For the last few weeks, Sam Altman had been deliberating over how involved he might get in the nascent effort to primary Joe Biden. Last month, as I first reported, Altman invited Rep. Dean Phillips, the long-shot Democratic presidential challenger, to his home in San Francisco for a one-on-one meeting to determine whether he might be a viable alternative. People on the Phillips campaign got the impression that the OpenAI founder was fully on board, with one saying he would even be “embedded” into the operation.
Two weeks later, however, Altman’s life blew up. He was fired from OpenAI, inspired a staff revolt, and was almost immediately rehired in a whiplash corporate saga for the ages. Any extracurricular plans he might have had to insinuate himself into presidential politics would, I presume, have had to take a backseat to the more urgent work of getting his company back under control.
