rant · moment 12 of 18
AI Needs Its Own Dave Thomas: Why Sam Altman Can't Be Trusted
from Bibi, Genghis Khan, & The Decency To Stay Home | The Tim Dillon Show #488 · #488
7 min
Tim argues that AI executives like Sam Altman and Peter Thiel are terrifying, unrelatable spokespeople for a scary technological future, contrasting them with the folksy trustworthiness of Wendy's founder Dave Thomas via an old commercial and a parody Altman ad.
- Tim describes the anxiety people feel about AI: being ushered into a new world without understanding costs or benefits, with no control over what happens.
- People are more anxious on planes than in cars because planes require trusting equipment and crew with no sense of control—same anxiety applies to AI adoption.
- Tech executives talking about Satan or accusations of killing employees don't inspire confidence in AI companies.
- AI industry needs its own Dave Thomas: a folksy, trustworthy figure instead of Sam Altman and Peter Thiel.
- Tim asks whether any person in tech can function as a spokesman without horrifying people within minutes of opening their mouth.
- Dave Thomas's Wendy's commercial: an old man in a kitchen, admitting mistakes, trying different formulas—someone you could trust.
- Sam Altman's actual pitch sounds dystopian: intelligence will be a utility sold on a meter, people buying what corporations allow them to consume.
- Tim reimagines how a Dave Thomas figure would sell AI: reassuring and folksy instead of cold and technological.
- Contrast: Dave Thomas would say 'buy intelligence from our friendly machine,' but Altman actually says 'intelligence is a utility, you will buy it from us on a meter, you will live when we say.'
- Tech executives deny deaths at their companies could be suspicious despite circumstances that are kind of suspicious.
Dave ThomasMark ZuckerbergSam AltmanWendy'sOpenAIArtificial IntelligencePeter Thiel