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submitted 3 weeks ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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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[-] libre_warrior@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 weeks ago

I like to call them Chief of Capital abbreviated cockheads.

[-] sturmblast@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago

Sam Altman also raped his sister apparently

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[-] SethTaylor@lemmy.world -1 points 2 weeks ago

Predictable

[-] markz@suppo.fi -1 points 3 weeks ago

This should be obvious. It would be an exception if these people knew shit about fuck. Instead of just listening to them, you should maybe check what they have personally contributed to anything. What does Altman's github look like?*

They're all talk, with nothing to show. But then again, have you heard what this doorknob has to say? That we should maybe build a dyson sphere around the solar system?

*I want to believe this is his real account

https://github.com/Sam-Altman

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[-] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I mean, yeah. He's not a programmer lol he's a businessman. Most CEOs don't actually do anything.

[-] Tigeroovy@lemmy.ca -1 points 2 weeks ago

lmao no shit.

[-] Chozo@fedia.io -1 points 2 weeks ago

Does the author not really understand what a CEO is? Don't get me wrong, Sam Altman is a piece of shit - but his coding ability has nothing to do with that.

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip -1 points 3 weeks ago

He's a sales person. Name me one sales person that was good at coding.

[-] paranoia@feddit.dk -1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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.

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[-] KelvarCherry@piefed.blahaj.zone -1 points 3 weeks ago

He Can Barely Code
He can code?

[-] RagingRobot@lemmy.world -1 points 2 weeks 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

[-] CanIFishHere@lemmy.ca -1 points 2 weeks ago

Why would a CEO have to know how to code? OpenAI has a marketcap of $852B, he can hire has many programmers as the company needs.

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[-] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 weeks 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.

I heard that Bezos can barely drive a delivery truck, too.

I mean come on, is it really a surprise that the role of CEO is so detached from the actual workings of a company? That's why CEOs can just hop companies without working their way up from the bottom. The role rarely has anything to do with the product or service.

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this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
85 points (100.0% liked)

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