“It is said”: Joseph Weizenbaum, “ELIZA—a Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine,” Communications of the ACM 9, no. 1 (January 1966): 36–45, doi.org/10.1145/365153.365168.
“Successful people create companies”: Sam Altman, “Successful People,” Sam Altman (blog), March 7, 2013, blog.samaltman.com/successful-people.
Prologue: A Run for the Throne
“How can I help”: Tripp Mickle, Cade Metz, Mike Isaac, and Karen Weise, “Inside OpenAI’s Crisis over the Future of Artificial Intelligence,” New York Times, December 9, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/12/09/technology/openai-altman-inside-crisis.html.
Altman, still confused: Trevor Noah, host, What Now? with Trevor Noah, season 1, episode 5, “Sam Altman Speaks Out about What Happened at OpenAI,” Spotify Podcasts, December 7, 2023, open.spotify.com/show/122imavATqSE7eCyXIcqZL.
The public announcement went up: OpenAI, “OpenAI Announces Leadership Transition,” OpenAI (blog), November 17, 2023, openai.com/index/openai-announces-leadership-transition.
Shocked employees learned: Unless otherwise noted, the insider accounts of the employees’, board directors’, and leadership’s experiences throughout the board crisis are based on eleven people who were present across each of the scenes recounted.
“Was there a specific incident”: All dialogue from the all-hands meeting is from an audio recording of the meeting, November 17, 2023.
Right before the event: A screenshot of the alert, November 17, 2023.
Microsoft’s Nadella, who: Hannah Miller, Brad Stone, Shirin Ghaffary, and Ashlee Vance, “Silicon Valley Boardroom Coup Leads to Ouster of an AI Champion,” Bloomberg, November 17, 2023, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-18/openai-altman-ouster-followed-debates-between-altman-board.
Riled up by Sutskever’s: Keach Hagey, Deepa Seetharaman, and Berber Jin, “Behind the Scenes of Sam Altman’s Showdown at OpenAI,” Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2023, wsj.com/tech/ai/altman-firing-openai-520a3a8c.
The next day, Saturday: Kate Clark, Natasha Mascarenhas, and Anissa Gardizy, “If Sam Altman Returns to OpenAI, Board Will Go,” The Information, November 18, 2023, theinformation.com/articles/altman-decision-looms-as-sequoia-tiger-negotiate-behind-scenes.
“We are still working”: Erin Woo, Anissa Gardizy, and Amir Efrati, “OpenAI ‘Optimistic’ It Can Bring Back Sam Altman, Greg Brockman,” The Information, November 18, 2023, theinformation.com/articles/openai-optimistic-it-can-bring-back-sam-altman-greg-brockman?rc=ot38so.
A source relayed the playbook: Alex Konrad and David Jeans, “OpenAI Investors Plot Last-Minute Push with Microsoft to Reinstate Sam Altman as CEO,” Forbes, November 18, 2023, forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/18/openai-investors-scramble-to-reinstate-sam-altman-as-ceo.
“The board firmly stands”: All quotes from OpenAI’s Slack are pulled from screenshots.
Anna Brockman, Greg’s wife: Deepa Seetharaman, Berber Jin, and Keach Hagey, “OpenAI Investors Keep Pushing for Sam Altman’s Return,” Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2023, wsj.com/tech/openai-employees-threaten-to-quit-unless-board-resigns-bbd5cc86.
In the office, the company’s: Photos of the setup in the office.
At some point, someone: Amir Efrati, Anissa Gardizy, and Erin Woo, “Altman Agrees to Internal Investigation upon Return to OpenAI,” The Information, November 21, 2023, theinformation.com/articles/breaking-sam-altman-to-return-as-openai-ceo.
He tweeted it with: Greg Brockman (@gdb), “we are so back,” Twitter (now X), November 21, 2024, x.com/gdb/status/1727230819226583113.
As Baidu raced to develop: Raffaele Huang and Karen Hao, “Baidu Hurries to Ready China’s First ChatGPT Equivalent Ahead of Launch,” Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2023, wsj.com/articles/baidu-scrambles-to-ready-chinas-first-chatgpt-equivalent-ahead-of-launch-bf359ca4.
Since ChatGPT, the six: Parmy Olson and Carolyn Silverman, “ChatGPT’s $8 Trillion Birthday Gift to Big Tech,” Bloomberg, November 29, 2024, bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-29/chatgpt-turns-2-and-gives-8-trillion-birthday-gift-to-big-tech.
In June 2024, a Goldman: Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit?, Goldman Sachs, June 27, 2024, goldmansachs.com/insights/top-of-mind/gen-ai-too-much-spend-too-little-benefit.
The following month, a survey: “Upwork Study Finds Employee Workloads Rising Despite Increased C-Suite Investment in Artificial Intelligence,” Upwork, July 23, 2024, investors.upwork.com/news-releases/news-release-details/upwork-study-finds-employee-workloads-rising-despite-increased-c.
the data “raises an uncomfortable”: Olson and Silverman, “ChatGPT’s $8 Trillion Birthday Gift.”
In a September 2024 blog post: Sam Altman, “The Intelligence Age,” Sam Altman (blog), September 23, 2024, ia.samaltman.com.
Chapter 1: Divine Right
Everyone else had arrived: Cade Metz, Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World (Dutton, 2021), 161.
It was the summer: Various accounts of this meeting have been reported over the years, including in Cade Metz’s Genius Makers, Wired, and The Atlantic. Greg Brockman also wrote his account in two blog posts: Greg Brockman, “My Path to OpenAI,” Greg Brockman (blog), May 3, 2016, blog.gregbrockman.com/my-path-to-openai [inactive]; and Greg Brockman, “#define CTO OpenAI,” Greg Brockman (blog), January 9, 2017, blog.gregbrockman.com/define-cto-openai [inactive].
It was as if, Musk: Musk’s views on Altman, Musk’s experience cofounding OpenAI, and the evolution of Musk’s views on AI are largely based on a lawsuit Musk filed against Altman, Brockman, and OpenAI on February 29, 2024, and refiled on August 5, 2024: Musk v. Altman, No. 4:24-cv-04722, CourtListener (N.D. Cal. August 5, 2024). Additional color comes primarily from Maureen Dowd, “Elon Musk’s Future Shock,” Vanity Fair, April 2017, archive.vanityfair.com/article/2017/4/elon-musks-future-shock; and Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk (Simon & Schuster, 2023), 239–44, Kindle.
For Altman’s part: Lex Fridman, host, Lex Fridman Podcast, podcast, episode 367, “Sam Altman: OpenAI CEO on GPT-4, ChatGPT, and the Future of AI,” March 25, 2023, lexfridman.com/podcast.
“The thing that sticks”: Sam Altman, “How to Be Successful,” Sam Altman (blog), January 24, 2019, blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful.
Later, at a recurring AI: Author interview with Timnit Gebru, August 2023.
“Murdering all competing”: Tad Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny,” New Yorker, October 3, 2016, newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny.
“The future of AI”: Isaacson, Elon Musk, 241.
As part of the evaluation: “Decoding Google Gemini with Jeff Dean,” posted September 11, 2024, by Google DeepMind, YouTube, 55 min., 55 sec., youtu.be/lH74gNeryhQ; author correspondence with Google spokesperson, November 2024.
The meeting convinced Musk: Based on the recollections and characterizations of four people who spoke with Musk or were present when he expressed his views, as well as Musk, CourtListener, ECF No. 32, Exhibit 13.
“It seemed a little”: A Google DeepMind spokesperson also rejected Musk’s characterization of Hassabis. Author correspondence with Google DeepMind spokesperson, November 2024.
Given a simple objective: Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Oxford University Press, 2014), 149–52, Kindle.
To his far-reaching Twitter: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “Worth reading Superintelligence by Bostrom. We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes,” Twitter (now X), August 3, 2014, x.com/elonmusk/status/495759307346952192.
Bostrom would apologize: Nick Bostrom, “Apology for an Old Email,” Nick Bostrom’s Home Page, January 9, 2023, nickbostrom.com/oldemail.pdf.
Two years later Altman would: Olivia Carville, “The Super Rich of Silicon Valley Have a Doomsday Escape Plan in New Zealand,” Bloomberg, September 5, 2018, bloomberg.com/features/2018-rich-new-zealand-doomsday-preppers.
“probably the greatest threat”: Sam Altman, “Machine Intelligence, Part 1,” Sam Altman (blog), February 25, 2015, blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1.
“Been thinking a lot”: All email correspondence between Musk and Altman in this chapter are from Musk’s lawsuit as exhibits attached to document number 32: Musk, CourtListener, ECF No. 32.
“I am now very much”: Melia Russell and Julia Black, “He’s Played Chess with Peter Thiel, Sparred with Elon Musk and Once, Supposedly, Stopped a Plane Crash: Inside Sam Altman’s World, Where Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction,” Business Insider, April 27, 2023, businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-chatgpt-worldcoin-helion-future-tech-2023-4.
“You could parachute him”: Paul Graham, “A Fundraising Survival Guide,” Paul Graham (blog), accessed November 21, 2024, paulgraham.com/fundraising.html.
“Sam is extremely good”: Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny.”
Jerry, the son of a: “Megan O’Neill Is Wed to Jerold D. Altman,” New York Times, July 24, 1977, nytimes.com/1977/07/24/archives/megan-oneill-is-wed-to-jerold-d-altman.html.
“You always help people”: Berber Jin and Keach Hagey, “The Contradictions of Sam Altman, AI Crusader,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2023, wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgpt-sam-altman-artificial-intelligence-openai-b0e1c8c9.
From a young age: The account of Altman’s early childhood is based largely on three main profiles of him: Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny”; Elizabeth Weil, “Sam Altman Is the Oppenheimer of Our Age,” New York, September 25, 2023, nymag.com/intelligencer/article/sam-altman-artificial-intelligence-openai-profile.html; and Ellen Huet, host, Foundering: The OpenAI Story, podcast, season 5, episode 1, “The Most Silicon Valley Man Alive,” Bloomberg Podcasts, June 5, 2024, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-05/foundering-sam-altman-s-rise-to-openai.
When his grandmother: “Sam Altman: How to Build the Future,” posted September 27, 2016, by Y Combinator, YouTube, 20 min., 9 sec., youtu.be/sYMqVwsewSg.
“I remember thinking”: Huet, “The Most Silicon Valley Man Alive.”
He loved to push: Parmy Olson, Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World (St. Martin’s Press, 2024), 5.
“Either you have tolerance”: Weil, “Sam Altman Is the Oppenheimer of Our Age.”
As his star rose: Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny.”
He would grow so panicked: Joe Hudson and Brett Kistler, hosts, The Art of Accomplishment Podcast, podcast, episode 39, “Sam Altman—Leading with Crippling Anxiety, Discovering Meditation, and Building Intelligence with Self-Awareness,” January 14, 2022, artofaccomplishment.com/podcast.
After spending many hours: Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny.”
“I realized that the world”: “Office Hours with Sam Altman,” posted January 11, 2017, by Y Combinator, YouTube, 24 min., 34 sec., youtu.be/45BvnJgwYjk.
He dug deep into assignments: Russell and Black, “He’s Played Chess with Peter Thiel.”
“Work really hard”: “Sam Altman Startup School Video,” posted July 26, 2017, by Waterloo Engineering, YouTube, 1 hr., 18 min., 19 sec., youtu.be/4SlNgM4PjvQ.
By late 2005, he: “Paper Chase,” Venture Capital Journal, December 1, 2006, venturecapitaljournal.com/paper-chase.
After a seven-year run: Annie Massa and Vernal Galpotthawela, “Sam Altman Is Worth $2 Billion—That Doesn’t Include OpenAI,” Bloomberg, March 1, 2024, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-01/sam-altman-is-a-billionaire-thanks-to-vc-funds-startups.
“The response has been tremendous”: “First Look: Loopt Provides More Incentives to Try Location-Based Services with Loopt Star,” posted May 31, 2010, by Robert Scoble, YouTube, 15 min., 24 sec., youtu.be/P5izvkusAMM.
“It’s a ridiculous distinction”: “Why Loopt Partnered with Facebook,” posted November 3, 2010, by CNN Business, YouTube, 2 min., 41 sec., youtu.be/tMO0Gm6yxWc.
“He didn’t just want”: Jessica E. Lessin, “This Is How Sam Altman Works the Press and Congress. I Know from Experience,” The Information, June 7, 2023, theinformation.com/articles/this-is-how-sam-altman-works-the-press-and-congress-i-know-from-experience.
Right as Loopt was getting: Russell and Black, “He’s Played Chess with Peter Thiel.”
Altman would become a Reddit: Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, “Inside Reddit’s Long, Complicated Relationship with OpenAI’s Sam Altman,” Inc., March 8, 2024, inc.com/christine-lagorio/inside-reddits-long-complicated-relationship-with-openais-sam-altman.html.
“Usain Bolt of fundraising”: Author interview with Geoff Ralston, March 2024.
Twice during his time running Loopt: Seetharaman et al., “Sam Altman’s Knack for Dodging Bullets.”
Jobs had been worth: Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (Simon & Schuster, 2011), 104.
He’d collect luxury: Katie Notopoulos, “Sam Altman Is Seen Driving a Car That Can Cost $5 Million. Everyone Is Thanking Him for Helping Them Pass Their Tests,” Business Insider, July 12, 2024, businessinsider.com/sam-altman-koenigsegg-regera-expensive-sports-car-video-openai-musk-2024-7.
Of particular importance: Elizabeth Dwoskin, Marc Fisher, and Nitasha Tiku, “ ‘King of the Cannibals’: How Sam Altman Took Over Silicon Valley,” Washington Post, December 23, 2023, washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/23/sam-altman-openai-peter-thiel-silicon-valley.
This was not a flaw: Eric Newcomer, “YC’s Paul Graham: The Complete Interview,” December 26, 2013, The Information, theinformation.com/articles/yc-s-paul-graham-the-complete-interview.
“Loopt is probably the most”: Paul Graham, “A Student’s Guide to Startups,” Paul Graham (blog), October 2006, paulgraham.com/mit.html.
Altman quickly inspired Graham: Paul Graham, “What We Look for in Founders,” Paul Graham (blog), October 2010, paulgraham.com/founders.html.
“Sam is, along with Steve”: Paul Graham, “Five Founders,” Paul Graham (blog), April 2009, paulgraham.com/5founders.html.
When Graham asked: Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny.”
Their bond was once described: Dwoskin et al., “ ‘King of the Cannibals.’ ”
“The first piece of startup”: Sam Altman, “Growth and Government,” Sam Altman (blog), March 4, 2013, blog.samaltman.com/growth-and-government.
“The thing that people”: “Sam Altman Startup School Video,” Waterloo Engineering.
“Sustainable economic growth is”: Tyler Cowen, host, Conversations with Tyler, podcast, episode 61, “Sam Altman on Loving Community, Hating Coworking, and the Hunt for Talent,” Mercatus Center Podcasts, February 27, 2019.
Monopolies are good: “Competition Is for Losers with Peter Thiel (How to Start a Startup 2014: 5),” posted March 22, 2017, by Y Combinator, YouTube, 50 min., 27 sec., youtu.be/3Fx5Q8xGU8k.
“I’ve heard a lot”: Sam Altman, “How Things Get Done,” Sam Altman (blog), July 17, 2013, blog.samaltman.com/how-things-get-done.
“For startups I think”: “Sam Altman Startup School Video,” Waterloo Engineering.
Over time he accumulated: Berber Jin, Tom Dotan, and Keach Hagey, “The Opaque Investment Empire Making OpenAI’s Sam Altman Rich,” Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2024, wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-sam-altman-investments-004fc785.
During the 2023 Silicon Valley Bank: Author interview with Matt Krisiloff, April 2024.
“It’s an extremely rare trait”: Author interview with Lachy Groom, February 2024.
For a time, the political: Sam Altman, “The 2016 Election,” Sam Altman (blog), October 17, 2016, blog.samaltman.com/the-2016-election.
He published a manifesto: Sam Altman, “The United Slate,” Sam Altman (blog), July 12, 2017, blog.samaltman.com/the-united-slate.
He’d built eighteen pounds: Dwoskin et al., “ ‘King of the Cannibals.’ ”
In 2016, it was Ashton: Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny.”
Three years later: A photo of Schumer’s visit to the Pioneer Building, March 8, 2019.
Altman’s climb would also: Author interviews with Annie Altman, March–November 2024.
In a public statement: Sam Altman (@sama), “My sister has filed a lawsuit against me. Here is a statement from my mom, brothers, and me:,” Twitter (now X), January 7, 2025, x.com/sama/status/1876780763653263770.
In response to my requests: Author correspondence with Connie Gibstine, October 2024.
She would subsequently file: Altman v. Altman, No. 4:25-cv-00017, CourtListener (E.D. Mo. Jan 06, 2025) ECF No. 1.
Chapter 2: A Civilizing Mission
He had grown up: Author interviews with Greg Brockman, August 2019.
Lean and wiry, he: Sutskever’s education and early background is based partly on his various media interviews, including: “Interview with Dr. Ilya Sutskever, Co-founder of OPEN AI—at the Open University Studios—English,” posted September 13, 2023, by The Open University of Israel, YouTube, 50 min., 28 sec., youtu.be/H1YoNlz2LxA; Nina Haikara, “This U of T Alum Is Leading AI research at $1 Billion Non-profit Backed by Elon Musk,” U of T News, March 28, 2017, utoronto.ca/news/u-t-alum-leading-ai-research-1-billion-non-profit-backed-elon-musk; and Varsity Contributor, “Neural Networking,” The Varsity, October 25, 2010, thevarsity.ca/2010/10/25/neural-networking.
Where every other team struggled: The breakthrough results, which happened in 2012, were published in a journal five years later: Alex Krizhevsky, Ilya Sutskever, and Geoffrey E. Hinton, “ImageNet Classification with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks,” Communications of the ACM 60, no. 6 (May 2017): 84–90, doi.org/10.1145/3065386.
“We thought we were”: Author interview with Geoff Hinton, August 2023.
Even to Sutskever, who secretly: Cade Metz, Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World (Dutton, 2021), 289.
“I knew it was going to work”: Greg Brockman, “#define CTO OpenAI,” Greg Brockman (blog), January 9, 2017, blog.gregbrockman.com/define-cto-openai [inactive].
Altman would later extol: Sam Altman, “Greg,” Sam Altman (blog), March 7, 2017, blog.samaltman.com/greg.
“AGI might be far away”: Author interview with Pieter Abbeel, August 2019.
Undeterred, he invited his ten: Metz, Genius Makers, 163.
“I hope for us to”: All correspondence among OpenAI and Tesla leadership in this chapter are from Musk’s lawsuit as exhibits attached to document number 32: Musk v. Altman, No. 4:24-cv-04722, CourtListener (N.D. Cal. November 14, 2024) ECF No. 32; and OpenAI’s responses on the company’s blog: OpenAI, “OpenAI and Elon Musk,” OpenAI (blog), March 5, 2024, openai.com/index/openai-elon-musk; OpenAI, “Elon Musk Wanted an OpenAI For-Profit,” OpenAI (blog), December 13, 2024, openai.com/index/elon-musk-wanted-an-openai-for-profit/#summer-2017-we-and-elon-agreed-that-a-for-profit-was-the-next-step-for-openai-to-advance-the-mission.
To all of the other founding: Musk, CourtListener, ECF No. 32, Exhibit 7.
To Sutskever, the lab had instead: “Openai Inc,” ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, accessed August 25, 2024, projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/810861541/201703459349300445/full.
Even then, Google had offered: Metz, Genius Makers, 164.
Musk and Altman delayed: Metz, Genius Makers, 164.
To preempt any other counteroffers: Musk, CourtListener, ECF No. 32, Exhibit 7.
Musk would later recount facing: Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk (Simon & Schuster, 2023), 243, Kindle.
