The problem with naming my consulting clients that some of them won't want to be named. I don't want to turn down paid work because I have a popular blog.

I have a very strong policy that I won't write about someone because they paid me to do so, or asked me to as part of a consulting engagement. I guess you'll just have to trust me that I'll hold to that. I like to hope I've earned the trust of most of my readers.

I do have a structural conflict, which is one of the reasons my disclosures page exists. I don't value things like early access enough to avoid writing critically about companies, but the risk of subtle bias is always there. I can live with that, and I trust my readers can live with it too.

I've found myself in a somewhat strange position where my hobby - blogging about stuff I find interesting - has somehow grown to the point that I'm effectively single-handedly running an entire news agency covering the world's most valuable industry. As a side-project.

I could commit to this full-time and adopt full professional journalist ethics - no accepted credits, no free travel etc. I'd still have to solve the revenue side of things, and if I wrote full time I'd give up being a practitioner which would damage my ability to credibly cover the space. Part of the reason people trust me is that I'm an active developer and user of these tools.

On top of that, some people default to believing that the only reason anyone would write anything positive about AI is if they were being paid to do so. Convincing those people otherwise is a losing battle, and I'm trying to learn not to engage.

So I'm OK with my disclosures and principles as they stand. They may not get a 100% pure score from everyone, but they're enough to satisfy my own personal ethics.

I have just added disclosures links to the footer to make them easier to find - thanks for the prod on that: https://github.com/simonw/simonwillisonblog/commit/95291fd26...

The problem with these "shill for an AI company" thoughts is that it really doesn't matter how good their shilling or salesmanship is. They actually do need to provide value for it to be successful

These aren't tools they're asking $25,000 upfront for, that they can trick us that it for sure definitely works and get the huge lump sum then run

Nah.. at best they get a few dollars upfront for us to try it out. Then what? If it doesn't deliver on their promise, it flops

Simon Willison has publicly posted many times that he finds it frustrating that people call him a shill for the AI industry

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that your enumerated list would be considered beyond simply being enthusiastic about a new technology