Sam Altman responds to ‘incendiary’ New Yorker article after attack on his home

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published a blog post responded Friday evening to both an apparent attack on his home and an in-depth New Yorker profile raising questions about his reliability.

Early Friday morning, someone reportedly threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s San Francisco home. No one was injured in the incident and a suspect was later arrested at OpenAI headquarters where he threatened to set the building on fire. according to SF police.

Although police have not publicly identified the suspect, Altman noted that the incident occurred a few days after “an inflammatory article” was published about him. He said someone had suggested that publishing the article “at a time of great concern about AI” could make things “more dangerous” for him.

“I put it aside,” Altman said. “Now I’m awake in the middle of the night and angry, and I think I underestimated the power of words and stories.”

The article in question was a lengthy investigative piece written by Ronan Farrow (who won a Pulitzer for his reporting that exposed many of the sexual abuse allegations surrounding Harvey Weinstein) and Andrew Marantz (who has written extensively about technology and politics).

Farrow and Marantz said that in interviews with more than a hundred people with knowledge of Altman’s business conduct, most described Altman as having “a ruthless will to power that sets him apart even among industrialists who put their names on spaceships.”

Echoing other journalists who have profiled Altman, Farrow and Marantz suggested that many sources raised questions about his trustworthiness, with one anonymous board member saying that he combines “a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction” with “a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may arise from misleading someone.”

In his response, Altman said that, looking back, he can identify “a lot of things I’m proud of and a lot of mistakes.”

One of the mistakes, he said, is a tendency to be “conflict-averse,” which he said has “caused a lot of pain for me and OpenAI.”

“I’m not proud that I mishandled myself in a conflict with our previous board that created a huge mess for the company,” Altman said, presumably referring to his resignation and quick reinstatement as CEO of OpenAI in 2023. “I’ve made many more mistakes along OpenAI’s crazy journey; I’m a flawed person in the middle of an exceptionally complex situation, trying to get a little better every year and always working for the mission.”

He added: “I’m sorry to the people I hurt and I wish I had learned more sooner.”

Altman also acknowledged that there seems to be “so much Shakespearean drama between the companies in our field,” which he attributed to a “ring of power dynamic” that “makes people do crazy things.”

Of course, the right way to deal with the ring of power is to destroy it, so Altman added, “I don’t mean that [artificial general intelligence] is the ring itself, but instead the totalizing philosophy of ‘being the one who controls AGI.’” His proposed solution is “to focus on sharing the technology with people in general, and making sure no one gets the ring.”

Altman concluded by saying he welcomes “criticism and debate in good faith,” while reiterating his belief that “technological advances can make the future incredibly bright, for your family and mine.”

“As we have that debate, we need to de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics and try to have fewer explosions in fewer homes, figuratively and literally,” he said.