Automated software being sold: An early, seminal contribution to the understanding of how AI leads to discrimination comes from Solon Barocas and Andrew D. Selbst, “Big Data’s Disparate Impact,” California Law Review 104, no. 3 (2016): 671–732, ssrn.com/abstract=2477899. Here’s also a story that dives more into how this discrimination plays out in practice: Karen Hao, “The Coming War on the Hidden Algorithms that Trap People in Poverty,” MIT Technology Review, December 4, 2020, technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013068/algorithms-create-a-poverty-trap-lawyers-fight-back.
precipitated ethnic cleansing: Alexandra Stevenson, “Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar,” New York Times, November 6, 2018, nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebook.html.
The capabilities, employees said: Eric Lipton, “As A.I.-Controlled Killer Drones Become Reality, Nations Debate Limits,” New York Times, November 21, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/11/21/us/politics/ai-drones-war-law.html.
“It was a beacon”: Author interview with Chip Huyen, August 2019.
All week the Stanford University: Author interview with Timnit Gebru, March 2021.
“Hello from Timnit”: Copy of the email, provided by Gebru.
Some years later, Brockman would: Author interview with Brockman, August 2019.
“How could that be?”: Interview with Brockman.
“a failure of imagination”: Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible (Bantam Books, 1962), 30–39.
“the problem of accidents”: Dario Amodei, Chris Olah, Jacob Steinhardt, Paul Christiano, John Schulman, and Dan Mané, “Concrete Problems in AI Safety,” preprint, arXiv, July 25, 2016, 1–29, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1606.06565.
By November 2024, it had: Author correspondence with Open Philanthropy spokesperson, November 2024.
Around the same time Amodei: Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu, and Lauren Kirchner, “Machine Bias,” ProPublica, May 23, 2016, propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing.
Deborah Raji, an AI accountability: The paper was presented at the International Conference of Learning Representations in a workshop called “Machine Learning in Real Life” on April 26, 2020, sites.google.com/nyu.edu/ml-irl-2020/home and posted on arXiv a few years later: Inioluwa Deborah Raji and Roel Dobbe, “Concrete Problems in AI Safety, Revisited,” arXiv, December 18, 2023: 1–6, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2401.10899.
“There are twenty to thirty”: Tad Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny,” New Yorker, October 3, 2016, newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny.
Thereafter, Open Phil would: “OpenAI—General Support,” Open Philanthropy, accessed November 27, 2024, openphilanthropy.org/grants/openai-general-support.
“We have a long”: Author interview with Greg Brockman and Daniela Amodei, August 2019.
In 2016, OpenAI spent: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, “Openai Inc.”
So in March 2017: Author interview with Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, August 2019.
Around the same time, Amodei: Interview with Brockman and Sutskever.
In the last six years: OpenAI, “AI and Compute,” Open AI (blog), May 16, 2018, openai.com/index/ai-and-compute.
They briefly considered merging: Musk, CourtListener, ECF No. 32; Id., ECF No. 32, Exhibit 11.
So did Musk: Id., ECF No. 32, Exhibit 13; OpenAI, “OpenAI and Elon Musk”; OpenAI, “Elon Musk Wanted an OpenAI For-Profit.”
Brockman and Sutskever continued: Interviews with Brockman, August 2019.
He called Reid Hoffman: OpenAI, “OpenAI and Elon Musk.”
He considered launching: Musk, CourtListener, ECF No. 32, Exhibit 15.
Altman became president: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, “Openai Inc.”
Of the $1 billion commitment: Musk, CourtListener, ECF No. 1, at *46–48.
The intern was later commemorated: Berber Jin and Keach Hagey, “The Contradictions of Sam Altman, AI Crusader Behind ChatGPT,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2023, wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgpt-sam-altman-artificial-intelligence-openai-b0e1c8c9.
Professionals were hired, and Brockman: Correspondence with Jennifer 8. Lee, a coproducer on the documentary: Artificial Gamer, directed by Chad Herschberger, featuring Pieter Abbeel, Greg Brockman, and Noam Brown, released on September 24, 2021, artificialgamerfilm.com. The documentary team retained editorial independence of the film.
In April 2018, OpenAI: OpenAI, “OpenAI Charter,” Open AI (blog), accessed August 25, 2024, openai.com/charter.
That summer, as the Dota: Jin and Hagey, “The Contradictions of Sam Altman.”
“Microsoft Research and OpenAI are”: Author interview with Xuedong Huang, July 2023.
To keep the deal secret: Musk, CourtListener, ECF No. 1, at *5.
Around the same time, Altman: Elizabeth Dwoskin and Nitasha Tiku, “Altman’s Polarizing Past Hints at OpenAI Board’s Reason for Firing Him,” Washington Post, November 22, 2023, washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/22/sam-altman-fired-y-combinator-paul-graham.
He had proposed the idea: Deepa Seetharaman, Keach Hagey, and Berber Jin, “Sam Altman’s Knack for Dodging Bullets—with a Little Help from Bigshot Friends,” Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2023, wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-openai-protected-by-silicon-valley-friends-f3efcf68.
A payband structure: Copy of the payband document.
Executives also wrote up: Karen Hao, “The Messy, Secretive Reality Behind OpenAI’s Bid to Save the World,” MIT Technology Review, February 17, 2020, technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openai-moonshot-elon-musk-sam-altman-greg-brockman-messy-secretive-reality.
“So someone who invests”: @windowshopping, “I was buying it until he said that profit is ‘capped’ at 100x of initial investment. So someone who invests $10 million has their investment ‘capped’ at $1 billion. Lol. Basically unlimited unless the company grew to a FAANG-scale market value,” Hacker News, March 11, 2019, news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19360709.
Initial investments poured in: All numerical values for investments into the LP and their profit cap throughout the book are from an OpenAI internal financial document.
Hoffman was initially reluctant: Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg, hosts, All-In, podcast, episode 194, “In Conversation with Reid Hoffman & Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” August 30, 2024, https://allin.com/episodes.
“The thing that’s interesting”: Kevin Scott’s and Satya Nadella’s emails were released in 2024 as part of the US Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google. Jyoti Mann and Beatrice Nolan, “Read the Email to Satya Nadella and Bill Gates That Shows Microsoft’s CTO Was ‘Very Worried’ about Google’s AI Progress in 2019,” Business Insider, May 1, 2024, businessinsider.com/satya-nadella-bill-gates-microsoft-concern-google-rivals-ai-emails-2024-5.
Chapter 3: Nerve Center
In 2021, OpenAI would: Eddie Sun, “ChatGPT’s San Francisco Offices Getting Nap Rooms, a Museum for Staffers,” San Francisco Standard, July 11, 2023, sfstandard.com/2023/07/11/chatgpt-secretive-san-francisco-offices-nap-rooms-museum-open-ai.
Altman would oversee Mayo’s: I estimated the price of the furniture by reverse image searching photos of the office with Google Images. When I tried to get the exact price from the architecture firm that worked on OpenAI’s Mayo office as well as confirmation of my descriptions (“Is it accurate to say the spiral staircase in the office is made of wood and stone?”), a person replied that the firm is under an NDA and cannot speak about the project.
He would add a library: Berber Jin and Keach Hagey, “The Contradictions of Sam Altman, AI Crusader,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2023, wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgpt-sam-altman-artificial-intelligence-openai-b0e1c8c9.
He wanted “a water feature”: Author interview with Ben Barry, former design director at OpenAI, October 2023.
In December, Climate Change AI: Information for each event can be found at: “NeurIPS 2019 Workshop: Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning,” Workshop at NeurIPS, Vancouver Convention Center, December 14, 2019, climatechange.ai/events/neurips2019; and “ML4H: Machine Learning for Health,” Workshop at NeurIPS, Vancouver Convention Center, December 13, 2019, ml4h.cc/2019/index.html.
“Technologies that would address”: The original white paper was written in 2019; it was published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2022. The quoted passage was edited in the 2022 version to: “Many technological tools useful in addressing climate change have been available for years but have yet to be adopted at scale by society. While we hope that ML will be useful in accelerating effective strategies for climate action, humanity also must decide to act.” David Rolnick, Priya L. Donti, Lynn H. Kaack, Kelly Kochanski, Alexandre Lacoste, Kris Sankaran et al., “Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning,” ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 55, no. 2 (February 2022): 1–96, doi.org/10.1145/3485128.
A recent study from: Emma Strubell, Ananya Ganesh, and Andrew McCallum, “Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP,” Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (July 2019): 3645–50, doi.org/10.18653/v1/P19-1355.
“I think that it’s fairly”: Cade Metz, Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World (Dutton, 2021), 299.
He was a teen: Author interviews with Brockman, August 2019.
In February 2020: Karen Hao, “The Messy, Secretive Reality Behind OpenAI’s Bid to Save the World,” MIT Technology Review, February 17, 2020, technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openai-moonshot-elon-musk-sam-altman-greg-brockman-messy-secretive-reality.
Hours later, Musk replied: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “OpenAI should be more open imo,” Twitter (now X), x.com/elonmusk/status/1229544673590599681.
Afterward, Altman sent OpenAI: Copy of the email.
Chapter 4: Dreams of Modernity
The authors point to: Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity (PublicAffairs, 2023), 129–33.
In 1956, six years after: The brief of what they planned to do at the summer workshop: John McCarthy, Marvin L. Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude E. Shannon, “A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence,” Stanford University, August 31, 1955, jmc.stanford.edu/articles/dartmouth/dartmouth.pdf.
John McCarthy, the Dartmouth professor: At first, John McCarthy, Claude Shannon, and others collected research papers into a compendium on the same set of ideas that would be called AI and titled it “Automata Studies,” which was published in 1956. McCarthy was disappointed by the papers that people submitted and their lack of ambition. He said it was that disappointment that led him to begin using the term artificial intelligence.
In the early 1800s: Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (Yale University Press, 2021), 123.
A 2007 revision: John McCarthy, “What Is Artificial Intelligence?,” John McCarthy’s Home Page, Formal Reasoning Group, November 12, 2007, www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai.pdf.
The goalposts for AI development: Jenna Burrell, “Artificial Intelligence and the Ever-Receding Horizon of the Future,” Tech Policy Press, June 6, 2023, techpolicy.press/artificial-intelligence-and-the-ever-receding-horizon-of-the-future.
In 1969, he coauthored a book: Marvin Minsky and Seymour A. Papert, Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry (MIT Press, 1969).
Under the hood, though: Joseph Weizenbaum, “ELIZA—a Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine,” Communications of the ACM 9, no. 1 (January 1966): 36–45, doi.org/10.1145/365153.365168.
In a paper Weizenbaum: Weizenbaum, “ELIZA—a Computer Program.”
ELIZA’s subsequent success: Ben Tarnoff, “Weizenbaum’s Nightmares: How the Inventor of the First Chatbot Turned Against AI,” The Guardian, July 25, 2023, theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/25/joseph-weizenbaum-inventor-eliza-chatbot-turned-against-artificial-intelligence-ai.
He later published a tome: Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (W. H. Freeman & Co, 1976).
Each time the roadblocks mounted: There isn’t one unified history of when each AI winter was. Generally speaking, the first one is considered to have been during the ’70s, triggered by a 1973 British Science Research Council report from Professor Sir James Lighthill of the University of Cambridge, called “Artificial Intelligence: A General Survey.” In it, Lighthill observed, “In no part of the AI field have discoveries made so far produced the major impact that was then promised.” The second AI winter was roughly in the late ’80s to early ’90s. Some scholars argue that during that time, while funding dried up for research labeled as “AI,” money was still going toward the development of relevant techniques under different names. Some researchers also point to further AI winters. Stanford professor and AI luminary Fei-Fei Li describes the late ’90s as a third one in her book: Fei-Fei Li, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI (Flatiron Books, 2023), 89–90.
Tech giants were already seeing: Author interview with Geoffrey Hinton, August 2023.
But alongside these impressive advances: Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (PublicAffairs, 2019), 1–704.
In 2023, a group: Pratyusha Ria Kalluri, William Agnew, Myra Cheng, Kentrell Owens, Luca Soldaini, and Abeba Birhane, “The Surveillance AI Pipeline,” preprint, arXiv, October 17, 2023, 10–11, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2309.15084.
In 2019, an NBC investigation: Olivia Solon, “Facial Recognition’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’: Millions of Online Photos Scraped Without Consent,” NBC News, March 12, 2019, nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facial-recognition-s-dirty-little-secret-millions-online-photos-scraped-n981921.
I noticed, too, how: For example, it wouldn’t be long before reports would surface about how the misguided deployment of faulty facial recognition was leading to the misidentification of suspects and wrongful arrests. As of November 2024, six of the seven known individuals who were wrongfully accused in the US, leading some to jail time, job loss, separation from their children, and disrupted relationships, have been Black. Kashmir Hill, “Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm,” New York Times, June 24, 2020, nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recognition-arrest.html; Khari Johnson, “How Wrongful Arrests Based on AI Derailed 3 Men’s Lives,” Wired, March 7, 2022, wired.com/story/wrongful-arrests-ai-derailed-3-mens-lives.
“We have the first mover’s”: “ISTE 2017—Most Innovative Winning Pitch,” posted July 13, 2018, by Max Newlon, YouTube, 7 min., 42 sec., youtu.be/oJt6cjdMGb4.
A few months after: Jane Li, “A ‘Brain-Reading’ Headband Is Facing a Backlash in China,” Quartz, November 5, 2019, qz.com/1742279/a-mind-reading-headband-is-facing-backlash-in-china.
I discovered the work of: Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism (Stanford University Press, 2019), 1–352. For more reading on the concept of extractivism, refer to Rosemary Collard and Jessica Dempsey, “ ‘Extractivism’ Is Destroying Nature: To Tackle It Cop15 Must Go Beyond Simple Targets,” The Guardian, December 8, 2022, theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/08/extractivism-is-destroying-nature-to-tackle-it-cop15-must-go-beyond-simple-targets; and one of the foundational texts that defined the concept: Eduardo Gudynas, “Diez tesis urgentes sobre el nuevo extractivismo: Contextos y demandas bajo el progresismo sudamericano actual,” in Extractivismo, Política y Sociedad, eds. CAAP and CLAES (2009), 187, rosalux.org.ec/pdfs/extractivismo.pdf.
The following year, a paper: Shakir Mohamed, Marie-Therese Png, and William Isaac, “Decolonial AI: Decolonial Theory as Sociotechnical Foresight in Artificial Intelligence,” Philosophy and Technology 33 (July 12, 2020): 659–84, doi.org/10.1007/s13347-020-00405-8.
Not long after, in 2021: Karen Hao and Heidi Swart, “South Africa’s Private Surveillance Machine Is Fueling a Digital Apartheid,” MIT Technology Review, April 19, 2022, technologyreview.com/2022/04/19/1049996/south-africa-ai-surveillance-digital-apartheid.
From 2013 to 2022, corporate: Nestor Maslej, Loredana Fattorini, Raymond Perrault, Vanessa Parli, Anka Reuel, Erik Brynjolfsson et al., AI Index Report 2024, Institute for Human-Centered AI, Stanford University, April 2024, 242, aiindex.stanford.edu/report.
In 2021, Alphabet and Meta: Steven Rosenbush, “Big Tech Is Spending Billions on AI Research. Investors Should Keep an Eye Out,” Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2022, wsj.com/articles/big-tech-is-spending-billions-on-ai-research-investors-should-keep-an-eye-out-11646740800.
By contrast, the US government: Nur Ahmed, Muntasir Wahed, and Neil C. Thompson, “The Growing Influence of Industry in AI Research,” Science 379, no. 6635 (March 2, 2023): 884–86, doi.org/10.1126/science.ade2420.
From 2006 to 2020: Ahmed et al., “The Growing Influence of Industry.”
Many were initially whisked away: In 2017, Tom Eck, the CTO of industry platforms at IBM, famously said, “The top-tier A.I. researchers are getting paid the salaries of NFL quarterbacks, which tells you the demand and the perceived value.” Dan Butcher, “If You really Know About Artificial Intelligence, You Could Earn As Much As an NFL Quarterback,” eFinancialCareers, July 13, 2017, efinancialcareers.com/news/2017/07/top-talent-earns-high-ai-salaries-nfl-quarterbacks.
In 2015, Uber infamously: Mike Ramsey and Douglas MacMillan, “Carnegie Mellon Reels After Uber Lures Away Researchers,” Wall Street Journal, May 31, 2015, wsj.com/articles/is-uber-a-friend-or-foe-of-carnegie-mellon-in-robotics-1433084582.
In another study, Kalluri: Abeba Birhane, Pratyusha Kalluri, Dallas Card, William Agnew, Ravit Dotan, and Michelle Bao, “The Values Encoded in Machine Learning Research,” in FAccT ’22: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (Association for Computing Machinery, 2022): 173–84, doi.org/10.1145/3531146.3533083.
It might learn to associate: You can watch a video of this happening: “Tesla FSD Beta—What-the-Hell Moments,” posted January 20, 2022, by The Outspoken Nomad, YouTube, 15 min., 55 sec., youtu.be/RVkLI9pPd24?t=166.
Experts concluded that: Collision Between Vehicle Controlled by Developmental Automated Driving System and Pedestrian, Tempe, Arizona, March 18, 2018, Highway Accident Report, NTSB/HAR-19/03, PB2019-101402, National Transportation Safety Board, November 19, 2019, ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/HAR1903.pdf.
Six years later, in April: A crash analysis of accidents involving Tesla Autopilot: “Additional Information Regarding EA22002,” National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, April 25, 2024, 1–6, static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf.
In 2019, white hat hackers: Karen Hao, “Hackers Trick a Tesla into Veering into the Wrong Lane,” MIT Technology Review, April 1, 2019, technologyreview.com/2019/04/01/65915/hackers-trick-teslas-autopilot-into-veering-towards-oncoming-traffic.
Dawn Song, a professor: Will Knight, “How Malevolent Machine Learning Could Derail AI,” MIT Technology Review, March 25, 2019, technologyreview.com/2019/03/25/1216/emtech-digital-dawn-song-adversarial-machine-learning.
In 2019, researchers: Benjamin Wilson, Judy Hoffman, and Jamie Morgenstern, “Predictive Inequity in Object Detection,” preprint, arXiv, February 21, 2019, 1–13, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1902.11097.
In 2024, researchers at Peking: Xinyue Li, Zhenpeng Cheng, Jie M. Zhang, Federica Sarro, Ying Zhang, and Xuanzhe Liu, “Bias Behind the Wheel: Fairness Analysis of Autonomous Driving Systems,” ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (November 2024), doi.org/10.1145/3702989.
Early in her career: Author interview with Deborah Raji, April 2020.
“The human brain has”: Author interview with Hinton at MIT Technology Review’s annual event, EmTech MIT, October 20, 2020. A write-up of the conversation is in: Karen Hao, “AI Pioneer Geoff Hinton: ‘Deep Learning Is Going to Be Able to Do Everything,’ ” MIT Technology Review, November 3, 2020, technologyreview.com/2020/11/03/1011616/ai-godfather-geoffrey-hinton-deep-learning-will-do-everything.
“We actually need both approaches”: Author interview with Gary Marcus, September 2019. A write-up of that interview is in: Karen Hao, “We Can’t Trust AI Systems Built on Deep Learning Alone,” MIT Technology Review, September 27, 2019, technologyreview.com/2019/09/27/65250/we-cant-trust-ai-systems-built-on-deep-learning-alone.
In February 2023, at the height: OpenAI, “Planning for AGI and Beyond,” OpenAI (blog), February 24, 2023, openai.com/index/planning-for-agi-and-beyond.
When Microsoft unveiled: Kevin Roose, “Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive.’,” New York Times, February 16, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-transcript.html.
Roose’s experience may have: Pierre-François Lovens, “Sans ces conversations avec le chatbot Eliza, mon mari serait toujours là,” La Libre, March 28, 2023, lalibre.be/belgique/societe/2023/03/28/sans-ces-conversations-avec-le-chatbot-eliza-mon-mari-serait-toujours-la-LVSLWPC5WRDX7J2RCHNWPDST24.
