
The Optimist
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Narrated by:
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Will Damron
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By:
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Keach Hagey
About this listen
From an acclaimed Wall Street Journal reporter comes the first biography of the enigmatic leader of the AI revolution, charting his ascent within the tech world as well as his ambitions for this powerful new technology.
On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the world with its uncanny ability to hold humanlike conversations. Not even a year later, on November 17, 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was summarily fired on a video call by the company’s board. The firing made headlines around the globe: OpenAI is the leader in the race to build AGI―artificial general intelligence, or AI that can think like a human being―and Altman is the most prominent figure in the field. Yet it was mere days before Altman was back running the company he had co-founded, with most of the directors who voted to fire him themselves removed from the board.
The episode was a demonstration of how quickly the industry is moving, and of Altman’s power to bend reality to his will. In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk, a former friend and now Altman’s bitter opponent.
Hagey conducted more than 250 interviews, with Altman’s family, friends, teachers, mentors, co-founders, colleagues, investors, and portfolio companies, in addition to spending hours with Altman himself. The person who emerges in her portrait is a brilliant dealmaker with a love of risk, who believes in technological progress with an almost religious conviction―yet who sometimes moves too fast for the people around him. With both the promise and peril of AI increasing by the day, Hagey delivers a nuanced, balanced, revelatory account of the individual who is leading us into what he himself has called “the intelligence age.”
Altman is a figure out of Isaac Asimov or Neal Stephenson. Or he is the author himself: if it feels as though we have all collectively stepped into a science fiction short story, it is Altman who is writing it.
©2025 Keach Hagey (P)2025 Spotify AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything? The answer to these questions, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear, is “no,” “they wish,” “LOL,” and “definitely not.” This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.”
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A must read, even if you're an AI optimist
- By Malcolm Gomez on 05-15-25
By: Emily M. Bender, and others
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Apple in China
- The Capture of the World's Greatest Company
- By: Patrick McGee
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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For listeners of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs and Chris Miller’s Chip War, a riveting look at how Apple helped build China’s dominance in electronics assembly and manufacturing only to find itself trapped in a relationship with an authoritarian state making ever-increasing demands.
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Performance is so robotic it’s distracting.
- By robert Campbell on 05-29-25
By: Patrick McGee
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More and More and More
- An All-Consuming History of Energy
- By: Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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We have long been taught that humanity’s relationship with energy is one of progress, with wood superseded by coal, coal by oil, oil by nuclear—until at some future point everything will be replaced by “green” energy. But the long-held belief in transition and sustainability is completely untrue, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues. More and More and More demolishes this disastrous fallacy, showing how our industrial age and beyond has in fact been powered by an ever-greater accumulation of each major energy source feeding off the others.
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The Art of Uncertainty
- How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck
- By: David Spiegelhalter
- Narrated by: David Spiegelhalter
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Renowned statistician David Spiegelhalter shows how we can become better at dealing with what we don't know to make smarter choices in a world so full of puzzling variables. In lucid, lively prose, Spiegelhalter guides us through the principles of probability, illustrating how they can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to sports to climate change forecasts.
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Terrific
- By Roger March on 04-01-25
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House of Huawei
- The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company
- By: Eva Dou
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world’s most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global spotlight.
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Excellent work
- By Suzi on 05-26-25
By: Eva Dou
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The Optimist
- A Case for the Fly Fishing Life
- By: David Coggins
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill, David Coggins - afterword
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Optimist, David Coggins makes a case for the skills and sensibility of an enduring sport and shares the secrets, frustrations, and triumphs of the great tradition of fly fishing, which has captivated anglers worldwide. Written in wry, wise, and keenly observed prose, each chapter focuses on a specific place, fish, and skill. Few individuals, for example, have the visual acuity required to catch the nearly invisible bonefish of the Bahamas flats.
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But the hard copy.
- By Mike L. on 05-30-21
By: David Coggins
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The AI-Driven Leader
- Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions
- By: Geoff Woods
- Narrated by: Geoff Woods
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The difference between growing your business and going out of business is your ability to think strategically. The problem is, most leaders are stuck in the operational weeds, struggling to find the time to make better strategic decisions. This challenge is only heightened by the rise of AI. While you know AI is the future, current demands leave you with no time to explore its benefits. Meanwhile, your competition is gaining an edge by integrating AI. The time to act is now.
