David Remnick

I'm speaking with Ronan Farrow and Andrew Morantz, who have just published a long and very thorough account in The New Yorker of Sam Altman's tenure as CEO of OpenAI.

Our conversation continues in a moment.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour.

Stick around.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick.

And I've been speaking today with two of our writers, Ronan Farrow and Andrew Morantz.

They spent over a year reporting on Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, for a piece that's just been published in the New Yorker this week.

They wanted to understand Altman and his vision of the future.

But they also wanted to understand where he comes from, including parts of his life that Altman himself seemed wary of analyzing.

You wanted to get a sense of who this guy was, and I think he told you that he was the victim of a really serious homophobic attack when he was a teenager, although he was reluctant to go into it in much detail.

How does he think, Ronan, that that moment shaped him, if at all, and how do you see it?

You spent a lot of time in the last year looking into some very lurid allegations about Sam Altman's personal life, his sexual life, what he may or may not have done.

What did you conclude?

What can you say about that?

The most dangerous... Worse than the rise of the internet?

and other businesses, the railroads or whatever it might be?

And if Elon Musk were sitting here, he'd say what?

Microsoft has been a huge funder of OpenAI with a lot of exclusive access to their own products.

Mm-hmm.