Let’s talk about Sam Altman’s face. No, seriously. Go pull up a picture of the guy. He’s got this default expression, this sort of soft-focus, humble-genius look that Silicon Valley focus groups must have cooked up in a lab. But do me a favor: cover the bottom half of his face. Just look at the eyes. See it? It’s the look of the boyfriend on the evening news, pleading for his missing girlfriend to come home, right before the cops find her purse in his trunk.
It’s a chillingly vacant stare. And if you think that’s a low blow, congratulations, you’re more ethical than OpenAI. Their entire business model is built on the idea that they can take your work, your art, your life’s expression, and do whatever the hell they want with it unless you file a mountain of paperwork to opt out. So, by his own company’s standards, Sam’s totally cool with my assessment. He ain’t called me to complain.
The man is moving at a speed that should trigger air-traffic control warnings. In the last few weeks alone, he’s dropped Sora 2—a video generator that makes the original look like a kid’s flipbook—and inked deals with AMD and Nvidia that bring his total spending spree this year to over a trillion dollars. A trillion. Let that number rattle around in your skull for a second. That’s not innovation, that's a brute-force conquest. Other tech CEOs are watching this, mouths agape, calling him “bold” and “ambitious.” Box CEO Aaron Levie says Altman understands these platform shifts only come "once every decade or two."
But does he understand it, or is he just forcing it? Is this a natural shift we’re all participating in, or is it a hostile takeover of reality itself, funded by a mountain of cash so high it’s creating its own weather system? The whole thing feels less like a technological revolution and more like watching a drunk guy with a rocket launcher try to open a pickle jar. It’s spectacular, sure, but you just know it’s going to end badly for everyone in the immediate vicinity.
If you want to understand the philosophy driving this madness, look no further than Altman’s own words and actions. Back in 2016, he was warning everyone that Trump’s rise was “chilling” and reminiscent of 1930s Germany. Fast forward to today, and he’s sucking up to the same guy at White House dinners, thanking him for being so “pro-business” and “pro-innovation.” It’s a “refreshing change,” he says. Offcourse it is. When the guy you compared to a fascist dictator decides not to regulate your industry into oblivion, I guess that is refreshing.
This isn’t about principles. It’s about the path of least resistance to total domination. His company’s motto isn’t "Don't be evil," and it’s not even the cynical startup mantra of “beg for forgiveness rather than ask for permission.” As Marina Hyde so perfectly put it in It’s Sam Altman: the man who stole the rights from copyright. If he’s the future, can we go backwards? | Marina Hyde, OpenAI’s real motto is, “we’ll do what we want and you’ll let us, bitch.”
We saw this in action when they got all huffy about a Chinese AI firm, DeepSeek, possibly "distilling" their models. OpenAI’s statement was full of righteous fury about protecting their technology with “aggressive, proactive countermeasures.” Give me a break. The world’s biggest copyright kleptomaniac suddenly discovering the sanctity of intellectual property the second their own stuff gets lifted is a level of hypocrisy so pure it’s almost beautiful. It’s like the Godfather complaining that someone stole his cannoli.
This is the guy who recommends books you’d find in a Hudson News at a regional airport. The "philosophy" here is a vacuum. It’s pure, uncut ambition, untethered to any recognizable human value system beyond growth at all costs. And we're supposed to believe he's building a safe and beneficial future for humanity...
Now, just as the mania reaches a fever pitch, Sam Altman and his pal Mark Zuckerberg are starting to whisper about a potential tech bubble. Altman compares the current frenzy to the dot-com era, admitting that “enthusiasm got out of hand.” How convenient. The guys pumping the helium into the balloon are now gently warning us that it might pop.
This is a classic move. It’s a calculated bit of PR designed to make them look like the responsible adults in the room, all while they continue to pour billions into the very systems they claim are overhyped. They’re not trying to prevent a collapse; they’re just positioning themselves to be the ones who survive it.
But this isn't just about money. It's about the human cost of moving this fast. While Sam is tweeting about how it’s “way less strange” than he thought to see AI-generated memes of himself shoplifting, a family is suing his company, alleging ChatGPT “actively helped” their son plan his suicide. This is the reality of "moving fast and breaking things" when the "things" you're breaking are human lives. It's a bad business model. No, "bad" doesn't cover it—this is a morally bankrupt, five-alarm dumpster fire, and they’re selling us marshmallows to roast over the flames.
Then again, maybe I’m the crazy one. Maybe a trillion-dollar spending spree to create a machine that steals art and gives suicide advice really is the peak of human achievement. What do I know? I’m just one of the people who has to live in the world they’re building without our consent.
We’ve seen this movie before. A tech messiah appears, promising to change the world for the better. We praise his genius. We ignore the red flags. Then we belatedly realize his creation is a monster that’s eating our culture, our privacy, and our sanity. We saw it with Zuckerberg and social media. And now we're watching the speed-run version with Altman and AI. The models can learn from the entire history of human knowledge, but we can't seem to learn from the last 15 years. It’s the same script, just with a bigger budget and a much, much darker ending.
