{"id":150069,"date":"2025-06-01T18:09:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T18:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/150069\/"},"modified":"2025-06-01T18:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T18:09:09","slug":"sam-altman-biographer-keach-hagey-explains-why-the-openai-ceo-was-born-for-this-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/150069\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Altman biographer Keach Hagey explains why the OpenAI CEO was \u2018born for this moment\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

In \u201cThe Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future,\u201d<\/a> Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey examines our AI-obsessed moment through one of its key figures \u2014 Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI.<\/p>\n

Hagey begins with Altman\u2019s Midwest upbringing, then takes readers through his career at startup Loopt, accelerator Y Combinator, and now at OpenAI. She also sheds new light on the dramatic few days<\/a> when Altman was fired, then quickly reinstated, as OpenAI\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n

Looking back at what OpenAI employees now call \u201cthe Blip,\u201d Hagey said the failed attempt to oust Altman revealed that OpenAI\u2019s complex structure \u2014 with a for-profit company controlled by a nonprofit board \u2014 is \u201cnot stable.\u201d And with OpenAI largely backing down from plans to let the for-profit side take control<\/a>, Hagey predicted that this \u201cfundamentally unstable arrangement\u201d will \u201ccontinue to give investors pause.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does that mean OpenAI could struggle to raise the funds it needs to keep going? Hagey replied that it could \u201cabsolutely\u201d be an issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy research into Sam suggests that he might well be up to that challenge,\u201d she said. \u201cBut success is not guaranteed.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, Hagey\u2019s biography (also available as an audiobook on Spotify<\/a>) examines Altman\u2019s politics, which she described as \u201cpretty traditionally progressive\u201d \u2014 making it a bit surprising that he\u2019s struck massive data center deals<\/a> with the backing of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this is one area where, in some ways, I feel like Sam Altman has been born for this moment, because he is a deal maker and Trump is a deal maker,\u201d Hagey said. \u201cTrump respects nothing so much as a big deal with a big price tag on it, and that is what Sam Altman is really great at.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview with TechCrunch, Hagey also discussed Altman\u2019s response to the book, his trustworthiness, and the AI \u201chype universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You open the book by acknowledging some of the reservations that Sam Altman had about the project \u2014\u00a0 this idea that we tend to focus too much on individuals rather than organizations or broad movements, and also that it\u2019s way too early to assess the impact of OpenAI. Did you share those concerns?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I don\u2019t really share them, because this was a biography. This project was to look at a person, not an organization. And I also think that Sam Altman has set himself up in a way where it does matter what kind of moral choices he has made and what his moral formation has been, because the broad project of AI is really a moral project. That is the basis of OpenAI\u2019s existence. So I think these are fair questions to ask about a person, not just an organization.<\/p>\n

As far as whether it\u2019s too soon, I mean, sure, it\u2019s definitely [early to] assess the entire impact of AI. But it\u2019s been an extraordinary story for OpenAI \u2014 just so far, it\u2019s already changed the stock market, it has changed the entire narrative of business. I\u2019m a business journalist. We do nothing but talk about AI, all day long, every day. So in that way, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s too early.<\/p>\n

And despite those reservations, Altman did cooperate with you. Can you say more about what your relationship with him was like during the process of researching the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, he was definitely not happy when he was informed about the book\u2019s existence. And there was a long period of negotiation, frankly. In the beginning, I figured I was going to write this book without his help \u2014 what we call, in the business, a write-around profile. I\u2019ve done plenty of those over my career, and I figured this would just be one more.<\/p>\n

Over time, as I made more and more calls, he opened up a little bit. And [eventually,] he was generous to sit down with me several times for long interviews and share his thoughts with me.<\/p>\n

Has he responded to the finished book at all?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. He did tweet about the project, about his decision to participate with it, but he was very clear that he was never going to read it. It\u2019s the same way that I don\u2019t like to watch my TV appearances or podcasts that I\u2019m on.<\/p>\n

In the book, he\u2019s described as this emblematic Silicon Valley figure. What do you think are the key characteristics that make him representative of the Valley and the tech industry?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the beginning, I think it was that he was young. The Valley really glorifies youth, and he was 19 years old when he started his first startup. You see him going into these meetings with people twice his age, doing deals with telecom operators for his first startup, and no one could get over that this kid was so smart.<\/p>\n

