OpenAI’s Sam Altman is becoming one of the most powerful people on Earth. We should be very afraid
By Gary Marcus,
The Guardian
| 08. 03. 2024
Image by TechCrunch from Flickr licensed under CC by 2.0
On 16 May 2023, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s charming, softly spoken, eternally optimistic billionaire CEO, and I stood in front of the US Senate judiciary subcommittee meeting on AI oversight. We were in Washington DC, and it was at the height of AI mania. Altman, then 38, was the poster boy for it all.
Raised in St Louis, Missouri, Altman was the Stanford dropout who had become the president of the massively successful Y Combinator startup incubator before he was 30. A few months before the hearing, his company’s product ChatGPT had taken the world by storm. All through the summer of 2023, Altman was treated like a Beatle, stopping by DC as part of a world tour, meeting prime ministers and presidents around the globe. US Senator Kyrsten Sinema gushed: “I’ve never met anyone as smart as Sam… He’s an introvert and shy and humble… But… very good at forming relationships with people on the Hill and… can help folks in government understand AI.” Glowing portraits at the...
Related Articles
A Review of Exposed by Becky McClain
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
— John Lewis
Becky McClain became famous when she successfully sued Pfizer, one of the very largest pharmaceutical and biotech companies. She...
By Josie Ensor, The Times | 12.09.2025
A fertility start-up that promises to screen embryos to give would-be parents their “best baby” has come under fire for a “misuse of science”.
Nucleus Genomics describes its mission as “IVF for genetic optimisation”, offering advanced embryo testing that allows...
By Katherine Long, Ben Foldy, and Lingling Wei, The Wall Street Journal | 12.13.2025
Inside a closed Los Angeles courtroom, something wasn’t right.
Clerks working for family court Judge Amy Pellman were reviewing routine surrogacy petitions when they spotted an unusual pattern: the same name, again and again.
A Chinese billionaire was seeking parental...
By Tina Stevens, CounterPunch | 12.11.2025
Silicon Valley and other high tech billionaires are investing millions in start-ups dedicated to creating genetically engineered (GE) babies, according to a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report. AI mogul Sam Altman, cryptocurrency entrepreneur Brian Armstrong, venture capitalist Peter...
