SAN FRANCISCO — “I don’t think this will be an only good story,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said after being asked a question about whether his company, valued around $1 trillion, might bring some bad into the world. In other words: yes. His defense was that people should think in millennia, not decades. “Maybe the socioeconomic contract has to change very dramatically,” he said. “But that’s all been happening for a long time. There was no such job as basketball coach 500 years ago, there was no such job as AI company CEO 50 years ago.”
The basketball coach Altman referred to was Steve Kerr. The two were on stage together Monday night at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in Hayes Valley for a conversation about “leadership, innovation, and San Francisco.” After learning about the event earlier that day, I bought a ticket out of morbid curiosity. What myths is Altman interested in telling about himself and about his company, one actively making American life more expensive, degrading, and stupid? What possible connections could Kerr and Altman have? Most intriguingly, how would the most prominent member of the triumphalist AI set talk about a city he and his cohort have all but conquered?
