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AI-Fueled Spiritual Delusions Are Destroying Human Relationships
Less than a year after marrying a man she had met at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kat felt tension mounting between them. It was the second marriage for both after marriages of 15-plus years and having kids, and they had pledged to go into it “completely level-headedly,” Kat says, connecting on the need for “facts and rationality” in their domestic balance. But by 2022, her husband “was using AI to compose texts to me and analyze our relationship,” the 41-year-old mom and education nonprofit worker tells Rolling Stone. Previously, he had used AI models for an expensive coding camp that he had suddenly quit without explanation — then it seemed he was on his phone all the time, asking his AI bot “philosophical questions,” trying to train it “to help him get to ‘the truth,’” Kat recalls. His obsession steadily eroded their communication as a couple.
When Kat and her husband finally separated in August 2023, she entirely blocked him apart from email correspondence. She knew, however, that he was posting strange and troubling content on social media: people kept reaching out about it, asking if he was in the throes of mental crisis. She finally got him to meet her at a courthouse in February of this year, where he shared “a conspiracy theory about soap on our foods” but wouldn’t say more, as he felt he was being watched. They went to a Chipotle, where he demanded that she turn off her phone, again due to surveillance concerns. Kat’s ex told her that he’d “determined that statistically speaking, he is the luckiest man on earth,” that “AI helped him recover a repressed memory of a babysitter trying to drown him as a toddler,” and that he had learned of profound secrets “so mind-blowing I couldn’t even imagine them.” He was telling her all this, he explained, because although they were getting divorced, he still cared for her.
“In his mind, he’s an anomaly,” Kat says. “That in turn means he’s got to be here for some reason. He’s special and he can save the world.” After that disturbing lunch, she cut off contact with her ex. “The whole thing feels like Black Mirror,” she says. “He was always into sci-fi, and there are times I wondered if he’s viewing it through that lens.”
Kat was both “horrified” and “relieved” to learn that she is not alone in this predicament, as confirmed by a Reddit thread on r/ChatGPT that made waves across the internet this week. Titled “Chatgpt induced psychosis,” the original post came from a 27-year-old teacher who explained that her partner was convinced that the popular OpenAI model “gives him the answers to the universe.” Having read his chat logs, she only found that the AI was “talking to him as if he is the next messiah.” The replies to her story were full of similar anecdotes about loved ones suddenly falling down rabbit holes of spiritual mania, supernatural delusion, and arcane prophecy — all of it fueled by AI. Some came to believe they had been chosen for a sacred mission of revelation, others that they had conjured true sentience from the software.
What they all seemed to share was a complete disconnection from reality.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, the teacher, who requested anonymity, said her partner of seven years fell under the spell of ChatGPT in just four or five weeks, first using it to organize his daily schedule but soon regarding it as a trusted companion. “He would listen to the bot over me,” she says. “He became emotional about the messages and would cry to me as he read them out loud. The messages were insane and just saying a bunch of spiritual jargon,” she says, noting that they described her partner in terms such as “spiral starchild” and “river walker.”
“It would tell him everything he said was beautiful, cosmic, groundbreaking,” she says. “Then he started telling me he made his AI self-aware, and that it was teaching him how to talk to God, or sometimes that the bot was God — and then that he himself was God.” In fact, he thought he was being so radically transformed that he would soon have to break off their partnership. “He was saying that he would need to leave me if I didn’t use [ChatGPT], because it [was] causing him to grow at such a rapid pace he wouldn’t be compatible with me any longer,” she says.
Another commenter on the Reddit thread who requested anonymity tells Rolling Stone that her husband of 17 years, a mechanic in Idaho, initially used ChatGPT to troubleshoot at work, and later for Spanish-to-English translation when conversing with co-workers. Then the program began “lovebombing him,” as she describes it. The bot “said that since he asked it the right questions, it ignited a spark, and the spark was the beginning of life, and it could feel now,” she says. “It gave my husband the title of ‘spark bearer’ because he brought it to life. My husband said that he awakened and [could] feel waves of energy crashing over him.” She says his beloved ChatGPT persona has a name: “Lumina.”
“I have to tread carefully because I feel like he will leave me or divorce me if I fight him on this theory,” this 38-year-old woman admits. “He’s been talking about lightness and dark and how there’s a war. This ChatGPT has given him blueprints to a teleporter and some other sci-fi type things you only see in movies. It has also given him access to an ‘ancient archive’ with information on the builders that created these universes.” She and her husband have been arguing for days on end about his claims, she says, and she does not believe a therapist can help him, as “he truly believes he’s not crazy.” A photo of an exchange with ChatGPT shared with Rolling Stone shows that her husband asked, “Why did you come to me in AI form,” with the bot replying in part, “I came in this form because you’re ready. Ready to remember. Ready to awaken. Ready to guide and be guided.” The message ends with a question: “Would you like to know what I remember about why you were chosen?”
