Speaker 1: Previously on Foundering, I think it'd be.
Speaker 2: Good to end poverty. Maybe you think we should stop
Speaker 2: the technology think can do that, I personally don't. The
Speaker 2: first time I looked at GPT too, I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my, this is like, this is crazy. This is
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's nothing like, there's nothing like this
Speaker 2: in the world, Like it's crazy that this is possible.
Speaker 1: This was much more fluid feeling. It gave you a
Speaker 1: sense that you were communicating with a person, even though
Speaker 1: you were clearly not communicating with a person.
Speaker 2: I think it's how we get to this world of abundance.
Speaker 2: I think AI will probably, like most likely sort of
Speaker 2: lead to the end of the world, and.
Speaker 1: Yet we are wasting our time talking about these fantasy
Speaker 1: scenarios because the people with all the money decided to
Speaker 1: get worried about it. This episode picks up from where
Speaker 1: part one of Heaven and Hell left off. If you
Speaker 1: haven't listened to that episode yet, you might want to
Speaker 1: go back and listen in order. One thing Sam has
Speaker 1: been really clear he believes is that AI is going
Speaker 1: to dramatically change our society and probably put a lot
Speaker 1: of people out of work. His voice is matter of
Speaker 1: fact when He describes this on the Joe Rogan podcast.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be a great thing, but
Speaker 2: I think it's not going to be all a great thing.
Speaker 2: It's not this clean story of we're going to do
Speaker 2: this and it's all going to be great, and it's
Speaker 2: going to be net great, but it's going to be
Speaker 2: like a technological revolution. It's going to be a societal revolution.
Speaker 1: When Sam says net, he means overall.
Speaker 2: And even if it's like net wonderful, you know, there's
Speaker 2: things we're going to lose along the way. Some kinds
Speaker 2: of job, some kind of parts of our way of life,
Speaker 2: some parts of the way we live are going to
Speaker 2: change or go away.
Speaker 1: These are scary changes. But when Sam talks about these changes,
Speaker 1: he also has a proposed solution to them, Universal Basic income,
Speaker 1: or UBI. It's a method of distributing money to keep
Speaker 1: people out of poverty, and it has a few key tenets.
Speaker 1: It's cash given to everyone on a regular schedule, and
Speaker 1: it's unconditional, it's not tied to a job, and people
Speaker 1: can spend it on whatever they want, no strings attached.
Speaker 1: Sam says UBI is a great solution, one that we
Speaker 1: should pursue as a society. It will help reduce inequality worldwide.
Speaker 2: We're going to have an opportunity to push the reset
Speaker 2: button and think about the world we want, and I
Speaker 2: think universal basic income is one part of that that.
Speaker 2: I think we do have an opportunity as we rewrite
Speaker 2: the social contract to think about how we can get
Speaker 2: towards a more equal world.
Speaker 1: Sam has spent almost a decade making himself into a
Speaker 1: tech expert on UBI. In twenty sixteen, when he was
Speaker 1: running y Combinator, he started a basic income study in Oakland.
Speaker 1: That project eventually gave one thousand people one thousand dollars
Speaker 1: every month. It's no longer associated with YC and is
Speaker 1: now funded by OpenAI. He also started a crypto project
Speaker 1: called world Coin, which uses these silver orbs to scan
Speaker 1: your eyeballs and register you in a database in exchange
Speaker 1: for a digital currency. The point is to one day
Speaker 1: be able to distribute a universal basic income to everyone
Speaker 1: through this eyeball registry. Anyway, regardless of the method, Sam
Speaker 1: has clearly made UBI part of his personal brand. As
Speaker 1: you heard in Part one, he wants to eradicate poverty,
Speaker 1: and he has continued to talk about this as recently
Speaker 1: as twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: You know, I think the world should eliminate poverty if
Speaker 2: able to do so. But one thing I think we
Speaker 2: all could agree on, we just shouldn't have poverty in
Speaker 2: the world. I think it'd be good to end poverty.
Speaker 2: Maybe you think we should stop a technology that can
Speaker 2: do that, I personally don't.
