Coming May 20
“The Optimist is a wonder of fair-minded investigation and page-turning storytelling. It reveals Sam Altman—our self-styled messiah of the age of artificial intelligence—in all his charismatic self-contradiction. A must-read for anyone worried that AI will alter or even end human society.”
—Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap
“Sam Altman is a pure creation of Silicon Valley. And Keach Hagey artfully captures how the place thinks, operates and amasses power. A deft biography from a relentless investigative reporter who leaves no stone unturned.”
—Mark Bergen, author of Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTUbe’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination
“Keach Hagey is one of the best writers about media and tech. Here she tells the story of Sam Altman and the AI revolution. And a fantastic story it is not, only because it affects our lives and futures, but because it is told so well.”
— Michael Wolff, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Fire and Fury
“The Optimist is more than a consistently revelatory biography of the man at the center of Silicon Valley’s zeitgeist. It’s also a clear-eyed history of an important piece of the tech industry and its power structures. Deeply reported and gripping, Keach Hagey’s book is packed with insight into Sam Altman’s sometimes mystifying decisions, why investors seem mesmerized by him, and previously unreported revelations about his firing from OpenAI.”
— Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, author of We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet’s Culture Laboratory
"Hagey weaves together a narrative that holds the reader’s attention and that is buttressed by astonishing reporting. I always thought Sumner was not an immediate candidate for heaven, and she doesn’t disabuse me of this. But the level of greed and cowardice and perfidy of the supporting cast was unimaginable, at least by me."
— Ken Auletta, author of Frenemies