The lights dimmed as five actors took their places around a table on a makeshift stage in a New York City art gallery turned theater for the night. Wine and water flowed through the intimate space as the house — packed with media — sat to witness the premiere of “Doomers,” Matthew Gasda’s latest play that is loosely based on Sam Altman’s ousting as CEO of OpenAI in November 2023.
The play fictionalizes events that took place after OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever informed Altman he was fired — a decision the board made over concerns that the CEO was mishandling AI safety and engaging in abusive, toxic behavior. Despite the obvious meticulous research that went into Gasda’s depiction of that night, the playwright told TechCrunch his goal wasn’t to create a documentary, but rather to use that setting as a microcosm for the greater philosophical questions of AI safety and alignment.
Humans have for millennia created myth and lore around humanity’s next great inventions and the risks of pursuing them. Like Prometheus stealing fire and Oppenheimer splitting the atom, humanity can’t resist the lure of its own inventions.
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