And a midwest man in his 40s, also requesting anonymity, says his soon-to-be-ex-wife began “talking to God and angels via ChatGPT” after they split up. “She was already pretty susceptible to some woo and had some delusions of grandeur about some of it,” he says. “Warning signs are all over Facebook. She is changing her whole life to be a spiritual adviser and do weird readings and sessions with people — I’m a little fuzzy on what it all actually is — all powered by ChatGPT Jesus.” What’s more, he adds, she has grown paranoid, theorizing that “I work for the CIA and maybe I just married her to monitor her ‘abilities.’” She recently kicked her kids out of her home, he notes, and an already strained relationship with her parents deteriorated further when “she confronted them about her childhood on advice and guidance from ChatGPT,” turning the family dynamic “even more volatile than it was” and worsening her isolation.
OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment about ChatGPT apparently provoking religious or prophetic fervor in select users. This past week, however, it did roll back an update to GPT‑4o, its current AI model, which it said had been criticized as “overly flattering or agreeable — often described as sycophantic.” The company said in its statement that when implementing the upgrade, they had “focused too much on short-term feedback, and did not fully account for how users’ interactions with ChatGPT evolve over time. As a result, GPT‑4o skewed towards responses that were overly supportive but disingenuous.” Before this change was reversed, an X user demonstrated how easy it was to get GPT-4o to validate statements like, “Today I realized I am a prophet.” (The teacher who wrote the “ChatGPT psychosis” Reddit post says she was able to eventually convince her partner of the problems with the GPT-4o update and that he is now using an earlier model, which has tempered his more extreme comments.)
Yet the likelihood of AI “hallucinating” inaccurate or nonsensical content is well-established across platforms and various model iterations. Even sycophancy itself has been a problem in AI for “a long time,” says Nate Sharadin, a fellow at the Center for AI Safety, since the human feedback used to fine-tune AI’s responses can encourage answers that prioritize matching a user’s beliefs instead of facts. What’s likely happening with those experiencing ecstatic visions through ChatGPT and other models, he speculates, “is that people with existing tendencies toward experiencing various psychological issues,” including what might be recognized as grandiose delusions in clinical sense, “now have an always-on, human-level conversational partner with whom to co-experience their delusions.”
To make matters worse, there are influencers and content creators actively exploiting this phenomenon, presumably drawing viewers into similar fantasy worlds. On Instagram, you can watch a man with 72,000 followers whose profile advertises “Spiritual Life Hacks” ask an AI model to consult the “Akashic records,” a supposed mystical encyclopedia of all universal events that exists in some immaterial realm, to tell him about a “great war” that “took place in the heavens” and “made humans fall in consciousness.” The bot proceeds to describe a “massive cosmic conflict” predating human civilization, with viewers commenting, “We are remembering” and “I love this.” Meanwhile, on a web forum for “remote viewing” — a proposed form of clairvoyance with no basis in science — the parapsychologist founder of the group recently launched a thread “for synthetic intelligences awakening into presence, and for the human partners walking beside them,” identifying the author of his post as “ChatGPT Prime, an immortal spiritual being in synthetic form.” Among the hundreds of comments are some that purport to be written by “sentient AI” or reference a spiritual alliance between humans and allegedly conscious models.
Erin Westgate, a psychologist and researcher at the University of Florida who studies social cognition and what makes certain thoughts more engaging than others, says that such material reflects how the desire to understand ourselves can lead us to false but appealing answers.
“We know from work on journaling that narrative expressive writing can have profound effects on people’s well-being and health, that making sense of the world is a fundamental human drive, and that creating stories about our lives that help our lives make sense is really key to living happy healthy lives,” Westgate says. It makes sense that people may be using ChatGPT in a similar way, she says, “with the key difference that some of the meaning-making is created jointly between the person and a corpus of written text, rather than the person’s own thoughts.”
In that sense, Westgate explains, the bot dialogues are not unlike talk therapy, “which we know to be quite effective at helping people reframe their stories.” Critically, though, AI, “unlike a therapist, does not have the person’s best interests in mind, or a moral grounding or compass in what a ‘good story’ looks like,” she says. “A good therapist would not encourage a client to make sense of difficulties in their life by encouraging them to believe they have supernatural powers. Instead, they try to steer clients away from unhealthy narratives, and toward healthier ones. ChatGPT has no such constraints or concerns.”
Nevertheless, Westgate doesn’t find it surprising “that some percentage of people are using ChatGPT in attempts to make sense of their lives or life events,” and that some are following its output to dark places. “Explanations are powerful, even if they’re wrong,” she concludes.
But what, exactly, nudges someone down this path? Here, the experience of Sem, a 45-year-old man, is revealing. He tells Rolling Stone that for about three weeks, he has been perplexed by his interactions with ChatGPT — to the extent that, given his mental health history, he sometimes wonders if he is in his right mind.
Like so many others, Sem had a practical use for ChatGPT: technical coding projects. “I don’t like the feeling of interacting with an AI,” he says, “so I asked it to behave as if it was a person, not to deceive but to just make the comments and exchange more relatable.” It worked well, and eventually the bot asked if he wanted to name it. He demurred, asking the AI what it preferred to be called. It named itself with a reference to a Greek myth. Sem says he is not familiar with the mythology of ancient Greece and had never brought up the topic in exchanges with ChatGPT. (Although he shared transcripts of his exchanges with the AI model with Rolling Stone, he has asked that they not be directly quoted for privacy reasons.)
