Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?

Cheyana

Harvey Dent…

adrianhon

Archive link: https://archive.is/2026.04.06-100412/https://www.newyorker.c...

ronanfarrow

Ronan Farrow here. Andrew Marantz and I spent 18 months on this investigation. Happy to answer questions about the reporting.

ahartmetz

Well, no, obviously not. Not one bit.

catigula

1. No. 2. You cannot "control" superintelligent AI.

drivingmenuts

Short answer: No. Long answer: Hell, no.

sumeno

Betteridge strikes again

gchokov

He is cooked. Only a matter of time before the whole thing blows up. Once a scammer, always a scammer.

Aboutplants

Seeing Sam Altman slowly degrade into the realization that he is in fact not as smart as others in this space has been fascinating to watch. He used to speak with enthusiasm and confidence and now he’s like a scared little boy who got in way too deep. The last person that this happened to was Sam Bankman Fried as investors and regular folk finally realized he was full of complete shit and could only talk the game for so long until the truth emerged.

therobots927

Excellent work. I’ll have to wait until we get the print version delivered to finish as I’m not signed into the new Yorker on my phone. I’ve always been a huge fan of Ronan Farrow’s journalism and willingness to speak truth to power. I think he’s pulling at exactly the right thread here, and it’s very important to counteract Altman’s reputation laundering given that we run a very real risk of him weaseling his way into the taxpayer’s wallet under the current administration.

lnenad

This whole situation goes to show that yesterday's conspiracy theorists are today's realists. What's happening to USA's leadership and as a country and what's happening with with their top companies is really scary for the rest of us. If this trend continues we're all definitely gonna end up in a kleptocracy.

seba_dos1

Looks like Betteridge's law of headlines applies here too.

josefritzishere

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word "NO."

just_once

Amazing that this article and an actual comment from Ronan Farrow is this far down the list while...Scientists Figured Out How Eels Reproduce (2022) has 6 times the points.

pupppet

Ask Condé Nast if he can be trusted.. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/VWJVBNzc2u

HardwareLust

Of course he cannot be trusted. Anyone whose motivation is based on greed is by nature untrustworthy.

jesterson

Watch Altman's reaction in Tucker Carlson interview to the question about (alleged) murder of OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji. The overall response and particularly the body language speaks a lot.