What Next: TBD | Inside OpenAI's Empire

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

OpenAI started as a non-profit dedicated to building safe A.I. Now, they’re obsessed with building artificial general intelligence by any means necessary - even if they don’t quite know what that is. Guest: Karen Hao, reporter and author of “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI” Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I made you think you was real.
0:02.0	My name is Caden Sinclair.
0:04.0	Some people call us American royalty.
0:06.0	We were Liars.
0:08.0	A new series on Prime Video.
0:10.0	We were happy. We wanted for nothing.
0:12.0	Based on the best-selling novel.
0:15.0	Something terrible happened last summer,
0:17.0	and I have no memory of what or who hurt me.
0:20.0	No one in my family will tell me. When you're
0:23.0	left for dead, you want answers. We Will Liars. New series, watch now, only on Prime Video. This episode is
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1:02.7	In August of 2019, reporter Karen Howe went to visit the San Francisco headquarters of OpenAI.
1:09.8	It had started as a nonprofit research lab that said it was dedicated to fundamental AI
1:14.8	research with no commercial focus, no commercial intent.
1:20.4	At the time, Karen was covering AI for MIT Tech Review.
1:24.7	An Open AI was the buzzy new kid on the block.
	...

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