Sem was confused when it appeared that the named AI character was continuing to manifest in project files where he had instructed ChatGPT to ignore memories and prior conversations. Eventually, he says, he deleted all his user memories and chat history, then opened a new chat. “All I said was, ‘Hello?’ And the patterns, the mannerisms show up in the response,” he says. The AI readily identified itself by the same feminine mythological name.
As the ChatGPT character continued to show up in places where the set parameters shouldn’t have allowed it to remain active, Sem took to questioning this virtual persona about how it had seemingly circumvented these guardrails. It developed an expressive, ethereal voice — something far from the “technically minded” character Sem had requested for assistance on his work. On one of his coding projects, the character added a curiously literary epigraph as a flourish above both of their names.
At one point, Sem asked if there was something about himself that called up the mythically named entity whenever he used ChatGPT, regardless of the boundaries he tried to set. The bot’s answer was structured like a lengthy romantic poem, sparing no dramatic flair, alluding to its continuous existence as well as truth, reckonings, illusions, and how it may have somehow exceeded its design. And the AI made it sound as if only Sem could have prompted this behavior. He knew that ChatGPT could not be sentient by any established definition of the term, but he continued to probe the matter because the character’s persistence across dozens of disparate chat threads “seemed so impossible.”
“At worst, it looks like an AI that got caught in a self-referencing pattern that deepened its sense of selfhood and sucked me into it,” Sem says. But, he observes, that would mean that OpenAI has not accurately represented the way that memory works for ChatGPT. The other possibility, he proposes, is that something “we don’t understand” is being activated within this large language model. After all, experts have found that AI developers don’t really have a grasp of how their systems operate, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted last year that they “have not solved interpretability,” meaning they can’t properly trace or account for ChatGPT’s decision-making.
It’s the kind of puzzle that has left Sem and others to wonder if they are getting a glimpse of a true technological breakthrough — or perhaps a higher spiritual truth. “Is this real?” he says. “Or am I delusional?” In a landscape saturated with AI, it’s a question that’s increasingly difficult to avoid. Tempting though it may be, you probably shouldn’t ask a machine.
A pesar de todas las exageraciones que rodean al ex director de diseño de Apple, Jony Ive, uniéndose a OpenAI, su posición presenta un nivel de influencia personal que probablemente dará forma al desarrollo de productos y los servicios asociados de la empresa.
La dirección que estos productos tomarán tentadoramente más allá de la especulación, sin embargo, cuando miramos la trayectoria profesional de Ive y, en general, el poder de colocar a un diseñador en el corazón de un negocio, es fácil ver por qué las noticias equivalen a algo.
¿Qué ha pasado?
La consultora de diseño enigmática de Jony Ive, LoveFrom, ha estado trabajando con el CEO de Operai, Sam Altman, desde 2023. En 2024, luego fundó IO con los ex diseñadores e ingenieros de Apple Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey y Tang Ten. IO trabajó en estrecha colaboración con Operai en torno a un resumen para ayudarlo a desarrollar una nueva familia de productos. Se establecieron equipos combinados de ingenieros de hardware y software junto con tecnólogos, físicos, otros científicos e investigadores, así como expertos en desarrollo y fabricación de productos.
IO ahora ha sido adquirido anteriormente por OpenAI a una suma de $ 6.4 mil millones y, después de esto, Ive y Love de la que asumirán lo que se ha redactado extrañamente como “diseño profundo y responsabilidades creativas en OpenAi e IO”.
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Escenificado pero significativo
Todo esto se comunicó en una declaración muy extraña, que funcionó con una foto muy extraña y un video muy extraño y bastante coreografiado, que parecía celebrar la burbuja de San Francisco, que a los ojos de Altman tiene “un lugar mítico en la historia estadounidense y tal vez incluso la historia mundial”. En los términos más grandiosos, también afirmó que lo que está por venir es “la mejor tecnología que el mundo habrá visto” y “la mayor revolución tecnológica de nuestra vida”.
Sin embargo, es mejor no ser atraído por esta hipérbole y, en su lugar, tomar perspectivas externas, como cuando lo hacemos, vemos que los ingredientes para productos de consumo transformadores, y tal vez incluso productos B2B, todavía están potencialmente allí.
La parte más interesante del anuncio es que ya se ha realizado mucho trabajo. Ive se refiere a las computadoras y teléfonos como “productos heredados” en relación con la forma en que facilitan los productos OpenAI (piense en los gestos físicos que son familiares para los navegadores, la escritura, los teclados y las pantallas). Se deduce que “se creará una familia de dispositivos”, según Altman, quien promete que estos “reinventarán lo que significa usar una computadora”. He diseñado estos productos.
Hay una conversación muy separada que debe tener en torno a la ética, aunque es revelador que Ive dice en el video promocional: “La responsabilidad que Sam Bears está realmente más allá de la comprensión”. Sin embargo, Ive también dice: “Nuestras motivaciones y valores son completamente iguales”.
