The top of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is a self-proclaimed doomsday prepper who once bragged about his stockpile of weapons, gold, and other survival goods — long before he and other experts warned that AI poses an “extinction risk” to humanity on par with nuclear weapons and pandemics.
In 2016, Altman’s profile in said the Recent Yorker a conversation by which he told two tech entrepreneurs that one of his hobbies, apart from collecting cars and flying planes, is preparing to “survive” in the event of a catastrophe – akin to a deadly synthetic virus or the emergence of a rogue AI “that attacks us. “
“I try not to give it some thought an excessive amount of,” Altman reportedly said. “But I actually have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli armed forces and a big piece of land in Big Sur that I can fly to.”
The OpenAI lead downplayed his earlier remarks in an April speech Honest with Bari Weiss podcast telling a journalist that he was not a doomsday prepper “in the way I’d have thought”.
“It was like a fun hobby, but there’s nothing else to do. None of it will help if [artificial general intelligence] it’s going bad, nevertheless it’s a fun hobby,” said Altman.
The post contacted OpenAI for comment.
![Altman herself](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/NYPICHPDPICT000011797819.jpg?w=1024)
Altman’s vision of doom where AI has gone incorrect is common in Silicon Valley, where a growing number of tech billionaires have poured money into post-apocalyptic contingency plans like distant bunkers lately.
Some, like Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Larry Page, have bought land in Recent Zealand. The identical Recent Yorker profile revealed that Altman’s “backup plan” was to fly to Recent Zealand with Thiel should society crumble.
Critics of the technological obsession with a Terminator-like future, akin to Douglas Rushkoff, creator of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, have taken a cynical view of the recent AI scare.
![artificial intelligence](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/NYPICHPDPICT000011989758.jpg?w=1024)
They argue that the tech industry’s warnings of a possible Armageddon are a convenient distraction from more pressing issues – and a way to secure a seat at the table to shape regulations that will raise the barrier to entry for potential AI rivals.
This is also how Altman and other leaders advertise their advances in achieving artificial general intelligence or systems with human-level capabilities, when current services like ChatGPT are literally “trained” to return information, Rushkoff added.
“The true problem with large-scale tech bro existential panic is that they have an inclination to ignore and even exacerbate the issues that are happening at once,” Rushkoff told The Post.
“They give attention to something like an end-game Terminator nightmare, and for me it is a way to distract from the very real and present dangers they pose to us,” he added. “It is going to not be artificial intelligence that will detonate the atomic bomb in a fictional future. It’s the things they’re doing at once, at once.”
Nevertheless, catering to the paranoid tech brothers has develop into a lucrative business for some corporations – including Rising S, a Texas-based bunker builder that builds shelters and installs them at the customer’s preferred destination.
![Uprising S](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/NYPICHPDPICT000011989527.jpg?w=512)
According to Gary Lynch, the company’s CEO for 20 years, Rising S sells about 20 to 40 bunkers a 12 months, depending on size and complexity. The corporate quotes prices starting from $49,000 for the smallest model to greater than $9.6 million for a decked-out bunker dubbed “The Aristocrat.”
“I absolutely sold so much of tech people,” Lynch told The Post, noting a surge in sales to customers in Silicon Valley and Napa during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It looked like every bunker we sold had been there for about three years.”
Lynch said tech customers typically buy “larger models” of bunkers of 2,000 square feet or more – with bells and whistles like on-site bowling alleys, swimming pools, hot tubs and biometric entrances.
![Uprising S](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/NYPICHPDPICT000011989523.jpg?w=720)
Lynch said none of his buyers cited artificial intelligence as a reason for the purchase – although he noted that it’s common for customers to hold back from pondering “for fear of sounding sugary.”
John Ramey, a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur and company founder catastrophe preparation blog Preparedsaid he personally disagrees “with the implicit assumption that AI shall be a foul Skynet” – but has offered to defend Altman and others who feel the need to bring up such a possibility.
“Seeing that advanced computing is inevitable, and seeing the predictable problems that include it, and seeing what is needed to prepare for those problems, is why preppers are disproportionately represented in the Valley crowd,” Ramey told The Fast.
Altman is not the only expert to warn of the potential doom of AI advances. Earlier this month, Elon Musk said he sees a risk that AI “shall be the Terminator” in the future – and previously described his plan to construct a sustainable colony on Mars as key to humanity’s long-term survival in the event of a catastrophe.
![Altman herself](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/NYPICHPDPICT000011939427-1.jpg?w=1024)
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has warned that AI poses an “existential risk” to humanity that could lead to “many, many, many, many individuals injured or killed”
Altman also hinted at his fear when he testified before a Senate panel earlier this month, declaring that his worst fear is that advanced AI will “do significant harm to the world.”