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Top Book on Ai
- By JSprinkles on 02-09-25
By: Geoff Woods
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AI Snake Oil
- What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference
- By: Sayash Kapoor, Arvind Narayanan
- Narrated by: Landon Woodson
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Confused about AI and worried about what it means for your future and the future of the world? You’re not alone. AI is everywhere—and few things are surrounded by so much hype, misinformation, and misunderstanding. In AI Snake Oil, computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor cut through the confusion to give you an essential understanding of how AI works, why it often doesn’t, where it might be useful or harmful, and when you should suspect that companies are using AI hype to sell AI snake oil—products that don’t work, and probably never will.
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Mediocre
- By Amazon Customer on 05-20-25
By: Sayash Kapoor, and others
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Peak Human
- What We Can Learn from History’s Greatest Civilizations
- By: Johan Norberg
- Narrated by: Andrew Cullum
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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All golden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement and economic growth; yet no two are the same. Their beliefs, societies and place in the wider world all vary. Despite this, all previous golden ages have ended, whether it be because of external pressures or internal fracturing; too much hubris or too little wariness.
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The consist threads that knit the central theme.
- By C. D. on 06-11-25
By: Johan Norberg
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Who Knew
- By: Barry Diller
- Narrated by: Barry Diller
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Writing in his own singular voice, Barry Diller delivers both an astute and entertaining business memoir and a surprisingly frank coming-of-age story. After starting his career in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency, Diller went on to have one of the most extraordinary ascents in show business history, inventing the TV Movie of the Week for ABC at age twenty-seven, becoming CEO of Paramount Pictures at age thirty-two, and launching the Fox TV network at age forty-four.
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What an amazing book!
- By Barbara W. on 06-10-25
By: Barry Diller
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Supremacy
- AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World
- By: Parmy Olson
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In November 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was ChatGPT, and was unlike any app people had used before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. Behind the scenes, battles for control and prestige between the world’s two leading AI firms, OpenAI and DeepMind, who now steers Google's AI efforts, has remained elusive—until now.
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Author doesn’t understand AI
- By David on 09-30-24
By: Parmy Olson
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The Corporation in the 21st Century
- Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong
- By: John Kay
- Narrated by: Peter Wicks
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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John Kay's incisive overhaul of our ideas about business redefines our understanding of successful commercial activity and the corporation—and describes how we have come to "love the product" as we "hate the producer." This is a brilliant and original work from one of the greatest economists.
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Disjointed and disappointing.
- By Amazon Customer on 06-25-25
By: John Kay
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Sun Tzu's Art of Business Warfare
- How Asian Business Titans Apply Ancient Wisdom to Modern Challenges - With Original Translation
- By: Andreas Sun, Sun Tzu
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Unlock the Secrets of Strategic Leadership That Built Asia's Greatest Companies Did you know that 67% of businesses fail within their first 10 years? What separates the survivors from the casualties on the business battlefield? "The Art of Business Warfare" isn't just another business strategy book—it's a profound journey through the timeless wisdom of Sun Tzu's "Art of War," reimagined for today's corporate battlegrounds. Featuring 13 in-depth case studies of Asia's most successful business leaders—one for each of Sun Tzu's strategic principles—this book reveals how ancient military ...
By: Andreas Sun, and others
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Scaling Responsible AI
- From Enthusiasm to Execution
- By: Noelle Russell
- Narrated by: Deanna Anthony
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In Scaling Responsible AI: From Enthusiasm to Execution, celebrated speaker, AI strategist, and tech visionary Noelle Russell delivers an exciting and fascinating new discussion of how to implement artificial intelligence responsibly, ethically, and profitably at your organization. Responsible AI promises immense opportunity, but unguided enthusiasm can unleash serious risks. Learn how to implement AI ethically and profitably at your company with Scaling Responsible AI.
By: Noelle Russell
The author is a big fan of Sam
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Excellent, lots of new information, and no slant
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