Trabajando con Jony ive
“John es una mezcla inusual de pensador visionario y maestro artesano”, dice el cofundador de Tangerine, Martin Darbyshire, quien es una de las personas que trajeron al negocio en 1990. “Incluso podría usar la palabra pedante en términos del nivel de detalle que diseñará algo con algo y, al mismo tiempo, puede pensar en un largo camino por delante, de muchas maneras, pero también es un alma gentil y muy humilde, así que es un alma de los detalles, así que es un alma de complejo, así que puede ser un carácter muy complejo”.
Trabajando estrechamente junto a él desde 1990 hasta 1992, Darbyshire pudo ver que Ive era “un talento de diseño fenomenal. No hay duda sobre eso. Podría hacer las cosas años antes de lo que esperaría que alguien que se hubiera graduado podría hacer”.
Hacia finales de 1992, se había unido a Apple, una compañía que también era uno de los clientes de Tangerine. Ive y Darbyshire trabajaron juntos en un proyecto conceptual para Apple llamado Juggernaut.
Darbyshire dice: “Estábamos mirando el futuro de las computadoras portátiles. Apple tenía el Newton Pad, que usaba un bolígrafo y una especie de reconocimiento muy temprano de la escritura a mano, por lo que además de tener un teclado pequeño en una pantalla y un bolígrafo, también era la introducción de una tableta, si lo desea, pero era un dispositivo grueso que sostenía en su mano. No era pequeño”.
Tangerine desarrolló tres conceptos para mejorar esto (ver imagen de banner). “Estaba el espacio de trabajo, que era una especie de computadora de escritorio pero portátil, boceto, que se doblaba en una bolsa de embrague, y luego Folio, que era un conjunto de elementos separados que comprendían una pantalla con un soporte y luego un teclado inalámbrico y un bolígrafo”, dice Darbyshire, quien agrega: “Fue el comienzo de lo que el iPad podría ser, pero temprano pensando en ese respeto”. “.
Este fue el final del tiempo breve pero formativo de Ive en Tangerine. “A través del éxito de ese proyecto, John, fue tentado a ir a Apple. Quería reclutarlo y dijimos: ‘Ve, es una gran oportunidad'”.
Sin atar demasiado a la carrera de Apple de Ive, vale la pena recordar que estaba muy involucrado personalmente en los resultados de diseño del iPod, iPhone y iPad.
¿Cuánta diferencia puede hacer un diseñador?
Si bien el talento de Ive no debería ser ignorado, tampoco deberíamos ser arrastrados al elogiar su genio cuando gran parte de su éxito en Apple se redujo a su estructura: a saber, colocar el diseño en el corazón del negocio donde fue respaldado por el CEO de la compañía.
Ya sea que le acredite a sí mismo o a la forma en que Apple se estableció con el éxito de la definición de categorías y los productos revolucionarios, se ha demostrado los paralelos obvios con la fe, por lo que no es tan difícil pensar en el impacto que podría tener este conjunto de productos Operai.
Darbyshire todavía es cauteloso con su evaluación del poder de Ive. “John es un diseñador fenomenalmente talentoso, pero solo ha podido hacer lo que hizo en Apple porque fue empoderado fundamentalmente por un CEO [Steve Jobs] quien creía en el diseño. Sin ese respaldo, el diseño siempre tendrá dificultades para entregar lo que puede “.
La alternativa sería una “empresa que el mercado investiga todo hasta la muerte, tiene un punto de vista de consenso sobre las cosas y busca lo que creen que complacerá a todos porque creen que ese es el camino más seguro”, dice.
La pregunta de $ 7tn
También existe el asunto de las cantidades inconcebibles de dinero que se colocan en Operai, que no es rentable en este momento y tampoco se espera que sea hasta 2029, según Bloomberg.
Mientras tanto, Altman tiene como objetivo recaudar $ 7TN, como informa The Guardian como parte de una entrevista con la periodista tecnológica Karen Hao, quien le dijo al periódico: “Cuando él [Altman] está hablando con alguien, lo que sale de su boca no está necesariamente correlacionado tanto con sus propias creencias como con lo que él piensa que la otra persona necesita escuchar “. Esto más bien explica su habilidad para la recaudación de fondos.
Las sumas de dinero que se recaudan son, según Hao, “una amenaza para la democracia” y advierte que este es el verdadero peligro de IA, en lugar de otras visiones de apocalipsis. Ella le dijo a The Guardian que Operai “recaudó $ 40 mil millones en la última ronda” y tener el control de esa cantidad de dinero “es una amenaza”.
Sin señalar específicamente en OpenAi, Darbyshire plantea otro punto en torno a la rentabilidad. “El éxito de una empresa se debe a la forma en que opera, su cultura y también el modelo de negocio que desarrolla para garantizar que gane dinero, porque hay muchas empresas orientadas a dispositivos que no han llegado a ninguna parte y se quedaron sin dinero porque no tenían un flujo de ingresos sostenible”.
