Friday, early morning. Someone throws a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's home in San Francisco. No one is hurt. The same person is detained near the OpenAI office — he threatens to set the building on fire and shouts: "Sam is a very bad person."
A few days earlier, a profile was published in the New Yorker. It was written by Ronan Farrow — the journalist who broke the Weinstein story — and Andrew Marantz, who has covered tech and politics for years. They interviewed over 100 people from Altman's circle. Most described him as a person with an overwhelming will to power. An anonymous board member said Altman combines a strong desire to be liked with a sociopathic indifference to the consequences of his own lies.
Before publication, someone warned Altman that the article was coming out during a time of heightened anxiety around AI and it could be dangerous. He brushed it off. After the attack, he couldn't sleep, was angry, and wrote a blog post saying he had underestimated the power of words and narratives.
In his response, Sam Altman acknowledged nearly all the accusations. That he avoided conflict — a systemic trait that cost him and the company dearly. That the 2023 firing debacle spiraled into chaos because he couldn't have an honest conversation with the board. He wrote that he's an imperfect person at the center of an exceptionally complex situation. He even apologized to those he'd hurt.
He called what's happening inside the industry a Shakespearean drama. The reason, he said, is that every company wants to be the one controlling AGI (he calls AGI "the one ring").
"The lust for power over AGI makes people do insane things."
The only way out, he believes, is sharing the technology so no one gets the ring alone. He called for de-escalation and for avoiding explosions — figuratively and literally.
Less than 24 hours passed. Sunday at 1:40 AM, a Honda with two people inside drove past his house, circled back, and stopped. The passenger leaned out the window and fired. Cameras caught the plate, police detained both and found three firearms during the search. Altman has not commented on this attack.
The call for de-escalation didn't land.