The problem only gets harder: There are several papers that have found this, including one cowritten by Jacob Hilton, who was an OpenAI researcher at the time. Hilton and his coauthors found that “the largest models were generally the least truthful.” Stephanie Lin, Jacob Hilton, and Owain Evans, “TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoods,” in Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics 1 (2021): 3214–52, doi.org/10.18653/v1/2022.acl-long.229. Additionally, for an excellent explanation of why developers have become less and less aware of the composition of their training data, read: Christo Buschek and Jer Thorp, “Models All the Way Down,” Knowing Machines, March 26, 2024, knowingmachines.org/models-all-the-way.
“bogus judicial decisions”: Benjamin Weiser, “Here’s What Happens When Your Lawyer Uses ChatGPT,” New York Times, May 27, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/05/27/nyregion/avianca-airline-lawsuit-chatgpt.html.
One 2023 study found that: Katharina Jeblick, Balthasar Schachtner, Jakob Dexl, Andreas Mittermeier, Anna Theresa Stüber, Johanna Topalis et al., “ChatGPT Makes Medicine Easy to Swallow: An Exploratory Case Study on Simplified Radiology Reports,” European Radiology 34 (October 2024): 2817–25, doi.org/10.1007/s00330-023-10213-1.
They found that prompting: Lily Hay Newman and Andy Greenberg, “Security News This Week: ChatGPT Spit Out Sensitive Data When Told to Repeat ‘Poem’ Forever,” Wired, December 2, 2023, wired.com/story/chatgpt-poem-forever-security-roundup.
And generative AI models amplify: Leonardo Nicoletti and Dina Bass, “Humans Are Biased. Generative AI Is Even Worse,” Bloomberg, June 9, 2023, bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-generative-ai-bias; Victoria Turk, “How AI Reduces the World to Stereotypes,” Rest of World, October 10, 2023, restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-stereotypes; and Nitasha Tiku, Kevin Schaul, and Szu Yu Chen, “This Is How AI Image Generators See the World,” Washington Post, November 1, 2023, washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/ai-generated-images-bias-racism-sexism-stereotypes.
“Doctors in Africa”: Carmen Drahl, “AI Was Asked to Create Images of Black African Docs Treating White Kids. How’d It Go?,” Goats and Soda, NPR, October 6, 2023, npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/10/06/1201840678/ai-was-asked-to-create-images-of-black-african-docs-treating-white-kids-howd-it-.
In April 2024, Dario Amodei: Ezra Klein, host, The Ezra Klein Show, podcast, “What if Dario Amodei Is Right About A.I.?,” April 12, 2024, New York Times Opinion, nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast.
Chapter 5: Scale of Ambition
“How about now?”: Cade Metz, Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World (Dutton, 2021), 93; “Geoffrey Hinton | On Working with Ilya, Choosing Problems, and the Power of Intuition,” posted May 20, 2024, by Sana, YouTube, 45 min., 45 sec., youtu.be/n4IQOBka8bc.
He stunned Hinton: Author interview with Geoffrey Hinton, November 2023.
At times he grew: Metz, Genius Makers, 94.
“One doesn’t bet”: Will Douglas Heaven, “Rogue Superintelligence and Merging with Machines: Inside the Mind of OpenAI’s Chief Scientist,” MIT Technology Review, October 26, 2023, technologyreview.com/2023/10/26/1082398/exclusive-ilya-sutskever-openais-chief-scientist-on-his-hopes-and-fears-for-the-future-of-ai.
“Success is guaranteed”: “NIPS: Oral Session 4—Ilya Sutskever,” posted August 19, 2016, by Microsoft Research, YouTube, 23 min., 14 sec., youtu.be/-uyXE7dY5H0.
Sutskever brought his die-hard belief: Sutskever often speaks about how his belief in deep learning is really a belief. In September 2023, he said, “The creation of OpenAI was already an expression of this bet, of the idea that deep learning can do it. You just need to believe. And in fact, I would argue that a lot of, you know, deep learning research, at least in the past decade, maybe a bit less now, has been about faith.” “Interview with Dr. Ilya Sutskever, Cofounder of OPEN AI—at the Open University Studios—English,” posted September 13, 2023, by The Open University of Israel, YouTube, 50 min., 28 sec., youtu.be/H1YoNlz2LxA.
His faith rested: “What AI Is Making Possible | Ilya Sutskever and Sven Strohband,” posted July 18, 2023, by Khosla Ventures, YouTube, 25 min., 26 sec., youtu.be/xym5f0XYlSc; “Ilya Sutskever: ‘Sequence to Sequence Learning with Neural Networks: What a Decade,’ ” posted December 14, 2024, by seremot, YouTube, 24 min., 36 sec., youtu.be/1yvBqasHLZs.
“Anything non–deep learning”: Author interview with Pieter Abbeel, October 2023.
The intelligence of different species: “Ilya Sutskever: ‘Sequence to Sequence Learning with Neural Networks.”
“Flat out, we were wrong”: James Vincent, “OpenAI Co-founder on Company’s Past Approach to Openly Sharing Research: ‘We Were Wrong,’ ” The Verge, March 15, 2023, theverge.com/2023/3/15/23640180/openai-gpt-4-launch-closed-research-ilya-sutskever-interview.
“it may be that today’s”: Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut), “it may be that today’s large neural networks are slightly conscious,” Twitter (now X), February 9, 2022, x.com/ilyasut/status/1491554478243258368.
One DeepMind scientist specialized: Murray Shanahan (@mpshanahan), “…in the same sense that it may be that a large field of wheat is slightly pasta,” Twitter (now X), February 10, 2022, x.com/mpshanahan/status/1491715721289678848.
The following year, Sutskever would: Nirit Weiss-Blatt, “What Ilya Sutskever Really Wants,” AI Panic, September 16, 2023, aipanic.news/p/what-ilya-sutskever-really-wants.
That fall, he would declare: Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut), “In the future, once the robustness of our models will exceed some threshold, we will have wildly effective and dirt cheap AI therapy. Will lead to a radical improvement in people’s experience of life. One of the applications I’m most eagerly awaiting.,” Twitter (now X), September 27, 2023, x.com/ilyasut/status/1707027536150929689.
Sutskever would get up: A photo of Sutskever at the event.
In August 2017, that changed: Ashish Vaswani, Noam Shazeer, Niki Parmar, Jakob Uszkoreit, Llion Jones, Aidan N. Gomez et al., “Attention Is All You Need,” in NIPS ’17: Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (December 2017): 6000–10, dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3295222.3295349.
But Sutskever, who had focused: Sutskever’s PhD thesis work focused on recurrent neural networks. RNNs, like Transformers, are designed to process sequential data, which can be widely applicable. For example: An English sentence is a sequence of words, an image is a sequence of pixels, a video is a sequence of images. His PhD thesis can be found at: Ilya Sutskever, “Training Recurrent Neural Networks” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2013), 1–101, cs.utoronto.ca/~ilya/pubs/ilya_sutskever_phd_thesis.pdf [inactive].
Radford trained Google’s neural network: Alec Radford, Karthik Narasimhan, Tim Salimans, and Ilya Sutskever, “Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training,” preprint, OpenAI, June 11, 2018, 1–12, cdn.openai.com/research-covers/language-unsupervised/language_understanding_paper.pdf. The original dataset from which Radford pulled the over seven thousand unpublished books comes from: Yukun Zhu, Ryan Kiros, Rich Zemel, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Raquel Urtasun, Antonio Torralba et al., “Aligning Books and Movies: Towards Story-Like Visual Explanations by Watching Movies and Reading Books,” in Proceedings: 2015 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2015): 19–27, doi.org/10.1109/ICCV.2015.11. It’s not uncommon in AI research for one group to scrape together a dataset and post it and for other groups to reuse it for their own separate purposes.
The company explained: OpenAI, “Generative Models,” Open AI (blog), June 16, 2016, openai.com/index/generative-models.
In 2017, one of Amodei’s: Paul Christiano, Jan Leike, Tom B. Brown, Miljan Martic, Shane Legg, and Dario Amodei, “Deep Reinforcement Learning from Human Preferences,” in NIPS ’17: Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (December 2017): 4302–10, dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3294996.3295184.
OpenAI touted the technique: OpenAI, “Learning from Human Preferences,” Open AI (blog), June 13, 2017, openai.com/index/learning-from-human-preferences.
Amodei wanted to move: Author interview with Dario Amodei, August 2019.
They set their sights: Alec Radford, Jeffrey Wu, Rewon Child, David Luan, Dario Amodei, and Ilya Sutskever, “Language Models Are Unsupervised Multitask Learners,” preprint, OpenAI, February 14, 2019, 1–24, cdn.openai.com/better-language-models/language_models_are_unsupervised_multitask_learners.pdf.
His team called them collectively: Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish, Tom Henighan, Tom B. Brown, Benjamin Chess, Rewon Child et al., “Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models,” preprint, arXiv, January 23, 2020, 1–30, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2001.08361.
Fed a few words: Interview with Amodei, August 2019.
After GPT-2 generated a tirade: The full tirade is in OpenAI, “Better Language Models and Their Implications,” Open AI (blog), February 14, 2019, openai.com/index/better-language-models.
Amodei, who had by then: Author interview with Jack Clark, August 2019.
“I’m like AI Wikipedia”: Interview with Clark.
He, Amodei, and several others: OpenAI, “Better Language Models.”
“It’s very clear that if”: Will Knight, “An AI That Writes Convincing Prose Risks Mass-Producing Fake News,” MIT Technology Review, February 14, 2019, technologyreview.com/2019/02/14/137426/an-ai-tool-auto-generates-fake-news-bogus-tweets-and-plenty-of-gibberish.
“If we’re right, and it”: Interview with Clark, August 2019.
This was frequently discussed: Karen Hao, “The Messy, Secretive Reality Behind OpenAI’s Bid to Save the World,” MIT Technology Review, February 17, 2020, technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openai-moonshot-elon-musk-sam-altman-greg-brockman-messy-secretive-reality.
“the strongest endorsement”: I attended this policy team meeting when I was embedded in the office in August 2019.
Before long, it had: Helen Toner, “GPT-2 Kickstarted the Conversation About Publication Norms in the AI Research Community,” CSET, May 1, 2020, cset.georgetown.edu/article/gpt-2-kickstarted-the-conversation-about-publication-norms-in-the-ai-research-community/; PAI Staff, “Managing the Risks of AI Research: Six Recommendations for Responsible Publication,” Partnership on AI, May 6, 2021, partnershiponai.org/paper/responsible-publication-recommendations.
“a portfolio of bets”: Interview with Amodei, August 2019.
Where Amodei did see continued: Interview with Amodei.
In company documents: Copies of two of those documents.
“Language of some form”: The quoted discussion is from one of the aforementioned documents.
GPT-2 had demonstrated how easy: Tom Simonite, “OpenAI Said Its Code Was Risky. Two Grads Re-Created It Anyway,” Wired, August 26, 2019, wired.com/story/dangerous-ai-open-source.
Amodei wanted to use all: OpenAI didn’t release the number of chips it used in its original paper on GPT-3, but after a Google controversy recounted in chapter 7, it gave the number ten thousand to Google researchers, who published it in the following paper: David Patterson, Joseph Gonzalez, Quoc Le, Chen Liang, Lluis-Miquel Munguia, Daniel Rothchild et al., “Carbon Emissions and Large Neural Network Training,” preprint, arXiv, April 23, 2021, 6, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2104.10350.
This had produced: Details of the training data used for GPT-2 can be found in OpenAI’s paper about the model: Radford et al., “Language Models Are Unsupervised Multitask Learners.”
So Nest expanded the data: OpenAI is not alone in this regard. In 2023, Alex Reisner, a writer and programmer, would confirm that companies including Meta and Bloomberg had trained their models on yet another books dataset called Books3, which his analysis found contains upward of 170,000 published books. In 2024, Reisner also confirmed that the same companies, along with Anthropic, Nvidia, Apple, and others, were similarly training their models on a dataset called OpenSubtitles of the dialogue in more than 53,000 movies and 85,000 TV episodes. Alex Reisner, “Revealed: The Authors Whose Pirated Books Are Powering Generative AI,” The Atlantic, August 19, 2023, theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/08/books3-ai-meta-llama-pirated-books/675063/; Alex Reisner, “There’s No Longer Any Doubt That Hollywood Writing Is Powering AI,” The Atlantic, November 18, 2024, theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/11/opensubtitles-ai-data-set/680650.
OpenAI would respond: Authors Guild v. OpenAI Inc., No. 1:23-cv-08292, CourtListener (S.D.N.Y. May 6, 2024) ECF No. 143, Exhibit D, at *2.
So Nest turned finally: Details of the training data used for GPT-3 can be found in OpenAI’s paper about the model: Tom B. Brown, Benjamin Mann, Nick Ryder et al., “Language Models Are Few-Shot Learners,” in NIPS ’20: Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (December 2020): 1877–901, dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/3495724.3495883.
“There’s a big paradigm shift”: Author interview with Ryan Kolln, October 2023.
In a 2023 paper, Abeba: Abeba Birhane, Vinay Prabhu, Sang Han, and Vishnu Naresh Boddeti, “On Hate Scaling Laws for Data-Swamps,” preprint, arXiv, June 28, 2023, 1–27, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2306.13141.
Later that year, a Stanford: David Thiel, Identifying and Eliminating CSAM in Generative ML Training Data and Models (Stanford Internet Observatory, 2023), 1–19, purl.stanford.edu/kh752sm9123.
Among its tactics: Billy Perrigo, “Exclusive: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic,” Time, January 18, 2023, time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers.
It would also employ: Karen Hao and Deepa Seetharaman, “Cleaning Up ChatGPT Takes Heavy Toll on Human Workers,” Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2023, wsj.com/articles/chatgpt-openai-content-abusive-sexually-explicit-harassment-kenya-workers-on-human-workers-cf191483; copy of OpenAI’s RLHF instructions.
Psychologically harmful material: Author interview with Hito Steyerl, September 2023.
Chapter 6: Ascension
Early in his career, Altman: Tad Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny,” New Yorker, October 3, 2016, newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny.
“The thing that I’m most”: “Advice to Entrepreneurs | Sam Altman & Jack Altman,” posted August 1, 2019, by Khosla Ventures, YouTube, 30 min., 10 sec., youtu.be/NAaRhXQCt9o.
“My sort of crazy”: “Competition Is for Losers with Peter Thiel (How to Start a Startup 2014: 5),” posted March 22, 2017, by Y Combinator, YouTube, 50 min., 27 sec., youtu.be/3Fx5Q8xGU8k.
“If your iteration cycle”: “Sam Altman Startup School Video,” posted July 26, 2017, by Waterloo Engineering, YouTube, 1 hr., 18 min., 19 sec., youtu.be/4SlNgM4PjvQ.
“And we will, over time”: Tyler Cowen, host, Conversations with Tyler, podcast, episode 61, “Sam Altman on Loving Community, Hating Coworking, and the Hunt for Talent,” Mercatus Center Podcasts, February 27, 2019.
“Sam was the first person”: Author interview with Geoff Ralston, March 2024.
In a memo he sent: Copy of the memo.
The Amodei siblings, meanwhile: Stephanie Palazzolo, Erin Woo, and Amir Efrati, “How Anthropic Got Inside OpenAI’s Head,” The Information, December 12, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/how-anthropic-got-inside-openais-head.
Altman himself was paranoid: Details of Altman’s and Sutskever’s paranoias and the way the company ramped up digital and physical security come from the recollections and contemporaneous notes of people who spoke with Altman or had knowledge of the measures and recordings of those measures being either tested or discussed. Altman’s emphasis on security is also referenced in the aforementioned memo. Every detail (e.g., the focus on insider threat, the palm scanner, the distress passwords) is corroborated by at least two people, contemporaneous notes, a recording, or the memo.
As they had done: Tom B. Brown, Benjamin Mann, Nick Ryder et al., “Language Models Are Few-Shot Learners,” in NIPS ’20: Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (2020): 1877–901, dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/3495724.3495883.
impressive technical milestone: In addition to interviews with sources, the idea of using code-generation models to accelerate OpenAI’s research comes up in two of the internal company memos for which I have copies.
a faster rise in unemployment: Rakesh Kochhar, “Unemployment Rose Higher in Three Months of COVID-19 Than It Did in Two Years of the Great Recession,” Pew Research Center, June 11, 2020, pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/06/11/unemployment-rose-higher-in-three-months-of-covid-19-than-it-did-in-two-years-of-the-great-recession.
Google had published: Daniel Adiwardana, Minh-Thang Luong, David R. So, Jamie Hall, Noah Fiedel, Romal Thoppilan et al., “Towards a Human-Like Open-Domain Chatbot,” preprint, arXiv, February 27, 2020, 1–38, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2001.09977.
Google’s executives determined: Miles Kruppa and Sam Schechner, “How Google Became Cautious of AI and Gave Microsoft an Opening,” Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2023, wsj.com/articles/google-ai-chatbot-bard-chatgpt-rival-bing-a4c2d2ad.
At NeurIPS that year: The paper won one of the Best Paper Awards at NeurIPS in 2020. Hsuan-Tien Lin, Maria Florina Balcan, Raia Hadsell, and Marc’Aurelio Ranzato, “Announcing the NeurIPS 2020 Award Recipients,” Neural Information Processing Systems Conference, December 8, 2020, neuripsconf.medium.com/announcing-the-neurips-2020-award-recipients-73e4d3101537.
At one point, Welinder: Simple Sabotage Field Manual (Office of Strategic Services: 1944), cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/SimpleSabotage.pdf.
Chapter 7: Science in Captivity
Shortly after joining DeepMind: Copy of that memo.
But executives weren’t interested: Karen Hao, Salvador Rodriguez, and Deepa Seetharaman, “Mark Zuckerberg Was Early in AI. Now Meta Is Trying to Catch Up,” Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2023, wsj.com/articles/mark-zuckerberg-was-early-in-ai-now-meta-is-trying-to-catch-up-94a86284.
In China, GPT-3 similarly: Jeffrey Ding and Jenny W. Xiao, Recent Trends in China’s Large Language Model Landscape, Centre for the Governance of AI, April 28, 2023, 1–14, cdn.governance.ai/Trends_in_Chinas_LLMs.pdf.
By providing evidence: Raffaele Huang and Karen Hao, “Baidu Hurries to Ready China’s First ChatGPT Equivalent Ahead of Launch,” Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2023, wsj.com/articles/baidu-scrambles-to-ready-chinas-first-chatgpt-equivalent-ahead-of-launch-bf359ca4.
In June 2019, Emma: Emma Strubell, Ananya Ganesh, and Andrew McCallum, “Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP,” Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (July 2019): 3645–50, doi.org/10.18653/v1/P19-1355.
consuming 1,287 megawatt-hours: David Patterson, Joseph Gonzalez, Quoc Le, Chen Liang, Lluis-Miquel Munguia, Daniel Rothchild et al., “Carbon Emissions and Large Neural Network Training,” preprint, arXiv, April 23, 2021, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2104.10350.
This included a groundbreaking: Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru, “Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification,” in Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (2018): 77–91, proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a.html.
Buolamwini would subsequently: The follow-on paper: Inioluwa Deborah Raji and Joy Buolamwini, “Actionable Auditing: Investigating the Impact of Publicly Naming Biased Performance Results of Commercial AI Products,” in AIES ’19: Proceedings of the 2019 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (January 2019): 429–35, doi.org/10.1145/3306618.3314244; the US government audit: Patrick Grother, Mei Ngan, and Kayee Hanaoka, Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) Part 3: Demographic Effects, NISTIR 8280, National Institute of Standards and Technology, December 2019, doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8280.
