Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?

Annie Altman is more credible than a serial scammer

Hi Ronan, absolutely wild to see you here in the belly of the beast.

I have not read the article yet, because I get the physical magazine and look forward to reading it analog. I therefore only have an inconsequential question.

I love the New Yorker’s house style and editorial “voice,” and I have always been curious about the editing process. I enjoyed the recent exhibit at the NYPL, which had some marked up drafts with editor feedback and author comments.

Did you find that your editors made significant changes to the voice of the piece, and/or do you find any aspects of their editing process particularly notable or unusual?

Can’t wait to read this one, and hope the HN crowd treats you well.

It is disconcerting how Altman has used "AI safety" as a marketing tool. The more people imagine the universe turned into paperclips, the more they invest. Obviously Altman doesn't care about safety (I don't either; I'm not an AI-doomer). But he truly does come across as someone incapable of telling the truth. Are you even a liar if honesty is not in the set of possible outcomes?

Still, there's something oddly reassuring here: if you believe "AI safety" is essentially a buzzword (as I do), then this whole affair comes down to people squabbling over money and power. There really is nothing new under the sun.

I am very sympathetic to the situation you describe. I certainly think it is possible that Annie is describing something that happened. I think the author did a fair job of representing the allegations, finding the right balance between disclosing that they were unable to corroborate the allegations without dismissing them.

That said, "recovering" memories as a therapy does not pass any sort of sniff test and it doesn't take a concerted effort to discredit the concept. Human memory is very malleable. Patients with mental health issues (which could predate abuse, or could be caused by abuse) are often in search of answers and that makes them very vulnerable.

Could a memory be buried deep in our subconscious, forgotten, only to return to the surface later? Sure, we all forget things and then remember them when triggered by something, whether that's a smell or sound or something else entirely. But can we engineer that process, with any degree of reliability? How can we even begin to reliably reverse engineer the triggers?

I think it is also important to keep in mind that Annie is rich, and the health care available to rich people can be very predatory. There are endless examples of nonsense therapies for all types of health, from ear seeds to treatments for "chronic Lyme".

Memories that return organically due to a trigger are a world apart from "recovered" memories, we shouldn't conflate them. If Annie's memories were triggered in adulthood, sure, that's really no different than remembering something... but "recovered"? That is something else entirely.

Correct me where I'm wrong, I'd like to learn your perspective, maybe there's a missing piece.

This was a great article, and absolutely savage in some of its characterizations.