by: Charles Francis

Now that the acid bath of authoritarian government is undermining the foundations of our democracy, historians will ask, “Who were the big enablers, the billionaires who collaborated?  And why, when there was still hope?”

A biography of Sam Altman, the visionary CEO of OpenAI, an artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.) development company, tells the story with the weight of a great novel.  “The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future” by Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey is framed as the story of a corporate struggle. However, it can be appreciated as a “bildungsroman,” a novel of education about a gay young man’s personal quest to ultimately create superintelligence with the development of A.G.I.  Sounds like Marvel but thanks to Keach Hagey and the research of her colleagues over the years at the Wall Street Journal this story soars in the real world. 

Sam Altman gathers his personal force through so many moments and epic events brought to life in this biography. My favorite is his high school Gay Straight Alliance “he almost willed into existence,” according to one of his gay friends at the time. In a “Child is father to the Man” moment, Altman is incensed the GSA student assembly he organized has generated controversy because a Christian group and their parents have demanded their kids be excused. Altman presses ahead and uses the opportunity as a “bombshell for maximum rhetorical impact” to come out in front of the entire student body. Until then, only a few friends knew his story. A natural leader with preternatural confidence as a kid, Altman’s message carried the day as it would in the years to come in Silicon Valley.

In pursuit of his quest with optimistic brilliance, Altman brings the first commercial application of OpenAI, ChatGPT to the market. This generates billions in shareholder value while he survives upheavals in the governance of OpenAI, including getting fired by independent board members, then hired by Microsoft and called back by OpenAI.  Hagey makes this both comprehensible and exciting.  Amid the turmoil, the story darkens with head-snapping reversals of direction on the two most important principles of his adult life. The first was A.G.I. should be controlled by a non-profit board to ensure its safety and benefits for all humanity before it devours us. The second was his classically liberal worldview of government’s role to ensure the future of his techno-utopian ideals with open source technology for the public benefit. Hagey describes in gripping detail how Altman betrayed those twin pillars of a young man’s quest that withered in the face of ambition. “Founders are kings, emperors, gods” to the billionaire venture capitalists who fund them, Hagey explains Altman’s ability to raise billions and be courted by politicians while living a maxed-out gay life.

Altman and Oliver Mulhering (whom he met in Trump-backer Peter Thiel’s hot tub at 3 a.m., according to Hagey) married in 2024 “beneath a jasmine-draped chuppah (canopy) erected among the palm trees of his Hawaiian estate.” A scene of “almost unimaginable splendor,” she describes the wedding in gauzey awe but then draws a wrenching direct line from this moment of “splendor” to the fate of British mathematician Alan Turing, the WW II computing genius who broke the Nazi’s Enigma code. Turing, Hagey writes, “whose ideas had inspired the technology behind Altman’s ChatGPT,” committed suicide in 1954 after a punishment of chemical castration by the British government for being homosexual. The British government formally acknowledged and apologized for its persecution of Turing after software engineer John Graham-Cumming led a 10-year long movement in the UK for an apology. Living astride such epic historical context in the computing world when asked about the significance of his marriage, Altman responded in an Advocateinterview in an uncharacteristically underwhelming way “the laws have changed more quickly than I ever thought they would, so I’m grateful for that … I don’t have time for politics.”

He soon would. 

Altman had already compared Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler posing “an unprecedented threat to America.” 

“To anyone familiar with the history of Germany in the 1930s, it’s chilling to watch Trump in action,” he said. After Trump’s victory in 2024, and dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and more conversations with Trump, came his $1 million personal contribution to the Trump 2025 inaugural, and a confession I have “really changed my perspective on him.” Trump “will be incredible for the country in many ways,” Altman said. Perhaps because of a push to release the book, “The Optimist” fails to explore this and coming contortions: Altman alongside Trump announcing a $500 billion “Stargate Initiative” for massive A.I. data centers alongside A.I. deregulation, no more handwringing about safety. “I hope he’s right about A.I.,” Trump said.

Whatever happened to the kid who stood up for his Gay Straight Alliance? When asked in that Advocateinterview after his wedding what LGBTQ people he may have admired when growing up, he responded, “That’s a really great question, and you know, I never really thought about that.”  Thanks to this excellent biography, we know young Sam is in there somewhere. Yet “The Optimist” is also a novel without an ending. How could it be otherwise at this stage of Sam Altman’s quest mutated into a billionaire’s collaboration.

This article was originally posted on the Washington Blade.