"The ring of power pushes insanity." Altman responds to accusations of lying after attack
OpenAI's CEO wrote a post about his mistakes, AI criticism and "Shakespearean dramas" in the industry after his home was attacked
On the night of April 10, an unknown person threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman's house / Photo: FotoField / Shutterstock.com
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman commented on the attack on his home in a blog post on April 11 and also responded to a New Yorker investigation in which his former colleagues and associates described him as a pathological liar. Oninvest recounts the main point of Altman's publication.
About accusations of lying
Altman called the magazine's investigation "inflammatory" but apologized to people he may have offended. He said he made "a lot of mistakes" and was not proud of some things - in particular, his fear of conflict and the way he behaved in confrontations with the previous board of directors.
"I'm an imperfect person in the middle of an exceptionally difficult situation, trying to get a little better each year and always working toward the mission"
According to Altman, he realizes that OpenAI is no longer "some ambitious startup" but a large platform and needs to be more predictable. In early April, OpenAI raised $122 billion at a company-wide valuation of $852 billion and is now preparing for an IPO. Altman is aiming for an IPO as early as fall 2026, ahead of its main competitor, Anthropic.
In an April 6 New Yorker investigation, Altman's former colleagues and associates alleged that he was prone to lying (including to the board of directors) and inconsistent positions on important issues, including artificial intelligence security.
"He is not limited by the truth. He has two qualities that are almost never found in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people in every single interaction. The second is an almost sociopathic indifference to the consequences of deception."
In addition to the sources, the publication in its investigation referred to Altman's confidential dossier compiled by Ilya Sutzkever, then chief scientist at OpenAI, and to notes by former OpenAI vice president Dario Amodei. Sutzkever left OpenAI after a conflict with Altman and is now working on the Safe Superintelligence (SSI) project, which aims to develop safe superintelligence. Dario left OpenAI in 2020 due to disagreements over the direction of the company and founded Anthropic, a startup that created the Claude family of language models.
About competition
According to Altman, the race to create general artificial intelligence (AGI) - that is, human-like and capable of self-learning - has led to "Shakespearean dramas" playing out between the companies.
"[AGI] truly has a 'ring of power' dynamic, and it makes people do crazy things. I'm not talking about AGI itself being that 'ring', but rather the totalitarian philosophy of 'having control over AGI'."
The only possible solution is to make sure that the "ring of power" does not belong to any one person, Altman writes. According to him, the technology should be made available to a wide range of people, and control over it should be ensured by a "democratic system" that would have more influence than the development companies.
Altman also called criticism of AI because of the risks associated with it well-founded. "I sympathize with the anti-technology sentiment, and obviously technology doesn't always represent a boon for everyone," he wrote. - But overall, I believe that technological advances can make the future incredibly good - for you and my family."
About the attack
Altman published his post after an attack on his home in San Francisco. On the night of April 10, an unknown person threw a Molotov cocktail into the house and fled. There was a small fire at the site, but no one was injured. About an hour later, the attacker was detained by police near the headquarters of OpenAI, writes The Wall Street Journal.
Altman accompanied the post with a photo of his family and called for "lowering the heat of the rhetoric" in discussions about AI to "reduce the number of explosions in homes, both figuratively and literally."
"Normally we try to keep things private, but in this case I'm sharing the photo in the hope that it might deter the next person from throwing a Molotov cocktail into our home, regardless of what they think of me."
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
