Sam Altman is clearly a brilliant man. You pretty much have to be to lead a cutting-edge tech firm with OpenAI’s size, scope, and capabilities.
All the same, we might want to start wondering – maybe even worrying – about his mental health. Is he getting enough sleep? Is he pushing himself too hard? Does he maybe need to talk to someone?
As in someone other than his tech team?
A professional?
These are not actually (or at least not completely) tongue-in-cheek questions considering Altman’s ever-changing assessments of artificial intelligence (AI) potential – both for good and evil.
All through this past winter, Altman was convinced it would create a “jobs apocalypse.” Then in May, he declared himself “delighted to be wrong” about that belief.
He’s also stated that AI could lead to human extinction – but now rejects that concept, saying such an end is very preventable. And despite his alarmist calls in recent months for the government to start passing laws to regulate AI because of its horrific potential, he’s since told Politico:
We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency [to explore and expand it]… I wouldn’t take a trade of saying, “We’ll make sure there’s no major hacks, there’s no misuse of this technology, there’s zero scams, there’s zero all the other bad things that will happen”… Because I think people will do tremendously – orders of magnitude more – good stuff than bad stuff [with AI].
The thing is that Altman seems to believe everything he’s saying in the moment he’s saying it. I’m not calling him disingenuous.
But I am saying he should probably take a deep breath and get his story straight.
Humans vs. Data Centers
Last week, I wrote about the data center NorthPoint is trying desperately to build outside a tiny town in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. The company is literally trying to bribe residents to accept their proposal, offering both community investments and $10,000 per impacted household.
And yet there are still enough holdouts to potentially keep the project from moving forward. As I stated:
We all know that public sentiment about data centers isn’t favorable. People are concerned about their water usage, their effect on local power grids, the noise they make, and the fact that they don’t ultimately create many full-time jobs.
All told, I concluded that “if there are enough of these holdouts at the next meeting, NorthPoint is just going to have to find another place to build.”
Goldman Sachs, however, disagrees. Maybe not about the Poconos-specific facility, but in general. One of its strategists, Laura Cyr, came out this week to say that:
While U.S. data center development faces increasing political and community opposition, project data and our updated capacity estimates suggest that the U.S. data center growth outlook through 2027 remains largely unchanged.
Or, as Yahoo! Finance summarizes her stance, “Your band of angry neighbors is unlikely to stop that data center from going live in 2027.”
It’s an interesting evaluation considering how successful communities have been in shutting down such projects so far this year. As many of you know, my own city of Spartanburg, South Carolina, made national news earlier this year for shuttering a data center proposal.
Elsewhere, states like New York have put a moratorium on new, large ones being built.
So I’m not sure what information Cyr is working with. I’m sure it’s reputable.
But I’m wondering about its reliability all the same.
Baby boomers rule the housing market
Fortune Business Editor Nick Lichtenberg wrote an article earlier this year titled, “The pig in the python: Baby boomers are strangling the economy they built by refusing to move or retire.”
As the title indicates, it wasn’t gentle on the generation. Some would classify it as outright rude and entitled.
After facing significant backlash, Lichtenberg himself described the piece as arguing that:
… the U.S. economy is like a python that swallowed a pig when boomers entered the housing and labor markets in the 1970s, and that bulge is still moving through. Boomers, boosted by falling interest rates, rising asset prices, and better health, are staying longer in big houses and senior jobs, leaving less space for younger families to buy homes or move up at work.
He went on to describe them as having “a disproportionate share of the houses, high-status jobs, and institutional power” available. And while “that’s great for them,” it’s “suffocating for the generations behind them.”
Having a baby boomer mom, I can’t say I share Lichtenberg’s irritation. I watched her work exceptionally hard for decades to get where she is today. And like any good capitalist (and son), I believe she should be able to determine what to do with what she earned.
End of story.
This doesn’t mean he’s wrong about baby boomers dominating the housing market. The latest Census Bureau data shows that the national homeownership rate sits at 65% or so. Yet when you break it down by age category, you find that it’s:
79% for those 65 and older
76% for those 55 to 64
70% for the 45–54 range
A little over 60% for the 35-44 crowd
37% for those younger than 35.
Sometimes that’s just the way life goes.
Happy SWAN investing,
Brad Thomas
Editor, The Wide Moat Daily
