Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz: The Dangers Posed by Sam Altman

April 7, 2026·1 hr 10 min·6 clips

Ronan Farrow reveals Sam Altman's serial deception and why AI's existential stakes demand unprecedented integrity.

Tim Miller starts with housekeeping, because of course he does. Before the AI conversation, he plugs a live Next Level Podcast appearance and cuts into a sharp aside about the Iran war. Then the episode takes its swerve into Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the New Yorker reporting behind the discussion. Miller asks about early memos and the point when people around the company started wondering whether Altman could be trusted. The answer is not just one thing. Some of it is personal mistrust, especially from people who now run competitor companies and bring their own baggage. But some of it is harder to wave away. OpenAI's early talent problem comes across as a structural bind, not just a personality fight around one leader. The mood gets grim fast. The scientists are described as seeing themselves in Manhattan Project and Robert Oppenheimer terms, building something with utopian and dystopian stakes at once. That made recruitment morally weird. The pitch had to pull people away from lucrative jobs, including a six million dollar a year Google counteroffer, and into a scrappy nonprofit safety lab. It also had to calm fear, because some of the people capable of building the technology were afraid of bringing it into existence. Altman is the pitchman here. Not the scientist, as Miller points out, but the person telling frightened builders why OpenAI had to do it before someone else did. The ending lands with dry exhaustion: global annihilation via AI, two man-children fighting over personal grievances, and one small bright spot around breast cancer diagnosis.

As heard by us

A sharp, political look at OpenAI, Sam Altman, and the pressure around building advanced AI.

The Bulwark Podcast shifts into AI politics with the authors behind a New Yorker profile on OpenAI and Sam Altman. Tim Miller begins with a long program note and a stretch on Iran before the talk turns to the company, the recruiting problem, and the pressure that comes with…

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If you want the OpenAI and Sam Altman story framed as politics, incentives, and danger.

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