koolbaLarry Summers resigns from OpenAI board
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/technology/larry-summers-..., https://archive.ph/ASfq6
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/19/larry-summers-epstein-openai.html
Let's not forget that time he advocated for dumping toxic waste in poor countries.
"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that."
He also famously gave a speech declaring that one of the reasons women were underrepresented in science and engineering faculty positions was "issues of intrinsic aptitude". - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/science-jan-june05-summ...
It was 20 years ago but he has not changed his views, in one of his emails to Epstein (in 2017) he "observed that half the IQ in world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population..."
Most notable about that is the implied confession that he was lying in his original formulation, which was that there was more variability in male intelligence than female intelligence (higher highs, lower lows). In fact, his private undisclosed belief was simply that women were inferior.
I remember hearing about the variance thing ages ago. Back when I was young enough and naïve enough to trust statements said in official voices without critically assessing them.
With the caveat that IQ tests scores are now provably something one can learn to be good at (because LLMs do much better on public tests than private ones), was the claim about variably actually justified at the time, or was it nonsense even back then?
I'm not touching the variability thing with a 10 foot pole except to say that the further out on each extreme of the IQ "scale" you go the less reliable the scores are. The whole idea of using IQ as a ranking of ability rather than a diagnostic tools is bogus. I do think it's clear now though that Summers was simply being a misogynist (you lose the presumption of good faith when you disclose that you'd been lying all along.)
Why? He was one of the most prominent economists of his era. This is in the news because it's newsworthy, not because he's been radioactive this whole time.
Why not? He was a part of a pretty radioactive network of people. I doubt that he just happened to hang with Epstein by mere coincidence, and it does raise some questions about how much Sheryl knew about it.
I think it's very silly to suggest that Sandberg would have known anything at all about Summers personal life a decade before he had dealings with Epstein, simply because he was an undergraduate adviser to her. He was already one of the most famous economists in the country in the late 1980s, when that happened.