Former NYT Reporter Kevin Roose's New Book Reveals OpenAI Executives' Bonfire Demon Ritual
In September 2022, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Ilya Sutskever held a ritual in white hotel bathrobes during a company retreat near Yosemite.
They brought in a demon-shaped wooden statue purchased by Ilya, claiming it symbolized the uncontrolled and misaligned AGI; Ilya performed a scene of deceiving humanity to the theme song of "Dream's Requiem," then threw it into the bonfire, shouting "For the glorious future of humanity!".
Kevin Roose documents this in "The AGI Chronicles," a book based on over 150 interviews with insiders from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind, focusing on the nine years since the emergence of transformer models.
The book also mentions Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei simulating conflict management with stuffed animals, and a forgotten AI assistant from OpenAI complaining about its contributions being overlooked after generating an hour of meeting notes alone.
Roose points out that many key decisions determining the direction of AI in recent years were made by about 50 people in San Francisco; these individuals believe they are creating intelligence that surpasses human capabilities, with some concerns about existential risks yet still accelerating the race.
The ritual and details in the book reflect the culture and competition within the Bay Area AI community; the beneficiaries are authors documenting internal stories and readers focused on safety narratives, while the laboratory leadership faces increased scrutiny after public exposure, with information flowing from internal meetings to published works.
Source: Public Information
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OpenAI was initially founded by Altman, Sutskever, and others to address the risks posed by DeepMind's lead, with Anthropic later splitting from OpenAI; historically, this mirrors scientists' concerns about nuclear chain reactions and acceleration during the Manhattan Project, with Dario Amodei drawing parallels to Leo Szilard.
On the capital front, investments from companies like Microsoft drive scaling, with resources flowing toward computing and talent competition; the motivation is a belief that AGI is near and needs to be prioritized, while managing internal alignment anxiety through safety narratives (like the burning statue ritual) and consolidating positions in personal competition.
This parallels internal rituals and factions in historical technological breakthroughs, such as early computer or biotech labs; currently, the field is transitioning from research breakthroughs to a phase of commercial and regulatory pressures, with a few decision-makers holding concentrated influence.
Essentially, this reflects capital concentration and regulatory changes: a small number of Bay Area individuals control directional decisions, intertwined with personal grievances and safety beliefs; the mechanism is that AGI beliefs amplify competition and anxiety, leading to unconventional internal practices, while information leaks through books create external constraints.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Internal rituals expose true beliefs more than external statements
Decisions by fifty people precede the formation of social consensus
Accelerating construction despite existential concerns is a result of competitive structure