What Leaders Can Learn From Sam Altman | AI & The Future of Work

Sally McCutchion
May 7
6 min read

When articles like the recent New Yorker piece, Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted? go viral, we would normally expect a big reveal: some kind of financial scandal or criminal indictment. At the very least, we look for a clear-cut villain because it’s easier to prune a single bad apple than it is to acknowledge that the soil itself might be toxic.

The New Yorker profile of Sam Altman offers something far more nuanced than a criminal exposé. After a year of investigation and over a hundred interviews by two globally esteemed journalists, Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz, there was no ‘gotcha’ moment. What emerges instead is a pattern of human behaviour; a series of lies, power games, tactical manoeuvring, and shifting of narratives to suit the moment.

This article isn't just about one man; it’s a signpost to something bigger, heralding the arrival of an inevitable shift in how we must lead. This is an article for all leaders of today and tomorrow, one that mirrors the reality of our humanness and provides an opportunity for honest reflection.

Power vs. Purpose

The most poignant quote in the article from Ilya Sutskever says it all,

“Any person working to build this civilization-altering technology bears a heavy burden and is taking on unprecedented responsibility.” But “the people who end up in these kinds of positions are often a certain kind of person, someone who is interested in power, a politician, someone who likes it.”

This points to a deeper issue at the heart of modern organisational life. Unlike most downfall stories that point to illegal activity, this article points to the legal and common pursuit of power that’s become normalized in boardrooms. We’ve built a system that treats leadership as a prize to be won rather than a responsibility to be stewarded.

When the pursuit of power goes unchecked, it inevitably leads to the patterns of behaviour described in the New Yorker; acts of self-preservation, persuasive habits, manipulation, and the pursuit of personal goals even at the expense of the organization's stated purpose. At the heart of it is a constant tension: power vs purpose.

In our current reality, power has become the ultimate safety net. When the pressure to perform or the fear of being replaced kicks in, leadership shifts from mission to maneuver. It’s a survival instinct; the quiet goal of ‘doing good’ is crowded out by the louder necessity of staying powerful.

It’s important to remember that purpose can be front and centre. Many organisations have followed their ‘north star’ without compromising values, or profit. Companies like Patagonia, WL Gore, and Riverford have long led the way, while lesser-known startups like Something & Nothing are investing heavily in culture and putting their values at the heart of every decision.

But when the stakes are high, purpose often finds itself competing with the gravitational pull of power.

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Ten Times Bigger & Ten Times Faster

The fact that Altman's traits are being called out so publicly, especially in the absence of a crime, suggests something is shifting. The power-over-purpose model might be reaching its expiration date. Business as usual is about to be challenged in ways we can’t yet plan for. Whilst external changes caused by the AI boom are unpredictable, our internal preparation doesn't have to be.

In a podcast with Hannah Fry about The Future Of Intelligence, Demis Hassabis, Co-Founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, reflected on how society adapted to the Industrial Revolution. It was a 100-year process that eventually led to better food productivity, transport infrastructure, and transformative medical advances. But Hassabis is clear that the shifts brought by AI and more significantly, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will happen ten times quicker and be ten times bigger.

Hassabis suggests that ideas such as Universal Basic Income, that work within our current system, are not enough.

"We need a complete reimagining of how we work together."

He envisions a world where AI’s rewards are equally distributed through an unprecedented level of global and local collaboration. This shift toward the collective is the antithesis of the individualistic culture that shaped Altman and the leaders of his era.

Direct Democracy is one of the blueprints for what might be to come. It's a tangible example of what our future governance could look like. And Hassabis acknowledges that experiments in these areas are already happening in progressive organisations, global networks, and distributed movements. He’s not wrong.

The Leadership Shift ~ AI & The Future of Work

Groups of progressive thinkers are quietly experimenting with new models that challenge the very foundations of how we govern and lead. They are questioning the mechanics of economics and politics and reimagining hierarchy itself. Experiments are happening that challenge the way we show up within our businesses and institutions, change the way we make political and economic decisions and redirect the way communities organise around a common purpose.

Despite the fervour with which these new models have been explored, they haven't yet become mainstream. Models such as Holacracy or Sociocracy for organisations, Crowdocracy for politics, and Economic Democracy for financial decision-making, are the vanguard of organisational design, but they are still contending with the gravity of the status quo. These experiments signpost more equitable systems but they haven’t yet taken hold, such is the dominance of the pursuit of power.

The common thread through these models is that they give people a voice in decisions that impact them, dismantling the idea that a handful of leaders, elected or otherwise, should make important decisions on behalf of others. When Demis Hassabis speaks of distributing the benefits of AI equitably, it is these systems that offer a practical roadmap, creating the real possibility that leadership and power can finally be disentangled.

But there is a catch. We cannot thrive in these new systems if we continue to lead from an old-world mindset. To prepare for the arrival of AGI, we must cultivate an alternative set of habits and behaviours to the ones described in Sam Altman. Traits that are just as human, but far more generative:

Self-Awareness: Noticing when we’re driven by status rather than purpose
Integrity of Values: Living by values we’ve consciously chosen
Collaboration: Understanding that individual gains cannot compensate for systemic losses
Purpose: Shifting away from ‘business as usual’ to 'business as a force for good'
Self-Worth: Building self-worth through contribution, not position

Developing these traits within our current structures is challenging, but far from impossible. The old incentives of status and power still hold weight, but as we approach the AGI threshold, this future-ready set of human qualities will become the most valuable currency we have.

It may be too late for leaders such as Altman to adapt, especially within the pressured environment he faces. Altman himself said in The New Yorker,

“I’m sure being President of the United States would be a much more stressful job, but of all the jobs I think I could reasonably do, this is the most stressful one I can imagine”

In this case, pressure might not have produced a diamond. But the reality is, we all need to give ourselves a little grace if we are to face the challenges ahead.

What Will It Take?

If we are honest, we have all leaned on a white lie or a bit of sharp persuasion to navigate a difficult moment. But what the New Yorker article describes is not the occasional human stumble, it's the use of deception as a foundational strategic tool. While these traits become terrifying when the person displaying them has "his finger on the button", it's an illusion to believe they only matter when they exist in a CEO with such power.

We all contribute to the culture we live in. The New Yorker article isn’t an exposé on Sam Altman, it’s an exposé on the systems we inhabit. As leaders, the more we can push against the constant messaging that ‘more is more’ and prioritise systemic health over short term gain, the more prepared we will be for what AI is about to ask of us.

The coming change will dwarf the Industrial Revolution in both scale and speed. It isn't just our jobs that are being redefined, it is our very way of being. In the age of AI, the ultimate skill won't be what we can do, but how we relate to ourselves, how we connect with others, and how we engage with the world around us.

As Einstein famously said,