Sam Altman, unconstrained by the truth
New reporting at The New Yorker vindicates concerns that were first raised here
A central subtheme of this newletter, brought together in this 2024 Guardian article, has been that Sam Altman should not be trusted:
Strong reporting in The New Yorker by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz makes the case significantly more strongly.
I will let you read the details, of which there are many, for yourself, but here’s a nice summary of Altman that rings true to me:
Read it here.
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As a postscript, another thing I have noted about Altman is that when he is in trouble, he often tries to change the narrative with hype,
Right now he is in trouble. People are increasingly concerned about the economics of his company, and in big scoop The Information just reported that the even CFO has concerns:
Today’s new OpenAI report on Superintelligence (allegedly a New Deal for the AI era) isn’t about something real or imminent (as far as I can tell), instead I suspect that it’s just another Altmanian attempt to distract, in this case from the fact that the economics of his company make no sense.
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Now, go read that article in The New Yorker.
And think about whether we might need some outside review on this man’s decisions (as I argued in Taming Silicon Valley), or whether it would be just fine to leave our fate as a species partly up to him.
If some future OpenAI model could enables a massive bioweapon or cyberattack, would you really want Altman deciding, unilaterally, whether or not it is ok to release the model?
I sure as hell wouldn’t. And after you read the Farrow-Marantz New Yorker investigation, you probably wouldn’t either.
In the emailed version of the newsletter there was a glitch in the link. Try https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted
My concerns about Altman run as deep as yours. I have read multiple accounts of his behaviours right from his earliest days, especially in Karen Hao's Empire of AI and also nods to his behaviour in many other books where he isn't the central character, but when he is mentioned, it's normally in the context of deceit and unwillingness to be, even on the most basic topics, truthful.
His tendency toward, as you rightly put it, deflection, is omnipresent. He is and has been almost definitely schooled in the deny-deflect tactics of the Intel agencies because he is a connoisseur of its deployment.
I honestly cannot see a future where individuals like him have the ability to make decisions about existential threats to our society.
This problem of Altman is just a small glimpse into the wider problem of the tiny number of incredibly powerful individuals who control all of the AI theatre that we are meant to take up like children being spoon-fed.
It is an insult to our intelligence every time I hear him or Hossabis or Amodei or the current and former folks at Palantir and their ideologies and their conceptual values around moral issues.
It's incredible and all of that sitting alongside what we don't know is going on in China at the same time, the culture in China has, as per Kai-Fu Lee's account of it in AI Superpowers, become as cut-throat and as nihilistic as Silicon Valley.
Therefore we can only imagine what's going on over there. It is truly a really worrying situation, and I don't think that overstates it in any way or fashion.
I will now go and read the New Yorker article and see what they have to say.
All the very best,
Graham.