14 June 2024

Silicon Valley's False Prophet

Bookmarked Silicon Valley's False Prophet.

The truth is a little grimmer: Altman was, from an early age, chosen by Silicon Valley to be their next messiah, which allowed him to wield incredible power over the startup ecosystem without ever meaningfully contributing to it. Altman’s ascent to the apex of Silicon Valley — and the budding flowers of a Sam Altman cult of personality we see — feels just random and arbitrary, without any real force majeure behind it.

Fascinating character portrait of Sam Altman. I have no real insight into how accurate this portrayal is compared to, say, the referenced Bloomberg piece that waxes lyrical about Altman, but Zitron is certainly convincing as he presents his case.

Regardless of how Altman came to his current station, I think we all can agree that Silicon Valley and growth-at-all-costs mindset is cancerous. And that Altman is the poster boy du jour of just that.