Hey, everybody. Katie and Lauren and I are taking a week off from taping a new episode,

but we wanted to share one of our favorite episodes of Uncanny Valley this week.

It's all about OpenAI's Sam Altman.

We trace his origin story from his Midwest roots to his tumultuous rise at OpenAI,

and of course, we question whether he is the person

we should trust to create our AI future. We hope you enjoy it. We have been a misunderstood

and badly mocked org for a long time. Like when we started and said we were going to work on

aGI, like people thought we were bad shit insane. Sam Altman is the CEO and one of the founders

of OpenAI, the generative AI company that launched ChatGPT about two years ago and essentially

ushered in a new era of artificial intelligence. This is Wired's Uncanny Valley, a show about

the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley.

So today on the show, we're doing a deep dive on Sam Altman, from his Midwest roots to his early

startup days, to his time as a venture capitalist, and his rise and fall and rise again at OpenAI.

We're going to look at it all while asking,

is this the man we should trust to guide our explorations into artificial intelligence?

And do we even have a choice?

I'm Michael Collori, Director of Consumer Tech and Culture here at Wired.

And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired. And I'm Zoe Shipper, Wired's director of business and industry.

Okay, so I want to start today by going back one year into the past November,

2023, to an event that we refer to as the blip.

The blip. We don't just refer to it as the blip. That is actually the internal phrase that is used at OpenA.I.

To describe some of the most chaotic three to four days in that company's history.

...