OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was at the center of Silicon Valley’s most visible campaign in recent memory Monday night when he appeared The Tonight Show. In a predictable softball interview with host Jimmy Fallon, Altman explained how ChatGPT helped her overcome the anxiety of being a new parent.
It was a distinctly shrewd, if somewhat surprising, choice by Altman who has mostly kept his personal life out of the media spotlight. But Altman is a salesman, and a good salesman understands the optics of good television. So he talked about being a dad and worried that his son — who wasn’t crawling at six months — was developing more slowly than other babies (spoiler: he wasn’t). “I can’t imagine going through figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT,” Altman told Fallon. “People have done it for a long time, no problem. So obviously it was possible, but I relied on it a lot.”
As fears about the future of AI grew, the subtext was crystal clear: Technology can help people understand their children better. We should welcome it. The timing of that particular message was not mistaken.
Of late, the tech establishment has become a charm offensive as age-verification laws sweep the US and the world and public backlash against AI intensifies.
Altman admitted as much but didn’t get specific during the interview. One of the things I worry about is the rate of change in the world right now. This is a three-year-old technology. No other technology has been adopted in the world so quickly,” Altman said. Making sure we introduce it to the world in a responsible way, where people have time to adapt, give input, figure out how to do it — you can imagine we’re getting it wrong.
These concerns have only fueled a concentrated campaign outside the Valley to better control the narrative, which includes everything from TV ads to pop-ups to create better brand awareness, and explain why the virtues of AI and social media and what it can do for people outweigh the harms. If Silicon Valley exists “The Age of Hard Technology,” It is an even harder sell.
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