Sam Altman’s Washington charm offensive is working

During Tuesday’s Senate hearing on artificial intelligence, lawmakers promised over and over not to repeat the many mistakes they’ve made in their still unrealized attempts to regulate social media. But the hearing proved that if there’s anyone who’s learned from the sloppy, often volatile, relationship between Washington and tech these last six years, it’s Sam Altman.

Over the course of three hours of questioning, the OpenAI CEO charmed the committee by calling on Congress to enact stricter regulations around AI. He endorsed the creation of an agency to deal with the technology, as well as a licensing regime that would govern the riskiest uses of AI, and new laws to provide some clarity around liability as it relates to AI. 

Eschewing the usual protective crouch of tech CEOs, Altman entertained the committee’s hypotheticals (on the question of whether AI-enabled drones could automatically pick military targets, Altman said, he didn’t think that should be allowed, but, “sure”) and deftly dodged any gotcha-style questions (asked whether he’s making a lot of money on OpenAI, Altman pointed out he has no equity in the company).

Whether Altman’s approach was strategy or sincerity—or a little bit of both—it worked. By the end of the hearing, Senator Kennedy was asking Altman if he might like to lead this new AI agency, and Senator Richard Blumenthal, who is among tech’s toughest critics in the Senate, gushed to Altman, “Having talked to you privately, I know how much you care.” 

The tenor of the hearing—civil, constructive, even at times informative—couldn’t have been more different than the many hyper-politicized tech-bashing sessions that Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and other tech CEOs have had to endure. 

When Zuckerberg made his first appearance before Congress in 2018, he was all but dragged to D.C. in the midst of an international scandal around Cambridge Analytica’s theft of Facebook user data. Facebook was already in its adolescence, and lawmakers treated the company’s leader like a reckless, out-of-control teenager. True to the role, Zuckerberg responded defensively, and often unhelpfully, in kind.

Five years later, Altman is coming to Congress with an entirely different posture at an entirely different moment in OpenAI’s lifespan—not years, but months after the public launch of its most feared and revered product, ChatGPT. He also has the benefit of having watched all the ways other tech companies have botched their relationship with Washington. Where it took Zuckerberg over a decade to acknowledge Facebook might be something more than a utopia of human connection, and suggest solutions to some of the platform’s many problems, Altman has lately been a little like the girl explaining meme, shouting into the ear of anyone who will listen about AI’s potentially disastrous consequences.

Lawmakers, unaccustomed to tech leaders being so forthcoming about their products’ flaws, seem to like it. “I can’t recall when we’ve had people representing large corporations or private sector entities come before us and plead with us to regulate them,” said Senator Dick Durbin, admiringly.

Altman’s technique isn’t just paying off in the Senate. The night before the hearing, a group of bipartisan members of the House met with Altman for dinner and left the evening unrestrained in their praise. “I thought it was fantastic,” Representative Ted Lieu told CNBC.

“I think it amazed a lot of members,” echoed Representative Mike Johnson. “And it was standing-room only in there.”

The upside to all of this is that lawmakers might actually learn something from these meetings (rather than use their time with tech leaders to rack up viral C-Span clips) and turn what they learn into substantive legislation. The downside, of course, is they could do it all on Altman’s terms and wind up getting rolled by a smart political operator who seems to understand that the best defense really is a good offense.