OpenAI’s Sam Altman wants the government to interfere

“OpenAI should have been a government project, right?”

It was late July at OpenAI headquarters in San Francisco, and Sam Altman was talking about how Congress might regulate artificial intelligence. As the former head of Y Combinator, Altman, 38, has played a role in the creation of a portfolio of companies worth more than $500 billion. He’s a ferocious capitalist, though he doesn’t present that way. Dressed in gray jeans and a loose sweater, he avoids the recently fashionable Sam Bankman-Fried performative slob style. And at least while he’s in the office, Altman doesn’t try to muster the “I make the weather!” volubility of other tech leaders.

“I spend my days trying to figure out why two people who report to me are not speaking to each other,” he says softly, with more concern than irritation. It’s like if Dashboard Confessional ran a large HR department.