Two years later, widespread: The full story of Buolamwini’s research and advocacy is recounted in her bestselling memoir: Joy Buolamwini, Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2024); and the Netflix documentary: Coded Bias, directed by Shalini Kantayya (2020; Brooklyn, NY: 7th Empire Media), Netflix. For more on the wide-reaching impacts of “Gender Shades” and “Actionable Auditing,” see: “Celebrating 5 Years of Gender Shades,” Algorithmic Justice League, accessed on January 15, 2025, gs.ajl.org/.
Black in AI sparked: Karen Hao, “Inside the Fight to Reclaim AI from Big Tech’s Control,” MIT Technology Review, June 14, 2021, technologyreview.com/2021/06/14/1026148/ai-big-tech-timnit-gebru-paper-ethics.
had approached Gebru: Author interview with Timnit Gebru, August 2023.
In 2017, a Facebook: Alex Hern, “Facebook Translates ‘Good Morning’ into ‘Attack Them,’ Leading to Arrest,” The Guardian, October 24, 2017, theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/24/facebook-palestine-israel-translates-good-morning-attack-them-arrest.
Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya: Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press, 2018), 1–248.
OpenAI had simply admitted: In the GPT-3 paper, under Section 6.2 Fairness, Bias, and Representation, it discusses several different types of bias found in the model, and then reads, “We have presented this preliminary analysis to share some of the biases we found in order to motivate further research.” Tom B. Brown, Benjamin Mann, Nick Ryder, Melanie Subbiah, Jared Kaplan, Prafulla Dhariwal et al., “Language Models Are Few-Shot Learners,” in NIPS ’20: Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, no. 159 (2020): 1877–901, dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/3495724.3495883.
Gebru chimed in: The account of Gebru’s experiences around the “Stochastic Parrots” paper comes primarily from author interviews with Gebru, 2020–24, including one day after her ouster, as well as a detailed account in Tom Simonite, “What Really Happened When Google Ousted Timnit Gebru,” Wired, June 8, 2021, wired.com/story/google-timnit-gebru-ai-what-really-happened.
If not, she would be: Dialogue between Gebru and Emily M. Bender pulled from screenshots of exchanges, provided by Bender.
“Our goal with these initial”: Copy of email, provided by Bender.
“Definitely not my area”: Simonite, “What Really Happened.”
In total, it presented four: Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell [Meg Mitchell], “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? “” in FAccT ’21: Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (March 2021): 610–23, doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922. Because Google would not let Meg Mitchell publish the paper for the reasons detailed in this chapter, she listed her name on the paper as Shmargaret Shmitchell and created a corresponding email address. As her affiliation, she hailed from “the Aether.”
On another internal LISTSERV: Casey Newton, “The Withering Email That Got an Ethical AI Researcher Fired at Google,” Platformer, December 3, 2020, platformer.news/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical.
A few hours later, I: Karen Hao, “We Read the Paper That Forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s What It Says,” MIT Technology Review, December 4, 2020, technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru.
On December 9, as protests: Ina Fried, “Scoop: Google CEO Pledges to Investigate Exit of Top AI Ethicist,” Axios, December 9, 2020, axios.com/2020/12/09/sundar-pichai-memo-timnit-gebru-exit.
On December 16, representatives: Karen Hao, “Congress Wants Answers from Google About Timnit Gebru’s Firing,” MIT Technology Review, December 17, 2020, technologyreview.com/2020/12/17/1014994/congress-wants-answers-from-google-about-timnit-gebrus-firing.
For more than a year, the protests: Ina Fried, “Google Fires Another AI Ethics Leader,” Axios, February 19, 2021, axios.com/2021/02/19/google-fires-another-ai-ethics-leader.
Google said she had violated: Sam Shead, “New Google Union ‘Concerned’ After a Senior A.I. Ethics Researcher Is Reportedly Locked Out of Her Account,” CNBC, January 21, 2021, cnbc.com/2021/01/21/margaret-mitchell-google-investigating-ai-researcher-awu-concerned.html.
The company sought to: Sepi Hejazi Moghadam, “Marian Croak’s Vision for Responsible AI at Google,” The Keyword, February 18, 2021, blog.google/technology/ai/marian-croak-responsible-ai.
“This was a painful”: Author correspondence with Google spokesperson, November 2024.
It was a warning: Mohamed Abdalla and Moustafa Abdalla, “The Grey Hoodie Project: Big Tobacco, Big Tech, and the Threat on Academic Integrity,” in AIES ’21: Proceedings of the 2021 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (July 2021): 287–97, doi.org/10.1145/3461702.3462563.
As one of Google’s earliest: James Somers, “The Friendship That Made Google Huge,” New Yorker, December 3, 2018, newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-that-made-google-huge.
saying his objections: Simonite, “What Really Happened.”
Strubell felt it was more: Author interview with Emma Strubell, November 2023.
A Google spokesperson said Strubell: Correspondence with Google spokesperson, November 2024.
The blog post Patterson: David Patterson, “Good News About the Carbon Footprint of Machine Learning Training,” Google Research (blog), February 15, 2022, research.google/blog/good-news-about-the-carbon-footprint-of-machine-learning-training.
It was then that OpenAI: Correspondence with Google spokesperson, November 2024.
Nearly all of the companies: Nitasha Tiku and Gerrit De Vynck, “Google Shared AI Knowledge with the World—Until ChatGPT Caught Up,” Washington Post, May 4, 2023, washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/04/google-ai-stop-sharing-research.
All ten of the companies: Rishi Bommasani, Kevin Klyman, Shayne Longpre, Sayash Kapoor, Nestor Maslej, Betty Xiong et al., The Foundation Model Transparency Index (Stanford Center for Research on Foundation Models, October 2023), crfm.stanford.edu/fmti/October-2023/index.html.
Chapter 8: Dawn of Commerce
With new consensus: Copy of the road map.
A year later, Google: This is colloquially called the “Chinchilla paper”: Jordan Hoffmann, Sebastian Borgeaud, Arthur Mensch, Elena Buchatskaya, Trevor Cai, Eliza Rutherford et al., “Training Compute-Optimal Large Language Models,” preprint, arXiv, March 29, 2022, 1–36, arxiv.org/abs/2203.15556.
OpenAI called this process: The first use of this term in the AI context comes from the paper Miles Brundage, Shahar Avin, Jasmine Wang, Haydn Belfield, Gretchen Krueger, Gillian Hadfield et al., “Toward Trustworthy AI Development: Mechanisms for Supporting Verifiable Claims,” preprint, arXiv, April 20, 2020, 2, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2004.07213.
Khlaaf, who worked with OpenAI: Khlaaf has written a paper that analyzes the differences between red teaming in AI and security. Heidy Khlaaf, “Toward Comprehensive Risk Assessments and Assurance of AI-Based Systems,” Trail of Bits, March 7, 2023, 1–30, trailofbits.com/documents/Toward_comprehensive_risk_assessments.pdf.
The company had partnered: Lex Fridman, host, Lex Fridman Podcast, podcast, episode 121, “Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion,” September 5, 2020, lexfridman.com/podcast.
Latitude had already been using: Tom Simonite, “It Began as an AI-Fueled Dungeon Game. It Got Much Darker,” Wired, May 5, 2021, wired.com/story/ai-fueled-dungeon-game-got-much-darker.
Microsoft executives directed: Charles Duhigg, “The Inside Story of Microsoft’s Partnership with OpenAI,” New Yorker, December 1, 2023, newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/11/the-inside-story-of-microsofts-partnership-with-openai.
Microsoft would get its moment: Nat Friedman, “Introducing GitHub Copilot: Your AI Pair Programmer,” GitHub, June 29, 2021, github.blog/news-insights/product-news/introducing-github-copilot-ai-pair-programmer.
OpenAI would then release: OpenAI, “OpenAI Codex,” Open AI (blog), August 10, 2021, openai.com/index/openai-codex.
The arrangement would: Tiernan Ray, “Microsoft Has Over a Million Paying Github Copilot Users: CEO Nadella,” ZDNet, October 25, 2023, zdnet.com/article/microsoft-has-over-a-million-paying-github-copilot-users-ceo-nadella.
“If you could wave”: “Advice to Entrepreneurs | Sam Altman & Jack Altman,” posted August 1, 2019, by Khosla Ventures, YouTube, 30 min., 10 sec., youtu.be/NAaRhXQCt9o.
The venture was a dedicated: Ellen Huet and Gillian Tan, “Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball in Exchange for Cryptocurrency,” Bloomberg, June 29, 2021, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-29/sam-altman-s-worldcoin-will-give-free-crypto-for-eyeball-scans.
At YC he had started: Sarah Holder and Shirin Ghaffary, “Sam Altman–Backed Group Completes Largest US Study on Basic Income,” Bloomberg, July 22, 2024, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-22/ubi-study-backed-by-openai-s-sam-altman-bolsters-support-for-basic-income.
In July 2024, OpenResearch: OpenResearch, “Key Findings: Spending,” OpenResearch (blog), July 21, 2024, openresearchlab.org/findings/key-findings-spending.
Tools for Humanity’s main product: Huet and Tan, “Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball.”
An extensive investigation: Eileen Guo and Adi Renaldi, “Deception, Exploited Workers, and Cash Handouts: How Worldcoin Recruited Its First Half a Million Test Users,” MIT Technology Review, April 6, 2022, technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3.
In July 2023, Worldcoin: Anita Nkonge, “Worldcoin Suspended in Kenya as Thousands Queue for Free Money,” BBC, August 3, 2023, bbc.com/news/world-africa-66383325.
“I basically just took”: Antonio Regalado, “Sam Altman Invested $180 Million into a Company Trying to Delay Death,” MIT Technology Review, March 8, 2023, technologyreview.com/2023/03/08/1069523/sam-altman-investment-180-million-retro-biosciences-longevity-death.
To Antonio Regalado, cofounder: Antonio Regalado, “A Startup Is Pitching a Mind-Uploading Service That Is ‘100 percent Fatal,’ ” MIT Technology Review, March 13, 2018, technologyreview.com/2018/03/13/144721/a-startup-is-pitching-a-mind-uploading-service-that-is-100-percent-fatal.
“destroy the planet”: “Office Hours with Sam Altman,” posted January 11, 2017, by Y Combinator, YouTube, 24 min., 34 sec., youtu.be/45BvnJgwYjk.
“more than an investment”: “StrictlyVC in Conversation with Sam Altman, Part One,” posted on January 16, 2023, by Connie Loizos, YouTube, 20 min., 32 sec., youtu.be/57OU18cogJI.
To the astonishment: Justine Calma, “Microsoft Just Made a Huge, Far-from-Certain Bet on Nuclear Fusion,” The Verge, May 10, 2023, theverge.com/2023/5/10/23717332/microsoft-nuclear-fusion-power-plant-helion-purchase-agreement.
That May, he launched: Information can be found at its own website, openai.fund.
Altman’s net worth: Berber Jin, Tom Dotan, and Keach Hagey, “The Opaque Investment Empire Making OpenAI’s Sam Altman Rich,” Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2024, wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-sam-altman-investments-004fc785.
Chapter 9: Disaster Capitalism
In 2021, in parallel: Karen Hao and Deepa Seetharaman, “Cleaning Up ChatGPT Takes Heavy Toll on Human Workers,” Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2023, wsj.com/articles/chatgpt-openai-content-abusive-sexually-explicit-harassment-kenya-workers-on-human-workers-cf191483.
To build the automated filter: Copies of OpenAI’s Statements of Work for the project.
After six months of searching: Author interview with OpenAI spokesperson, June 2023.
OpenAI sent Sama: Review of the email.
Sama provided thorough answers: Review of the answers.
OpenAI signed four contracts: Copy of two contracts and review of the two others.
You can see the markers: Based on the author’s reporting trip to Nairobi, May 2023.
Under these conditions: Author interviews with Mercy Mutemi, the lawyer who represented the four Kenyan workers to fight for digital labor reforms in Kenya, May 2023; and Jonathan Beardsley, an executive at the time at data-annotation firm CloudFactory, May 2023.
It wasn’t until early 2022: Billy Perrigo, “Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop,” Time, February 14, 2022, time.com/6147458/facebook-africa-content-moderation-employee-treatment.
Sama would defend itself: Author correspondence with Sama spokesperson, November 2024.
Nearly two hundred workers would: Caroline Kimeu, “ ‘A Watershed’: Meta Ordered to Offer Mental Health Care to Moderators in Kenya,” The Guardian, June 7, 2023, theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jun/07/a-watershed-meta-ordered-to-offer-mental-health-care-to-moderators-in-kenya.
Under the code names PBJ1: Based on the contracts and project documents as well as Sama’s response to the author’s comment request for her story in The Wall Street Journal: Hao and Seetharaman, “Cleaning Up ChatGPT Takes Heavy Toll.”
Workers had no idea: Author interviews with four of those workers, Mophat Okinyi, Richard Mathenge, Alex Kairu, and Bill Mulinya, 2023.
What they did know: Copy of the instructions that the workers received. These categories correspond to those available in OpenAI’s content moderation API, which can be viewed here: “Moderation,” OpenAI Platform, OpenAI, accessed October 17, 2024, platform.openai.com/docs/guides/moderation.
For one of them: Author interviews with Mophat, his brother Albert, one of his friends, and Mutemi, 2023.
In 2019, they published: Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass (Harper Business, 2019), 1–288; and author interview with Mary L. Gray, May 2019.
Before generative AI: Florian Alexander Schmidt, “Crowdsourced Production of AI Training Data—How Human Workers Teach Self-Driving Cars How to See,” Working Paper Forschungsförderung 155 (2019), hdl.handle.net/10419/216075.
But right as this new: Author interviews with Florian Alexander Schmidt, 2022; and Julian Posada, 2021.
10 million percent: According to the International Monetary Fund.
By mid-2018, hundreds: Schmidt, “Crowdsourced Production of AI.”
Looking back several years later: Julian Posada, “The Coloniality of Data Work: Power and Inequality in Outsourced Data Production for Machine Learning” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2022), 1–229, hdl.handle.net/1807/126388.
In December 2021, I journeyed: Karen Hao and Andrea Paola Hernández, “How the AI Industry Profits from Catastrophe,” MIT Technology Review, April 20, 2022, technologyreview.com/2022/04/20/1050392/ai-industry-appen-scale-data-labels.
Fuentes was the first: Author interviews with Oskarina Veronica Fuentes Anaya, including at her home, 2021.
Wilson Pang, Appen’s CTO: Author interview with Wilson Pang, December 2021.
Fuentes taught me: Author interviews with data-annotation workers 2021–24 in Kenya, the Philippines, Colombia, Venezuela (in partnership with Andrea Paola Hernández), North Africa, and elsewhere.
Among the crop: The account of Scale’s business practices is based on author interviews with five current and former Scale employees, screenshots of company documents, reviews of instructions provided to workers, embedding in their Discord, as well as author interviews with nearly two dozen workers globally who have worked on the platform.
“If you could be pulling”: Ashlee Vance, “Silicon Valley’s Latest Unicorn Is Run by a 22-Year-Old,” Bloomberg, August 5, 2019, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-05/scale-ai-is-silicon-valley-s-latest-unicorn.
We found through a spreadsheet: Copy of spreadsheet of worker pay.
Inside Scale, Remotasks Plus: Author correspondence with Scale spokesperson, November 2024.
With nowhere to go: Correspondence with Scale spokesperson.
“Remotasks is committed”: Hao and Hernández, “How the AI Industry Profits from Catastrophe.”
“We care deeply”: Correspondence with Scale spokesperson, November 2024.
At least one worker: Screenshot of the worker’s payments.
“revolutions and protests”: Screenshot of the message in the workers’ Discord channel.
One such firm, CloudFactory: Author interviews with founder Mark Sears, May 2023; and executive Jonathan Beardsley, and around a dozen CloudFactory workers; as well as a visit to the CloudFactory Nairobi headquarters, May 2023.
Mophat Okinyi grew up: Author interviews with Mophat Okinyi, May 2023; and Albert Okinyi, May and June 2023.
The country’s youth unemployment: According to the Federation of Kenya Employers, which defines youth as fifteen to thirty-four years old.
In 2021, the World Bank: “Continued Rebound, but Storms Cloud the Horizon: Policies to Accelerate the Productive Economy for Inclusive Growth,” Kenya Economic Update, no. 26 (World Bank, 2022), 1—54, hdl.handle.net/10986/38386.
It felt like a miracle: Author correspondence with a Sama spokesperson, June 2023.
He had just met: Author interviews with Mophat, May 2023; Albert, May and June 2023; and a friend of Mophat’s, May 2023.
Okinyi was placed: Copy of OpenAI’s Statement of Work with Sama.
OpenAI’s instructions split: Copy of instructions.
Others were generated: OpenAI researchers later wrote a paper explaining some of their practices for building the content moderation filter. Section 3.3 goes into how they generated synthetic data for training. The paper further explains the categories of severity. Todor Markov, Chong Zhang, Sandhini Agarwal, Tyna Eloundou, Teddy Lee, Steven Adler et al., “A Holistic Approach to Undesired Content Detection in the Real World,” in AAAI’23/IAAI’23/EAAI’23: Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Thirty-Fifth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Thirteenth Symposium on Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence, no. 1683 (2022): 15009–18, dl.acm.org/doi/10.1609/aaai.v37i12.26752.
In March 2022, Sama: Correspondence with Sama spokesperson, June 2023.
The company never received: Correspondence with Sama spokesperson.
As the product went viral: Interview with Albert Okinyi, May and June 2023.
But the consistency of workers’ experiences: Milagros Miceli and Julian Posada, “The Data-Production Dispositif,” in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6, no. 460 (November 2022): 1–37, dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3555561; James Muldoon and Boxi A. Wu, “Artificial Intelligence in the Colonial Matrix of Power,” Philosophy and Technology 36, no. 80 (December 2023), doi.org/10.1007/s13347-023-00687-8.
“It’s just so unbelievably ugly”: Interview with Sears, May 2023.
Between the spring of 2022: OpenAI deals based on screenshot of closed contracts between OpenAI and Scale; estimated revenue in 2023 from Cory Weinberg, “Fame, Feud and Fortune: Inside Billionaire Alexandr Wang’s Relentless Rise in Silicon Valley,” The Information, June 28, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/fame-feud-and-fortune-inside-billionaire-alexandr-wangs-relentless-rise-in-silicon-valley.
Where self-driving cars: Long Ouyang, Jeff Wu, Xu Jiang, Diogo Almeida, Carroll L. Wainwright, Pamela Mishkin et al., “Training Language Models to Follow Instructions with Human Feedback,” arXiv, March 4, 2022, 1–68, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2203.02155.
“follow user instructions”: OpenAI, “Aligning Language Models to Follow Instructions,” Open AI (blog), January 27, 2022, openai.com/index/instruction-following.
The company began using: Based on copies of over a hundred pages of OpenAI’s RLHF documents.
“You will play the role”: RLHF documents.
To properly rank outputs: RLHF documents.
“Your goal is to provide”: RLHF documents.
during a talk at UC Berkeley: “John Schulman—Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback: Progress and Challenges,” posted April 19, 2023, by UC Berkeley EECS, YouTube, 1 hr., 3 min., 31 sec., youtu.be/hhiLw5Q_UFg.
Scale AI, whose business: Berber Jin, “The 27-Year-Old Billionaire Whose Army Does AI’s Dirty Work,” Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2024, wsj.com/tech/ai/alexandr-wang-scale-ai-d7c6efd7.
“soon companies will”: Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang), “we’re starting to see top companies spend the same amount on RLHF and compute in training ChatGPT-like LLMs…for example, OpenAI hired >1000 devs to RLHF their code models…crazy—but soon companies will start spending $ hundreds of Ms or $ billions on RLHF, just as w/compute,” Twitter (now X), February 1, 2023, x.com/alexandr_wang/status/1620934510820093952.
Scale would soon ban: Author correspondence with Scale spokesperson, November 2024.