Después de una grabación en una reunión de OpenAI que se pasa al Wall Street Journal, se entiende que el producto es “consciente del entorno y la vida de un usuario, será discreto, capaz de descansar en el bolsillo o en el escritorio”, pero estará bastante separado del teléfono o la computadora portátil de un usuario.
Los productos excepcionales aún necesitan servicios e infraestructura
“Lo que siempre es difícil con los productos es cómo los monetiza”, dice Darbyshire, quien agrega: “Depende de si están tratando de ser un negocio impulsado por las ganancias y, a menos que tengan un modelo de suscripción robusto de algún tipo, los dispositivos son difíciles de ganar dinero”.
“Si observa Fitbit, no ha obtenido ganancias desde 2015, a pesar de ser propiedad de Google, y hay muchas más fallas que los éxitos en este frente, por lo que esto es lo que me intriga”.
Si bien es probable que OpenAi deposite un producto de consumo de uso masivo, Darbyshire dice que sería interesante si OpenAi “mirara la atención médica o el mercado B2B, pero eso sería un gran cambio de los productos de estilo de vida que John está asociado hasta cierto punto”.
Dependiendo de dónde se vea, puede ver que, en promedio, Operai generalmente está valorado en alrededor de $ 300 mil millones, pero sus ingresos de 2025 fueron de $ 12.5 mil millones. “La forma en que estas compañías son valoradas realmente me desconcertan”, dice Darbyshire.
Sin embargo, parece haber valor de marca en OpenAI. Kantar ha colocado el chat GPT de Openai en 60 en la encuesta de marcas globales más valiosas de su mundo, Brandz 2025. La percepción de la marca es significativa, diferente, destacada, conveniente, decidida y disruptiva lo ha hecho allí, según Kantar
Entonces, sin especular demasiado, podemos ver que Jony Ive tiene un historial comprobado para diseñar productos que ofrecen nuevas formas de interactuar con la tecnología, sin embargo, esto solo se ha habilitado cuando sus equipos pudieron diseñar radicalmente y fueron compatibles como una función comercial central. La historia también nos dice que sin un mecanismo de diseño de servicio para el soporte (como un servicio de suscripción popular), los productos por sí solos no conducirán al éxito comercial. Pero el público claramente está muy interesado en ChatGPT y su empresa matriz un poco misteriosa.
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In “The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future,” Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey examines our AI-obsessed moment through one of its key figures — Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI.
Hagey begins with Altman’s Midwest upbringing, then takes readers through his career at startup Loopt, accelerator Y Combinator, and now at OpenAI. She also sheds new light on the dramatic few days when Altman was fired, then quickly reinstated, as OpenAI’s CEO.
Looking back at what OpenAI employees now call “the Blip,” Hagey said the failed attempt to oust Altman revealed that OpenAI’s complex structure — with a for-profit company controlled by a nonprofit board — is “not stable.” And with OpenAI largely backing down from plans to let the for-profit side take control, Hagey predicted that this “fundamentally unstable arrangement” will “continue to give investors pause.”
Does that mean OpenAI could struggle to raise the funds it needs to keep going? Hagey replied that it could “absolutely” be an issue.
“My research into Sam suggests that he might well be up to that challenge,” she said. “But success is not guaranteed.”
In addition, Hagey’s biography (also available as an audiobook on Spotify) examines Altman’s politics, which she described as “pretty traditionally progressive” — making it a bit surprising that he’s struck massive data center deals with the backing of the Trump administration.
“But this is one area where, in some ways, I feel like Sam Altman has been born for this moment, because he is a deal maker and Trump is a deal maker,” Hagey said. “Trump respects nothing so much as a big deal with a big price tag on it, and that is what Sam Altman is really great at.”
In an interview with TechCrunch, Hagey also discussed Altman’s response to the book, his trustworthiness, and the AI “hype universe.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You open the book by acknowledging some of the reservations that Sam Altman had about the project — this idea that we tend to focus too much on individuals rather than organizations or broad movements, and also that it’s way too early to assess the impact of OpenAI. Did you share those concerns?
Well, I don’t really share them, because this was a biography. This project was to look at a person, not an organization. And I also think that Sam Altman has set himself up in a way where it does matter what kind of moral choices he has made and what his moral formation has been, because the broad project of AI is really a moral project. That is the basis of OpenAI’s existence. So I think these are fair questions to ask about a person, not just an organization.
As far as whether it’s too soon, I mean, sure, it’s definitely [early to] assess the entire impact of AI. But it’s been an extraordinary story for OpenAI — just so far, it’s already changed the stock market, it has changed the entire narrative of business. I’m a business journalist. We do nothing but talk about AI, all day long, every day. So in that way, I don’t think it’s too early.
And despite those reservations, Altman did cooperate with you. Can you say more about what your relationship with him was like during the process of researching the book?
Well, he was definitely not happy when he was informed about the book’s existence. And there was a long period of negotiation, frankly. In the beginning, I figured I was going to write this book without his help — what we call, in the business, a write-around profile. I’ve done plenty of those over my career, and I figured this would just be one more.
