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

Overall reaction to the question “can he be trusted?”

• Many commenters default to “no,” often invoking Betteridge’s law of headlines.
• Some equate Altman’s behavior with classic “sociopath” or “corpo sociopath” patterns: charm, pursuit of power, flexible relationship with truth.
• A minority argue the article shows no clear “smoking gun,” and that much can be explained by the chaos of building a huge company quickly.
• Several note the deeper issue is that no single person should have such power, regardless of character.

Article, reporting, and media business model

• The piece is widely praised as detailed, careful, and unusually well fact-checked; some call it “brutal but fair.”
• Others criticize it as too focused on personality and gossip, not enough on structural issues (compute monopolies, financial engineering, corporate capture of a “nonprofit”).
• There’s discussion of paywalls, desire for per-article payments or micropayments, and suggestions to use libraries, archives, or reader modes.
• The reporter engages in the thread, explains methods, confirms months of sourcing on sensitive claims, and stresses the cost and fragility of long-form investigative work.

OpenAI vs competitors and product quality

• Several developers say they’ve moved to Anthropic’s tools, claiming better UX or code generation, especially for broad or multi-step tasks.
• Others strongly prefer OpenAI’s code-focused model for complex or deeply technical work, citing higher usefulness rates and more generous limits.
• Opinions on Gemini are mixed to negative; some report dangerously wrong technical advice.
• A few argue OpenAI’s influence and technical lead are overstated; others note it still dwarfs rivals in userbase and mindshare.

Governance, safety, and power dynamics

• Commenters highlight repeated patterns in the article: alleged lying, “shadow boards,” crisis war rooms, and aggressive political and PR maneuvering.
• Some see “AI safety” as largely a marketing and lobbying tool; others are more worried about arms-race dynamics and government entanglement (especially defense).
• Debate over whether focus on Altman distracts from systemic incentives: investor pressure, winner-take-all markets, and concentration of wealth and compute.

Sensitive allegations and memory

• The handling of family abuse allegations generates nuanced discussion about trauma, recovered memories, and scientific skepticism.
• Some feel the reporting struck a fair balance; others think it should have included more explicit context about the unreliability of therapist-driven “memory recovery.”