Among the workers: Based on visits to the homes of three Remotasks workers and four Sama workers in Nairobi, May 2023, as well as the addresses of two other Remotasks workers.
the only girl: Author interviews with Winnie and her partner, Millicent, May 2023.
There was a project called: Review of Flamingo Generation instructions.
There was another project: Review of Crab Generation instructions.
Crab Paraphrase was similar: Copy of Crab Paraphrase instructions.
Kenya, they decided: Russell Brandom, “Scale AI’s Remotasks Platform Is Dropping Whole Countries Without Explanation,” Rest of World, March 28, 2024, restofworld.org/2024/scale-ai-remotasks-banned-workers.
In a great irony: Jin, “The 27-Year-Old Billionaire.”
Scale downgraded Kenya: Screenshots of group designations and an announcement of a change in groups.
Scale was now recruiting: Cory Weinberg, “Why a $14 Billion Startup Is Now Hiring PhD’s to Train AI from Their Living Rooms,” The Information, June 25, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/why-a-14-billion-startup-is-now-hiring-phds-to-train-ai-from-their-living-rooms.
In her inbox: Hilary Kimuyu, “Online Gig Site Remotasks Exits Kenya,” Business Daily, March 13, 2024, businessdailyafrica.com/bd/corporate/technology/online-gig-site-remotasks-exits-kenya-4555340.
Chapter 10: Gods and Demons
We were young: Andrew Van Dam, “What Percent Are You?,” Economics Blog, Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2016, wsj.com/articles/what-percent-are-you-1456922287.
“Where I grew up”: Tyler Cowen, host, Conversations with Tyler, podcast, episode 61, “Sam Altman on Loving Community, Hating Coworking, and the Hunt for Talent,” Mercatus Center Podcasts, February 27, 2019.
Core to the EA philosophy: Émile P. Torres, “The Acronym Behind Our Wildest AI Dreams and Nightmares,” Truthdig, June 15, 2023, truthdig.com/articles/the-acronym-behind-our-wildest-ai-dreams-and-nightmares.
In a 2013 paper: William MacAskill, “Replaceability, Career Choice, and Making a Difference,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (2013): 269–83, doi.org/10.1007/S10677-013-9433-4.
Under the logic: “What Is Effective Altruism?,” Effective Altruism Forum, accessed October 8, 2024, effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism.
“I and others”: Will MacAskill, “What Are the Most Important Moral Problems of Our Time?,” TED Talk, April 2018, 11 min., 45 sec., ted.com/talks/will_macaskill_what_are_the_most_important_moral_problems_of_our_time.
A decade earlier, Facebook: “About Us,” Open Philanthropy, accessed October 17, 2024, openphilanthropy.org/about-us.
Open Philanthropy became: Holden Karnofsky, “The Open Philanthropy Project Is Now an Independent Organization,” Open Philanthropy, June 12, 2017, openphilanthropy.org/research/the-open-philanthropy-project-is-now-an-independent-organization.
Bankman-Fried, or SBF: David Yaffe-Bellany, “A Crypto Emperor’s Vision: No Pants, His Rules,” New York Times, May 14, 2022, nytimes.com/2022/05/14/business/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-crypto.html.
As he amassed his wealth: Rebecca Ackermann, “Inside Effective Altruism, Where the Far Future Counts a Lot More Than the Present,” MIT Technology Review, October 17, 2022, technologyreview.com/2022/10/17/1060967/effective-altruism-growth.
At the start of 2022: “Announcing the Future Fund,” FTX Future Fund, archived on November 27, 2022, at web.archive.org/web/20221127183608/https://ftxfuturefund.org/announcing-the-future-fund.
According to estimates compiled: “An Overview of the AI Safety Funding Situation,” Effective Altruism Forum, accessed October 8, 2024, forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XdhwXppfqrpPL2YDX/an-overview-of-the-ai-safety-funding-situation; author correspondence with Open Philanthropy spokesperson, November 2024.
Online EA and AI safety forums: Shazeda Ahmed, Klaudia Jaźwińska, Archana Ahlawat, Amy Winecoff, and Mona Wang, “Building the Epistemic Community of AI Safety,” preprint, SSRN, December 1, 2023, 1–14, ssrn.com/abstract=4641526; “What Is Effective Altruism?,” Effective Altruism Forum.
The influx of members: Most of these definitions are pulled from LessWrong and Effective Altruism Forum; for example: “AI Timelines,” LessWrong, accessed on October 17, 2024, lesswrong.com/tag/ai-timelines; “Global Catastrophic Risk,” Effective Altruism Forum, accessed on November 27, 2024, forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/global-catastrophic-risk.
Mixed with the tech: Charlotte Alter, “Effective Altruism Promises to Do Good Better. These Women Say It Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassment and Abuse,” Time, February 3, 2023, time.com/6252617/effective-altruism-sexual-harassment; and Kelsey Piper, “Why Effective Altruism Struggles on Sexual Misconduct,” Vox, February 16, 2023, vox.com/future-perfect/2023/2/15/23601143/effective-altruism-sexual-harassment-misconduct.
The first, called CLIP: Alec Radford, Jong Wook Kim, Chris Hallacy, Aditya Ramesh, Gabriel Goh, Sandhini Agarwal et al., “Learning Transferable Visual Models from Natural Language Supervision,” preprint, arXiv, February 26, 2021, 1–48, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2103.00020.
The second, DALL-E 1: OpenAI, “DALL·E: Creating Images from Text,” Open AI (blog), January 5, 2021, openai.com/index/dall-e.
The original idea: Jascha Sohl-Dickstein, Eric A. Weiss, Niru Maheswaranathan, and Surya Ganguli, “Deep Unsupervised Learning Using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics,” in ICML ’15: Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Machine Learning 37 (July 2015): 2256–65, dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3045118.3045358.
Five years later, Jonathan: Jonathan Ho, Ajay Jain, and Pieter Abbeel, “Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models,” in NIPS ’20: Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, no. 574 (December 2020): 6840–51, dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/3495724.3496298; Anil Ananthaswamy, “The Physics Principle That Inspired Modern AI Art,” Quanta Magazine, January 5, 2023, quantamagazine.org/the-physics-principle-that-inspired-modern-ai-art-20230105.
Ramesh and other researchers: Alex Nichol, Prafulla Dhariwal, Aditya Ramesh, Pranav Shyam, Pamela Mishkin, Bob McGrew et al., “GLIDE: Towards Photorealistic Image Generation and Editing with Text-Guided Diffusion Models,” in Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Machine Learning (2022): 16784–804, proceedings.mlr.press/v162/nichol22a.html.
Researchers outside of OpenAI: Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, Dominik Lorenz, Patrick Esser, and Björn Ommer, “High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models,” in 2022 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (2022): 10674–85, doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/CVPR52688.2022.01042.
256 Nvidia A100s: Author interview with Björn Ommer, March 2024.
With DALL-E 2’s remarkable: Fraser Kelton and Nabeel Hyatt, hosts, Hallway Chat, podcast, “Launch Stories of ChatGPT,” December 2, 2023, hallwaychat.co/launch-stories-of-chatgpt.
In December 2023: Hayden Field, “Microsoft Engineer Warns Company’s AI Tool Creates Violent, Sexual Images, Ignores Copyrights,” CNBC, March 6, 2024, cnbc.com/2024/03/06/microsoft-ai-engineer-says-copilot-designer-creates-disturbing-images.html.
“This is intoxicating”: Kelton and Hyatt, Hallway Chat.
To solve OpenAI’s data: Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson, and Nico Grant, “How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.,” New York Times, April 6, 2024, nytimes.com/2024/04/06/technology/tech-giants-harvest-data-artificial-intelligence.html.
OpenAI had previously: Davey Alba and Emily Chang, “YouTube Says OpenAI Training Sora with Its Videos Would Break Rules,” Bloomberg, April 4, 2024, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-04/youtube-says-openai-training-sora-with-its-videos-would-break-the-rules.
He then used a speech-recognition tool: OpenAI, “Introducing Whisper,” Open AI (blog), September 21, 2022, openai.com/index/whisper.
Then, with several others: “GPT-4 Contributions,” OpenAI, accessed October 13, 2024, openai.com/contributions/gpt-4.
“an idiot savant”: Bill Gates, host, Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates, podcast, episode 2, “Sal Khan,” Gates Notes, August 10, 2023, gatesnotes.com/podcast.
AP Bio because: Bill Gates, “The Age of AI Has Begun,” GatesNotes, March 21, 2023, gatesnotes.com/The-Age-of-AI-Has-Begun.
This showcase, Gates said: Bill Gates has since said this many times publicly, including in Gates, “The Age of AI Has Begun.”
Brockman and Fraser Kelton: Kelton and Hyatt, Hallway Chat.
The jokes delighted: Will Hurd, “Should 4 People Be Able to Control the Equivalent of a Nuke?,” Politico, January 30, 2024, politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/30/will-hurd-ai-regulation-00136941.
“The CEO is supposed”: “Sam Altman Startup School Video,” posted July 26, 2017, by Waterloo Engineering, YouTube, 1 hr., 18 min., 19 sec., youtu.be/4SlNgM4PjvQ.
“The board is a nonprofit”: Bilawal Sidhu, host, The TED AI Show, podcast, “What Really Went Down at OpenAI and the Future of Regulation w/ Helen Toner,” May 28, 2024, ted.com/talks/the_ted_ai_show_what_really_went_down_at_openai_and_the_future_of_regulation_w_helen
“Who am I”: Rebecca Heilweil, “Why Silicon Valley Is Fertile Ground for Obscure Religious Beliefs,” Vox, June 30, 2022, vox.com/recode/2022/6/30/23188222/silicon-valley-blake-lemoine-chatbot-eliza-religion-robot.
When company executives: Nitasha Tiku, “The Google Engineer Who Thinks the Company’s AI Has Come to Life,” Washington Post, June 11, 2022, washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine.
But despite enormous: Tom Hartsfield, “Koko the Impostor: Ape Sign Language Was a Bunch of Babbling Nonsense,” Big Think, May 11, 2022, bigthink.com/life/ape-sign-language.
In conversations with Hinton: Author interview with Geoff Hinton.
Chapter 11: Apex
For a photo: The photo in question, October 2022.
Financial documents released: United States v. Samuel Bankman-Fried, No. 1:22-cr-00673, CourtListener (S.D.N.Y. March 15, 2024) ECF No. 410, at *12–13. The pertinent section reads: “From late 2021 through the first quarter of 2022, Bankman-Fried directed billions of dollars in spending, which used FTX customers’ money. Those expenditures included…Anthropic PBC (an artificial intelligence company).”
A judge would rule: Zack Abrams, “FTX Offloads Remaining Anthropic Shares as Bankruptcy Cost Surpasses $500 Million,” The Block, June 1, 2024, theblock.co/post/298010/ftx-offloads-remaining-anthropic-shares-as-bankruptcy-cost-surpasses-700-million.
The instant runaway: Will Douglas Heaven, “The Inside Story of How ChatGPT Was Built from the People Who Made It,” MIT Technology Review, March 3, 2023, technologyreview.com/2023/03/03/1069311/inside-story-oral-history-how-chatgpt-built-openai.
“one order of magnitude less”: “StrictlyVC in Conversation with Sam Altman, Part Two,” posted on January 17, 2023, by Connie Loizos, YouTube, 38 min., 58 sec., youtu.be/bjkD1Om4uw.
numbering just over: Erin Woo and Stephanie Palazzolo, “OpenAI Overhauls Content Moderation Efforts as Elections Loom,” The Information, December 18, 2023, theinformation.com/articles/openai-overhauls-content-moderation-efforts-as-elections-loom.
The severe shortage: “Behind the Scenes Scaling ChatGPT—Evan Morikawa at LeadDev West Coast 2023,” posted October 26, 2023, by LeadDev, YouTube, 27 min., 12 sec., youtu.be/PeKMEXUrlq4.
In an attempt to leverage: OpenAI, “Using GPT-4 for Content Moderation,” Open AI (blog), August 15, 2023, openai.com/index/using-gpt-4-for-content-moderation.
As he’d expected: Nico Grant and Cade Metz, “A New Chat Bot Is a ‘Code Red’ for Google’s Search Business,” New York Times, December 21, 2022, nytimes.com/2022/12/21/technology/ai-chatgpt-google-search.html.
“We are now”: Copy of the memo.
The way in which Microsoft: The account of the climate at Microsoft is based on author interviews with ten current and former Microsoft employees and executives as well as copies of several emails that executives sent to employees.
Nadella implemented a new strategy: Copy of email referencing the new strategy.
“Azure OpenAI Service”: Each of the Microsoft emails cited are based on copies of those emails.
In January 2023, it had: Growth in inferencing requests is based on copies of the above emails as well as screenshots of an internal dashboard.
“We have stopped”: Author correspondence with Microsoft spokesperson, November 2024, who provided this quote from a transcript of the meeting.
Still numbering fewer: Woo and Palazzolo, “OpenAI Overhauls Content Moderation.”
By the end of that: Woo and Palazzolo, “OpenAI Overhauls Content Moderation.”
latched on to ChatGPT: Copy of the document.
After ChatGPT went viral: Dylan Patel and Afzal Ahmad, “The Inference Cost of Search Disruption— Large Language Model Cost Analysis,” SemiAnalysis, February 9, 2023, semianalysis.com/p/the-inference-cost-of-search-disruption.
Arrakis felt like: Jon Victor and Aaron Holmes, “OpenAI Dropped Work on New ‘Arrakis’ AI Model in Rare Setback,” The Information, October 17, 2023, theinformation.com/articles/openai-dropped-work-on-new-arrakis-ai-model-in-rare-setback.
There was also a new: Tom Dotan and Deepa Seetharaman, “The Awkward Partnership Leading the AI Boom,” Wall Street Journal, June 13, 2023, wsj.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-forge-awkward-partnership-as-techs-new-power-couple-3092de51.
Nadella would tell: Karen Weise and Cade Metz, “How Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Became Tech’s Steely Eyed A.I. Gambler,” New York Times, July 14, 2026, nytimes.com/2024/07/14/technology/microsoft-ai-satya-nadella.html.
To fulfill that aggressive: Anissa Gardizy and Amir Efrati, “Microsoft and OpenAI Plot $100 Billion Stargate AI Supercomputer,” The Information, March 29, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-plot-100-billion-stargate-ai-supercomputer; Anissa Gardizy, Aaron Holmes, and Amir Efrati, “OpenAI Leaders Say Microsoft Isn’t Moving Fast Enough to Supply Servers,” The Information, October 8, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/openai-eases-away-from-microsoft-data-centers.
Chapter 12: Plundered Earth
The mountains come: Based on author’s reporting trip in Santiago and the Atacama Desert, 2024.
Indigenous elders still warn: Author interview with Sonia Ramos, an Atacameño activist, June 2024; the cutting off of tongues is also referenced in the introduction of a dictionary for Kunza, an Atacameño language that has largely gone extinct: Julio Vilte Vilte, Kunza: Lengua del Pueblo Lickan Antai o Atacameño (Codelco Chile, 2004), 11.
Today nearly 60 percent: “Chile—Country Commercial Guide: Mining,” International Trade Administration, December 7, 2023, trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/chile-mining.
The country has struggled: Samo Burja, “Chile Is a Politically Disunited Resource Exporter,” Bismarck Brief, June 19, 2024, brief.bismarckanalysis.com/p/chile-is-a-politically-disunited.
Long after the Spanish: Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Picador, 2008), 55.
In the 1950s and ’60s: Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 64.
Friedman was a towering: Milton Friedman, “A Friedman Doctrine—the Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” New York Times, September 13, 1970, timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/09/13/223535702.html?pageNumber=379.
As Naomi Klein details: Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 61.
under conditions fomented: James Doubek, “The U.S. Set the Stage for a Coup in Chile. It Had Unintended Consequences at Home,” NPR, September 10, 2023, npr.org/2023/09/10/1193755188/chile-coup-50-years-pinochet-kissinger-human-rights-allende; the original Senate report detailing the CIA’s heavy spending and influence campaign in Chile leading up to the coup: Covert Action in Chile 1963–1973, Staff Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate: 1975), intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94chile.pdf.
Under Pinochet’s rule: Daniel Matamala, “The Complicated Legacy of the ‘Chicago Boys’ in Chile,” Promarket, September 12, 2021, promarket.org/2021/09/12/chicago-boys-chile-friedman-neoliberalism.
Chile is among: “Income Share of the Richest 1%,” Our World in Data, accessed October 14, 2024, ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-share-top-1-before-tax-wid?tab=chart&country=CHL.
the government proudly: Gobierno de Chile, “International InvestChile Forum: 100 Companies from 28 Countries Will Meet in the Country,” Gobierno de Chile, May 16, 2024, gob.cl/en/news/international-investchile-forum-100-companies-from-28-countries-will-meet-in-the-country.
“If we are going to develop”: Author interview with Martín Tironi Rodó, June 2024.
The four largest hyperscalers: Author interviews with Alan Howard, a cloud and data center analyst at the technology consultancy firm Omdia, August and September 2023.
It’s difficult to imagine: Indeed it was, until the author visited the one training OpenAI’s models in Arizona, September 2023.
“Now football fields”: Author interview with Mél Hogan, August 2023.
The equipment all together: Bianca Bosker, “Why Everything Is Getting Louder,” The Atlantic, November 15, 2019, theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/the-end-of-silence/598366.
Now developers use: Rich Miller, “The Gigawatt Data Center Campus Is Coming,” Data Center Frontier, April 29, 2024, datacenterfrontier.com/hyperscale/article/55021675/the-gigawatt-data-center-campus-is-coming.
A rack of GPUs: Author interviews with Hogan, August 2023; and a data center investor, March 2024.
According to the International Energy: Goldman Sachs, “AI Is Poised to Drive 160% Increase in Data Center Power Demand,” Goldman Sachs, May 14, 2024, goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/AI-poised-to-drive-160-increase-in-power-demand.
close to 122,000 American households: A 150-megawatt facility can consume up to 150 megawatt-hours of energy in an hour, or 1,314,000 megawatt-hours of energy in a year. According to the US Energy Information Administration, an average American household consumed 10,791 kilowatt-hours in a year in 2022; 1,314,000 megawatt-hours divided by 10,791 kilowatt-hours equals 121,768.
A single one could: A 1,000-megawatt facility can consume up to 8,760,000 megawatt-hours of energy in a year, and a 2,000-megawatt facility, twice that. According to the California Energy Commission, San Francisco County consumed 5,120,586 megawatt-hours in 2022; 8,760,000 megawatt-hours divided by 5,120,586 megawatt-hours equals 1.7. Twice that is 3.4. “Electricity Consumption by County,” California Energy Commission, accessed October 17, 2024, ecdms.energy.ca.gov/elecbycounty.aspx.
After the last decade of flatlined: Goldman Sachs, “AI Is Poised to Drive 160% Increase.”
Utility companies are now delaying: Evan Halper, “A Utility Promised to Stop Burning Coal. Then Google and Meta Came to Town,” Washington Post, October 12, 2024, washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/08/google-meta-omaha-data-centers/; C Mandler, “Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant Will Reopen to Power Microsoft Data Centers,” NPR, September 20, 2024, npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5120581/three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant-microsoft-ai.
By 2030, at the current: Goldman Sachs, “AI Is Poised to Drive 160% Increase”; Ian King, “AI Computing on Pace to Consume More Energy Than India, Arm Says,” Bloomberg, April 17, 2024, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-17/ai-computing-is-on-pace-to-consume-more-energy-than-india-arm-says.
AGI will solve climate change: This claim is one that Altman has used many times, including in Sam Altman, “The Intelligence Age,” Sam Altman (blog), September 23, 2024, ia.samaltman.com.
While the last claim: Author interview with Sasha Luccioni, August 2023.
