All posts tagged: Sam Altman

Sam Altman’s thank-you to coders draws the memes

Sam Altman’s thank-you to coders draws the memes

Published by skeptic

If you need a cathartic release from the news that Amazon laid off 16,000 workers, Block chopped nearly half its workforce, Atlassian pared back 10% of staffers, and Meta is reportedly considering another massive round of layoffs, all in the name of AI, then we invite you to browse the responses to a recent Sam Altman post on X. Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, shared this on Tuesday: “I have so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely complex software character-by-character. It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took. Thank you for getting us to this point.” I have so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely complex software character-by-character. It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took. Thank you for getting us to this point. — Sam Altman (@sama) March 17, 2026 The problem with that sweet sentiment is that Altman’s company ushered in the AI now being used as an excuse for developer layoffs and fewer junior developer jobs. And it did so by training …

Inside OpenAI’s Race to Catch Up to Claude Code

Inside OpenAI’s Race to Catch Up to Claude Code

Published by skeptic

Katy Shi, a researcher who works on Codex’s behavior at OpenAI, says that while some folks describe its default personality as “dry bread,” many have come to appreciate its less sycophantic style. “A lot of engineering work is about being able to take critical feedback without interpreting it as mean,” Shi says. Several major enterprises have signed on to use Codex too. “The fact that ChatGPT is synonymous with AI gives us a massive advantage in the B2B market,” says Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications. “Companies want to use technologies their workers are already familiar with.” OpenAI’s strategy to sell Codex is largely based on packaging it in with ChatGPT and other OpenAI products, Simo said. Cisco’s president and chief product officer, Jeetu Patel, says he has told employees not to worry about the cost of using Codex, because they’ll need to be comfortable with the tool. When employees ask if “they’re going to lose their job because they’re using these tools,” Patel says, “what we have to tell our people is no, but …

Is the Pentagon allowed to surveil Americans with AI?

Is the Pentagon allowed to surveil Americans with AI?

Published by skeptic

That’s because until the last several decades, people weren’t generating massive clouds of data that opened up new possibilities for surveillance. The Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, was written when collecting information meant entering people’s homes.  Subsequent laws, like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 or the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, were passed when surveillance involved wiretapping phone calls and intercepting emails. The bulk of laws governing surveillance were on the books before the internet took off. We weren’t generating vast trails of online data, and the government didn’t have sophisticated tools to analyze the data.  Now we do, and AI supercharges what kind of surveillance can be carried out. “What AI can do is it can take a lot of information, none of which is by itself sensitive, and therefore none of which by itself is regulated, and it can give the government a lot of powers that the government didn’t have before,” says Rozenshtein.  AI can aggregate individual pieces of information to spot patterns, draw inferences, …

OpenAI’s Sam Altman announces Pentagon deal with ‘technical safeguards’

OpenAI’s Sam Altman announces Pentagon deal with ‘technical safeguards’

Published by skeptic

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced late on Friday that his company has reached an agreement allowing the Department of Defense to use its AI models in the department’s classified network. This follows a high-profile standoff between the DoD — also known under the Trump administration as the Department of War — and OpenAI’s rival Anthropic. The Pentagon pushed AI companies, including Anthropic, to allow their models to be used for “all lawful purposes,” while Anthropic sought to draw a red line around mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. In a lengthy statement released Thursday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company “never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner,” but he argued that “in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.” More than 60 OpenAI employees and 300 Google employees signed an open letter this week asking their employers to support Anthropic’s position. After Anthropic and the Pentagon failed to reach an agreement, President …

Sam Altman would like remind you that humans use a lot of energy, too

Sam Altman would like remind you that humans use a lot of energy, too

Published by skeptic

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed concerns about AI’s environmental impact this week while speaking at an event hosted by The Indian Express. For one thing, Altman — who was in India for a major AI summit — said concerns about AI’s water usage are “totally fake,” though he acknowledged it was a real issue when “we used to do evaporative cooling in data centers.” “Now that we don’t do that, you see these things on the internet where, ‘Don’t use ChatGPT, it’s 17 gallons of water for each query’ or whatever,” Altman said. “This is completely untrue, totally insane, no connection to reality.” He added that it’s “fair” to be concerned about “the energy consumption — not per query, but in total, because the world is now using so much AI.” In his view, this means the world needs to “move towards nuclear or wind and solar very quickly.” There’s no legal requirement for tech companies to disclose how much energy and water they use, so scientists have been trying to study it independently. Data …

