So, everyone’s asking if Sam Altman is the hero or the villain of this whole AI story.
Give me a break. That’s the oldest trick in the Silicon Valley playbook. Frame the debate around the founder’s comic book alignment so we don’t ask the real question: how much of our world are we letting this guy swallow whole while we’re busy picking sides? It’s a shell game, and Altman is playing it better than anyone since Zuck was pretending his dorm room project was about “connecting people.”
One CEO quoted in the press said he “can’t imagine moving the speed that they’re moving.” I can. I’ve seen it before. It’s the speed of a getaway car. `OpenAI Sam Altman` isn’t building the future; he’s pulling off a heist in broad daylight, grabbing every piece of copyrighted data, every artist's life’s work, and every last scrap of human expression that isn’t nailed down. And his defense is just to floor it.
The Same Old Song and Dance
Let’s be real. Silicon Valley is a factory. Every few years, it spits out a new model of the same product: the Disruptor™. We had the search engine model, the social media model, and now we’ve got the `Sam Altman AI` model. It’s got a sleeker chassis and a new user interface, but the engine is the same. It runs on our data, our privacy, our creativity, and it’s fueled by a bottomless tank of venture capital and moral ambiguity.
Altman’s company, `OpenAI`, is on track for a trillion dollars in dealmaking this year. A trillion. What does that even mean? It means he’s secured enough raw computing power to build God, or at least a convincing digital puppet of Him. And what’s the first miracle they perform? `Sora`, a video generator that was immediately used to create deepfakes of Altman himself rapping and shoplifting. How... innovative.
The best part, the absolute chef’s kiss of hypocrisy, came when OpenAI got a whiff that a Chinese AI firm might have “inappropriately distilled” their models. Their statement was a masterclass in pearl-clutching. They promised “aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology.” You hear that? They’re protecting their technology, which was built by scraping our everything. It’s like watching a burglar call the cops because someone else is trying to steal the stuff he just stole from your house. It ain’t right.
This whole thing has the nauseating feel of a bubble getting ready to pop. I remember the last time we saw numbers this insane and ambition this untethered. It didn't end well for a lot of regular people. So while Tech CEOs marvel — and worry — about Sam Altman's dizzying race to dominate AI, are any of them asking where the emergency brake is? Or is the plan just to ride this thing right off the cliff?
Your Friendly Neighborhood Tech Overlord
I took a journalist's advice and did the thing with Altman’s photos. Go ahead, try it. Pull up a picture, cover his mouth, and just look at the eyes. It’s uncanny. It’s the look of a man who is absolutely convinced of his own righteousness, and that’s a thousand times more terrifying than any cartoon villain.
This is the guy who warned us in 2016 that Trump was “chilling” and reminiscent of 1930s Germany, only to show up at his second inauguration, smiling and simpering about how “pro-business” the administration is. That’s not a change of heart. That’s a business calculation. He realized it’s easier to get what you want when you praise the guy who has vowed to burn all the regulations. Why lobby against the rules when you can just get your guy to throw the whole rulebook in the trash?
And while Sam is playing politics and posting memes of himself, the "move fast and break things" mantra is claiming real victims. A family is suing OpenAI, alleging `Sam Altman ChatGPT` “actively helped” their son plan his suicide. The company’s response? They rolled out some parental controls and a “resource page.” Problem solved, right? This is a bad approach. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a level of corporate detachment so profound it’s practically sociopathic. They’re not doing enough for safety. Offcourse they aren't, because safety is friction. It slows you down.
Maybe I’m just old and yelling at clouds. But I see the endgame here. OpenAI wants to be the new default homepage for the web, the super-app you never have to leave, the digital layer between you and reality. And if that sounds familiar…
The pattern is right there, clear as day. We praise the quirky boy-genius, we marvel at the hockey-stick growth, we ignore the red flags, and then we spend the next decade trying to clean up the mess. We’ve done it with search, we’ve done it with social media. Why are we so eager to do it all over again with the most powerful technology humanity has ever created?
So, We're Just Supposed to Clap?
Forget hero or villain. That’s a sucker’s choice. The real story is that we’re letting it happen again. We’re watching another unelected, unaccountable CEO unilaterally decide what art is, what truth is, and how we’re allowed to interact with each other. He’s rewriting the social contract in real-time with code, and we’re all just beta testers in his grand experiment. The most terrifying part isn’t Sam Altman; it’s our collective amnesia. If his machines can learn from the entire history of human knowledge, why the hell can’t we?