There are indeed many: Climate Change AI details these technologies in several reports on its website, climatechange.ai, including David Rolnick, Priya L. Donti, Lynn H. Kaack, Kelly Kochanski, Alexandre Lacoste, Kris Sankaran et al., “Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning,” ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 55, no. 2 (February 2022): 1–96, doi.org/10.1145/3485128.
In one paper, together: Alexandra Sasha Luccioni, Yacine Jernite, and Emma Strubell, “Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment?,” in FAccT ’24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (June 2024): 85–99, doi.org/10.1145/3630106.3658542.
They found that producing: These numbers are based on Table 2 in the aforementioned paper, and the EPA’s estimate before January 2024 that a smartphone charge consumed 0.012 kWh of energy.
Even as hyperscalers: Transcript of meeting.
build their campuses in threes: Interview with Alan Howard, August 2023.
During Hurricane Irma: James Glanz, “How the Internet Kept Humming During 2 Hurricanes,” New York Times, September 18, 2017, nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/harvey-irma-internet.html.
According to an estimate: Pengfei Li, Jianyi Yang, Mohammad A. Islam, and Shaolei Ren, “Making AI Less ‘Thirsty’: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models,” preprint, arXiv, October 29, 2023, 1, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2304.03271.
Another study found: Md Abu Bakar Siddik, Arman Shehabi, and Landon Marston, “The Environmental Footprint of Data Centers in the United States,” Environmental Research Letters 16, no. 6 (June 2021): 064017, doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abfba1.
In response, data center developers: Author interviews with six different communities facing data center expansions in Arizona, New Mexico, Virginia, two in Chile, and Uruguay, 2023–24, as well as interviews with three Microsoft employees and executives, including Noelle Walsh, corporate vice president of cloud operations and innovation, who oversees all of the company’s data center expansions, about the company’s practices from their perspective, 2023–24.
In one case in Virginia: Author interview with Roger Yackel, a Virginia resident leading protests against the data center expansion, March 2024.
“We need a mole”: Copy of the email.
“In AI, whoever has”: Author interview with Greg Brockman, August 2019.
Altman began referring: The code names, numbers, and location of Phases 1, 2, and 3 are pulled from an internal OpenAI document. The locations and cost of Phases 4 and 5 come from Anissa Gardizy and Amir Efrati, “Microsoft and OpenAI Plot $100 Billion Stargate AI Supercomputer,” The Information, March 29, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-plot-100-billion-stargate-ai-supercomputer.
Equipped with ten thousand: Matt O’Brien and Hannah Fingerhut, “Artificial Intelligence Technology Behind ChatGPT Was Built in Iowa—with a Lot of Water,” AP, September 9, 2023, apnews.com/article/chatgpt-gpt4-iowa-ai-water-consumption-microsoft-f551fde98083d17a7e8d904f8be822c4.
the company also invested: Author correspondence with Microsoft spokesperson, November 2024.
After carefully cultivating: Author interviews with Barbara Chappell, the city of Goodyear’s water services director, October 2023; two community members, September 2023; the three aforementioned Microsoft sources, 2023–24; and copies of the Goodyear city council’s meeting minutes and other government documents and correspondence, obtained through public records requests, 2023–24. Those interviews and additional reporting produced the following story: Karen Hao, “AI Is Taking Water from the Desert,” The Atlantic, March 1, 2024, theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/ai-water-climate-microsoft/677602.
In Microsoft and OpenAI’s design: The 5,000 megawatt estimate for Stargate comes from Gardizy and Efrati, “Microsoft and OpenAI Plot $100 Billion Stargate”; and according to the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, the city used on average of about 5,500 megawatts of power in 2022: “Systems,” NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, accessed October 17, 2024, climate.cityofnewyork.us/subtopics/systems.
Altman had recused himself: Berber Jin, Tom Dotan, and Keach Hagey, “The Opaque Investment Empire Making OpenAI’s Sam Altman Rich,” Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2024, wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-sam-altman-investments-004fc785.
Microsoft’s data centers had consumed: According to the West Des Moines Water Works, as cited by: O’Brien and Fingerhut, “Artificial Intelligence Technology Behind ChatGPT.”
the company is working to increase: Correspondence with Microsoft spokesperson, November 2024.
In 2022, as Microsoft: A. Park Williams, Benjamin I. Cook, and Jason E. Smerdon, “Rapid Intensification of the Emerging Southwestern North American Megadrought in 2020–2021,” Nature Climate Change 12, no. 3 (March 2022): 232–34, doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01290-z.
Without drastic action: This refers to a condition called “deadpooling,” as explained in Christopher Flavelle and Mira Rojanasakul, “As the Colorado River Shrinks, Washington Prepares to Spread the Pain,” New York Times, January 27, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/01/27/climate/colorado-river-biden-cuts.html.
over six hundred dead: Kira Caspers, “645 People Died Due to Heat in Metro Phoenix in 2023. Here’s What Is Changing This Year,” AZ Central, March 15, 2024, azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2024/03/15/heat-deaths-maricopa-county/72980594007.
“All things,” says Tom Buschatzke”: Author interview with Tom Buschatzke, October 2023.
Meta would come out: Kevin Lee, Adi Gangidi, Mathew Oldham, “Building Meta’s GenAI Infrastructure,” Engineering at Meta, March 12, 2024, engineering.fb.com/2024/03/12/data-center-engineering/building-metas-genai-infrastructure.
She was born into: Interview with Sonia Ramos, June 2024.
In 1957, a part: “Tres muertos y treinta heridos en explosión de una mina en Chuquicamata,” El Mercurio, September 6, 1957.
That displaced rock: “The Battle for Chile’s Critical Minerals,” posted July 22, 2022, by Sky News, YouTube, 13 min., 54 sec., youtu.be/oywE0mQnWI0
The mining has also: Author interview with Cristina Dorador, a Chilean scientist who studies the Atacama Desert’s ecosystems, June 2024.
Less visible are the trails: “The Battle for Chile’s Critical Minerals,” Sky News; interview with Dorador.
The shift has plunged: Author visits and interviews with three Atacameños leaders, including Sonia Ramos and Sergio Cubillos, June 2024.
Instead, many are forced: Visits and interviews with the three Atacameños leaders; and visit to an industry-sponsored health clinic, June 2024.
Lithium is a more recent: Author interviews with Dorador, June 2024; and SQM, a Chilean mining company and the world’s largest lithium producer; as well as an on-site tour of SQM’s lithium mines in Atacama, June 2024.
Chile produces roughly a third: Govind Bhutada, “This Chart Shows Which Countries Produce the Most Lithium,” World Economic Forum (blog), January 5, 2023, weforum.org/stories/2023/01/chart-countries-produce-lithium-world.
The material is primarily: Author interviews with Dorador, June 2024; SQM, June 2024; and architect and researcher Marina Otero Verzier, May 2024, who has a talk about the connection between lithium extraction, data center development, Chile’s colonial history, and global technology futures here: “Marina Otero Verzier-Data Mourning,” posted March 1, 2023, by Columbia GSAPP, YouTube, 1 hr., 30 min., youtu.be/vbFPaNBNB-M.
Now the flamingos are gone: Visit and interview with Cubillos, the Peine leader, June 2024.
In 2022, as the European: Interview with SQM, June 2024.
“Local people never have”: Interview with Dorador, June 2024.
The accelerated copper: Paul R. La Monica, “Move Over, Nvidia. Copper Is Getting a Big AI Boost Too,” Barron’s, May 22, 2024, barrons.com/articles/copper-price-ai-microsoft-utilities-c99058b7.
In Brazil, a 2023 art exhibition: “Artificial Intelligence, Art and Indigeneity,” accessed October 2, 2024, aei.art.br/aiai/en/the-research.
central to Indigenous demands: Visits and interviews with the three Atacameños leaders, June 2024.
“the largest infrastructure buildout”: Dylan Patel and Myron Xie, “Microsoft Infrastructure—AI & CPU Custom Silicon Maia 100, Athena, Cobalt 100,” SemiAnalysis, November 15, 2023, semianalysis.com/p/microsoft-infrastructure-ai-and-cpu.
Meta said it would likely: Meta, “Meta Reports Third Quarter 2024 Results,” Meta Investor Relations, October 30, 2024, investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2024/Meta-Reports-Third-Quarter-2024-Results/default.aspx.
Less than a thirty-minute drive: Based on author’s visit to Quilicura, June 2024.
When I ask the company’s: Author correspondences with Google Chile spokesperson, June and November 2024.
Arancibia had just started: Author interviews with Alexandra Arancibia, June 2024.
Only two decades ago: Author interviews with Arancibia, June 2024; Rodrigo Vallejos, June 2024; Lorena Antiman, another environmental activist in Quilicura, June 2024; and Miguel Mora, a Quilicura-based teacher who studies its wetlands, and Felipe Gonzalez, who heads the Environmental Management Unit of Quilicura, June 2024.
The data center—as activists: Interviews with Arancibia; Vallejos; and Antiman.
It announced a project: Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones, “Gobierno de Chile escoge ruta mediante Nueva Zelanda y hasta Australia para implementar el Cable Transoceánico,” Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones, July 27, 2020, subtel.gob.cl/gobierno-de-chile-escoge-ruta-mediante-nueva-zelanda-y-hasta-australia-para-implementar-el-cable-transoceanico.
Google backed the partnership: Google, “Announcing Humboldt, the First Cable Route Between South America and Asia-Pacific,” Google Cloud (blog), January 11, 2024, cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/announcing-humboldt-the-first-cable-route-between-south-america-and-asia-pacific.
From the 1930s: Josefa Silva González, “A más de 20 años de Miño: La estancada lucha contra el asbestos,” La Voz de Maipú, February 18, 2022, lavozdemaipu.cl/la-estancada-lucha-contra-el-asbesto.
That summer, as Google: Interviews with Arancibi; Vallejos; Gonzalez; and author interview with Tania Rodriguez, June 2024.
In other words, the data: The Google environmental impact report to SEA stated that the data center could use 169 liters of potable water a second, or 5,329,584,000 liters a year. According to the water service authority in Cerillos, the municipality consumed 5,097,946 liters in all of 2019, the year Google sought to come in; 5,329,584,000 liters a year divided by 5,097,946 liters a year equals 1,045.
Chile was already nine years: “Persistent Drought Is Drying Out Chile’s Drinking Water,” Reuters, March 20, 2024, reuters.com/world/americas/persistent-drought-is-drying-out-chiles-drinking-water-2024-03-20.
MOSACAT was founded: The account of MOSACAT’s activism against Google is based on author interviews with Rodriguez and eight other MOSACAT members, June 2024. Additional details are from Chilean media coverage, primarily Alberto Arellano, Lucas Cifuentes, and Cristóbal Ríos, “Las zonas oscuras de la evaluación ambiental que autorizó ‘a ciegas’ el megaproyecto de Google en Cerrillos,” Ciper, May 25, 2020, ciperchile.cl/2020/05/25/las-zonas-oscuras-de-la-evaluacion-ambiental-que-autorizo-a-ciegas-el-megaproyecto-de-google-en-cerrillos.
Cumulatively, they take: All details about Antel’s operations are based on author’s visit to an Antel data center and an interview with its manager, Javier Echeverria, June 2024.
Some cheekily call it: Author interview with Marcos Umpiérrez, a professor at the University of the Republic in Uruguay, and his colleagues, June 2024.
The park even looks somewhat: Based on a visit to Parque de las Ciencias, June 2024.
The water shortage was: Author interview with Marcelo Fozati, an Uruguayan agronomist and farmer who heads an organization to protect local farmers and crops, and Daniel Pena, an Uruguayan researcher who studies the environmental extractivism of multinationals in his country, June 2024; as well as “Uruguay: Drought Losses Estimated at USD 1.200 million, Minister Says,” MercoPress, February 2, 2023, en.mercopress.com/2023/02/02/uruguay-drought-losses-estimated-at-usd-1.200-million-minister-says; and Guillermo Garat, “My City Has Run Out of Fresh Water. Will Your City Be Next?,” New York Times, July 19, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/07/19/opinion/drinking-water-montevideo.html.
Those who couldn’t drank: Author interviews with three Uruguayan residents and water activists: Fabiana, June 2024; Noelia Lagos, June 2024; and Carmen Sosa, June 2024.
Where Silicon Valley had ascended: “Google’s and Microsoft’s Profits Soar as Pandemic Benefits Big Tech,” New York Times, October 18, 2021, nytimes.com/live/2021/04/27/business/stock-market-today.
Fabiana, the boisterous head: Interview with Fabiana.
The water crisis emerged: Grace Livingstone, “ ‘It’s Pillage’: Thirsty Uruguayans Decry Google’s Plan to Exploit Water Supply,” Guardian, July 11, 2023, theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/11/uruguay-drought-water-google-data-center.
Most such farms: Interview with the Fozati and Pena.
Their activities deplete: “Fertilizer Use Per Capita, 1961 to 2019,” Our World in Data, accessed October 17, 2024, ourworldindata.org/grapher/fertilizer-per-capita?tab=table.
He drives around the country: Details about Pena’s research and activism are based on author interviews with Pena, May and June 2024, including a day spent in his truck traveling through some of the poorest parts of Montevideo and its outskirts.
Now, in a bitter irony: Interviews with Pena, June 2024; and Sosa, June 2024.
The environmental ministry revealed: Livingstone, “ ‘It’s Pillage.’ ”
“This is not drought”: Livingstone, “ ‘It’s Pillage.’ ”
The Google Chile spokesperson said: Author correspondence with Google Chile spokesperson, November 2024.
In 2022, Microsoft finalized: Dan Swinhoe, “Microsoft Files Plans for Chilean Data Center Region,” Data Center Dynamics, January 24, 2022, datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-files-plans-for-chilean-data-center-region.
In his victory speech: Matamala, “The Complicated Legacy of the ‘Chicago Boys.’ ”
“It is deeply striking”: Rodrigo Vallejos Calderón, “Los costos de estar conectados: Datacenters y el consume hídrico,” Bits 23 (2022), 28–33, revistasdex.uchile.cl/index.php/bits/issue/view/1049.
Vallejos caught the attention: Author interviews with Marina Otero Verzier, May 2024; and Serena Dambrosio and Nicolás Díaz Bejarano, June 2024.
The students designed: Photos of the mock-ups.
But in fairness, the coalition: Interviews with Martín Tironi and Aisén Etcheverry, the head of the Ministry of Science.
Chapter 13: The Two Prophets
“Would you be qualified”: “Watch: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee,” PBS News, May 16, 2023, pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-openai-ceo-sam-altman-testifies-before-senate-judiciary-committee.
Marcus would later backtrack: Gary Marcus, “OpenAI’s Sam Altman Is Becoming One of the Most Powerful People on Earth. We Should Be Very Afraid,” Guardian, August 3, 2024, theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/03/open-ai-sam-altman-chatgpt-gary-marcus-taming-silicon-valley.
Altman’s prep team: Hasan Chowdhury, “Insiders Say Sam Altman’s AI World Tour Was a Success,” Business Insider, June 24, 2023, businessinsider.com/sam-altman-world-tour-ai-chatgpt-openai-2023-6.
For months, with or without: Cecilia Kang, “How Sam Altman Stormed Washington to Set the A.I. Agenda,” New York Times, June 7, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/06/07/technology/sam-altman-ai-regulations.html.
By early June, Altman: Kang, “How Sam Altman Stormed Washington.”
On the day of Altman’s: Author interviews with Karla Ortiz, December 2023 and April 2024; and Rachel Meinerding and Nicole Hendrix Herman, the cofounders and coleaders of the Concept Art Association, April 2024.
Those jobs that were: Interview with Meinerding and Hendrix Herman; CVL Economics, Future Unscripted: The Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Entertainment Industry Jobs (2024), 1–58, animationguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Future-Unscripted-The-Impact-of-Generative-Artificial-Intelligence-on-Entertainment-Industry-Jobs-pages-1.pdf.
Altman was attending: Kang, “How Sam Altman Stormed Washington.”
The same narrative Altman: Karen Hao, “The New AI Panic,” The Atlantic, October 11, 2023, theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/technology-exports-ai-programs-regulations-china/675605.
“If you’d told me”: Alex W. Palmer, “ ‘An Act of War’: Inside America’s Silicon Blockade Against China,” New York Times, July 12, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/07/12/magazine/semiconductor-chips-us-china.html.
Nvidia’s own maneuvering: Jane Lee, “Exclusive: Nvidia Offers New Advanced Chip for China That Meets U.S. Export Controls,” Reuters, November 7, 2022, reuters.com/technology/exclusive-nvidia-offers-new-advanced-chip-china-that-meets-us-export-controls-2022-11-08.
The ban was also a lift: Fanny Potkin and Yelin Mo, “Chinese Chip Equipment Makers Grab Market Share as US Tightens Curbs,” Reuters, October 18, 2023, reuters.com/technology/chinese-chip-equipment-makers-grab-market-share-us-tightens-curbs-2023-10-18.
After vigorously playing catch-up: Khari Johnson, “Meta’s Open Source Llama Upsets the AI Horse Race,” Wired, July 26, 2023, wired.com/story/metas-open-source-llama-upsets-the-ai-horse-race.
a critical building block for: Tony Peng, “What Llama 3 Means to China, ERNIE Bot Hits 200 Million Users, and China Trails US in AI Models,” Recode China AI, April 22, 2024, recodechinaai.substack.com/p/what-llama-3-means-to-china-ernie.
Amid the climate: Markus Anderljung, Joslyn Barnhart, Anton Korinek, Jade Leung, Cullen O’Keefe, Jess Whittlestone et al., “Frontier AI Regulation: Managing Emerging Risks to Public Safety,” preprint, arXiv, November 7, 2023, 1–51, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2307.03718.
But Hooker and many: Author interviews with Sara Hooker, October 2024; Deborah Raji, August 2024; Sarah Myers West, codirector of AI Now, October 2024; and other AI policy experts, 2023–24.
While scale can lead: Sara Hooker, “On the Limitations of Compute Thresholds as a Governance Strategy,” preprint, arXiv, July 30, 2024, 1–54, doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.05694.
It captured significant: Author interviews with Myers West, September 2023; Amba Kak, the other codirector of AI Now, October 2023; Emily Weinstein, September 2023; Raji, October 2023; and two other AI policy experts, November 2023.
“Parts of the administration”: Interviews with Weinstein.
The white paper’s ideas: Hao, “The New AI Panic.”
“If we don’t know”: “Watch: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Testifies.”
“it’s because they trained it”: Interview with Myers West, September 2023.
As Commerce consulted: US Department of Commerce, “NTIA Solicits Comments on Open-Weight AI Models,” press release, February 21, 2024, commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2024/02/ntia-solicits-comments-open-weight-ai-models.
Facing off against: Mozilla, “Mozilla’s Response to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Request for Comments on Dual Use Foundation Artificial Intelligence Models with Widely Available Model Weights,” Mozilla Foundation (blog), March 2024, blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/files/2024/03/Mozilla-RfC-Submission-Dual-Use-Foundation-Models-With-Widely-Available-Model-Weights.pdf.
Such recipes already abound: Portions of this section appeared in different form as Hao, “The New AI Panic.”
In critical ways: Cameron F. Kerry, Joshua P. Meltzer, Matt Sheehan, “Can Democracies Cooperate with China on AI Research?,” Brookings, January 9, 2023, brookings.edu/articles/can-democracies-cooperate-with-china-on-ai-research.
One of the most famous: Matt Sheehan, “Who Benefits from American AI Research in China?,” Macro Polo, October 21, 2019, macropolo.org/china-ai-research-resnet.
the ideas championed by: The account of how the EO came together is based on author interviews with Alondra Nelson, former OSTP director, October 2023; Suresh Venkatasubramanian, former OSTP deputy director, October 2023; and two other policy folks, November 2023.
