GoKawiilSign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Email address Sign Up Thank you!
You don’t build a trillion dollar AI empire by being a saint.
In a seeping new investigative piece from The New Yorker, numerous tech insiders paint a picture of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as a relentless liar who wants everyone to like him while manipulating even the people closest to him to get what he wants. AI safety, in this slippery portrait of Altman, is merely a bargaining chip he dangles like a carrot to get concerned engineers — and anyone else worried about the tech’s far-reaching consequences — on board, before going back on his word.
Some of these insiders were strikingly blunt in their diagnoses: Altman was a literal “sociopath,” one OpenAI board member alleged.
“He’s unconstrained by truth,” they told The New Yorker. “He has two traits that are almost never seen in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction. The second is almost a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone.”
Aaron Swartz, the famed coder and hacktivist who died by suicide in 2013, used similar language to describe Altman. Swartz had been batchmates with Altman in the inaugural class of 2005 at the Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator, and warned his friends about Altman shortly before his passing.
“You need to understand that Sam can never be trusted,” he told one confidante. “He is a sociopath. He would do anything.”
Altman, it’s worth noting, has been accused by his sister in a civil suit of repeatedly sexually abusing her beginning when she was three-year-old and when he was 12. Altman, his mother, and his brothers all deny the claims.
The New Yorker piece characterizes Altman as more of a businessman than an engineer, leveraging an almost singular ability to get skeptics, be they engineers or the public, to believe that he holds the same priorities as them.
“He’s unbelievably persuasive. Like, Jedi mind tricks,” a tech executive who has worked with Altman told The New Yorker. “He’s just next level.”
... continue reading