AI Summary
5 min readThe Man Who Would Control Our Future
About a week before this episode was recorded, someone tried to kill OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. A man threw a lit Molotov cocktail into Altman's San Francisco home. Prosecutors say he was motivated by a hatred of AI technology—they found a note on him warning of humanity's impending extinction from AI. Days later, two more people drove by Altman's house and one fired a gun at it. Between the two attempts on his life, Altman took to his blog to ask people not to try to kill him anymore, partly blaming a recent New Yorker profile for the violence.
That profile, written by Andrew Marantz and Ronan Farrow, posed a central question: "Sam Altman May Control Our Future. Can He Be Trusted?" Marantz joined Today Explained to give the abbreviated answer.
The Pattern of Promises
Marantz and Farrow spoke to more than 100 people for the piece. "Most of them have their doubts about whether he can be trusted," Marantz said. One of the most striking quotes came from someone who described Altman as "unconstrained by truth"—a phrase Marantz confirmed was echoed by many, including people who still work with him. "There were many, many people who used words like sociopathic, who used words like 'unconstrained by truth.'"
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Violence Against Sam Altman** - Two recent attempts on the life of the OpenAI CEO frame the episode’s central tension about trust and power in AI.
- 2 (00:49) **The Core Question: Can Sam Altman Be Trusted?** - The New Yorker investigation into Altman’s character and the structural problem of concentrating AI power in one person.
- 3 (02:55) **The Original Promise vs. The Reality** - Altman’s founding pitch for OpenAI was a safety-first, nonprofit research lab that could not be corrupted by power-seeking individuals.
- 4 (04:20) **The Broken Promise to AI Safety Advocates** - Many were recruited to OpenAI with the promise of cautious, safety-focused work, only to feel betrayed as the company accelerated the AI race.
- 5 (05:28) **The Broken Promise to Government Regulators** - Altman publicly pleaded for regulation under Biden, then praised Trump for deregulation, revealing a pattern of saying what works in the room.
- 6 (06:36) **Altman: Businessman, Not Tech Savant** - The investigation reveals Altman is not a technical genius but a business executive who saw AI as a business opportunity.
- 7 (08:19) **The Power of AI: Hype or Real Threat?** - The episode grapples with whether AI’s dangers are exaggerated or genuinely existential, noting its real-world integration into military tech and infrastructure.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Anthropic and OpenAI are proving the inherent difficulties in trusting AI companies with our future.
This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc. Photo by Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
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