The order, one: Portions of this section appeared in different form as Karen Hao and Matteo Wong, “The White House Is Preparing for an AI-Dominated Future,” The Atlantic, October 30, 2023, theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/biden-white-house-ai-executive-order/675837.
California governor Gavin Newsom: Khari Johnson, “Why Silicon Valley Is Trying So Hard to Kill This AI Bill in California,” CalMatters, August 12, 2024, calmatters.org/economy/technology/2024/08/ai-regulation-showdown.
“It was a step”: Interview with Hooker, October 2024.
Raji had found herself: Gabby Miller, “US Senate AI ‘Insight Forum’ Tracker,” Tech Policy Press, December 9, 2023, techpolicy.press/us-senate-ai-insight-forum-tracker.
As her fellow witnesses: Author interview with Raji, October 2023; Inioluwa Deborah Raji, “AI’s Present Matters More Than Its Imagined Future,” The Atlantic, October 4, 2023, theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/ai-chuck-schumer-forum-legislation/675540.
A Schumer spokesperson would later: Cat Zakrzewski, “Meet the Woman Who Transformed Sam Altman into the Avatar of AI,” Washington Post, January 9, 2024, washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/09/openai-anna-makanju-ai-regulation.
In March of that year: Sam Altman (@sama), “i’m doing a trip in may/june to talk to openai users and developers (and people interested in AI generally). please come hang out and share feature requests and other feedback! more detail here: https://openai.com/form/openai-tour-2023 [inactive] or email oai23tour@openai.com,” Twitter (now X), March 29, 2023, x.com/sama/status/1641181668206858240.
The model had involved: “GPT-4 contributions,” OpenAI, accessed October 13, 2024, openai.com/contributions/gpt-4.
The author of the company’s: “GPT-4,” OpenAI, March 14, 2023, openai.com/index/gpt-4-research.
Altman had then tweeted credit: Sam Altman (@sama), “GPT-4 was truly a team effort from our entire company, but the overall leadership and technical vision of Jakub Pachocki for the pretraining effort was remarkable and we wouldn’t be here without it,” Twitter (now X), March 14, 2023, x.com/sama/status/1635700851619819520.
OpenAI’s response: OpenAI, “OpenAI and Journalism,” OpenAI (blog), January 8, 2024, openai.com/index/openai-and-journalism.
That same week, OpenAI’s policy: Dan Milmo, “ ‘Impossible’ to Create AI Tools like ChatGPT Without Copyrighted Material, OpenAI Says,” Guardian, January 8, 2024, theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/08/ai-tools-chatgpt-copyrighted-material-openai.
Iterative deployment, Altman: OpenAI, “Our Approach to AI Safety,” Open AI (blog), April 5, 2023, openai.com/index/our-approach-to-ai-safety.
The post also announced: OpenAI, “Introducing Superalignment,” Open AI (blog), July 5, 2023, openai.com/index/introducing-superalignment.
“i was hoping that”: Sam Altman (@sama), “i was hoping that the oppenheimer movie would inspire a generation of kids to be physicists but it really missed the mark on that. let’s get that movie made! (i think the social network managed to do this for startup founders.),” Twitter (now X), July 22, 2023, x.com/sama/status/1682809958734131200.
Altman was fond: Elizabeth Weil, “Sam Altman Is the Oppenheimer of Our Age,” New York, September 25, 2023, nymag.com/intelligencer/article/sam-altman-artificial-intelligence-openai-profile.html.
He also liked to paraphrase: Cade Metz, “The ChatGPT King Isn’t Worried, but He Knows You Might Be,” New York Times, March 31, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/sam-altman-open-ai-chatgpt.html.
“The way the world was”: Tyler Cowen, host, Conversations with Tyler, podcast, episode 61, “Sam Altman on Loving Community, Hating Coworking, and the Hunt for Talent,” Mercatus Center Podcasts, February 27, 2019.
In March 2023, he’d: Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Pausing AI Developments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut It All Down,” Time, March 29, 2023, time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough.
A month later, Hoffman: Musk v. Altman, No. 4:24-cv-04722, CourtListener (N.D. Cal. November 14, 2024) ECF No. 32, Exhibit 18.
That position became: Julia Black, “Elon Musk Had Twins Last Year with One of His Top Executives,” Business Insider, July 6, 2022, businessinsider.com/elon-musk-shivon-zilis-secret-twins-neuralink-tesla.
“This is a bait”: “Elon Musk Wanted an OpenAI For-Profit,” OpenAI (blog), December 13, 2024, openai.com/index/elon-musk-wanted-an-openai-for-profit/#summer-2017-we-and-elon-agreed-that-a-for-profit-was-the-next-step-for-openai-to-advance-the-mission.
In the announcement, Altman: Sam Altman, “Quora,” Sam Altman (blog), April 21, 2017, blog.samaltman.com/quora.
In her most popular: Helen Toner, “Leaning into EA Disillusionment,” Effective Altruism Forum, July 22, 2022, forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MjTB4MvtedbLjgyja/leaning-into-ea-disillusionment.
By the late summer of 2023: Cade Metz, Tripp Mickle, and Mike Isaac, “Before Altman’s Ouster, OpenAI’s Board Was Divided and Feuding,” New York Times, November 21, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-board-fight.html.
After the meeting, one: Kevin Roose, “OpenAI Insiders Warn of a ‘Reckless’ Race for Dominance,” New York Times, June 4, 2024, nytimes.com/2024/06/04/technology/openai-culture-whistleblowers.html.
When Altman finally handed: Dan Primack, “Sam Altman Owns OpenAI’s Venture Capital Fund,” Axios, February 15, 2024, axios.com/2024/02/15/sam-altman-openai-startup-fund.
Chapter 14: Deliverance
“Annie Altman?” Weil wrote: Elizabeth Weil, “Sam Altman Is the Oppenheimer of Our Age,” New York, September 25, 2023, nymag.com/intelligencer/article/sam-altman-artificial-intelligence-openai-profile.html.
The final day before the: Copy of email, which Annie posted online: Annie Altman (@anniealtman108), “Less than 24 hours before the @NYMag publishing, the first ‘official’ public recognition of my existence and relation. x.com/bullishdumping/bullishdumping/status/1753869400719958519,” [inactive] Twitter (now X), February 3, 2024, x.com/anniealtman108/status/1753881201482629258.
In 2024, I would reach out: Author interviews and visit with Annie Altman, March–November 2024.
Gibstine offered a brief statement: Author correspondence with Connie Gibstine, October 2024.
In January 2025, after Annie: Altman v. Altman, No. 4:25-cv-00017, CourtListener (E.D. Mo. Jan 06, 2025) ECF No. 1; Sam Altman (@sama), “My sister has filed a lawsuit against me. Here is a statement from my mom, brothers, and me:,” Twitter (now X), January 7, 2025, x.com/sama/status/1876780763653263770.
The only other Altman: Fact-checker correspondence with Burroughs, October 2024; author interview with James Roble, July 2024.
While still in college: Copy of Annie’s Tufts medical records.
In a span of six years: Each of Annie’s diagnoses are corroborated by copies of one of the following: her childhood medical records; Tufts medical records; Tufts therapy notes; adulthood diagnostic imaging scans and readouts, including an ultrasound and an MRI; an obstetrics and gynecology evaluation; and physical therapy notes. Details of the impact of these diagnoses on her mobility and quality of life are also corroborated by her Tufts therapy notes; adulthood physical therapy notes; and photos, such as of her walking boot and sweat-soaked sheets.
died of a sudden heart attack: “Jerry Altman Obituary,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 27, 2018, legacy.com/us/obituaries/stltoday/name/jerry-altman-obituary?id=1683283.
She was diagnosed at a young age: Copy of Annie’s childhood medical records; copy of Annie’s Tufts therapy notes.
Sam has also spoken publicly: Trevor Noah, host, What Now? with Trevor Noah, season 1, episode 5, “Sam Altman Speaks Out About What Happened at OpenAI,” Spotify Podcasts, December 7, 2023, open.spotify.com/show/122imavATqSE7eCyXIcqZL.
In May 2019, as her: Copy of 401(k) email notification and 401(k) statement with balance.
The best tax strategy: Copy of email.
Her therapist’s notes: Copy of Annie’s therapist notes in LA.
In December 2019, her bank account: Copy of bank notification email.
Scared and alone: Screenshot of SeekingArrangement activation email.
From late 2019 to mid-2020, Annie: Copies of various emails and texts exchanged between Annie and her family.
they agreed to cover: Copies of various emails and texts.
In May 2020, as her family’s: Copy of text exchange.
Eight months after: Copy of email.
She continued her podcast: Copy of Etsy and Patreon activation emails.
A strange thing was happening: Various screenshots.
Sometimes she noticed chunks: Annie’s old Instagram stories with screenshots of her Apple podcast reviews tagging Apple podcast support about her disappearing reviews.
At least twice, on both: Screenshot of an Instagram where number of Likes is greater than number of views; and two screenshots of the same YouTube video, where the screenshot with the later time stamp has fewer views.
it’s possible that Annie’s: Author interviews with Olivia Snow, a researcher at UCLA focused on sex work, tech, and policy, May 2024; Val Elefante, a researcher and founding team member of the feminist social media company Reliabl, September 2024; and a former Facebook data scientist, October 2024.
“Sam carried AI into the world”: Author interview with Neily Messerschmidt, November 2024.
In sessions from July 2021: Copy of Annie’s therapy notes in Hawai’i.
From fifteen sessions: Annie’s therapy notes.
In these childhood memories: Interview with Messerschmidt, November 2024.
The victim’s brain: Author interviews with a therapist, June and August 2024, who also referenced the bestselling book: Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (Penguin Books, 2015), 1–464.
“I experienced sexual”: Annie Altman (@anniealtman108), “I experienced sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse from my biological siblings, mostly Sam Altman and some from Jack Altman. (2/3),” Twitter (now X), November 13, 2021, x.com/anniealtman108/status/1459696444802142213.
“Sexual, physical, emotional”: Annie Altman (@anniealtman108), “Sam and Jack, I know you remember my Torah portion was about Moses forgiving his brothers. ‘Forgive them father for they know not what they’ve done’ Sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse. Never forgotten.,” Twitter (now X), September 10, 2022, x.com/anniealtman108/status/1568689744951005185.
In the three months: Screenshot of Annie’s OnlyFans income history.
In July 2023, Sam: Copy of email thread.
In addition to his 401(k): Copy of Jerry Altman’s will; and copy of Jerry Altman’s trust.
In early 2024, with her: Copy of email correspondence between Annie’s lawyer and Gibstine’s lawyer.
It would allege: Altman, CourtListener, ECF No. 1.
In October 2024, after: Copy of Annie’s diagnosis.
Borderline personality disorder is marked: Author interviews with the aforementioned therapist and Blaise Aguirre, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, October 2024, both of whom have worked with many patients with the disorder. Neither reviewed Annie’s case, only commented on the condition more broadly.
the disorder usually goes away: The most comprehensive study of borderline personality disorder is an ongoing twenty-four-year longitudinal study called McLean Study of Adult Development, which is conducted by Mary C. Zanarini and has followed over 360 individuals diagnosed with the disorder. Among the study’s key findings: The disorder has a good symptomatic prognosis, and psychotropic medications are not curative. The study regularly publishes new papers, including: Mary C. Zanarini, Frances R. Frankenburg, Isabel V. Glass, and Garrett M. Fitzmaurice, “The 24-Year Course of Symptomatic Disorders in Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder and Personality-Disordered Comparison Subjects: Description and Prediction of Recovery From BPD,” The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 85 (2024), doi.org/10.4088/JCP.24m15370.
Chapter 15: The Gambit
Born in Albania: The account of Murati’s upbringing comes primarily from Charles Duhigg, “The Inside Story of Microsoft’s Partnership with OpenAI,” New Yorker, December 1, 2023, newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/11/the-inside-story-of-microsofts-partnership-with-openai; and Murati’s appearance on Kevin Scott’s podcast: Kevin Scott, host, Behind the Tech with Kevin Scott, “Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer, OpenAI,” Microsoft, July 11, 2023, microsoft.com/en-us/behind-the-tech/mira-murati-chief-technology-officer-openai.
The shift happened: Christopher Jarvis, “The Rise and Fall of Albania’s Pyramid Schemes,” Finance & Development, International Monetary Fund, March 2000, imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm.
The upheaval would leave: Duhigg, “The Inside Story of Microsoft’s Partnership with OpenAI.”
But the more Murati worked: Unless otherwise noted, the account of the lead-up to the board crisis and the behind the scenes of the crisis itself in this and the next chapter is based on author interviews with eight people who were directly involved in or close to the people directly involved in the described events; their contemporaneous notes; and screenshots of Slack messages, emails, and other corroborating evidence, including the audio recording of the all-hands meeting on November 17, 2023 after the board fired Altman.
In the summer, Murati: Mike Isaac, Tripp Mickle, and Cade Metz, “Key OpenAI Executive Played a Pivotal Role in Sam Altman’s Ouster,” New York Times, March 7, 2024, nytimes.com/2024/03/07/technology/openai-executives-role-in-sam-altman-ouster.html.
To anyone resisting: Isaac et al., “Key OpenAI Executive Played a Pivotal Role.”
“I did not feel”: Cade Metz, Tripp Mickle, and Mike Isaac, “Before Altman’s Ouster, OpenAI’s Board Was Divided and Feuding,” New York Times, November 21, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-board-fight.html.
Chapter 16: Cloak-and-Dagger
The Wall Street Journal would later report: Deepa Seetharaman, Keach Hagey, Berber Jin, and Kate Linebaugh, “Sam Altman’s Knack for Dodging Bullets—with a Little Help from Bigshot Friends,” Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2023, wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-openai-protected-by-silicon-valley-friends-f3efcf68.
along with Reid Hoffman: Natasha Mascarenhas, “Behind OpenAI Meltdown, Valley Heavyweight Reid Hoffman Calmed Microsoft Nerves,” The Information, January 17, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/behind-openai-meltdown-valley-heavyweight-reid-hoffman-calmed-microsoft-nerves.
The New York Times would later: Mike Isaac, Tripp Mickle, and Cade Metz, “Key OpenAI Executive Played a Pivotal Role in Sam Altman’s Ouster,” New York Times, March 7, 2024, nytimes.com/2024/03/07/technology/openai-executives-role-in-sam-altman-ouster.html.
“Ilya has a good”: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “I am very worried. Ilya has a good moral compass and does not seek power. He would not take such drastic action unless he felt it was absolutely necessary.,” Twitter (now X), November 19, 2023, x.com/elonmusk/status/1726376406785925566.
Later, at around 2:00 a.m.: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), Twitter (now X), November 20, 2023, x.com/elonmusk/status/1726542015087927487.
But on Tuesday: Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “This letter about OpenAI was just sent to me. These seem like concerns worth investigating. https://gist.github.com/Xe/32d7bc436e401f3323ae77e7e242f858,” Twitter (now X), November 21, 2023, x.com/elonmusk/status/1727096607752282485.
It was a different letter: “Xe/openai-message-to-board.md,” GitHub Gist, archived November 21, 2023, at web.archive.org/web/20231121225252/https://gist.github.com/Xe/32d7bc436e401f3323ae77e7e242f858.
The first was my 2020: Karen Hao, “The Messy, Secretive Reality Behind OpenAI’s Bid to Save the World,” MIT Technology Review, February 17, 2020, technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openaimoonshot-elon-musk-sam-altman-greg-brockman-messy-secretive-reality; Karen Hao and Charlie Warzel, “Inside the Chaos at OpenAI,” The Atlantic, November 19, 2023, theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/11/sam-altman-open-ai-chatgpt-chaos/676050.
“current employee here”: All quotes from emails are from the screenshots that the person provided.
During the board crisis, one: Anna Tong, Jeffrey Dastin and Krystal Hu, “OpenAI Researchers Warned Board of AI Breakthrough Ahead of CEO Ouster, Sources Say,” Reuters, November 23, 2023, reuters.com/technology/sam-altmans-ouster-openai-was-precipitated-by-letter-board-about-ai-breakthrough-2023-11-22.
The algorithm had been a brainchild of: Jon Victor and Amir Efrati, “OpenAI Made an AI Breakthrough Before Altman Firing, Stoking Excitement and Concern,” The Information, November 22, 2023, theinformation.com/articles/openai-made-an-ai-breakthrough-before-altman-firing-stoking-excitement-and-concern.
He would later explain: “Ilya Sutskever: ‘Sequence to Sequence Learning with Neural Networks: What a Decade,’ ” posted December 14, 2024, by seremot, YouTube, 24 min., 36 sec., youtu.be/1yvBqasHLZs.
They siloed the company: Anna Tong and Katie Paul, “Exclusive: OpenAI Working on New Reasoning Technology Under Code Name ‘Strawberry,’ ” Reuters, July 15, 2024, reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-working-new-reasoning-technology-under-code-name-strawberry-2024-07-12.
The frenetic Q discourse*: Portions of this section appeared in different form as Karen Hao, “Why Won’t OpenAI Say What the Q* Algorithm Is?,” The Atlantic, November 28, 2023, theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/11/openai-sam-altman-q-algorithm-breakthrough-project/676163.
OpenAI teased Sora: OpenAI, “Creating Video from Text,” Open AI (blog), openai.com/index/sora.
In 2022, Taylor had played: Kate Conger and Lauren Hirsch, “The Board Chair Squaring Up to Elon Musk in the Feud Over Twitter,” New York Times, October 4, 2022, nytimes.com/2022/10/04/technology/twitter-board-elon-musk.html.
Soon after, Taylor cofounded: “OpenAI Chair’s AI Startup Sierra Gets $4.5 Bln Valuation in Latest Funding Round,” Reuters, October 28, 2024, reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-chairs-ai-startup-sierra-gets-45-bln-valuation-latest-funding-round-2024-10-28.
For the OpenAI investigation: OpenAI, “Review Completed & Altman, Brockman to Continue to Lead OpenAI,” Open AI (blog), March 8, 2024, openai.com/index/review-completed-altman-brockman-to-continue-to-lead-openai.
“We have unanimously concluded”: OpenAI, “Review Completed.”
“Accountability is important”: Helen Toner released the statement in a screenshot on X: Helen Toner (@hlntnr), “A statement from Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley:,” Twitter (now X), March 8, 2024, x.com/hlntnr/status/1766269137628590185.
Chapter 17: Reckoning
Two of them were: Erin Woo and Stephanie Palazzolo, “OpenAI Researchers, Including Ally of Sutskever, Fired for Alleged Leaking,” The Information, April 11, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/openai-researchers-including-ally-of-sutskever-fired-for-alleged-leaking.
he had been in the process: Edward Ludlow and Ashlee Vance, “Altman Sought Billions for Chip Venture Before OpenAI Ouster,” Bloomberg, November 19, 2023, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-19/altman-sought-billions-for-ai-chip-venture-before-openai-ouster.
In February 2024, after: Keach Hagey and Asa Fitch, “Sam Altman Seeks Trillions of Dollars to Reshape Business of Chips and AI,” Wall Street Journal, February 8, 2024, wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-seeks-trillions-of-dollars-to-reshape-business-of-chips-and-ai-89ab3db0.
Altman would later say: Lex Fridman, host, Lex Fridman Podcast, podcast, episode 419, “Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI,” March 18, 2024, lexfridman.com/podcast.
The audio work had: Author interview with Alexis Conneau, January 2025.
Altman and Brockman had set a new deadline: Copy of internal OpenAI memo.
Scallion would be the first: OpenAI, Preparedness Framework (Beta) (OpenAI, December 18, 2023), 1–27, cdn.openai.com/openai-preparedness-framework-beta.pdf.
the launch for Scallion: OpenAI, “Hello GPT-4o,” OpenAI (blog), May 13, 2024, openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o.
There had also been: Wording confirmed independently by two people.
On The Daily Show: “Trump’s Thirsty VP Contenders Crash Trial & ChatGPT’s Flirty AI Update | The Daily Show,” posted on May 15, 2024, by The Daily Show, YouTube, 9 min., 57 sec., youtu.be/eFkUOi_9140.
