Today, Altman is finding it hard to shake a public image as unknowable, at best, and perhaps delusional about what constitutes an acceptable future. As the public understanding of AI grows—along with the anxiety it induces—he has found himself the figurehead of humanity’s next chapter. Even Altman admits there’s a “non-zero” chance that it’s our last.
I sat down with Altman for two interviews in San Francisco, the first on September 11 and then again on October 2. In the intervening three weeks, the story about AI seemed to turn upside down about a half dozen times.
Over the course of these two conversations, we discussed Altman’s life—his children, his rivalries, pronatalism, “prepping” for the apocalypse, visiting Trump’s ballroom, Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, and being characterized as a villain in society.
We talked about his company—new products, the delayed IPO, his compensation, the recent exodus of executives.
And we talked about the technology itself—exinction risk, alignment, regulation, and ChatGPT’s role in mental health and suicide.
It is clear that while Altman publicly asks to be regulated, he is also aware that it is unlikely he will be. “We’re going to make…I’m going to make many individual decisions that you’re clearly not going to like,” he told me. “You can come try making them all; they’re not so easy.”
(OpenAI has an agreement with Condé Nast, the owner of Vanity Fair, which allows OpenAI to display its content in search results for a limited term.)
Our conversations have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Watch Part 1 on this page and read the transcript below.
Watch Part 2 and read the transcript here.
Mark Guiducci: Sam, it’s good to see you.
Sam Altman: You too.
We are speaking at an extraordinary time, I think, for AI in terms of the capabilities and the risks and the public awareness of both.