OpenAI and the Confusing Hypothetical
October 20, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
SAMA or Sam AI-Man Altman is probably going to ignore the Economist’s article “What If OpenAI Went Belly-Up?” I love what-if articles. These confections are hot buttons for consultants to push to get well-paid executives with impostor syndrome to sign up for a big project. Push the button and ka-ching. The cash register tallies another win for a blue chip.
Will Sam AI-Man respond to the cited article? He could fiddle the algorithms for ChatGPT to return links to AI slop. The result would be either [a] an improvement in Economist what-if articles or a drop off in their ingenuity. The Economist is not a consulting firm, but it seems as if some of its professionals want to be blue chippers.
A young would-be magician struggles to master a card trick. He is worried that he will fail. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
What does the write up hypothesize? The obvious point is that OpenAI is essentially a scam. When it self destructs, it will do immediate damage to about 150 managers of their own and other people’s money. No new BMW for a favorite grand child. Shame at the country club when a really terrible golfer who owns an asphalt paving company says, “I heard you took a hit with that OpenAI investment. What’s going on?”
Bad.
SAMA has been doing what look like circular deals. The write up is not so much hypothetical consultant talk as it is a listing of money moving among fellow travelers like riders on wooden horses on a merry-go-round at the county fair. The Economist article states:
The ubiquity of Mr Altman and his startup, plus its convoluted links to other AI firms, is raising eyebrows. An awful lot seems to hinge on a firm forecast to lose $10bn this year on revenues of little more than that amount. D.A. Davidson, a broker, calls OpenAI “the biggest case yet of Silicon Valley’s vaunted ‘fake it ’till you make it’ ethos”.
Is Sam AI-Man a variant of Elizabeth Holmes or is he more like the dynamic duo, Sergey Brin and Larry Page? Google did not warrant this type of analysis six or seven years into its march to monopolistic behavior:
Four of OpenAI’s six big deal announcements this year were followed by a total combined net gain of $1.7trn among the 49 big companies in Bloomberg’s broad AI index plus Intel, Samsung and SoftBank (whose fate is also tied to the technology). However, the gains for most concealed losses for some—to the tune of $435bn in gross terms if you add them all up.
Frankly I am not sure about the connection the Economist expects me to make. Instead of Eureka! I offer, “What?”
Several observations:
- The word “scam” does not appear in this hypothetical. Should it? It is a bit harsh.
- Circular deals seem to be okay even if the amount of “value” exchanged seems to be similar to projections about asteroid mining.
- Has OpenAI’s ability to hoover cash affected funding of other economic investments. I used to hear about manufacturing in the US. What we seem to be manufacturing is deals with big numbers.
Net net: This hypothetical raises no new questions. The “fake it to you make it” approach seems to be part of the plumbing as we march toward 2026. Oh, too bad about those MBA-types who analyzed the payoff from Sam AI-Man’s story telling.
Stephen E Arnold, October x, 2025
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