Sam Altman, AI and the future tech bros want

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

**Ronan Farrow** (0:06)
We are in a situation, Post Citizens United, where there is just no political willpower to create oversight for these companies. This is a situation that does require oversight, not just of Sam Altman, but of all of the leaders of this tech.

**Chris Bentley** (0:20)
Talk about the intrigue at OpenAI and all you want, and there is plenty of it. But concerns about artificial intelligence are bigger than one company or one CEO.
It's Tuesday, April 14th, and this is Here & Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, a glimpse into the lives of our tech overlords, or how AI, crypto, and the aegis of unfathomable wealth can make anything seem possible. In a few minutes, we'll hear about the billionaire version of turn on, tune in, drop out. Setting up your own anarcho-capitalist utopia, free of pesky things like taxes.

**Douglas Rushkoff** (1:15)
Of course you want a private enclave, a private place with its own rules, so that you can really enact the survival of the fittest, or in this case, the survival of the richest.

**Chris Bentley** (1:27)
Also, Anthropic's newest AI model comes with a dire warning about cybersecurity. But there is marketing value in saying the product is so powerful, it could end the world.
That's coming up in a few minutes. But first, Ronan Farrow, on his recent story in The New Yorker, written with Andrew Marantz, about Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT. Reportedly, OpenAI is preparing for an initial public offering that could value the company at more than a trillion dollars. And according to the New Yorker investigation, insiders are concerned about Altman's leadership. I'll let Robin Young take it from here.

**Robin Young** (2:13)
Now you may have heard, a suspect has been arrested after an attempt to fire a bomb Sam Altman's home. Sam Altman said the New Yorker article was incendiary. The New Yorker has responded with a statement saying, in part, the New Yorker's investigation into OpenAI and Sam Altman was meticulously reported and fact-checked. The resulting story is fair and responsible. The writers did speak with Altman more than a dozen times, interviewed more than a hundred people over 18 months. And so let's bring in Ronan Farrow.
Ronan, first, do you want to add anything to the magazine statement?

**Ronan Farrow** (2:46)
Well, I think that is the crux of it. You know, when you have a sober, very, in fact, generous to the subject, in terms of, you know, our openness to deep conversation, our sincere listening to and inclusion of any responses, all the hallmarks of the kind of critical journalism that one wants about a moment of national anxiety about a technology and an industry that's important. When you have that in play, you know, that really is the core of what we should be focusing on, the underlying conditions in this industry.
And it's worth noting, OpenAI has relied on this reporting in their own letters to the attorneys general of California and Delaware. So, the dispute here is not factual. And we know the case that you talked about, where this was attempted vandalism or threat, was someone who had, you know, prior posts evincing this ideology. And I think that just opens up the bigger conversation. We are in a moment where a lot of people are, and were prior to this article, concerned about a crisis of legitimacy in AI leadership and the risks that Sam Altman, among others in the industry, has been very emphatic about emphasizing.

**Robin Young** (3:58)
Okay, well, let's get to this because your piece is titled, Sam Altman May Control Our Future But Can He Be Trusted? And it starts with the lead up to Altman's high-profile firing from OpenAI back in 2023 Now one of your cast of characters is OpenAI's chief scientist. This is Ilya Sutskover. He and others worried that Sam Altman was not the guy to have his finger on the button, is the quote, of this new technology they were launching. What was their sense of what they were about to launch? And why were they concerned about Altman?

**Ronan Farrow** (4:27)
Well, it's important to understand the kind of creation myth of OpenAI. OpenAI was founded as a non-profit, and the entire pitch revolved around this technology being, as Altman put it when he was enlisting Elon Musk and Elon Musk's funds, a technology that could be as powerful and as dangerous as nuclear weapons.
The founders of this tech did not have the resources of, let's say, Google, which was several steps ahead. But in internal emails that we report on, they talk about having the upper hand in terms of having a noble, high-minded mission. And they were convinced of a range of risks, right? Everything from the kind of more dangerous, the nuke scenario I just mentioned, the Terminator, Skynet, classic science fiction scenarios of an AI falling out of alignment with human interests and triggering catastrophic devastation of the human species to more immediate ones. Risk to the economy, risk to jobs.