This was an obviously smart, but somewhat surprising choice by Altman, who has mostly kept his personal life out of the media spotlight. But Altman is a salesman, and a good salesman understands the nuances of good television. So he talked about being a dad and being concerned that his son — who wasn’t crawling by six months — was developing slower than other kids (spoiler: he’s not). “I can’t even imagine how to parent a newborn without ChatGPIT,” Altman told Fallon. “People did it for a long time, no problem. So clearly it was possible, but I put too much trust in it.”
As fears grow over the future of AI, the subtext was painfully clear: Technology can help people understand their children better. We should welcome it. The timing of that particular message was not by accident.
Recently, as age-verification laws have spread in the US and around the world, and public reaction to AI has intensified, the tech establishment has become charm-aggressive.
Altman admitted as much but did not get into specific details during the interview. “One of the things I’m concerned about is the rate of change that’s happening in the world right now. This is a three-year-old technology. No other technology has been adopted by the world that quickly,” Altman said. “Making sure that we present it to the world in a responsible way, where people have time to adapt, to give input, to figure out how to do it — you can imagine where we’re going wrong.”
Those concerns have only fueled a focused campaign outside the Valley to better control the narrative, involving everything from TV commercials to pop-ups to create better brand awareness, and explain that the virtues of AI and social media, and all that it can do for people, outweigh the harms. If Silicon Valley is in its “hard tech era,” it’s making an even harder sell.
Ads are everywhere: streaming, cable, social media. TikTok is great for dad advice. ChatGPT can teach you how to exercise properly, create memorable dishes, or organize an unforgettable road trip. Google wants you to “ask more about your phone” with its AI features. Anthropic – which claimed in a September ad spot that “there has never been a better time” for AI – is even hosting pop-ups and selling merchandise. Meta promises to be your personal AI for everything.
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