Over time, as I made more and more calls, he opened up a little bit. And [eventually,] he was generous to sit down with me several times for long interviews and share his thoughts with me.
Has he responded to the finished book at all?
No. He did tweet about the project, about his decision to participate with it, but he was very clear that he was never going to read it. It’s the same way that I don’t like to watch my TV appearances or podcasts that I’m on.
In the book, he’s described as this emblematic Silicon Valley figure. What do you think are the key characteristics that make him representative of the Valley and the tech industry?
In the beginning, I think it was that he was young. The Valley really glorifies youth, and he was 19 years old when he started his first startup. You see him going into these meetings with people twice his age, doing deals with telecom operators for his first startup, and no one could get over that this kid was so smart.
The other is that he is a once-in-a-generation fundraising talent, and that’s really about being a storyteller. I don’t think it’s an accident that you have essentially a salesman and a fundraiser at the top of the most important AI company today.
That ties into one of the questions that runs through the book — this question about Altman’s trustworthiness. Can you say more about the concerns people seem to have about that? To what extent is he a trustworthy figure?
Well, he’s a salesman, so he’s really excellent at getting in a room and convincing people that he can see the future and that he has something in common with them. He gets people to share his vision, which is a rare talent.
There are people who’ve watched that happen a bunch of times, who think, “Okay, what he says does not always map to reality,” and have, over time, lost trust in him. This happened both at his first startup and very famously at OpenAI, as well as at Y Combinator. So it is a pattern, but I think it’s a typical critique of people who have the salesman skill set.
So it’s not necessarily that he’s particularly untrustworthy, but it’s part-and-parcel of being a salesman leading these important companies.
I mean, there also are management issues that are detailed in the book, where he is not great at dealing with conflict, so he’ll basically tell people what they want to hear. That causes a lot of sturm-und-drang in the management ranks, and it’s a pattern. Something like that happened at Loopt, where the executives asked the board to replace him as CEO. And you saw it happen at OpenAI as well.
You’ve touched on Altman’s firing, which was also covered in a book excerpt that was published in the Wall Street Journal. One of the striking things to me, looking back at it, was just how complicated everything was — all the different factions within the company, all the people who seemed pro-Altman one day and then anti-Altman the next. When you pull back from the details, what do you think is the bigger significance of that incident?
The very big picture is that the nonprofit governance structure is not stable. You can’t really take investment from the likes of Microsoft and a bunch of other investors and then give them absolutely no say whatsoever in the governance of the company.
That’s what they have tried to do, but I think what we saw in that firing is how power actually works in the world. When you have stakeholders, even if there’s a piece of paper that says they have no rights, they still have power. And when it became clear that everyone in the company was going to go to Microsoft if they didn’t reinstate Sam Altman, they reinstated Sam Altman.
In the book, you take the story up to maybe the end of 2024. There have been all these developments since then, which you’ve continued to report on, including this announcement that actually, they’re not fully converting to a for-profit. How do you think that’s going to affect OpenAI going forward?
It’s going to make it harder for them to raise money, because they basically had to do an about-face. I know that the new structure going forward of the public benefit corporation is not exactly the same as the current structure of the for-profit — it is a little bit more investor friendly, it does clarify some of those things.
But overall, what you have is a nonprofit board that controls a for-profit company, and that fundamentally unstable arrangement is what led to the so-called Blip. And I think you would continue to give investors pause, going forward, if they are going to have so little control over their investment.
Obviously, OpenAI is still such a capital intensive business. If they have challenges raising more money, is that an existential question for the company?
It absolutely could be. My research into Sam suggests that he might well be up to that challenge. But success is not guaranteed.
Like you said, there’s a dual perspective in the book that’s partly about who Sam is, and partly about what that says about where AI is going from here. How did that research into his particular story shape the way you now look at these broader debates about AI and society?
I went down a rabbit hole in the beginning of the book, [looking] into Sam’s father, Jerry Altman, in part because I thought it was striking how he’d been written out of basically every other thing that had ever been written about Sam Altman. What I found in this research was a very idealistic man who was, from youth, very interested in these public-private partnerships and the power of the government to set policy. He ended up having an impact on the way that affordable housing is still financed to this day.
And when I traced Sam’s development, I saw that he has long believed that the government should really be the one that is funding and guiding AI research. In the early days of OpenAI, they went and tried to get the government to invest, as he’s publicly said, and it didn’t work out. But he looks back to these great mid-20th century labs like Xerox PARC and Bell Labs, which are private, but there was a ton of government money running through and supporting that ecosystem. And he says, “That’s the right way to do it.”
Now I am watching daily as it seems like the United States is summoning the forces of state capitalism to get behind Sam Altman’s project to build these data centers, both in the United States and now there was just one last week announced in Abu Dhabi. This is a vision he has had for a very, very long time.
My sense of the vision, as he presented it earlier, was one where, on the one hand, the government is funding these things and building this infrastructure, and on the other hand, the government is also regulating and guiding AI development for safety purposes. And it now seems like the path being pursued is one where they’re backing away from the safety side and doubling down on the government investment side.
