{"id":714308,"date":"2026-06-04T10:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T10:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/714308\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T10:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T10:26:11","slug":"sam-altman-eyes-bernie-sanders-as-his-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/714308\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Altman Eyes Bernie Sanders as His Pope"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Anthropic got an invitation<\/a> from Pope Leo XIV for his encyclical on artificial intelligence, OpenAI is looking for its own moral authority to latch onto. It seems that Altman and company have chosen Bernie Sanders. After the Senator announced<\/a> he would be introducing legislation for the federal government to take a 50% ownership stake in frontier AI labs, Altman reportedly requested<\/a> a meeting with Sanders. Keep an eye out for white smoke pouring out from a data center to know if the meeting went well.<\/p>\n

Sanders revealed<\/a> that he would be meeting with Altman on Wednesday during an appearance on CNN. When asked by Katie Collins if he\u2019d be sitting down with Altman, Sanders confirmed he would be and said it was Altman who asked for the face-to-face (though whether they\u2019d talk about Sanders\u2019 proposal for partial nationalization of the AI industry, the Senator said, \u201cWho knows?\u201d).<\/p>\n

It might, on its face, seem strange for Altman to take the meeting with Sanders after he basically called for forcing companies like OpenAI to hand over a controlling stake in their operations right as they\u2019re all preparing to go public.<\/p>\n

But Altman has some real reputational damage to make up for after spending basically a decade saying things like \u201cAI will probably, like, most likely sort of lead to the end of the world<\/a>, but in the meantime, there\u2019ll be great companies created,\u201d and \u201cMy job is to help people destroy jobs<\/a>.\u201d One way to do that is to cozy up to someone who is viewed by the public as having ethical credibility and integrity. And while most lawmakers have just hung back and let AI run wild, Sanders is one of the few people in power actually trying to address the issues of the working class.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s certainly some common ground for the two\u2014assuming you take OpenAI\u2019s positions as genuinely held and not just posturing. The company has previously published a policy paper calling for the creation of\u00a0 a \u201cpublic wealth fund that provides every citizen\u2014including those not invested in financial markets\u2014with a stake in AI-driven economic growth.\u201d That is also the goal of Sanders\u2019 proposed legislation that would take profits from the AI companies and create a sovereign wealth fund (though notably, OpenAI\u2019s plan does not call for government control).<\/p>\n

But Altman likely has some ulterior motives for trying to link himself to Bernie. For one, he likely knows that the legislation won\u2019t go anywhere, so he can play footsie with the idea of supporting it without any consequence. Altman has also previously suggested that the government should provide a federal backstop<\/a> for AI firms should their massive investments in compute ever fail to actually turn a profit. Letting the government get involved in ownership could be a side door to that sort of federally-backed assurance.<\/p>\n

Appearing to do the \u201cright thing\u201d while making it self-serving has basically become the OpenAI playbook. Earlier today, the company released a policy paper<\/a> calling for mandatory evaluations of AI models for potential safety risks\u2014a stricter version of the voluntary checks that the Trump administration created<\/a> via executive order. That\u2019s in line with the types of laws that the company has been pushing at the state level<\/a>, where it\u2019s working to create its own, favorable framework for regulation while the federal government drags its feet. It allows OpenAI to look like it\u2019s submitting itself to more scrutiny while dictating the terms behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

It seems unlikely that Sanders wouldn\u2019t see through any sort of superficial overture, but who knows. Maybe he really wants that pope hat.<\/p>\n