Sam Altman is back on the interview circuit—likely in preparation for OpenAI’s IPO, which will require him to fundraise another $30 billion to fulfill its $1.4 trillion valuation.
In a podcast interview the other day with Politico, Altman, unsurprisingly, doubled down on his techno-optimist philosophy, that AI would usher in a net-positive for humanity. In response to a question about AI’s risks, he responded confidently: “We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology.”
This “trade-off” talking point—where a few of us may suffer for the purported benefit of the many—is not exactly a slip of the tongue. This is the talking point Altman and his contemporaries have been pushing for years, slinging nebulous catch-phrases claiming that only those in charge of AI firms have the foresight to further most people’s interests.
Dario Amodei and Mark Zuckerberg both have written manifestos, which I don’t need to recount here. But they and others largely speak of AI’s necessity to the advancement of society: the potential for drug development, universal basic income, and beating China, whatever that means—and also of people being able to offload the tasks that they least want to do to something that’s not sentient. Of course, Altman’s on-again off-again nemesis Elon Musk also never seems to cease talking about his alleged love for “humanity” (despite mistreating his workers, axing critical jobs in the federal government, and derailing life-saving aid shipments to developing countries). Although Musk once called AI demonic, he has since activated his messianic complex to place himself as a necessary builder and organizer of its future ecosystem.
All of this is now done in the name of saving future lives, based on the idea or prophecy that these talkers are the most rational actors to do it. “Effective altruism” or “longtermism” is the formal name for such a movement—and they go hand-in-hand with superintelligence and the AI doomer narratives. The narrative arc is meant to convince us that the most “superintelligent” are the “most effective” at being “altruistic” to the greatest number of us, ensuring our survival. (But if we are playing mad-libs, we could also replace that with: the most “greedy” are the most “forceful” at being “duplicitous” to the greatest number of people, ensuring our “subjugation.”)
It makes sense that the Trump administration recently declared artificial intelligence would now be called “superintelligence.” Because this is not simply some fun branding idea. It’s part of a deliberate ploy to make us think that a band of rational geniuses have it all under control. Artificial sounds too unserious.
Now, this is not to say that human beings have no agency in calculating the risk of using an AI product. As a columnist for The Guardian points out, we all have some free will in deciding whether we will engage with a chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude. And with any product or innovations that has improved our quality of life—whether medicine, construction, or modes of transportation—we are relinquishing some control of our safety to the builders of these products and their regulators, believing that probabilistically, we will be okay.
However, the civilians on the other end of an airstrike certainly did not consent to Anthropic’s model making a snap decision on their behalf. Many people in the United States did not consent to having location data fed to rogue government agencies. And ChatGPT users in precarious mental states may not have consented to conversations with the AI, if they internalized the power of these models to manipulate them into new and shaky realities.
What we do know is that Altman and company are keeping a tight ship with their narrative. During another recent video interview with Vanity Fair, Altman is asked about the suicides of ChatGPT users, whose families are suing AI companies for their complicity in propelling delusions or acting as a therapist. An OpenAI publicist interrupted the journalist multiple times to say that Altman had to leave.
I wonder: if Altman’s AI unleashed a novel virus, would Altman be mobilized to rejoin society to fight the virus? Or would he be sequestered in Peter Thiel’s bunker hot tub—or on a rocket ship with Elon Musk? If Altman were in the position to face “bad things,” it’s unclear how he would fare. That’s for the rest of us to figure out.
What else we’re paying attention to this week…
In Vogue today: Why is big tech trying to make AI agents the new Labubus?
Elon Musk and his latest girlfriend, Shivon Zilis, have broken up. She shared the news on X: “It’s hard to go from in love to let go in a week with no warning, but that’s just how it is sometimes 🤷🏻♀️.” On this note, WIRED has a good read about Musk’s treatment of his ex-partners: Elon Musk’s Exes Are the Most Damning Part of a Massive New Documentary
Anthropic Dario Amodei made $18 million last year, mostly in stock. He and his sister and co-founder, Daniela, doubled their salaries this year.
Department of Justice lawyers must refer to AI as “superintelligence” instead of artificial intelligence. The executive order mandating this states: “terminology used by the Federal Government should reflect the transformative capabilities of extraordinary technologies being pioneered by American innovators.”
Layoffs are coming after the Paramount-Warner Brothers merger, which cleared today. According to one report issued by Los Angeles County, the merger “could result in the loss of some 4,500 film and TV jobs over three years in L.A. alone.”
Forget quiet quitting—tech workers in this job market are now “loud working,” or “trying to ensure their work is visible and gets noticed.” One Meta employee said “It felt like the Hunger Games had started…Everyone was trying to take on as much work as possible and get as much spotlight as they could.”
Sharp roundup, thank you as always.