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🧵 IN THE WINTER OF 2022, a few months after ChatGPT began to scramble everything, I was part of a small group of staffers who met with Sam Altman at the White House. A few reflections on that meeting, and what it tells us about this most recent hype/panic cycle 🧵🧵🧵

Remember the feel of that moment: Across continents, people were panicking about the new technology, and the OpenAI CEO was on a charm offensive, aiming to soothe nerves from Washington to Brussels.

The meeting, held in an ornate conference room on the fourth floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, lasted a little over an hour. Altman politely shook everyone’s hand before we settled around the wooden table.

the screen the “demo” of the new model the CEO was there to show us. I found this very funny. So did many of my colleagues, who giggled quietly. Unfortunately, the humor seemed lost on the CEO, who betrayed no visible emotion during the meeting.

When the screen was finally working, Altman pulled up a lengthy YouTube video—Vladimir Putin speaking Russian at a press conference (I also thought this was an amusing choice, given the setting)—and showed us how the website could instantly translate the speech into English and summarize

its contents. It was impressive. Then he told a story about his business partner’s wife: she had spent months talking to stumped doctors about her symptoms before one query in the app diagnosed her mystery illness.