I cannot remember the last time something in the Sunday papers made me gasp, but that\u2019s what happened last weekend when I read an interview with Alan Chang.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t read books,\u201d said the 30-something boss of Fuse Energy, a $5 billion (\u20ac4.3 billion) British tech-centric power supplier start-up, after a man from The Sunday Times asked him to list some personal interests.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t watch films either, and forget philanthropy. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in charities, really,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s an extremely inefficient way to deploy capital.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the gasp-inducing line came when Chang, a former top executive at hard-charging fintech Revolut<\/a>, revealed he had decided to set up Fuse in 2022 after discovering the British energy industry was full of mediocre clots. <\/p>\n \u201cWe just went on LinkedIn and then looked at: who are the people who work there? Where did they go to university? What is their track record? And I\u2019d say the majority of those people I personally wouldn\u2019t hire.\u201d<\/p>\n Never having met Chang, I have no idea if he made this preposterously arrogant comment for effect, or because he believes it. Either way, I was surprised by how surprised I was.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not as if outspoken chief executives are extinct, but they do seem to be more endangered.<\/p>\n Ryanair<\/a>\u2019s Michael O\u2019Leary<\/a> remains a blustering aberration 17 years after telling me he would be retiring in three years so a more emollient leader could run the airline. That was in an interview where he called one industry rival \u201ca rich kid who got off his arse\u201d and said Virgin\u2019s Richard Branson \u201cdoesn\u2019t add up to much\u201d. <\/p>\n Not much has changed. Two months ago he called Rachel Reeves \u201ca moron\u201d, Ursula von der Leyen \u201can idiot\u201d and complained that morons and idiots in the European Parliament were making \u201cf**ked-up regulation\u201d.<\/p>\n In finance, JPMorgan Chase<\/a>\u2019s Jamie Dimon<\/a> is still an outlier on Wall Street where he has branded everything from US politics to some of his own bank\u2019s diversity programmes \u201cstupid shit\u201d.<\/p>\n Meanwhile in tech, Palantir<\/a>\u2019s voluble Alex Karp<\/a> stands out for musing about getting a drone and \u201chaving light fentanyl-laced urine spraying on analysts that tried to screw us\u201d, and cheerfully agreeing some find him an \u201carrogant prick\u201d.<\/p>\n Why is the list of other forthright voices so small? It\u2019s not just the steady march of the PR industrial complex, or vindictive politicians ready to make life difficult for companies that don\u2019t toe the line.<\/p>\n I suspect Chang\u2019s comments seem especially jolting because he comes from a tech industry that has taken pretentious, overwrought leadership guff to an entirely new level in the past four years.<\/p>\n I speak here of the wordy essays AI<\/a> chieftains and their backers have been pumping out since ChatGPT\u2019s arrival in 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cArtificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher\u2019s Stone,\u201d declared Marc Andreessen<\/a> in his 5,200-word Techno-Optimist Manifesto of 2023.<\/p>\n [\u00a0How will history judge today\u2019s chief executives?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n \u201cA defining characteristic of the Intelligence Age will be massive prosperity,\u201d promised Sam Altman<\/a> the following year.<\/p>\n One month later, Anthropic<\/a>\u2019s Dario Amodei<\/a> produced a 14,700-word thumper on how AI might transform the world for the better.<\/p>\n It turned out to have a sequel of 21,800 words, including footnotes, in which Amodei explained we were entering a phase that will \u201ctest who we are as a species\u201d<\/a>. <\/p>\n Last month, Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> burst forth with 6,500 words on \u201cthe path to a positive AI future\u201d that took self-interested blither to a new peak.<\/p>\n AI could give everyone \u201cinvention superpowers\u201d and personalised tutors with \u201ca PhD in every subject\u201d, as well as \u201cpowerful tools to create new businesses\u201d, he wrote, but only if Meta<\/a> were free to flourish.<\/p>\n \u201cMeta is the company primarily focused on building personal superintelligence for everyone,\u201d he earnestly explained. \u201cMost other labs are focused on building AI for companies, governments or other institutions, so if those labs lead, then the balance of power will favour larger institutions over individuals.\u201d <\/p>\n