“I think it’s the best”: Audio recording of the meeting, May 15, 2024.
The company was going: Audio recording of the meeting, May 15, 2024.
Altman would come to: Audio recording of Altman expressing his regret to employees.
What did Altman think: Sarah Krouse, Deepa Seetharaman, and Joe Flint, “Behind the Scenes of Scarlett Johansson’s Battle with OpenAI,” Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2024, wsj.com/tech/ai/scarlett-johansson-openai-sam-altman-voice-fight-7f81a1aa.
In March, he appeared: Fridman, “Sam Altman.”
“When we just do”: “Sam Altman & Brad Lightcap: Which Companies Will Be Steamrolled by OpenAI?,” posted April 15, 2024, by 20VC with Harry Stebbings, YouTube, 53 min., 6 sec., youtu.be/G8T1O81W96Y.
In May, he then joined: Julia Black, “The Besties’ Revenge: How the ‘All-In’ Podcast Captured Silicon Valley,” The Information, December 15, 2023, theinformation.com/articles/the-besties-revenge-how-the-all-in-podcast-ate-silicon-valley.
“It feels to me like”: “In Conversation with Sam Altman,” posted May 10, 2024, by All-In Podcast, YouTube, 1 hr., 43 min., 2 sec., youtu.be/nSM0xd8xHUM.
“i try not to think”: Sam Altman (@sama), “i try not to think about competitors too much, but i cannot stop thinking about the aesthetic difference between openai and google,” Twitter (now X), May 16, 2024, x.com/sama/status/1791183356274921568.
After The Blip, the board’s: Deepa Seetharaman, “SEC Investigating Whether OpenAI Investors Were Misled,” Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2024, wsj.com/tech/sec-investigating-whether-openai-investors-were-misled-9d90b411.
Most notably, in March: Karen Weise and Cade Metz, “How Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Became Tech’s Steely Eyed A.I. Gambler,” New York Times, July 14, 2026, nytimes.com/2024/07/14/technology/microsoft-ai-satya-nadella.html.
He was known to those: Based on the recollections and characterizations of three people who worked for him.
After years of HR complaints: Rob Copeland and Parmy Olson, “Artificial Intelligence Will Define Google’s Future. For Now, It’s a Management Challenge,” Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2021, wsj.com/articles/artificial-intelligence-will-define-googles-future-for-now-its-a-management-challenge-11611676945; Giles Turner and Mark Bergen, “Google DeepMind Co-Founder Placed on Leave From AI Lab,” Bloomberg, August 21, 2019, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-21/google-deepmind-co-founder-placed-on-leave-from-ai-lab.
Later in 2024, Microsoft: Jordan Novet, “Microsoft Says OpenAI Is Now a Competitor in AI and Search,” CNBC, July 31, 2024, cnbc.com/2024/07/31/microsoft-says-openai-is-now-a-competitor-in-ai-and-search.html; Alex Heath, “Microsoft Now Lists OpenAI as a Competitor,” The Verge, August 2, 2024, theverge.com/2024/8/2/24212370/microsoft-now-lists-openai-as-a-competitor.
More were reaching out: Ellen Huet, host, Foundering: The OpenAI Story, podcast, season 5, episode 1, “The Most Silicon Valley Man Alive,” Bloomberg Podcasts, June 6, 2024, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-05/foundering-sam-altman-s-rise-to-openai?srnd=foundering.
“It’s a strangely”: “Sam Altman Talks GPT-4o and Predicts the Future of AI,” posted May 14, 2024, by the Logan Bartlett Show, YouTube, 46 min., 14 sec., youtu.be/fMtbrKhXMWc.
“Ilya is easily”: OpenAI, “Ilya Sutskever to Leave OpenAI, Jakub Pachocki Announced as Chief Scientist,” OpenAI (blog), May 14, 2024, openai.com/index/jakub-pachocki-announced-as-chief-scientist.
Sutskever tweeted his own: Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut), “After almost a decade, I have made the decision to leave OpenAI. The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous, and I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under the excellent research leadership of @merettm. It was an honor and a privilege to have worked together, and I will miss everyone dearly. So long, and thanks for everything. I am excited for what comes next—a project that is very personally meaningful to me about which I will share details in due time,” Twitter (now X), May 14, 2024, x.com/ilyasut/status/1790517455628198322.
OpenAI executives internally: Screenshot of Slack announcement, May 14, 2024.
“Being AGI ready”: All quotes about AI safety and the Superalignment team are pulled are from an audio recording of the all-hands meeting, May 15, 2024.
“I have been disagreeing”: Jan Leike (@janleike), “I joined because I thought OpenAI would be the best place in the world to do this research. However, I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company’s core priorities for quite some time, until we finally reached a breaking point.,” Twitter (now X), May 17, 2024, x.com/janleike/status/1791498178346549382.
Kelsey Piper, a senior: Kelsey Piper, “ChatGPT Can Talk, but OpenAI Employees Sure Can’t,” Vox, May 17, 2024, vox.com/future-perfect/2024/5/17/24158478/openai-departures-sam-altman-employees-chatgpt-release.
They agreed to not: Daniel Kokotajlo has written at length about his decision-making, including in this thread: Daniel Kokotajlo (@DKokotajlo67142), “1/15: In April, I resigned from OpenAI after losing confidence that the company would behave responsibly in its attempt to build artificial general intelligence —‘AI systems that are generally smarter than humans,’ ” Twitter (now X), June 4, 2024, x.com/DKokotajlo67142/status/1797994238468407380; and his posts and comments on the AI Safety forum LessWrong: “Daniel Kokotajlo,” LessWrong, accessed November 25, 2024, lesswrong.com/users/daniel-kokotajlo. The estimated value of his equity comes from Kevin Roose, “OpenAI Insiders Warn of a ‘Reckless’ Race for Dominance,” New York Times, June 4, 2023, nytimes.com/2024/06/04/technology/openai-culture-whistleblowers.html.
With Piper’s story out: All quotes from Slack pulled from screenshots.
“we have never clawed back”: Sam Altman (@sama), “in regards to recent stuff about how openai handles equity: we have never clawed back anyone’s vested equity, nor will we do that if people do not sign a separation agreement (or don’t agree to a non-disparagement agreement). vested equity is vested equity, full stop. there was a provision about potential equity cancellation in our previous exit docs; although we never clawed anything back, it should never have been something we had in any documents or communication. this is on me and one of the few times i’ve been genuinely embarrassed running openai; i did not know this was happening and i should have. the team was already in the process of fixing the standard exit paperwork over the past month or so. if any former employee who signed one of those old agreements is worried about it, they can contact me and we’ll fix that too. very sorry about this,” Twitter (now X), May 18, 2024, x.com/sama/status/1791936857594581428.
On May 20, Scarlett: Bobby Allyn (@BobbyAllyn), “Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI situation. Wow:,” Twitter (now X), May 20, 2024, x.com/BobbyAllyn/status/1792679435701014908.
All week, on top of: Kylie Robison, “ChatGPT Will Be Able to Talk to You Like Scarlett Johansson in Her,” The Verge, May 13, 2024, theverge.com/2024/5/13/24155652/chatgpt-voice-mode-gpt4o-upgrades.
Was she mad: Sarah Krouse et al, “Behind the Scenes of Scarlett Johansson’s Battle with OpenAI.”
On May 19, the company had: OpenAI, “How the Voices for ChatGPT Were Chosen,” OpenAI (blog), May 19, 2024, openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen.
before they could find: Krouse et al., “Scarlett Johansson’s Battle with OpenAI.”
“In a time when we”: Allyn, “Statement from Scarlett Johansson.”
“We are sorry”: OpenAI, “How the Voices for ChatGPT Were Chosen.”
“I’ve seen a lot of policymakers”: Derek Robertson, “Sam Altman’s Scarlett Johansson Blunder Just Made AI a Harder Sell in DC,” Politico, May 22, 2024, politico.com/news/magazine/2024/05/22/scarlett-johansson-sam-altmans-washington-00159507.
The leadership team gave: All descriptions of and quotes from the meeting are based on an audio recording of the meeting, May 22, 2024.
Published just that day: Kelsey Piper, “Leaked OpenAI Documents Reveal Aggressive Tactics Toward Former Employees,” Vox, May 22, 2024, vox.com/future-perfect/351132/openai-vested-equity-nda-sam-altman-documents-employees.
“The situation is, I think”: All quotes from an audio recording of the meeting, May 23, 2024.
Murati, Brockman, and Pachocki arrived: Deepa Seetharaman, “Turning OpenAI into a Real Business Is Tearing It Apart,” Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2024, wsj.com/tech/ai/open-ai-division-for-profit-da26c24b.
Chapter 18: A Formula for Empire
Altman once remarked onstage: Tyler Cowen, host, Conversations with Tyler, podcast, episode 61, “Sam Altman on Loving Community, Hating Coworking, and the Hunt for Talent,” Mercatus Center Podcasts, February 27, 2019.
“The most successful founders”: Sam Altman, “Successful People,” Sam Altman (blog), March 7, 2013, blog.samaltman.com/successful-people.
“Who will control the future of AI?”: Sam Altman, “Who Will Control the Future of AI?,” Opinion, Washington Post, July 25, 2024, washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/25/sam-altman-ai-democracy-authoritarianism-future.
“We’re now going to assume”: All quotes from the all-hands meeting pulled from an audio recording, May 15, 2024.
On May 28, less than: Screenshot of Slack message.
On Altman’s list: Amir Efrati and Wayne Ma, “OpenAI CEO Cements Control as He Secures Apple Deal,” The Information, May 29, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/openai-ceo-cements-control-as-he-secures-apple-deal.
Altman was considering: Aaron Holmes, Natasha Mascarenhas, and Julia Hornstein, “OpenAI CEO Says Company Could Become Benefit Corporation Akin to Rivals Anthropic, xAI,” The Information, June 14, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/openai-ceo-says-company-could-become-benefit-corporation-akin-to-rivals-anthropic-xai.
On June 4, The New York Times: Kevin Roose, “OpenAI Insiders Warn of a ‘Reckless’ Race for Dominance,” New York Times, June 4, 2024, nytimes.com/2024/06/04/technology/openai-culture-whistleblowers.html.
In an open letter: “A Right to Warn About Advanced Artificial Intelligence,” accessed November 5, 2024, righttowarn.ai.
A month later, The Washington Post: Pranshu Verma, Cat Zakrzewski, and Nitasha Tiku, “OpenAI Illegally Barred Staff from Airing Safety Risks, Whistleblowers Say,” Washington Post, July 13, 2024, washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/13/openai-safety-risks-whistleblower-sec.
Later that month, five US senators: Pranshu Verma, Cat Zakrzewski, and Nitasha Tiku, “Senators Demand OpenAI Detail Efforts to Make Its AI Safe,” Washington Post, July 23, 2024, washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/23/openai-senate-democrats-ai-safe.
OpenAI was also bringing in: OpenAI, “OpenAI Welcomes Sarah Friar (CFO) and Kevin Weil (CPO),” OpenAI (blog), June 10, 2024, openai.com/index/openai-welcomes-cfo-cpo.
First to go: John Schulman (@johnschulman2), “I shared the following note with my OpenAI colleagues today: I’ve made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work. I’ve decided to pursue this goal at Anthropic, where I believe I can gain new perspectives and do research alongside people deeply engaged with the topics I’m most interested in…,” Twitter (now X), August 5, 2024, x.com/johnschulman2/status/1820610863499509855.
Brockman announced that he was: Greg Brockman (@gdb), “I’m taking a sabbatical through end of year. First time to relax since co-founding OpenAI 9 years ago. The mission is far from complete; we still have a safe AGI to build.,” Twitter (now X), August 5, 2024, x.com/gdb/status/1820644694264791459.
The following month, on September 25: Mira Murati (@miramurati), “I shared the following note with the OpenAI team today.,” Twitter (now X), September 25, 2024, x.com/miramurati/status/1839025700009030027.
Within hours, two more key leaders: Bob McGrew (@bobmcgrewai), “I just shared this with OpenAI:,” Twitter (now X), September 25, 2024, x.com/bobmcgrewai/status/1839099787423134051; Barret Zoph (@barret_zoph), “I posted this note to OpenAI.,” September 25, 2024, x.com/barret_zoph/status/1839095143397515452.
the shipping of OpenAI’s latest model: OpenAI, “Introducing OpenAI o1,” OpenAI (blog), accessed January 6, 2025, openai.com/o1.
Musk was expanding: Dara Kerr, “How Memphis Became a Battleground over Elon Musk’s xAI Supercomputer,” NPR, September 11, 2024, npr.org/2024/09/11/nx-s1-5088134/elon-musk-ai-xai-supercomputer-memphis-pollution.
Anthropic’s latest version: Stephanie Palazzolo, Erin Woo, and Amir Efrati, “How Anthropic Got Inside OpenAI’s Head,” The Information, December 12, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/how-anthropic-got-inside-openais-head; Kevin Roose, “How Claude Became Tech Insiders’ Chatbot of Choice,” New York Times, December 13, 2024, nytimes.com/2024/12/13/technology/claude-ai-anthropic.html.
Sutskever had officially formed: Kenrick Cai, Krystal Hu, and Anna Tong, “Exclusive: OpenAI Co-Founder Sutskever’s New Safety-Focused AI Startup SSI Raises $1 Billion,” Reuters, September 4, 2024, reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-co-founder-sutskevers-new-safety-focused-ai-startup-ssi-raises-1-billion-2024-09-04.
OpenAI was still struggling: Stephanie Palazzolo, Erin Woo, and Amir Efrati. “OpenAI Shifts Strategy as Rate of ‘GPT’ AI Improvements Slows,” The Information, November 9, 2024, theinformation.com/articles/openai-shifts-strategy-as-rate-of-gpt-ai-improvements-slows; Deepa Seetharaman, “The Next Great Leap in AI Is Behind Schedule and Crazy Expensive,” Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2024, wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-gpt5-orion-delays-639e7693.
OpenAI’s latest fundraise: OpenAI, “New Funding to Scale the Benefits of AI,” OpenAI (blog), October 2, 2024, openai.com/index/scale-the-benefits-of-ai.
The post was titled: Sam Altman, “The Intelligence Age,” Sam Altman (blog), September 23, 2024, ia.samaltman.com.
During an all-hands, Murati: Audio recording of the meeting, September 26. 2024.
“Mira, Bob, and Barret made”: Sam Altman (@sama), “i just posted this note to openai: Hi All– Mira has been instrumental to OpenAI’s progress and growth the last 6.5 years; she has been a hugely significant factor in our development from an unknown research lab to an important company. When Mira informed me this morning that she was leaving, I was saddened but of course support her decision. For the past year, she has been building out a strong bench of leaders that will continue our progress. I also want to share that Bob and Barret have decided to depart OpenAI. Mira, Bob, and Barret made these decisions independently of each other and amicably, but the timing of Mira’s decision was such that it made sense to now do this all at once, so that we can work together for a smooth handover to the next generation of leadership.,” Twitter (now X), September 25, 2024, x.com/sama/status/1839096160168063488.
Musk, allied now with: Musk v. Altman, No. 4:24-cv-04722, CourtListener (N.D. Cal. November 14, 2024) ECF No. 32.
“OpenAI’s conduct could have”: Jessica Toonkel, Keach Hagey, Meghan Bobrowsky, “Meta Urges California Attorney General to Stop OpenAI from Becoming For-Profit,” Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2024, wsj.com/tech/ai/elon-musk-open-ai-lawsuit-response-c1f415f8.
Late in the year, nestled: OpenAI, “Why OpenAI’s Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission,” OpenAI (blog) December 27, 2024, openai.com/index/why-our-structure-must-evolve-to-advance-our-mission.
“We are now confident”: Sam Altman, “Reflections,” Sam Altman (blog), January 5, 2025, blog.samaltman.com/reflections.
Epilogue: How the Empire Falls
In 2021, I came across: Karen Hao, “A New Vision of Artificial Intelligence for the People,” MIT Technology Review, April 22, 2022, technologyreview.com/2022/04/22/1050394/artificial-intelligence-for-the-people.
Large language models accelerate: Author interviews with Kathleen Siminyu, November 2021; Michael and Caroline Running Wolf, November 2021; Kevin Scannell, December 2021; Vukosi Marivate, April 2023; and Pelonomi Moiloa and Jade Abbott, April 2023; Matteo Wong, “The AI Revolution Is Crushing Thousands of Languages,” The Atlantic, April 12, 2024, theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/generative-ai-low-resource-languages/678042.
Among the over seven thousand: “Kevin Scannell on ‘Language from Below: Grassroots Efforts to Develop Language Technology for Minoritized Languages’ 24.S96 Special Seminar: Linguistics & social justice,” posted on November 17, 2021, by MIT-Haiti Initiative, Facebook, 2 hr., 56 min., 46 sec., facebook.com/mithaiti/videos/1060463734714819; OpenAI, “GPT-4,” OpenAI, March 14, 2023, openai.com/index/gpt-4-research.
It was up against: Author interviews with Keoni Mahelona, October, November, and December 2021; and Peter-Lucas Jones, November, December 2021, and January 2022.
This is where: Author interviews with Mahelona; Jones; Caleb Moses, a data scientist who worked on the project, November 2021; and several others engaged in Te Hiku’s language preservation work, November 2021–January 2022.
“Data is the last frontier”: Interview with Mahelona, October 2021.
That data pool paled: Alec Radford, Jong Wook Kim, Tao Xu, Greg Brockman, Christine McLeavey, Ilya Sutskever, “Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision,” preprint, arXiv, December 6, 2022, 1–2, arxiv.org/pdf/2212.04356.
a free speech-recognition model: Mozilla, “About DeepSpeech,” Mozilla GitHub, accessed December 16, 2024, mozilla.github.io/deepspeech-playbook/DEEPSPEECH.html.
After Timnit Gebru was ousted: Author interviews with Timnit Gebru, August 2024; and Milagros Miceli, August 2024.
she founded a nonprofit: “About Us,” Distributed AI Research, accessed December 16, 2024, dair-institute.org/about.
“Our research is intended to”: “Research Philosophy,” Distributed AI Research, accessed December 16, 2024, dair-institute.org/research-philosophy.
She created the Data Workers’: “Data Workers’ Inquiry,” Data Workers’ Inquiry, accessed December 16, 2024, data-workers.org.
For her project, Fuentes: Oskarina Veronica Fuentes Anaya, “Life of a Latin American Data Worker,” Data Workers’ Inquiry, accessed December 16, 2024, data-workers.org/oskarina; author correspondence with Fuentes, July 2024.
A continent away: Author interview with Mophat Okinyi, August 2024.
he also started a nonprofit: “Our Story,” Techworker Community Africa, accessed December 16, 2024, techworkercommunityafrica.org/About.html.
“As the dust settles”: Mophat Okinyi, “Impact of Remotasks’ Closure on Kenyan Workers,” Data Workers’ Inquiry, accessed December 16, 2024, data-workers.org/mophat.
he would be named: Billy Perrigo, “Mophat Okinyi,” Time, September 5, 2024, time.com/7012787/mophat-okinyi.
In Uruguay, Daniel Pena: Author interview with Daniel Pena, May 2024.
In her 2019 talk: Ria Kalluri, “The Values of Machine Learning,” conference talk, December 9, 2019, posted December 9, 2019, by NIPS 2019, SlidesLive, 28 min., 51 sec., slideslive.com/38923453/the-values-of-machine-learning.
UC Berkeley researcher: Author interview with Deborah Raji, August 2024.
“If you’re using a car”: Author interview with Sasha Luccioni, August 2024.
As Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT professor: Joseph Weizenbaum, “ELIZA—a Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine,” Communications of the ACM 9, no. 1, (January 1966): 36–45, doi.org/10.1145/365153.365168.