The other is that he is a once-in-a-generation fundraising talent, and that\u2019s really about being a storyteller. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s an accident that you have essentially a salesman and a fundraiser at the top of the most important AI company today.<\/p>\n

That ties into one of the questions that runs through the book \u2014 this question about Altman\u2019s trustworthiness. Can you say more about the concerns people seem to have about that? To what extent is he a trustworthy figure?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, he\u2019s a salesman, so he\u2019s really excellent at getting in a room and convincing people that he can see the future and that he has something in common with them. He gets people to share his vision, which is a rare talent.<\/p>\n

There are people who\u2019ve watched that happen a bunch of times, who think, \u201cOkay, what he says does not always map to reality,\u201d and have, over time, lost trust in him. This happened both at his first startup and very famously at OpenAI, as well as at Y Combinator. So it is a pattern, but I think it\u2019s a typical critique of people who have the salesman skill set.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s not necessarily that he\u2019s particularly untrustworthy, but it\u2019s part-and-parcel of being a salesman leading these important companies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I mean, there also are management issues that are detailed in the book, where he is not great at dealing with conflict, so he\u2019ll basically tell people what they want to hear. That causes a lot of sturm-und-drang in the management ranks, and it\u2019s a pattern. Something like that happened at Loopt, where the executives asked the board to replace him as CEO. And you saw it happen at OpenAI as well.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve touched on Altman\u2019s firing, which was also covered in <\/strong>a book excerpt<\/strong><\/a> that was published in the Wall Street Journal. One of the striking things to me, looking back at it, was just how complicated everything was \u2014 all the different factions within the company, all the people who seemed pro-Altman one day and then anti-Altman the next. When you pull back from the details, what do you think is the bigger significance of that incident?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The very big picture is that the nonprofit governance structure is not stable. You can\u2019t really take investment from the likes of Microsoft and a bunch of other investors and then give them absolutely no say whatsoever in the governance of the company.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what they have tried to do, but I think what we saw in that firing is how power actually works in the world. When you have stakeholders, even if there\u2019s a piece of paper that says they have no rights, they still have power. And when it became clear that everyone in the company was going to go to Microsoft if they didn\u2019t reinstate Sam Altman, they reinstated Sam Altman.<\/p>\n

In the book, you take the story up to maybe the end of 2024. There have been all these developments since then, which you\u2019ve continued to report on, including this announcement that actually, they\u2019re not fully converting to a for-profit. How do you think that\u2019s going to affect OpenAI going forward?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s going to make it harder for them to raise money, because they basically had to do an about-face. I know that the new structure going forward of the public benefit corporation is not exactly the same as the current structure of the for-profit \u2014 it is a little bit more investor friendly, it does clarify some of those things.<\/p>\n

But overall, what you have is a nonprofit board that controls a for-profit company, and that fundamentally unstable arrangement is what led to the so-called Blip. And I think you would continue to give investors pause, going forward, if they are going to have so little control over their investment.<\/p>\n

Obviously, OpenAI is still such a capital intensive business. If they have challenges raising more money, is that an existential question for the company?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It absolutely could be. My research into Sam suggests that he might well be up to that challenge. But success is not guaranteed.<\/p>\n

Like you said, there\u2019s a dual perspective in the book that\u2019s partly about who Sam is, and partly about what that says about where AI is going from here. How did that research into his particular story shape the way you now look at these broader debates about AI and society?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went down a rabbit hole in the beginning of the book, [looking] into Sam\u2019s father, Jerry Altman, in part because I thought it was striking how he\u2019d been written out of basically every other thing that had ever been written about Sam Altman. What I found in this research was a very idealistic man who was, from youth, very interested in these public-private partnerships and the power of the government to set policy. He ended up having an impact on the way that affordable housing is still financed to this day.<\/p>\n

