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Silicon Valley's False Prophet

The tech industry has craved a messiah since the death of Steve Jobs, but in OpenAI CEO Sam Altman they’ve discovered more of a false prophet — a seedy grifter that uses his remarkable ability to impress and manipulate Silicon Valley’s elite to mask a total lack of technical

The tech industry has craved a messiah since the death of Steve Jobs, but in OpenAI CEO Sam Altman they’ve discovered more of a false prophet — a seedy grifter that uses his remarkable ability to impress and manipulate Silicon Valley’s elite to mask a total lack of technical or business acumen. Many CEOs have the ability to make bold proclamations and have them accepted, even by the media that purportedly exists to hold them to account, with the earliest days of Facebook’s Metaverse pivot the best example of this, when even the smartest tech journalists took leave of their senses and conceded that, in a near future, we’ll all be convening in virtual worlds for work, play, and socialization. Altman is a master manipulator, incredibly adept at saying things that sound profound, like “your rate of learning should always be high” and that “each unit of work you do should generate more and more results,” while also knowing that the self-reinforcing prophecies of the tech industry are what make someone rich and powerful rather than any particular achievements.

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