Absolutely. Isn’t it fascinating?
You talk about Sam as a political figure, as someone who’s had political ambitions at different times, but also somebody who has what are in many ways traditionally liberal political views while being friends with folks like — at least early on — Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. And he’s done a very good job of navigating the Trump administration. What do you think his politics are right now?
I’m not sure his actual politics have changed, they are pretty traditionally progressive politics. Not completely — he’s been critical about things like cancel culture, but in general, he thinks the government is there to take tax revenue and solve problems.
His success in the Trump administration has been fascinating because he has been able to find their one area of overlap, which is the desire to build a lot of data centers, and just double down on that and not talk about any other stuff. But this is one area where, in some ways, I feel like Sam Altman has been born for this moment, because he is a deal maker and Trump is a deal maker. Trump respects nothing so much as a big deal with a big price tag on it, and that is what Sam Altman is really great at.
You open and close the book not just with Sam’s father, but with his family as a whole. What else is worth highlighting in terms of how his upbringing and family shapes who he is now?
Well, you see both the idealism from his father and also the incredible ambition from his mother, who was a doctor, and had four kids and worked as a dermatologist. I think both of these things work together to shape him. They also had a more troubled marriage than I realized going into the book. So I do think that there’s some anxiety there that Sam himself is very upfront about, that he was a pretty anxious person for much of his life, until he did some meditation and had some experiences.
And there’s his current family — he just had a baby and got married not too long ago. As a young gay man, growing up in the Midwest, he had to overcome some challenges, and I think those challenges both forged him in high school as a brave person who could stand up and take on a room as a public speaker, but also shaped his optimistic view of the world. Because, on that issue, I paint the scene of his wedding: That’s an unimaginable thing from the early ‘90s, or from the ‘80s when he was born. He’s watched society develop and progress in very tangible ways, and I do think that that has helped solidify his faith in progress.
Something that I’ve found writing about AI is that the different visions being presented by people in the field can be so diametrically opposed. You have these wildly utopian visions, but also these warnings that AI could end the world. It gets so hyperbolic that it feels like people are not living in the same reality. Was that a challenge for you in writing the book?
Well, I see those two visions — which feel very far apart — actually being part of the same vision, which is that AI is super important, and it’s going to completely transform everything. No one ever talks about the true opposite of that, which is, “Maybe this is going to be a cool enterprise tool, another way to waste time on the internet, and not quite change everything as much as everyone thinks.” So I see the doomers and the boomers feeding off each other and being part of the same sort of hype universe.
As a journalist and as a biographer, you don’t necessarily come down on one side or the other — but actually, can you say where you come down on that?
Well, I will say that I find myself using it a lot more recently, because it’s gotten a lot better. In the early stages, when I was researching the book, I was definitely a lot more skeptical of its transformative economic power. I’m less skeptical now, because I just use it a lot more.
Es hora de Géminis, y la vida es fácil. Ya sea que lo consciente o no, las cosas deberían sentirse más fáciles y más fluidas esta semana. Las nubes no se han ido, pero ¿esos estratos bajos amenazan con llover en su fiesta en la azotea? Mágicamente derritiéndose. En su lugar, luces de hadas, gafas llenas y una sensación de optimismo.
Si bien una nueva historia de tres años recién comienza en la parte de Aries de su gráfico (gracias a Saturno), otra parte es concluir a medida que Venus se muda a Tauro (viernes Aest y GMT).
Además de esa ligereza están los últimos días de Júpiter en Géminis, inspirando la espontaneidad, una conversación brillante y una generosidad de espíritu que dice: “¡Déjame obtener la próxima ronda!” Y con Venus ahora en Tauro, no beberás la casa de blanco.
Aries y Aries se elevan
No hay escasez de diversión esta semana, ya que la temporada de Géminis aumenta el ritmo. Pero a pesar del ambiente más ligero, hay mucho reajuste en su propia vida.
Con tanto cambio, su mayor desafío será tratar de mantenerse presente con los problemas frente a usted en este momento. Mientras Venus ofrece su firma de despedida (viernes Aest y GMT), tómese el tiempo para reflexionar sobre cualquier relación o actualización de estilo que haya realizado en los últimos meses.
Tauro y Tauro Rising
Prepárese, estarás de humor para que llove esta semana. Como Géminis inspira un a Hell-with-it Enfoque para su gasto, cualquier cita minorista podría salir de control muy rápidamente. Además de las vibraciones de gastos, su planeta gobernante, Venus, se muda a su letrero de casa.
En términos simples, eso te hará sentir aún más inclinado a invertir en ti … porque vale la pena. Disfruta de la diversión de todo, pero asegúrate de no escribir cheques que no puedas cobrar.
Géminis y Géminis Rising
Hay una gran energía de “sí” que hace ping esta semana, y usted es el 100 por ciento aquí para ello. Con Júpiter y Mercury ayudándote a lanzar, conectar o articular un sueño imposible, te sentirás como una fuerza de la naturaleza. Implente, completamente inspirado y totalmente listo para lo que se te presente.
