool idea”.

He’s the reason Ilya and the other top talent left OpenAI.

He lied brazenly about the capabilities of GPT 5.

Anyways, They call him Scam Altman for a reason.

i take all my medical advice from joe rogan /s

i just use X and follow smart people in areas i find interesting (business, tech, science, diy) as they share what they're working on, what cool findings or observations they post, and engage with them.

i see a lot of cynical takes here, but you know.. i've not yet built a 1b+ ARR company. i've not gone to a elite medical research school and then worked on breakthroughs. i've not done many things, and i find it impressive when others have actually done/shipped something that is 1000x more than i have.

i doubt most people here are as smart as they think they are. they're in the middle with me lol, the outliers on the right side of the bell curve are special for a reason. might as well keep an open mind!