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Coming live. I'm a rave.

And a bit of a rave situation.

It's on.

Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher,

and I'm Kara Swisher. I've been reporting on tech for decades, and few advances have made the

kind of splash and had the potential long-term impact that Chat GPT did back in November

2022. It made a nonprofit called OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman known around the world.

I met Sam actually when it was a teenager when he had a company called Looped, which didn't last.

And I've watched him over the years grow as he went from company to company, including at OpenAI, where he and Elon told me about the need to have an organization like this to protect us against

the tech giants themselves, Google, and others, when AI came of age. And it turned out these

might have been the monsters we were scared of meeting in the first place. I do like Sam. He's very

charming and I can see why people think of his manipulative. But he really is an interesting character, more like Steve Jobs than anyone else I've ever interviewed.

And I wrote and spoke a lot about his sudden ouster and just a sudden reinstatement as the CEO of OpenAI in the fall of 2023.

And I should note that Vox Media, like a lot of media companies, has a licensing deal with Open AI that gives OpenAIA access to its IP.

My guests today are two tech journalists who have each come out with their own very well-reported books about Sam and Open AI,

including what was happening behind the scenes during that crucial firing and rehiring,

the wide impact of generative AI and the

potential for artificial general intelligence in the future. Keach Hagey is a reporter at the Wall

Street Journal. Her book is called The Optimist Sam Altman Open AI and the race to reinvent the

future. Karen Howe writes for publications including The Atlantic and leads the Pulitzer Center's

AI Spotlight series. Her book is called Empire of AI, Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's

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