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- Amazon's "Artificial" film about OpenAI and Sam Altman is slated to debut next year.It sure sounds a lot like "The Social Network" — the Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook movie from 2010."The Social Network" defined how lots of people view Mark Zuckerberg today. Should Altman be concerned about the same thing?
"The Social Network" was a surprising hit movie in 2010.
How would you feel about a new version — except this time it's about AI instead of social networking, and Sam Altman is the villain, instead of Mark Zuckerberg?
You may find out next year, when "Artificial," a $40 million Amazon-funded production about OpenAI, is supposed to debut.
Puck's Matt Belloni has gotten a look at the script, and it seems to have lots of parallels with the 15-year-old Facebook movie. Just like "The Social Network," it's about drama between the company's founders — specifically, the weird story where OpenAI's board fired Altman in the fall of 2023, only to see him return a few days later, stronger than ever.
And just like "The Social Network," "Artificial" features actor Andrew Garfield — except this time around, he plays the scheming CEO (Altman) instead of the plucky cofounder who gets outflanked (in this version of the story, that would be OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever).
Belloni notes that it's a bit surprising that Amazon has greenlit this one, given the fact that it could anger rich and powerful people. But he also says that one of those people — Altman — ought to be concerned about how he's portrayed in the movie.
After all, he says, "The Social Network," which is a fictional story loosely based on some facts, "did damage Zuckerberg and Facebook in the court of public and political opinion."
And I definitely remember how sensitive Facebook execs were about the movie at the time, with what seemed like good reason: "The Social Network" portrays Zuckerberg as a manipulative, lonely liar.
"It's the only version of Mark Zuckerberg that most people are going to know about, and it's a terribly unflattering one," I wrote after seeing the movie back in 2010, suggesting that it was rough enough to make me feel sorry for the billionaire. Zuckerberg initially complained about the movie himself, arguing that it got both facts and the big picture wrong.
But within a few months, after the movie got critical acclaim and a decent reception at the box office, Zuckerberg formally embraced his portrayal by appearing on "Saturday Night Live" alongside Jesse Eisenberg, who portrayed fictional Zuckerberg. And as I recall, for many years, the fictional Zuckerberg became an odd hero to a certain class of tech and business folks: Yes, he's a flawed guy, but he's a flawed guy who dropped out of college to build a world-changing business. How cool is that?
More important: While Zuckerberg is indeed very unpopular today — a staggering two-thirds of Americans have a negative view of him, per Pew Research — I don't think that has much to do with a 2010 movie.
Instead, I'd peg Americans' distaste for Zuckerberg on the 2016 election and its aftermath.
As you'll recall, liberals and Democrats blamed Facebook for Donald Trump's victory (an argument that looks even more misplaced after Trump won again last year); and then, as Facebook promised to crack down on misinformation on the platform in response, conservatives and Republicans said Zuckerberg was censoring them. So now people across the political spectrum dislike him.
Will Sam Altman care about any of this? Hard to say. Altman certainly isn't as well-known as Zuckerberg, for now (though he is not camera-shy — see that photo of him above, where he's holding forth for reporters at the annual Sun Valley "summer camp for billionaires" this week).
He is, however, very attuned to power. For years, Altman was a public opponent of Donald Trump. He "represents an unprecedented threat to America," Altman wrote in 2016.
But since last fall's election, Altman scrambled to ally himself with the president, jostling for a place alongside other tech titans. "I think he will be incredible for the country in many ways!" he wrote in January, after securing a place for his company in a splashy infrastructure deal Trump touted.
So yes, maybe "Artificial" will become Altman's "Social Network," and become his de facto origin story for most people. But for now, I think Altman is most concerned about the way one particular American thinks about him.
