AI echo chambers and sanity in tech leadership: Three case studies

"AI delusion" remains loosely defined, but most of us know it when we see it: exaggerated faith in the technology's power, applicability, or nature, coupled with a refusal to acknowledge its limitations.

It's bad in the individual, as when an elderly relative emails you a hallucination-laden ChatGPT summary. It's worse in management, when your boss insists that AI slop is genius marketing content at a bargain rate. It is terrifying in tech CEOs. It is not, thankfully, compulsory.

Consider three recent examples of technology leadership in the age of AI. One would be Pythonesque were the disconnect with engineers and the public not so profound. Another risks becoming a business-school case study in how to demolish customer trust. The third offers something less fashionable: robust pragmatism. Saving the best till last, y'all.

Case 1: we present for your consideration Sam Altman of OpenAI, one of the few actually at the controls of the singularity machine. …