What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Who is Sam Altman Anyway?

This episode of What Next TBD explores the complex and contradictory persona of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, through deep reporting by New Yorker writers Andrew Morantz and Ronan Farrow. The episode traces Altman’s career from his early days at Looped, where employees questioned his trustworthiness, to his pivotal role in founding OpenAI with a mission to create safe, nonprofit AI. Over time, however, internal documents and whistleblower accounts reveal a pattern of shifting narratives: promoting safety and regulation publicly while pursuing aggressive growth and for-profit ambitions behind the scenes. The piece examines the 2023 board coup that briefly ousted Altman, driven by concerns from co-founders like Ilya Sutskever and Dario Amadei, who feared his power-seeking behavior threatened the very safety mission OpenAI claimed to uphold. The episode also grapples with the blurred lines between legitimate scrutiny and corporate espionage, including salacious allegations about Altman’s personal life, some of which were unsubstantiated. As OpenAI now races to stay ahead in the AI arms race—raising $122 billion in a single round—the original vision of cautious, altruistic leadership appears increasingly at odds with the reality of a high-stakes, profit-driven industry. The episode leaves listeners questioning whether Altman is a visionary, a manipulator, or both.