David Remnick

That whole episode has been mired in secrecy and confusion.

Ronan and Andrew see the firing, the blip as they call it, as a key to understanding Altman and the problems with his leadership.

Their extraordinary investigation in The New Yorker is called Sam Altman May Control the Future.

Can he be trusted?

Now, Andrew, Ronan, you compare Sam Altman to Robert Oppenheimer, who, of course, was pivotal in developing the A-bomb.

Oppenheimer not only developed a technology, but in a sense, he defined an age in American life, the atomic age.

But there's, of course, something extremely ominous about that comparison, too.

So let's begin this way, Andrew.

Who is Sam Altman, and why would you compare him to Robert Oppenheimer?

We're the Americans and we're going to defeat the Nazis.

But that's also the ominous part, Ronan, is the notion that the atomic bomb defined an age, the atomic age.

It still looms over our politics and global security.

What is the potential ominous aspect of AI?

We hear about it as something that could be fantastic for the development of drugs, for all kinds of things, but it could also wipe out God knows how many jobs.

But it goes darker than that.

Now, just to be clear, Andrew, what most of us have in mind in terms of AI is chatbots, which run on large language models.

How is that different from the aspiration of an AGI, artificial general intelligence?

And that's something that doesn't exist yet.

What's interesting, Andrew, is that you quickly described Sam Altman as somebody who really doesn't have that much computer science knowledge.

That when it comes to the actual science, the actual technology,