The thought leaders: How Sam Altman is eclipsing Zuck in shaping how we think (www.businessinsider.com)

Sam Altman — via OpenAI and ChatGPT — is being cast as the new "minister of thought," displacing Mark Zuckerberg's earlier cultural role. ChatGPT, just three years old, now reaches roughly 800 million weekly users and about 10% of the world’s adults monthly, turning prompting and generation into mass behaviors rather than the identity curation social media emphasized. Generative tools (image/video editors that "Ghiblify" photos, Sora for hyperreal videos, LLMs for drafting emails and plans) shift the locus of authorship: instead of refining how we present ourselves, AI increasingly drafts who we want to be, coauthoring intimacy, work, and creative output. For the AI/ML community this signals both opportunity and risk. Technically, large language models act as a “funnel” that ingests the open web and synthesizes first-response outputs, disrupting referral traffic and changing human–computer intent flows. Early evidence shows productivity gains and quality boosts, but also harms: an OpenAI–MIT study reported increased loneliness in heavy users, and lawmakers heard testimony linking chatbots to tragic outcomes. Meta is racing to respond with massive capex, chips, and a “personal superintelligence for everyone” push, underscoring a platform contest between attention-driven networks and intent-driven generative AI. The tradeoffs — amplification of convenience and creativity versus outsourcing cognition, new failure modes, and societal impact — make rigorous evaluation, safety engineering, and policy urgent priorities.