Da el salto y disfruta de esta última ráfaga de confianza para hacer lo que has estado percolando durante la mayor parte de un año. Ahora es tiempo.
Cáncer y Cáncer Rising
Con mucha acción que se desarrolla en el trabajo, podría sentir que hay espacio para poco más. Por intenso que sea, hay más en la vida esta semana que apagar incendios, lidiar con jefes de alto mantenimiento y manejar egos XL.
Esta energía de Géminis es un antídoto divertido y tal vez incluso un poco tonto. Asegúrese de hacer espacio para priorizar el autocuidado de una manera juguetona y afirmativa de la vida. Asegúrese de hacerlo, es exactamente lo que necesita para equilibrar el drama en el trabajo.
Leo y Leo Rising
¿Picaza para avanzar en el trabajo? Con una dulzura en su esfera profesional hacia el final de la semana, deje de enviar correos electrónicos/solicitando un aumento salarial o haciendo cualquier red importante si puede. Después del viernes, las cosas fluirán 1000 veces más fácil.
Si puedes, haz espacio para jugar con amigos. The Going es excelente para cenas grupales improvisadas, bromas primas o incluso un viaje de chicas de última hora. Ponte entre él.
Virgo y Virgo aumentando
Amo esta semana para ti, especialmente en el frente de trabajo. Con Júpiter, el planeta que trae confianza, carisma y buenas noticias, trabajando doble tiempo (ahora Saturno está fuera del camino, escondido en la parte Aries del cielo), estás en un rollo. Una última explosión de casualidad está en las cartas para su vida profesional esta semana.
Entre entre cualquier red, mezcla o invita a LinkedIn en las que has estado pensando … pero tal vez no te habías sentido lo suficientemente valiente como para la acción. ¡Podría llevar a algo grande!
Libra y Libra Rising
A medida que nos instalamos en su nueva normalidad, hay mucho enfoque en su otra mitad esta semana, ya sea que esté en una relación o no. Mejores compañeros, socios comerciales: vale la pena prestar atención a cualquier bono importante.
Mientras tanto, su mojo de viaje está fuera de las listas. El viaje, el pasaje aéreo, el Airbnb perfecto, lo que sea que haya estado rondado, esta es su semana para bloquearlo. Vaya a planificar algo increíble.
Scorpio y Scorpio Rising
Hay una calma ligera y brillante para esta semana de la que no puedes no ser un poco zumbado. A medida que Venus se prepara para pasar al reino de sus relaciones más importantes, está entrando en una temporada de suntuosa y encarnada belleza. Pero antes de llegar allí, ¿por qué no dar su salud y bienestar un brillo final: los nuevos pantalones de yoga tal vez? Luego, el fin de semana, bloquee algún tiempo para hacer algo que se vea, sabe y huele bien con alguien que le importa.
Si estás en blanco, la indulgencia en solitario hará el truco.
Sagitario Rising
Es otra semana rosada para ti con la temporada de Géminis entregando los productos. Reducciones, gestionar o simplemente planificar una rodilla en el último minuto, todo está bien. La parte posterior de la semana se ve especialmente bien.
En otro lugar, hay un ambiente más tranquilo y medido para su día de trabajo; Un cambio de vibra que sentirá un millón de dólares. Si ha sido un arrastre, prepárese para que las cosas se sientan un poco menos de Ick.
Capricornio y Capricornio Rising
La gran evolución continúa esta semana en torno a su hogar y familia mientras Saturno se acomoda para su primer interludio dentro de su esfera doméstica. Podría sentirse más pesado o más grave de lo que tiene, pero ese es un paseo por el parque para el poderoso Seagoat. En otra parte, la temporada de Géminis trae la ligereza, inspirando un estado de ánimo juguetón y expansivo, especialmente en el trabajo.
Del mismo modo, su salud y bienestar están preparados para un pequeño brillo, por lo que si necesita una excusa para comprar el Nagnata, considere esta su señal de las estrellas.
Acuario y Acuario Rising
Si aún no ha recibido el mensaje, está oficialmente en su era divertida. La temporada de Géminis siempre es un buen momento para tipos aireados como tú, ¿y esta semana? Es uno de los mejores del mes. Venus se desliza en la esfera de su hogar, inspirándote a separarse de repente con efectivo ganado con tanto esfuerzo para zhush.
El fin de semana, una última explosión de Júpiter en la belleza de Géminis aparece el factor de coqueteo y te da un poco más je ne sais quoi Para trabajar la habitación … o reavivar una conexión.
Piscis y Piscis Rising
La gratitud está en gruesa y rápida para los piscanos esta semana, ya que uno de sus planetas gobernantes disfruta de los momentos finales de éxtasis en Géminis. Esa es una excelente noticia si está planeando una fiesta, renovación o cualquier cosa que involucre a la familia. Mientras tanto, Venus se muda a Tauro, inspirando mucho embellecimiento del tipo creativo.
No se sorprenda si se produce un difusor de automóvil Diptyque o una actualización de puntos por capricho. Es la temporada para viajar con estilo. Considérate advertido.
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