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Hey ChatGPT, which one of these versions truly is the real Sam Altman?

If the aim is not, in the first place, to help the world, but instead to get bigger - better chips, more data, smarter code - then our problems might just get bigger too NYT By Tim Wu EMPIRE OF AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI by Karen Hao Published by Penguin Press 482 pages $32 THE OPTIMIST: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future by Keach Hagey Published by 367 pages $31.99 The 'paper clip problem' is a well??'known ethics thought experiment. It imagines a superintelligent AI charged with the seemingly harmless goal of making as many paper clips as possible. Trouble is, as the philosopher Nick Bostrom put it in 2003, without common-sense limits it might transform 'first all of earth and then increasing portions of space into paper clip manufacturing facilities.' The tale has long served as a warning about objectives pursued too literally. Two new books that orbit the entrepreneur Sam Altman and the firm he co-founded, OpenAI, suggest we may already be living with a version of the problem. In Empire of AI, journalist Karen Hao argues that the pursuit of an artificial superintelligence has become its own figurative paper clip factory, devouring too much energy, minerals and human labour. The Optimist, by the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey, leaves readers suspecting that the earnest and seemingly innocuous paper clip maker who ends up running the world for his own ends could be Altman himself. Hao portrays OpenAI and other companies that make up the fast??'growing AI sector as a 'modern-day colonial world order.' Much like the European powers of the 18th and 19th centuries, they 'seize and extract precious resources to feed their vision of artificial intelligence.' In a corrective to tech journalism that rarely leaves Silicon Valley, Hao ranges well beyond the Bay Area with extensive fieldwork in Kenya, Colombia and Chile. The Optimist is concentrated on Altman's life and times. Born in Chicago to progressive parents named Connie and Jerry, Altman was heavily influenced by their do-gooder spirit. His relentlessly upbeat manner and genuine technical skill made him a perfect fit for Silicon Valley. The arc of Altman's life also follows a classic script. He drops out of Stanford to launch a start??'up that fizzles, but the effort brings him to the attention of Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y Combinator, an influential tech incubator that launched companies like Airbnb and Dropbox. By age 28, Altman has risen to succeed Graham as the organisation's president, setting the stage for his leadership in the AI revolution. As Hagey makes clear, success in this context is all about the way you use the people you know. During the 2010s Altman joined a group of Silicon Valley investors determined to recover the grand ambitions of earlier tech eras. They sought to return to outer space, unlock nuclear fusion, achieve human-level AI and even defeat death itself. The investor Peter Thiel was a major influence, but Altman's most important collaborator was Elon Musk. The early??' 2010s Musk who appears in both books is almost unrecognisable to observers who now associate him with black MAGA hats and chain-saw antics. This Musk, the builder of Tesla and SpaceX, believes that creating superintelligent computer systems is 'summoning the demon.' He becomes obsessed with the idea that Google will soon develop a true artificial intelligence and allow it to become a force for evil. Altman mirrors his anxieties and persuades him to bankroll a more idealistic rival. He pitched a 'Manhattan Project for AI,' a nonprofit to develop a good AI in order to save humanity from its evil twin. Musk guaranteed $1 billion and even supplied the name OpenAI. Hagey's book, written with Altman's cooperation, is no hagiography. The Optimist lets the reader see how thoroughly Altman outfoxed his patron. It's striking that, despite providing much of the initial capital and credibility, Musk ends up with almost nothing to show for his investment. Hao's 2020 profile of OpenAI, published in the MIT Technology Review, was unflattering and the company declined to cooperate with her for her book. She wants to make its negative spillover effects evident. Hao does an admirable job of telling the stories of workers in Nairobi who earn 'starvation wages to filter out violence and hate speech' from ChatGPT, and of visits to communities in Chile where data centres siphon prodigious amounts of water and electricity to run complex hardware. Altman recently told the statistician Nate Silver that if we achieve human-level AI, 'poverty really does just end.' But motives matter. The efficiencies of the cotton gin saved on labour but made slavery even more lucrative. If the aim is not, in the first place, to help the world, but instead to get bigger — better chips, more data, smarter code — then our problems might just get bigger too. Note: The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement regarding news content related to AI systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims. The reviewer is a law professor at Columbia University ©2025 The New York Times News Service