Sam Altman responds to ‘incendiary’ New Yorker article after attack on his home

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published a blog post on Friday evening responding to both an apparent attack on his home and an in-depth New Yorker profile raising questions about his trustworthiness.

Early Friday morning, someone allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s San Francisco home. No one was hurt in the incident, and a suspect was later arrested at OpenAI headquarters, where he was threatening to burn down the building, according to the SF Police Department.

While the police have not identified the suspect publicly, Altman noted that the incident came a few days after “an incendiary article” was published about him. He said someone had suggested that the article’s publication “at a time of great anxiety about AI” could make things “more dangerous” for him.

“I brushed it aside,” Altman said. “Now I am awake in the middle of the night and pissed, and thinking that I have underestimated the power of words and narratives.”

The article in question was a lengthy investigative piece written by Ronan Farrow (who won a Pulitzer for reporting that revealed many of the sexual abuse allegations around Harvey Weinstein) and Andrew Marantz (who’s written extensively about technology and politics).

Farrow and Marantz said that during interviews with more than 100 people who have knowledge of Altman’s business conduct, most described Altman as someone with “a relentless will to power that, even among industrialists who put their names on spaceships, sets him apart.” 

Echoing other journalists who have profiled Altman, Farrow and Marantz suggested that many sources raised questions about his trustworthiness, with one anonymous board member saying he combines “a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction” with “a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone.”

In his response, Altman said that looking back, he can identify “a lot of things I’m proud of and a bunch of mistakes.”

Among the mistakes, he said, is a tendency towards “being conflict-averse,” which he said has “caused great pain for me and OpenAI.”

“I am not proud of handling myself badly in a conflict with our previous board that led to a huge mess for the company,” Altman said, presumably referring to his removal and rapid reinstatement as OpenAI CEO back in 2023. “I have made many other mistakes throughout the insane trajectory of OpenAI; I am a flawed person in the center of an exceptionally complex situation, trying to get a little better each year, always working for the mission.”

He added, “I am sorry to people I’ve hurt and wish I had learned more faster.”

Altman also acknowledged that there seems to be “so much Shakespearean drama between the companies in our field,” which he attributed to a “‘ring of power’ dynamic” that “makes people do crazy things.”

Of course, the correct way to deal with the ring of power is to destroy it, so Altman added, “I don’t mean that [artificial general intelligence] is the ring itself, but instead the totalizing philosophy of ‘being the one to control AGI.’” His proposed solution is “to orient towards sharing the technology with people broadly, and for no one to have the ring.”

Altman concluded by saying that he welcomes “good-faith criticism and debate,” while reiterating his belief that “technological progress can make the future unbelievably good, for your family and mine.”

“While we have that debate, we should de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics and try to have fewer explosions in fewer homes, figuratively and literally,” he said.