More like he'll blog and tweet about using Claude and get gullible software engineers to buy Claude subscriptions and work on their own obsolescence while paying for it.
Many people are still deluded and think he is the same person who wrote the informal AI tutorials in plain html. He isn't, he is selling stuff now.
I'm as jaded as can be but I think Anthropic is now beyond the point where they'd place much value on farming Karpathy's name recognition. I'm sure they considered it an extra plus in his hiring package but they wouldn't do the level of comp package he'd want if they didn't believe the odds were decent that he'll contribute serious value.
Sure, it can always not work out but that's no more a risk with him than any high-profile hire who doesn't really need the money and will always have other options.
What is he selling? How is this time different compared to when he was at OpenAI or at Tesla? You could say he was shilling those products too. I don't see any shift. He's still posted free in depth YouTube videos recently.
FYI, Karpathy has 2.5M followers on twitter, Anthropic has 1.3M (OpenAI has 4.8M, for comparison). I'm sure Karpathy will be doing mostly research and will make real contributions, but I also think it would be naive to ignore the weight of his voice. It's not negligible, nor is it the only thing he brings.
Is that a serious question? He already promoted vibe coding and AI hype. Now he is literally there to promote Anthropic and its IPO price.
When he was at OpenAI it wasn't overtly commercial yet. At Tesla he had a way lower profile. Now he is the vibe coding Jesus for deluded software engineers. The impact is much larger.
He was literally rolled out in front of camera as Tesla's AI prodigy at multiple streamed events designed to appeal to techy consumers and dev recruitment. He's definitely been one of AI's public personas for a long time now, and his employers have regularly aided/directed/utilized him accordingly.
First they verify whether a picture came from OpenAI, then they'll include subscriber data and geolocation.
Well, they'll finally find out that no one wants to look at AI generated pictures or text. Once they do that, the tool will fail for the public and only work for the government.
Many people are still deluded and think he is the same person who wrote the informal AI tutorials in plain html. He isn't, he is selling stuff now.