Exclusive: OpenAI Has Poached Instagram’s Celebrity Whisperer

Exclusive: OpenAI Has Poached Instagram’s Celebrity Whisperer

Published by Sam Flores

OpenAI has hired Instagram’s vice president of global partnerships, Charles Porch, to serve as the AI company’s first-ever vice president of global creative partnerships. The newly created position is the latest move in OpenAI’s push to win over a skeptical entertainment industry. In his over 15 years at Instagram, Facebook, and Meta, Porch was instrumental in bringing high-profile figures to the platforms. He facilitated the exclusive Instagram launch of Beyoncé’s self-titled album in 2013, coordinated Instagram’s portrait studios at Vanity Fair’s Oscar Party and the Met Gala, convinced Pope Francis to join the social media platform in 2016, and led an initiative in 2025 to lure TikTok creators over to Instagram Reels with “Breakthrough Bonus” payments. OpenAI is hoping to reap similar benefits from Porch’s deep relationships with both talent and management in the worlds of music, film, fashion, art, sports, and the creator ecosystem. While Porch and the company offered sparse details on the still-evolving role, which will begin in March, the most likely applications of his talent include arranging deals to license entertainers’ …

India has 100M weekly active ChatGPT users, Sam Altman says

India has 100M weekly active ChatGPT users, Sam Altman says

Published by skeptic

India has 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, making the country one of OpenAI’s largest markets globally, CEO Sam Altman said ahead of a government-hosted AI summit. On Sunday, Altman outlined ChatGPT’s growing adoption in India in an article published in the Indian English daily Times of India, as OpenAI prepares to formally participate in the five-day India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, beginning Monday. Altman is attending the event alongside senior executives from several of the world’s leading AI companies. The growth comes as OpenAI, like other leading AI firms, looks to India’s young population and its more than a billion internet users to fuel global expansion. The ChatGPT maker opened a New Delhi office in August 2025 after months of groundwork in the country, and has adjusted its approach for India’s price-sensitive market, including rolling out a sub-$5 ChatGPT Go tier that was later made free for a year for Indian users. In the article, Altman said India is ChatGPT’s second-largest user base after the United States, highlighting the South Asian nation’s …

The Biggest Super Bowl Rivalry Is Between Two Centibillion-Dollar AI Companies

The Biggest Super Bowl Rivalry Is Between Two Centibillion-Dollar AI Companies

Published by Sam Flores

As the first mover in the space, OpenAI has benefitted from early fundraising triumphs, ease of recruiting, and the kind of brand recognition that has effectively made ChatGPT the “Kleenex” of LLMs. But it has also been quicker than its counterparts to make unpopular moves not only into advertising but also AI-generated video feeds and even AI erotica. This has all left an opening for Anthropic and others like it to benefit from what Meservey calls “underdog privilege.” Though it’s hard to cast a company that was recently valued at $350 billion as a true underdog, these ads undeniably plant an aesthetic flag that could both resonate with tech-skeptical consumers and help recruit in-demand research talent who feel aligned with Anthropic’s mission. “People are very, very tribal,” said Meservey. Still, it’s a high-wire act that could risk souring consumers on the industry as a whole. After all, ChatGPT isn’t the only chatbot that offers sycophantic answers—and Anthropic now risks appearing hypocritical if it decides to launch advertising on its platform in the future. Anthropic isn’t …

AI needs to be trained on a theology of human dignity

AI needs to be trained on a theology of human dignity

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman admitted in a September 2025 interview that he loses sleep thinking about the weighty responsibility in selecting which texts will train ChatGPT on morals and ethics. This is the correct reaction for the 40-something CEO of OpenAI to have. It is the correct reaction for any leader of any major artificial-intelligence company to have. The massive power that these companies are wielding now — and will wield in the future — absolutely demands ethical accountability. Right now. Whatever ethical views the large language models are being trained on, the companies’ own ethical compasses are apparently fine with AI interlocutors providing their users custom porn on demand. When pressed about concerns related to porn addiction, mental health and even lack of adequate safeguards surrounding the creation of AI-generated child porn, Altman responded in another interview, this time with CNBC in October, by saying that OpenAI is not the “moral police” of the world. Perhaps Altman can be forgiven for having an incoherent approach given that he is apparently trying to reflect …

Sam Altman got exceptionally testy over Claude Super Bowl ads

Sam Altman got exceptionally testy over Claude Super Bowl ads

Published by skeptic

Anthropic’s Super Bowl commercial, one of four ads the AI lab dropped on Wednesday, begins with the word “BETRAYAL” splashed boldly across the screen. The camera pans to a man earnestly asking a chatbot (obviously intended to depict ChatGPT) for advice on how to talk to his mom. The bot, portrayed by a blonde woman, offers some classic bits of advice. Start by listening. Try a nature walk! And then twists into an ad for a fictitious (we hope!) cougar-dating site called Golden Encounters. Anthropic finishes the spot by saying that while ads are coming to AI, they won’t be coming to its own chatbot, Claude. Another commercial features a slight young man looking for advice on building a six pack. After offering his height, age, and weight, the bot serves him an ad for height-boosting insoles. The Anthropic commercials are cleverly aimed at OpenAI’s users, after that company’s recent announcement that ads will be coming to ChatGPT’s free tier. And they caused an immediate stir, spawning headlines that Anthropic “mocks,” “skewers,” and “dunks on” …