---
title: "The Atlantic’s “Deal with the Devil” Carries a Warning for Every Leader – Avi Hakhamanesh"
source: "https://avisainewsletter.substack.com/p/cost-of-waiting-on-ai?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=iz3a&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email"
domain: "avisainewsletter.substack.com"
type: "article"
summarized_at: "2026-04-11"
canonical: "https://tl-dr.cc/s/the-atlantic-s-deal-with-the-devil-carries-a-warning-fo-hz_I"
---

# The Atlantic’s “Deal with the Devil” Carries a Warning for Every Leader – Avi Hakhamanesh

**Source:** [avisainewsletter.substack.com](https://avisainewsletter.substack.com/p/cost-of-waiting-on-ai?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=iz3a&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email)  
**Summarized:** 2026-04-11  

- The Atlantic CEO regrets not making more AI licensing deals earlier—waiting cost them negotiating leverage as training data value declined and competitors locked in better terms.
- Leaders face timing decisions where some situations reward patience (avoiding premature builds) but others punish waiting (losing partnerships, competitive positioning, and strategic hires to faster movers).
- Most high-priced consulting firms lack genuine AI expertise and are learning at client expense; seek advisors with proximity to technology, ability to translate research into business decisions, honest uncertainty assessment, and proven body of work.
- Leaders must use AI themselves extensively—there's no shortcut to building judgment about what these systems can actually do for their business.
- Hollywood assistants are using AI through personal accounts with minimal training or oversight while senior leadership remains unprepared to make informed decisions about AI's impact on core business strategy.
- Tubi launched streaming recommendations inside ChatGPT; AI is becoming the primary discovery channel where companies that own the path to decision increasingly own the audience relationship.
- OpenAI acquired The Breakfast Program (TBPN), a tech-focused news show, primarily for distribution to founders, engineers, and future shareholders ahead of expected IPO—marking first major media acquisition.
- Anthropic withheld Claude Mythos Preview from public release due to cybersecurity risks from advanced reasoning capabilities, sharing early access with 40+ companies to find vulnerabilities instead.
- AI models lack human creativity's "idling" phase—they cannot step away from problems, let ideas simmer, or leverage intuitive leaps that come from physical presence and living life away from the work.
- Sacramento Bee journalists refused to publish AI-generated rewrites under reporter bylines, citing risks to credibility, source trust, and public faith in local news.

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