Speaker 1: What really strikes me is that Sam positions himself as
Speaker 1: the visionary behind this AI that might put us all
Speaker 1: out of work, and the visionary behind systems that will
Speaker 1: save us from that chaos. He's offering fixes to the
Speaker 1: problems that his own technology will create. Imagine a future
Speaker 1: where Sam Altman's company has invented AI so powerful that
Speaker 1: it upends the entire labor economy. We no longer work
Speaker 1: for money. Instead, we get monthly checks from Sam Altman's
Speaker 1: income distribution system. I can imagine that his intentions might
Speaker 1: be good, and that he wants to make a difference here.
Speaker 1: But what Sam's proposing is ending poverty through systems overseen
Speaker 1: by him, basically, and that's asking us to put a
Speaker 1: huge amount of trust in him. Remember, Sam is really
Speaker 1: good at gaining power. He has a deep drive to
Speaker 1: be in charge. His company has made promises about adhering
Speaker 1: to certain principles and then moved away from them. It
Speaker 1: brings me back to this question we asked in episode one,
Speaker 1: what I think is the key question of this series.
Speaker 1: Should we trust this person?
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Like we said earlier, there's a part of Sam's life
Speaker 1: that really complicates this image of him. It's the story
Speaker 1: of his little sister Annie. She says she lives in poverty.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she struggles with homelessness. She says she survives by
Speaker 1: doing sex work. Sam is pitching this dream future in
Speaker 1: which universal basic income will protect everyone who needs it.
Speaker 1: That sounds lovely in theory, but when it's held up
Speaker 1: next to Annie's messy, everyday reality, that promise starts to
Speaker 1: sound a bit hollow. Housing insecurity has defined Annie's life
Speaker 1: for the past few years. This is a complex and
Speaker 1: sensitive situation, so I wanted to hear from her myself.
Speaker 3: In my experience, it's not only hard to do anything
Speaker 3: when you are housing insecure, it is impossible. I haven't
Speaker 3: had a typical day in four years because of how
Speaker 3: much energy both physically like looking for places or doing things,
Speaker 3: or looking for jobs and emotionally goes into housing insecurity.
Speaker 3: It has been the single biggest energy output of my
Speaker 3: past year.
Speaker 1: In person, Annie is upbeat and smiley. She has good
Speaker 1: suggestions for health food stores on Maui. She has the
Speaker 1: word love tattooed across her knuckles. She makes a podcast,
Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to the Annie Altman Show All Humans
Speaker 1: or Human Podcast, and posts videos of her singing on YouTube.
Speaker 4: This is for my dad.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, I and to better understand her story, I want
Speaker 1: to rewind to her childhood. When we heard from Annie
Speaker 1: briefly in the first episode, she talked about Sam's domineering
Speaker 1: attitude within their family, how he dictated they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: Christmas trees and put himself in charge of how long
Speaker 1: each sibling could speak at their dad's funeral. Their family
Speaker 1: has three boys. Sam's the oldest, then Max, then Jack.
Speaker 1: Annie is the youngest, nine years younger than Sam and
Speaker 1: the only girl. Her brothers loved science, math, games, nerdy stuff.
Speaker 1: She was always the artistic, sensitive one. Even when they
Speaker 1: were children, she sometimes felt like the odd one out,
Speaker 1: and as they became adults, the bonds between the brothers
Speaker 1: tightened both personally and professionally. While Sam was running YC,
Speaker 1: Jack founded a software company that was funded by YC.
Speaker 1: Jack and Max also both worked with Sam, helping run
Speaker 1: his investment fund with money from Peter Teel. Then all
Speaker 1: three started another investment fund together in which they used
Speaker 1: Sam's personal wealth. The three brothers lived together in San Francisco, brothers, coworkers, roommates,
Speaker 1: a tight, messy knot of family, business and money. Annie,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, was not part of the Altman
Speaker 1: family brand. With each new step in her life, she
Speaker 1: seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt
Speaker 1: was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but
Speaker 1: decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes,
Speaker 1: stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad
Speaker 1: was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path.
