Sam Altman’s ousting from OpenAI has entered the cultural zeitgeist

The lights dimmed as 5 actors took their locations round a desk on a makeshift stage in a New York Metropolis artwork gallery turned theater for the evening. Wine and water flowed by the intimate house as the home — full of media — sat to witness the premiere of “Doomers,” Matthew Gasda’s newest play that’s loosely primarily based on Sam Altman’s ousting as CEO of OpenAI in November 2023. 

The play fictionalizes occasions that befell after OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever knowledgeable Altman he was fired — a choice the board revamped issues that the CEO was mishandling AI security and fascinating in abusive, poisonous conduct. Regardless of the plain meticulous analysis that went into Gasda’s depiction of that evening, the playwright instructed Trendster his purpose wasn’t to create a documentary, however reasonably to make use of that setting as a microcosm for the better philosophical questions of AI security and alignment.

People have for millennia created delusion and lore round humanity’s subsequent nice innovations and the dangers of pursuing them. Like Prometheus stealing fireplace and Oppenheimer splitting the atom, humanity can’t resist the lure of its personal innovations. With Gasda’s play, the humanities at the moment are weighing in on the philosophical debate round speedy technological innovation — cementing expertise and its barons into the zeitgeist. 

“The humanities, the humanities, we will say one thing about this,” Gasda instructed Trendster. “We’re possibly toothless financially and toothless technologically, however we’re not toothless in the best way that we’ve the proper to symbolize this world as a lot as anybody else.”

In Gasda’s play, the corporate is named MindMesh, and the egotistical, infantile, spurned CEO is called Seth.

The primary act happens in Seth’s “conflict room” as he and people closest to him debate the deserves of the board’s ousting, what their subsequent steps must be, and whether or not the CEO is correct to doggedly pursue such society-altering expertise. The second act takes place in MindMesh’s board room and descriptions the assorted fears amongst its members, together with that the newly-ousted Seth would possibly take retribution on those that betrayed him, and that “we’re gonna get worn out by a competitor species.”

The central stress of the play is one which’s taking part in out on the world stage right now – the existential risk of AI versus the existential promise of it. 

‘I used to be fired for creating miracles’

Gasda says he wrote 35 drafts of this play, which he previewed for early audiences again in August. After extra journeys to San Francisco — and plenty of Celsius-fueled writing periods later — he arrived with the “Doomers” model that’s premiering in New York this weekend by February and shall be proven in San Francisco in March. 

Gasda, who is understood for writing and directing “Dimes Sq.” and “Zoomers,” instructed us he wished to know character archetypes and the psychology of a gaggle of those that don’t essentially “have interaction in self-reflection.”

The result’s a solid of 10, half of that are primarily based on actual individuals corresponding to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, former chief technologist Mira Murati, and co-founder and president Greg Brockman. Murati served as interim CEO in the course of the government shakeup. She left the corporate in September 2024 to start out her personal firm.

Different characters are primarily based on Helen Toner and Adam D’Angelo, two former board members who voted to oust Altman; and even Eliezer Yudkowsky, a researcher who has known as for OpenAI to be shut down earlier than it ends the world. 

Gasda mentioned that Seth, the character primarily based on Altman, is maybe essentially the most true-to-form in his depiction, however he additionally left room for fictional portrayals of characters these aware of the Bay space will acknowledge — a callous VC who thinks porn is the way forward for AI, a newly-minted Gen Z millionaire founder, and a know-it-all lawyer from Stanford. 

“I wished to extract sufficient sense of constancy and sense of realness to make the play difficult and to make the characters successfully actual sufficient that it gained’t flip off individuals who really know what occurred or know what a board room at an AI firm is like,” Gasda mentioned, noting that Altman was despatched a replica of the play earlier than it premiered.

The questions the solid debate are pertinent: Ought to AI improvement be sped up so “we” can win; ought to its improvement be slowed down to permit for higher security and alignment; ought to or not it’s shut down altogether to guard the human race?

By these debates, we see the archetypes of every character fulfilled: If there’s a selection between successful and being ethical, Seth, the character primarily based on Atlman, chooses to win.  

He declares loudly that the board fired him “for creating miracles,” and argues that alignment can be a “poor use of a sacred useful resource.” It’s human, he says, to pursue excellence and provides that MindMesh is the world’s “immune system,” a benevolent American-made AGI that can defend us when the “dangerous” AGI goes rogue.  

“The one factor to do is outcompete and out-engineer,” Seth says. Characters primarily based on Mira Murati and Greg Brockman largely again Seth, at the same time as he insults them, arguing for a imaginative and prescient of an AI utopia the place expertise cures illness and opens up interplanetary house journey. To which the protection ethicist character, Alina, says, “You make it sound like a genie in a bottle.”

Gasda sprinkles dry humor all through “Doomers” — lightening the temper of an in any other case tense material. He additionally introduces humor by capturing nuances of Silicon Valley tradition. Polycules and ketamine have been talked about greater than as soon as, and at one level, the characters casually take mushrooms. There are references to Waymo robotaxis, and at one level a personality remarks, “I do know consuming is low standing, however I actually need a drink,” in reference to the Cali-sober development overtaking the Bay. 

Security questions stay

The occasions depicted on this play befell virtually 15 months in the past, and already the dialog round AI has shifted because the race for domination outpaces issues of safety. 

Altman ended up instantly returning to energy after OpenAI engineers threatened to stop en masse if he wasn’t reinstated. A brand new board that’s comfy with OpenAI shifting right into a for-profit construction has since consolidated underneath the CEO. Sutskever and Jan Leike, the co-lead on OpenAI’s now-defunct superalignment crew, have defected. Different safety-focused researchers who raised issues about AI labs have additionally departed.

That hasn’t harm OpenAI.

The corporate is reportedly elevating a $40 billion spherical that will worth it at $300 billion, whereas President Donald Trump guarantees to guard AI from regulation as a brand new arms race in opposition to China heats up and new rivals, like DeepSeek, enter the ring. In brief, AI innovation is rushing up, not slowing down, simply as Seth’s character wished. The query everybody awaits the reply for is whether or not or not this can be a good factor. 

“It’s ugly to construct God,” Alina, the ethicist within the play, says. “As a result of we’re so ugly, and it’s primarily based on us.”