ronanfarrow

This means a lot to me. We're living in a time when we badly need independent journalism, with a very limited number of institutions devoting resources to this kind of work. Subscribing to support journalism you care about is a real public service, in my view.

Noted on the critiques of the subscription options. I'll try to relay.

Appreciate this. I thought deeply about that and took a lot of time, when we had little of it to go around, iterating and shaping it. (Including talking to computer scientists to make sure I sounded as not-dopey as possible on the technical side!)

The answer is that there really is no easy answer. It's an evolving assessment based on a complex matrix of considerations.

You try to reach a critical mass of detailed, rounded understanding of a central question, integrating the most meaningful perspectives, interrogating the weak points and blind spots, and backing up the assertions with documentary evidence or strong sourcing. Eventually, you reach a point where enough sources and materials are reliably triangulating toward the same truths.

As you guessed, there's external pressures that figure in this analysis—whether competitors are closing in on the same leads; what's happening in the broader news cycle that might make a story feel more or less relevant. As you also guessed, I am more fortunate than most writers in the degree to which I get to hold off until something feels fully baked. Mostly, writers simply have to hit a deadline, and resources run out before ambition does. I have deadlines and constraints too, but I get a lot of say in how I organize all of the above.

Then there's the actual process of creating the story. Writing a densely evidence-based investigative piece is labor-intensive—in this case, weeks of initial drafting, and then much iteration. The fact-checking process at the New Yorker is exhaustive, and can span weeks. Every sentence, assertion, and piece of underlying sourcing get scrubbed by multiple independent pairs of eyes. This story had four fact-checkers working on it for the better part of a two week period, pulling very long hours. This is all brought together in a closing meeting where each sentence is revised and polished in a group.

This is all done as additional information comes in—in fact, with these large-scale bodies of reporting, there is very often a snowball effect, where a lot comes in at the end.

Thank you so much. I’ll be answering more of them throughout the day as I have time.

I won’t get into behind-the-scenes specifics here but I think you can imagine how pressurized this topic was and the amount of heat that tends to generate. I’m used to getting a lot of blowback and it’s never fun. I just hope the work is meticulous and fair enough, and that enough people see the benefits of that, that I get to continue to do it.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think the piece at all avoids key areas of disillusionment with the technology. Quite the contrary.

This is a vast and tricky question. The business model has basically fallen out from under journalism, and especially this kind of labor-intensive investigative reporting. The media landscape is increasingly dominated by moneyed individuals and companies essentially buying up the discourse.

I would really suggest subscribing to and finding ways to amplify independent outlets and journalists, and encouraging others to do so.

I’ve really appreciated how substantive and polite the discourse here is, overall!

This is so appreciated, thank you! These stories can honestly take a lot out of me so thoughtful reactions mean a lot.

Interesting to hear! While this hasn’t been a commonplace reaction, I think if I do my job right it should allow people to read the facts as they will, exactly like this. It’s strenuously designed to be fair and, where appropriate, even generous.

For what it’s worth, the story, while focused on OpenAI, is not uncritical of Anthropic. It explores whether there is a wider race to the bottom in terms of safety, and erosion of even some of Anthropic’s commitments.

There is dwindling space for sincere independent accountability reporting on big tech like this to a) be created, since it's incredibly resource-intensive and so many resources flow from Silicon Valley, and b) actually reach people, since more platforms are now owned or otherwise influenced by interested parties.

Thank you for looking. Please do spread this kind of reporting in your communities, and subscribe to investigative outlets when you can.

As is always the case with incredibly precise and rigorously fact-checked reporting like this, where every word is chosen carefully (the initial closing meeting for this one was nearly eight hours long, with full deliberation about each sentence), there is more out there on that subject than is explicitly on the page.

The piece is an interrogation of this very question, at great length and with some nuance. I think what it does most usefully is scrutinize an array of different answers to the question.

My own impression after many hours of conversation is that he is identifying something of a true north star when he frames this around "winning." There are people in the story who talk about him emphasizing a desire for power (as opposed to, say, wealth). I think he probably also believes, to some extent, the story he tells that equates winning, and his gaining power, with a superabundant utopian future for all.

However, I think critics correctly highlight a tension between his statements about centering humanity writ large and his tilt into relentless accelerationism.

Fair request, here you go: https://x.com/RonanFarrow/status/2041203911697068112

Thank you for this, very much appreciate the thoughtful response.

The piece captures some of the anxieties within OpenAI right now about their competitive position. This obviously ebbs and flows but of late there has been much focus on Anthropic's relative position. We of course mention the allegations of "circular deals" and concerns about partners taking on debt.

All fair points on trauma and memory.

As noted in the piece, we spent months talking to Altman's partners and what we found and didn't is as described.

Ronan Farrow here. Andrew Marantz and I spent 18 months on this investigation. Happy to answer questions about the reporting.