‘One of the great joys in life is finding your purpose.” “Working with great people is one of the best parts of life.” What is the origin of these dopey platitudes? Not, I promise, the inside of a greetings card or the script of an unusually witless children’s film. These are the teachings of Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, and, in the view of many, the probable master of our species’ technological destiny.
Altman commands riches beyond measure. His place in history is secure and yet — how strange are the desires of the human heart — it appears that he wishes to become a public intellectual. Anybody paying attention to his career will be familiar with the wearying stream of pseudo-profundities disseminated in