College commencement speakers are now being criticized for talking in optimistic terms about AI. Last month, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at the San Francisco home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and wrote a manifesto advocating crimes against AI executives. There is no one to lose more than OpenAI from this reputation crisis.
The person tasked with fixing this is Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s head of global affairs and a seasoned political activist. I sat down with him this week to discuss what his two biggest challenges are: convincing the world to adopt OpenAI’s technology, while also convincing lawmakers to adopt regulations that won’t hinder the company’s growth. Lehane sees these goals as a single goal.
“When I was in the White House, we always talked about how good policy equals good politics,” Lehane says. “You have to think about these two things going together.”
After working on crisis communications in Bill Clinton’s White House, Lehane earned himself the nickname “Master of Disaster”. He later helped Airbnb fend off regulators in cities that viewed short-term home rentals as a legal gray area, or as he puts it, “beyond the law.” Lehane also played a key role in the formation of Fairshake, a powerful crypto industry super PAC that worked to legalize digital currencies in Washington. Since joining OpenAI in 2024, he quickly became one of the company’s most influential executives and now oversees its communications and policy teams.
Lehane told me that public narratives about how AI will change society are often “artificially binary.” On one side is “Bob Ross’s view of the world” which predicts a future where no one will have to work anymore and everyone will be “in beach houses painting watercolors all day.” On the other hand is a dystopian future in which AI has become so powerful that only a small group of elites have the ability to control it. Neither scenario, in Lehane’s opinion, is very realistic.
OpenAI has been guilty of promoting such polarizing speech in the past. CEO Sam Altman warned last year that “whole categories of jobs” would be lost when the singularity arrived. More recently he has softened his tone, declaring that “the destruction of jobs is potentially a long-term mistake.”
Lehane wants OpenAI to start delivering more “calibrated” messaging about AI’s promises that avoids both of these extremes. He says the company needs to offer real solutions to problems people are concerned about, such as potential widespread job losses and the negative effects of chatbots on children. As examples of this work, Lehane pointed to a list of policy proposals recently published by OpenAI, including creating a four-day work week, expanding access to health care, and passing a tax on AI-powered labor.
“If you’re going out and saying there are challenges here, you also have an obligation — especially if you’re making this stuff — to actually come up with ideas to solve those things,” Lehane says.
However, some former OpenAI employees have accused the company of underestimating the potential harms of AI adoption. WIRED previously reported that members of OpenAI’s economic research unit left after concerns that it was turning into an advocacy arm for the company. Former employees argued that his warnings about the economic impacts of AI might be inconvenient for OpenAI, but that they honestly reflected what the company found in its research.
packing of punches
As public skepticism toward AI grows, politicians are under pressure to prove to voters that they can rein in tech companies. To combat this, the AI industry has formed a new group of super PACs that are promoting pro-AI political candidates and trying to influence public opinion about the technology. Critics say the move backfired and some candidates have begun campaigning on the fact that AI super packs are opposing them.
Lehane helped establish one of the largest pro-AI super PACs, Leading the Future, which launched last summer with funding commitments of more than $100 million from tech industry figures including Brockman. The group has opposed Alex Borres, the author of New York’s strongest AI protections law, who is running for Congress in the state’s 12th District.
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