Even Sam “magic intelligence in the sky” Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI and the poster child of the AI boom, has mixed feelings about the speed with which the technology is developing.
In an appearance earlier this week on Stripe co-founder John Collison’s podcast, called Cheeky Pint, Altman retreated to a pub booth, sipped IPA and Guinness, and praised the many experts whose careers are actively being enhanced by the rise of AI.
That stone is felt especially sharp in recent weeks by mathematicians, according to OpenAI controversially published his AI-assisted solution to the Navier-Stokes problem that has plagued the field for decades. Some mathematicians called Foul, accusing the company of what in their view is affected by plagiarism. Then, eearlier this month, OpenAI followed by publishing results for nearly 400 additional long-standing math problems.
In the same way that professional chess players look back on Deep Blue’s victory over Kasparov, future generations of mathematicians will likely look back on OpenAI’s string of proofs in late 2026 as the watershed moment when their field was irrevocably changed by AI.
Adding insult to injury, Altman slipped his cheeky pint appearance – “I shouldn’t actually say this, but I will because we’re drinking” – that one of the models that OpenAI used internally to solve some particularly difficult technical problems was known among employees as: “Model Name-Hold My Beer.”
“We had this collective experience of people’s hardest research problems from their academic careers; the model just dropped them, one by one,” Altman said. “Lots of different fields – it was incredible to watch.” (He added that among them were “many of the problems that we published,” which could relate to the hundreds of mathematical solutions that OpenAI posted earlier this month. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.)
Watching the model name-hold my beer was also apparently a bit nerve-wracking. “Two nights in a row, I was up most of the night because I was so excited I couldn’t go to bed,” Altman said. “I was very excited and happy, but I also had a lot more sadness and melancholy and a sense of something coming to an end than I expected.”
What follows is an unsettling back-and-forth in which Altman seemingly tries to express the basic human expression of empathy for lives permanently altered by AI, while his interlocutor reassures him that this is just the way things are and that he doesn’t need his conscience.
Altman: “I agree that this is the right thing to do in the name of the world, and I also agree that this is just the shape of reality and nothing that anyone can stop, or should stop. But I really -“
Collison: “There’s a wisdom and nostalgia that you feel.”
Altman: “It’s more than nostalgia.”
Collison: “Wistfulness.”
Altman: “Yes.”
Here we can witness an echo chamber unfolding before our eyes: two individuals affirming a shared belief in the idea that the spread of AI, and all its consequent upheavals, is an inevitable next stage in the technological-and really human–evolution. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how many lives, communities or ecosystems are being disrupted in the moment, if you seriously believe that what you are building will make life better for everyone in the future. And this, above all else, is the ideology that pushes the AI juggernaut forward.
In another moment of reflection earlier in the conversation, Altman remarked: “I don’t think we” – meaning OpenAI – “did a great job of explaining to people why we think all the potential downsides of this technology are worth it.” He may actually be on to something there.