this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO and the public face of ChatGPT, has carved out an image for himself as one of the preeminent AI whisperers of our age, whose influence supposedly extends to the White House on the strength of his ideas alone.

Or at least that’s the image he’s managed to cultivate. A new exposé in the New Yorker paints a different portrait, and it’s substantially more vexing. Drawing on interviews with numerous OpenAI insiders who worked with Altman, the article portrays the CEO not as a technical wiz, but as a skilled manipulator— and one with a surprisingly shallow grasp of the AI systems his company is building.

According to numerous engineers interviewed for the article, Altman lacks experience in both programming and in machine learning — a shortage of expertise that becomes obvious when the CEO mixes up basic AI terms.

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[–] Smaile@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

The sub header for this paper is hilarious.

"I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer."

HAHAHAHA, no shit, he may just as well end up in a new league all his own with how much money will burn once this goes belly up.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 6 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

hes basically the version of Musk for AI/coding. plus the trifecta of scammers came from the same place, paypal, thiel and musk, and altman and thiel's gay pool parties.

[–] Godric@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

AI guy is bad at coding

surprisedPikachu.jpg

[–] arc99@lemmy.world 18 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

That doesn't surprise me. The guy is and always has been a grifter.

[–] Napster153@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

I'm more asking what lineage he was birthed from to be in the exact right place to screw over tech development for everyone

[–] neuromorph@lemmy.world 66 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

So the typical Tech CEO. What's new?

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 25 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Not only have I (25 year programming vet) never had a CEO who could code, I've never had a CEO who thought he should be able to code. As a species, they tend to be proud of their leadership chops rather than their ability to actually do anything.

[–] EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 14 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

No C-Suite suit I’ve ever met in my life has struck me as a leader type. I know there’s some out there but they all think that being in charge makes them leaders.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 7 points 13 hours ago

Yeah, I should have put "leadership" in ironic quotes. Like they say: don't step in the leadership.

[–] phx@lemmy.world 13 points 18 hours ago

Pretty much. These guys are all marketing with not so much understanding of the tech their hawking

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 25 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

Why is this framed as if it's in any way surprising?

has carved out an image for himself as one of the preeminent AI whisperers of our age

Has he? The only things I ever read about him are that he's a dunce with too much money at his disposal.

a shortage of expertise that becomes obvious when the CEO mixes up basic AI terms.

Is that why he thinks the acronym "GPT" is a trademark that belongs to his company, even though it existed before they did?

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[–] napkin2020@sh.itjust.works 189 points 1 day ago (3 children)

CEOs are required to be skilled manipulators. That's literally what their job is, actually.

[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 68 points 1 day ago (4 children)

So AI could do their job 10x better?

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Unironically yes.

90% of what CEOs do is talk to other CEOs and other C Suite members. Very rarely are they actually subject matter experts, those days are long gone. Externally, they are mascots, internally, they read reports from their underlings and then 'make the final call'.

You may notice that these are things that LLMs actually do a somewhat decent job of, ingesting a wide variety of input info, and essentially transforming it into a compelling narrative.

This is why so many CEOs and C suite are so enamored with, and impressed by 'AI':

Its a better version of what they do, which is essentially professional gaslighting.

C suite tend to be sociopathic narcissists.

This is just literally a verified and studied fact.

So, the sociopathic narcissists are impressed by an automagic gaslighting machine, that is often actually more factually corrrect than they are... but of course the actual facts don't matter to a narcissist, what matters is accomplishing their will.

This is a big part of why they genuienly do not understand why everyone else doesn't 'appreciate' AI the way they do.

They're out of touch, delusional, by way of narcissism.

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's what ppl keep saying. Effectively they are overpaid mascot.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 7 hours ago

they are the patsies for the board of the directors usually they have the power,and act as lightning rods, its a plus if they use woman to take the flack (aka glass cliff)

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[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 20 points 19 hours ago

Altman is just another tech bro dropout who never completed anything, similar to Musk.

But the skills required to be a CEO are that of a skilled manipulator, why would a CEO waste time coding when he can hire meatbags to do that? The nature of US startups benefits con artists and bullshit artists, because the VC money community is not the STEM community.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 10 points 14 hours ago

Anyone can be rich if born to the right parents.

[–] Gates9@sh.itjust.works 9 points 17 hours ago

This guys a fucking psycho for real. Another robot man with too much money for his own good, or anyone’s good, really.

[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 34 points 22 hours ago

I mean, yeah...obviously. The amount of CEOs with any technical understanding of what they supposedly manage is just about zero.

And the AI grift is basically on the same level as the Religious grift, supposed spiritual leaders/gurus who convince people that they have some special connection to God/the universe/spiritual realms, etc.

And people eat it up, it's been a thing for literally thousands of years. We are primed to want to belive it, and when it comes with membership in an exclusive club of other "true believers" , that's a winning formula.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 89 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

Why do people think that the CEO is like the "best employee" at what the company does?? No CEO at any company I've ever worked at has had a basic understanding of the work that I did. They understand "the business" but aren't the ones doing implementation.

And that's "fine" - we have different jobs. Theirs, apparently, has been worth millions of times what I do though...

[–] DrBob@lemmy.ca 47 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I have a CEO that I respect. I'm in an engineering heavy company and the CEO is anything but that, and he knows it. His background is finance and that's most of his job, and interfacing with government. He delegates effectively and does not insert himself in technical decisions. The one thing he does do is ask a lot of questions. In some respect he doesn't care what the answer is, but he wants to know that we've considered all the angles before he takes our advice. I've been pulled in to a boardroom before because something was on his mind that he wanted to share. One occasion he told me to think about it. He didn't want me to follow up with him, but when it came up at a board meeting he wanted the COO to have an answer, so he was flagging the issue for me. Good guy.