And when I traced Sam\u2019s development, I saw that he has long believed that the government should really be the one that is funding and guiding AI research. In the early days of OpenAI, they went and tried to get the government to invest, as he\u2019s publicly said, and it didn\u2019t work out. But he looks back to these great mid-20th century labs like Xerox PARC and Bell Labs, which are private, but there was a ton of government money running through and supporting that ecosystem. And he says, \u201cThat\u2019s the right way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now I am watching daily as it seems like the United States is summoning the forces of state capitalism to get behind Sam Altman\u2019s project to build these data centers, both in the United States and now there was just one last week announced in Abu Dhabi<\/a>. This is a vision he has had for a very, very long time.<\/p>\n

My sense of the vision, as he presented it earlier, was one where, on the one hand, the government is funding these things and building this infrastructure, and on the other hand, the government is also regulating and guiding AI development for safety purposes. And it now seems like the path being pursued is one where they\u2019re backing away from the safety side and doubling down on the government investment side.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absolutely. Isn\u2019t it fascinating?\u00a0<\/p>\n

You talk about Sam as a political figure, as someone who\u2019s had political ambitions at different times, but also somebody who has what are in many ways traditionally liberal political views while being friends with folks like \u2014 at least early on \u2014 Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. And he\u2019s done a very good job of navigating the Trump administration. What do you think his politics are right now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure his actual politics have changed, they are pretty traditionally progressive politics. Not completely \u2014 he\u2019s been critical about things like cancel culture, but in general, he thinks the government is there to take tax revenue and solve problems.<\/p>\n

His success in the Trump administration has been fascinating because he has been able to find their one area of overlap, which is the desire to build a lot of data centers, and just double down on that and not talk about any other stuff. But this is one area where, in some ways, I feel like Sam Altman has been born for this moment, because he is a deal maker and Trump is a deal maker. Trump respects nothing so much as a big deal with a big price tag on it, and that is what Sam Altman is really great at.<\/p>\n

You open and close the book not just with Sam\u2019s father, but with his family as a whole. What else is worth highlighting in terms of how his upbringing and family shapes who he is now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, you see both the idealism from his father and also the incredible ambition from his mother, who was a doctor, and had four kids and worked as a dermatologist. I think both of these things work together to shape him. They also had a more troubled marriage than I realized going into the book. So I do think that there\u2019s some anxiety there that Sam himself is very upfront about, that he was a pretty anxious person for much of his life, until he did some meditation and had some experiences.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s his current family \u2014 he just had a baby and got married not too long ago. As a young gay man, growing up in the Midwest, he had to overcome some challenges, and I think those challenges both forged him in high school as a brave person who could stand up and take on a room as a public speaker, but also shaped his optimistic view of the world. Because, on that issue, I paint the scene of his wedding: That\u2019s an unimaginable thing from the early \u201890s, or from the \u201880s when he was born. He\u2019s watched society develop and progress in very tangible ways, and I do think that that has helped solidify his faith in progress.<\/p>\n

Something that I\u2019ve found writing about AI is that the different visions being presented by people in the field can be so diametrically opposed. You have these wildly utopian visions, but also these warnings that AI could end the world. It gets so hyperbolic that it feels like people are not living in the same reality. Was that a challenge for you in writing the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I see those two visions \u2014 which feel very far apart \u2014 actually being part of the same vision, which is that AI is super important, and it\u2019s going to completely transform everything. No one ever talks about the true opposite of that, which is, \u201cMaybe this is going to be a cool enterprise tool, another way to waste time on the internet, and not quite change everything as much as everyone thinks.\u201d So I see the doomers and the boomers feeding off each other and being part of the same sort of hype universe.<\/p>\n

As a journalist and as a biographer, you don\u2019t necessarily come down on one side or the other \u2014 but actually, can you say where you come down on that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I will say that I find myself using it a lot more recently, because it\u2019s gotten a lot better. In the early stages, when I was researching the book, I was definitely a lot more skeptical of its transformative economic power. I\u2019m less skeptical now, because I just use it a lot more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In \u201cThe Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future,\u201d Wall Street Journal reporter Keach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,64165,1318,20208,53,64166,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-150069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-keach-hagey","11":"tag-openai","12":"tag-sam-altman","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-the-optimist","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114609452672802811","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}