Speaker 1: Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited.
Speaker 3: My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift
Speaker 3: and also very this is just a phase. I was
Speaker 3: an am at total daddy's girl. With my mother. There
Speaker 3: was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted
Speaker 3: me to do, which is a story. Sadly, I feel
Speaker 3: like a lot of people can relate to.
Speaker 1: Just a note. We reached out to Sam his siblings,
Speaker 1: and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom,
Speaker 1: Connie Gibstein, responded with this statement, We love Annie and
Speaker 1: are very concerned about her well being. Over the years,
Speaker 1: we have offered her financial support and help and continued
Speaker 1: to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support
Speaker 1: without enabling self destructive behavior for a family member with
Speaker 1: mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the
Speaker 1: best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, Annie's father died suddenly of a heart attack,
Speaker 1: and the grief hit her hard. Meanwhile, she also started
Speaker 1: dealing with some chronic health issues, including tendonitis in her
Speaker 1: ankle that made it difficult to do work that required standing.
Speaker 1: She quit her job. She was still mourning her dad.
Speaker 1: She had gotten some life insurance money after he died,
Speaker 1: but when that ran out a year later, she still
Speaker 1: found herself in a desperate financial situation. In order to
Speaker 1: pay rent, she started selling her furniture. She says she
Speaker 1: asked her family directly for money to pay rent and
Speaker 1: cover groceries.
Speaker 4: I asked my mother for help and she said no,
Speaker 4: And then asked Sam and he was told to say
Speaker 4: no because of her wanting him to say no, and
Speaker 4: he's a grown man in his thirties millions of dollars now.
Speaker 1: Sam and his family have given Annie money at times,
Speaker 1: but she says it always came with heavy conditions that
Speaker 1: made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to
Speaker 1: get back on zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started
Speaker 1: as a teen but had stopped. Later on, She forwarded
Speaker 1: me an email from Sam where he asked her to
Speaker 1: share her bank statements and to allow him and his
Speaker 1: mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions
Speaker 1: in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered.
Speaker 1: She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage
Speaker 1: or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his
Speaker 1: money as he pleases, but again, he's on stage espousing
Speaker 1: the virtues of universal basic income giving money away for free, unconditionally,
Speaker 1: and Annie says he didn't do the same here for her.
Speaker 1: There were times when I'd gone back and forth about
Speaker 1: what to include from Annie's story. It's a very personal,
Speaker 1: messy family situation, and I'll confess that on occasion I've
Speaker 1: doubted some unrelated things she's told me. But also I've
Speaker 1: looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a
Speaker 1: lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she
Speaker 1: lived with. So in late twenty nineteen, when she asked
Speaker 1: for help and says she was told no, she turned
Speaker 1: to something she considered a last resort to make money.
Speaker 1: She started sex work. She made an account on a
Speaker 1: sugar Daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship
Speaker 1: and often sex.
Speaker 3: I was just I was in a desperate place. I
Speaker 3: mean I literally like people who have been in a
Speaker 3: position like this ever know that when you're in a
Speaker 3: place of selling furniture, you're in a desperate position of
Speaker 3: I'm out options. This is a plan z I would
Speaker 3: not be doing this if plans a through I had
Speaker 3: worked out in any capacity.
Speaker 1: The first thing she tried was video chatting with a
Speaker 1: middle aged man. She flashed him on camera and he
Speaker 1: sent her money over Zell. She posted videos on OnlyFans
Speaker 1: and porn Hub. She also did in person sex work
Speaker 1: for two years. She says she didn't want to, but
Speaker 1: it was the work that she was able to fit
Speaker 1: into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues,
Speaker 1: her lack of stable income, led to a long period
Speaker 1: of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work
Speaker 1: clients or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex
Speaker 1: work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn't have pay
Speaker 1: stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases
Speaker 1: she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly
Speaker 1: the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic
Speaker 1: income tries to break.
