A trailer has dropped for 'Artificial,' the Luca Guadagnino-directed film about Sam Altman's brief 2023 ouster and reinstatement at OpenAI, starring Andrew Garfield as the CEO. The footage leans into an unsettling, horror-tinged tone, with Garfield's Altman warning that 'countries will fall' and industries will collapse while wandering past a bunker full of weapons. The movie, also featuring Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Ike Barinholtz, Jason Schwartzman and Mark Rylance, opens in theaters on Christmas Day.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-08
TechCrunch has published a living glossary of AI terminology aimed at demystifying jargon used across the industry, from AGI to AI agents. The piece highlights 'opaque recurrence,' a reasoning technique reportedly used in OpenAI's new Astra model that has unsettled AI safety researchers, alongside more familiar terms like LLMs, RAG, and RLHF.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-07
OpenAI announced it has met its self-set target of building an automated research intern, a system capable of handling well-defined research tasks that would normally take a human researcher several days. The company says it is now working toward a more advanced automated AI researcher by March 2028, a timeline CEO Sam Altman first outlined in October 2025.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-06
Anthropic, Meta, Google, and OpenAI all rolled out new or upgraded AI models within days of each other, part of what industry insiders call an accelerating release cadence. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the industry is moving to faster update cycles, while executives and analysts describe the frenzy as competitive positioning ahead of major public offerings and market share battles.
cnbc.com
· 2026-09-06
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to criticism about AI's environmental footprint by claiming roughly 38,000 ChatGPT queries use about as much water as growing a single almond. The comparison quickly went viral, with users mocking him online and dubbing him 'Sam Almond' as they debated the accuracy and intent behind the figure.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-04
Veteran director Ari Kuschnir is producing hyperreal AI-generated video shorts that mimic classic late-night infomercials, but instead of selling kitchen gadgets, they cast tech and political figures like Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump as pitchmen for their own real-world visions. The shorts exaggerate their promises into absurd, dystopian sales pitches, blending satire with the manufactured urgency of traditional infomercial tropes.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-04
OpenAI rolled out its new GPT-6 Astra model first to enterprise customers with access to its Daybreak cybersecurity platform, delaying access for Plus and Pro subscribers who expected earlier availability. CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the rollout was 'messy' and apologized, while an OpenAI engineering lead offered subscription credits to affected users for each day access was delayed.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-04
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pushed back on claims that ChatGPT usage consumes excessive water, comparing it to a viral claim that a single query uses as much water as running a shower for six hours. Speaking on the Sources Podcast, he said 38,000 queries equate to the water needed to grow one almond in California, and argued modern data centers no longer rely on evaporative cooling, instead using water similar to an office building.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-03
Students, teachers, and the school's principal have filed 30 lawsuits in a California federal court alleging OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman gave 'substantial assistance' to Jesse Van Rootselaar, the suspect in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting. The suits claim OpenAI's safety team flagged the suspect's violent conversations with ChatGPT and recommended alerting Canadian authorities, but executives chose silence to protect the company's reputation and finances, then merely deactivated the account rather than banning the user outright.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-02
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly attempted to influence California Governor Gavin Newsom before state lawmakers passed a bill regulating how AI chatbots interact with minors. The legislation, aimed at establishing safety guardrails for children's use of companion chatbots, has cleared the legislature but still awaits Newsom's signature to become law.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-09-01
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged in a Time interview that public sentiment has turned sharply against AI and the data centers powering it. Communities nationwide are protesting roughly $130 billion in data center construction, citing strained water supplies, rising living costs and pollution, forming a bipartisan opposition movement. Altman also revealed he's faced personal threats, including a molotov cocktail thrown at his home and a shooting, linked to anti-AI safety activism.
futurism.com
· 2026-08-31
OpenAI's head of data centers, Chris Malone, left the company last week after joining in March 2024, part of a wave of over a dozen executive departures since the start of the year. OpenAI attributes Malone's exit to a reorganization of its infrastructure team, now led by VP Sachin Katti reporting to president Greg Brockman. Other departures cited include the COO, chief revenue officer, chief marketing officer, and Altman's top deputy.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-08-26
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