Can OpenAI’s ‘Master of Disaster’ Solve AI’s Biggest Problem?

Three months ago, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman told me his worries about a growing problem facing the AI ​​industry: Despite the popularity of tools like ChatGPT, more and more people say they view AI the wrong way. Since then, the backlash has only intensified.

College commencement speakers are here frustration talking about AI in optimistic terms. Last month, someone dropped a Molotov Restaurant at the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in San Francisco and wrote a manifesto urging prosecution of AI officials. No one has more to lose from this history crisis than OpenAI.

The person tasked with trying to fix it is Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s global director and political activist. I sat down with him this week to discuss what I would argue are his two biggest challenges: convincing the world to embrace OpenAI technology, while at the same time forcing lawmakers to pass laws that won’t hinder the company’s growth. Lehane sees these goals as one and the same.

“When I was in the White House, we always talked about how good policy meets politics,” Lehane says. “You have to think about the two things going together.”

After working as a crisis liaison in Bill Clinton’s White House, Lehane earned the nickname “boss of disaster.” He later helped Airbnb ban regulators in cities that consider short-term rentals illegal, or as he puts it, “before the law.” Lehane also played a key role in creating Fairshake, a powerful crypto PAC that worked to validate digital currencies in Washington. Since joining OpenAI in 2024, he has been one of the company’s executives and now oversees its communications and policy teams.

Lehane tells me that public discourse about how AI will change society is often “false”. On the other hand is the “Bob Ross worldview” which predicts a future where no one will work anymore and everyone will live “in beach houses painting colorful pictures all day.” On the other hand, it is a dystopian future in which AI has become so powerful that only a small group of elites can control it. Even events, in Lehane’s view, are not real.

OpenAI is guilty of promoting this kind of rhetoric in the past. CEO Sam Altman warned last year that “all types of work“it will go away when unity comes.” Lately he’s softened his tone, to announce that “just wanting to work is wrong for a long time.”

Lehane wants OpenAI to start publishing a “standard” message about AI promises that avoids any of these issues. He says that the company needs to provide real solutions to the problems that people are worried about, such as the loss of jobs and the problems caused by chatbots for children. As an example of this work, Lehane showed a series of concepts that OpenAI recently released, which includes creating a four-day work week, expanding access to healthcare, and taxing AI-powered jobs.

“If you’re going to say there’s a problem here, you also have a responsibility — especially if you’re making these things — to come up with ideas to solve those things,” says Lehane.

Some former OpenAI employees have criticized the company for downplaying the potential challenges of adopting AI. WIRED previously reported that members of financial research organization OpenAI resigned after becoming concerned morphological being the representative arm of the company. The former employees said that their warnings about the financial implications of AI may have been harsh for OpenAI, but they honestly presented the company’s research findings.

Carrying Pins

With public skepticism about the growth of AI, politicians are under pressure to convince voters that they can control the technology industry. To combat this, the AI ​​industry has formed a new group of super PACs that are lobbying political candidates and experimenting affect people’s opinion technology. Critics say the move has not gone well, and some have started campaigning on this point that AI super PACS is against them.

Lehane helped launch one of the largest pro-AI PACs, Leading the Future, which launched last summer with more than $100 million in financial commitments from tech giants, including Brockman. The group said argued Alex BoresNew York’s most powerful AI defense lawmaker who is running for Congress in the state’s 12th district.