[–] shirasho@feddit.online 23 points 23 hours ago

This is what a CEO is supposed to do. They are the glue between every department and are supposed to make sure that everyone is on the same page. They ask "what is needed for us to get to this point and how can I help". They leave all functional details to the subject matter experts. They act as guide rails and do not derail the train.

Good CEOs understand that they are worth less than their employees because without their expertise and domain knowledge the CEO has no product to sell.

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[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 11 points 22 hours ago

At my old company of about 20,000 employees, our CEO used to travel between our regions to give speeches at our work gatherings. So we'd have to listen to him talk every year or so.

I was constantly amazed listening to the bullshit this guy would spew. He literally founded the company and led it for 20 years - but I firmly believe he had absolutely no idea what it was that we actually did.

We were an IT and management consulting company, so we'd be doing stuff like building applications, systems integrations, change management, or managing programs. The usually consulting shit.

This dude would give these speeches like we were out there solving world hunger.

[–] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's not surprising.

There are brain damaged people out there who still think Elon Musk is a good engineer.

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[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 17 points 20 hours ago

Least surprising thing I've read about him

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (5 children)

Having been in Tech in the last Tech Boom and also in this later one (I was even in Startups some years ago), I can tell you that whilst the previous one was mainly driven by Techies wanting do cool things, this one is entirely driven by grifters with backgrounds in areas like Finance and Marketing.

The present generation of Startup Founders are almost never Technically skilled, rather they're skilled at Salesmanship (most notably, Pitching) and they don't dream of cracking some complex problem, they dream about making a lot of money via an Exit Strategy.

The only surprising thing about Altman not understanding Technology in depth is people being surprised by it.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago

this one is entirely driven by grifters with backgrounds in areas like Finance and Marketing

I worked for startups in the '90s and this describes all of them, too.

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[–] SanicHegehog@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)
[–] olympicyes@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Elon presents himself as an elite coder and tech savant, and it sounds like his teams have to work around his hubris to prevent him from damaging things. I don’t know how Altman presents himself. More important to understand what your role is. His seems to be manipulating Trump, raising money, and evangelizing AI.

[–] MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 hours ago

The good thing he does for their engineer team in general is to be willing to use a white sheet design and not be forced to use legacy shuttle components.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 52 points 1 day ago

has carved out an image for himself as one of the preeminent AI whisperers of our age,

The media keeps glazing him, because he keeps spending money on PR firms so that happens

If everyone keeps saying a capitalist CEO is a once in a life super genius....

The reason is so people invest in that company, not that the CEO is actually intelligent.

It's the same shit Musk went thru, so people have no excuse falling for it again.

[–] paranoia@feddit.dk 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (4 children)

I don't expect a CEO to do any coding. I also don't expect a CEO to be as much of an expert as the PhD level computer scientists, machine learning experts, professors of psychology, neurology, ethics, etc., that his company is employing. It is not possible or even relevant for him to have those skills to the level of the top academics that work for him.

[–] Raiderkev@lemmy.world 10 points 14 hours ago

I expect any CEO to be a worthless chode that has stepped on everyone en route to the top.

[–] itistime@infosec.pub 9 points 15 hours ago

A CEO who is clueless about their organization’s nature is at an enormous disadvantage. I think it is too common now. Part of the reason so much sucks ass

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 3 points 12 hours ago

Exactly, that's AI's job.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

Are you a Boeing executive, by any chance?

[–] libre_warrior@lemmy.ml 4 points 17 hours ago

I like to call them Chief of Capital abbreviated cockheads.

[–] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I think a good CEO should strive to understand as much of a business he runs as possible. But the larger the company the more I find that it's common that the CEO actually is NOT skilled in the fields most integral to the company's success.

AMD has Lisa Su, but that seems like an exception more than a rule.

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[–] sturmblast@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Sam Altman also raped his sister apparently

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 7 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

It's a messy situation where nobody other than the two people involved will ever know the truth.

She claims it happened between 1997 and 2006 and she filed the lawsuit 19 years later in 2025. There won't be any evidence remaining other than what she claims to remember. He won't be able to clear his name by providing alibis for something that happened 20-30 years ago. Her family said it didn't happen and that she has mental health issues. She says she has mental health issues due to the abuse. Her ultra-rich brother had been financially supporting her and the claims happened after she asked for more and he refused. The family is siding with Sam, but Sam is also an insanely wealthy and powerful man who is known to lie constantly, so maybe their reason for siding with him isn't because they're absolutely sure he's right. And then there's the fact that he's gay, but sexual abuse isn't necessarily about sexual desire.

I don't think it's reasonable to say he definitely raped her. OTOH, it's also not possible to say he's definitely being falsely accused. It's just a shitty situation.

[–] sturmblast@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

Im partial to believing the victim over the billionaire

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[–] GutterRat42@lemmy.world 11 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

The way I see it, people pushing for AI and robots are the unskilled billionaires who don't want to pay the skilled for their work. Billionaires are useless.

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[–] RagingRobot@lemmy.world 12 points 22 hours ago

He's like every other CEO. Doesn't know anything about the stuff they are selling because it's built by someone else. Actually his product is for people like that. They don't need any skill to make something now. Before at least they had to buy it from us

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