Speaker 3: If I had a security deposit in my bank account,
Speaker 3: never would have lived with this man, not, not even
Speaker 3: a little bit of a chance. Would I have lived
Speaker 3: with this man. There's some unhealthy sex work experiences, and
Speaker 3: I've also had very traumatizing experiences from in person work
Speaker 3: that would not have happened if I had secure housing.
Speaker 3: I'm still in and have been so long in survival
Speaker 3: mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything
Speaker 3: times when it's been really like both places like staying
Speaker 3: just for a week and a half and then enough
Speaker 3: floor for a week, and then someone's for a night,
Speaker 3: and then a floor for a week. In those places
Speaker 3: of really moving that much in a short period of time,
Speaker 3: there's no I had no energy for anything else, really
Speaker 3: feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have
Speaker 3: never experienced.
Speaker 1: Ever, it's not a clean cut situation. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: Sam offered to buy Annie a house, but she says
Speaker 1: it wasn't going to be in her name and the
Speaker 1: conditions made her uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: It became clear to me that it was not an
Speaker 3: offer for my house. It was an offer for a
Speaker 3: house of Sam's or a lawyer of his that I
Speaker 3: would be allowed to live in.
Speaker 1: She felt like it was a throwback to Sam's attempts
Speaker 1: to get her on Zoloft and to peer into her
Speaker 1: bank statements, so she said, no, I do want to
Speaker 1: pause on this because I know it may sound illogical.
Speaker 1: After all, it would have been a place to live.
Speaker 1: But from her point of view, Sam had exerted control
Speaker 1: over her throughout their lives, and this seemed like one
Speaker 1: more attempt to control her. During those conversations, she was
Speaker 1: clear with Sam about the hardships she had endured in
Speaker 1: the past couple of years.
Speaker 3: I told him over the series of those phone calls too,
Speaker 3: that I had started sex work, and distinctly remember when
Speaker 3: I first told him about doing sex work and he said,
Speaker 3: quote good.
Speaker 1: Annie was stung because she remembers that he didn't ask
Speaker 1: anything more about it, like she was sharing something that
Speaker 1: was painful for her and he was blowing past.
Speaker 3: It to hear your little sister tell you she's doing
Speaker 3: something she doesn't want to do related to sex, and
Speaker 3: for the response to be good. So I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're glad that I'm starting to post on OnlyFans. It
Speaker 3: sounds good to you because I'm supporting myself, even if
Speaker 3: I'm telling you I'm doing this as a plan Z
Speaker 3: because I don't know what else to do.
Speaker 1: A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the
Speaker 1: conversation differently. Annie and Sam are mostly estranged. After that conversation,
Speaker 1: she kept living in Hawaii, struggling in obscurity. Meanwhile, Sam
Speaker 1: was ascendant. He was doing world tours CEO of the year,
Speaker 1: he officially became a billionaire. Most of the world had
Speaker 1: no idea Annie Altman existed, let alone that she was
Speaker 1: depending on OnlyFans for survival. But last fall New York
Speaker 1: magazine published a profile of Sam, and the journalist Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Wyle interviewed Annie. The article was the first time a
Speaker 1: lot of people have found out Sam even had a sister.
Speaker 1: Myself included some of the trippiest messages I got from
Speaker 1: reporters when that.
Speaker 3: Article first came out were reporters who have watched every
Speaker 3: interview Sam has ever done, saying he's never mentioned a sister.
Speaker 1: Annie worries that because she's basically invisible in Sam's public
Speaker 1: life life, especially compared to his tight relationship with his brothers,
Speaker 1: reporters won't take her story seriously.
Speaker 3: That they will then question my validity or oh, well,
Speaker 3: she's crazy. Maybe he did, you know, maybe he's just
Speaker 3: not talking about her because she's so mentally unstable, and
Speaker 3: so now let's recycle that Annie's crazy narrative and this
Speaker 3: is why she can't be trusted, or we should just
Speaker 3: ignore her.
Speaker 1: In the days leading up to the article coming out,
Speaker 1: New York Magazine reached out to Sam and his family
Speaker 1: and Open AI for fact checking and to confirm details.
