Why leading researchers fear AI will wreak even more havoc than social media

When Sam Altman was sunsetting his first startup in early 2012, there was little indication that his path ahead would parallel that of Silicon Valley's then-wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg. While Altman was weighing his next moves after shutting down Loopt, his location-sharing startup, the Facebook CEO was at the forefront of social media's global takeover and leading his company to a blockbuster initial public offering that valued Zuckerberg's brainchild at $104 billion. But just over a decade later, the tables have dramatically turned. Nowadays, the promise of social media as a unifying force for good has all but collapsed, and Zuckerberg is slashing thousands of jobs after his company's rocky pivot to the metaverse. And it's Altman, a 37-year-old Stanford dropout, who's now seeing his star rise to dizzying heights -- and who faces the pitfalls of great power.