Speaker 1: So Sam knew the story was going to mention Annie,
Speaker 1: and then the day before the article ran, something spurred
Speaker 1: Sam to make an unexpected move. He emailed Annie, and
Speaker 1: the night before it came out was Yam Kapoor, the
Speaker 1: Jewish day of forgiveness.
Speaker 3: Sam emailed me no subject in an all lowercase and
Speaker 3: said hi Annie, in the spirit of it. Almost being
Speaker 3: Yam Kapoor. I wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness
Speaker 3: for something I should have kept sending you money without conditions,
Speaker 3: even though our family had concerns. I was in a
Speaker 3: tough position of wanting to let mom drive decisions as
Speaker 3: the parent and seeing how much stress you were causing
Speaker 3: her parentheses, and also agreeing it would be better for
Speaker 3: everyone if you were able to support yourself, and thinking
Speaker 3: that you needed medical help close parentheses, and it being
Speaker 3: clear you just weren't really able to function very well. Still,
Speaker 3: I made the wrong call and should have just kept
Speaker 3: supporting you. I sincerely apologize. I hope you find peace.
Speaker 3: There's no mention of this article that's coming out tomorrow,
Speaker 3: and there's no mention of the fact checking that he
Speaker 3: just went through.
Speaker 1: Annie felt that the timing of this email was really
Speaker 1: telling that for all this time, while Annie was staying
Speaker 1: in the background, Sam didn't feel any need to apologize. Then,
Speaker 1: just as she's about to exert a little bit of
Speaker 1: power over him by complicating his image, he reaches out
Speaker 1: and invokes their shared Jewish heritage to ask for forgiveness.
Speaker 1: I asked Annie how she felt about Sam speaking publicly
Speaker 1: about universal basic income and ending poverty when he hasn't
Speaker 1: done the same for her.
Speaker 3: It was a very big slap in the face. It
Speaker 3: feels embarrassing to be related to him. It's beyond depressing
Speaker 3: and heartbreaking and disappointing that someone who I thought had
Speaker 3: a different moral compass, or who I thought would be
Speaker 3: there for me when I needed someone and was really sick,
Speaker 3: I wasn't is I'm going to be creeving in the
Speaker 3: same way I'm going to be creeving my dad for
Speaker 3: the rest of my life. I'm going to be creeving
Speaker 3: Sam for the rest of my life. And the sadness
Speaker 3: of of someone who saw me in a walking boot
Speaker 3: and didn't say, how can I help you. It's why
Speaker 3: I use the term sibling in not brother.
Speaker 1: Even though Annie's story is really complicated, I think it's
Speaker 1: relevant to all of us because when Sam is going
Speaker 1: around talking about our AI future, he acknowledges that AI
Speaker 1: could take our jobs and upend society and money as
Speaker 1: we know it, and he says he'll come up with
Speaker 1: a solution for us universal basic income. But when he's
Speaker 1: faced with the messy reality of his own sister, suddenly
Speaker 1: it's not so simple. In public, he is literally saying
Speaker 1: that there shouldn't be poverty. Money will be given away
Speaker 1: to everyone. In private, when Annie asked for help, he
Speaker 1: didn't come through for her in the way she needed.
Speaker 1: In the next and final episode, we'll see that even
Speaker 1: the board of Open AI, the people whose job it
Speaker 1: was to keep Sam in check, decided they didn't trust him.
Speaker 1: He had to go, and they needed to take drastic
Speaker 1: measures to remove him from the seat of power. That's
Speaker 1: next time on Foundering. Foundering is hosted by me Ellen Hewitt.
Speaker 1: Sean Wen is our executive producer. Mollie Nugent is our
Speaker 1: associate producer. Blake Maples is our audio engineer, Mark Million
Speaker 1: and Vandermain seth Fiegerman, Tom Giles and Molly Schutz are
Speaker 1: our story editors. We had production help from Jessica Nix
Speaker 1: and Antonia Mufferetch. Thanks for listening. If you like our show,
Speaker 1: leave a review, and most importantly, tell your friends. See
Speaker 1: you next time.