Sam Altman’s 3 Scenarios for AI’s Future

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Welcome back apprentices! 👋

Hey {{first_name|friend}},

Apparently, building the future is the easy part. 

Figuring out what to do with it? 

That's where things get awkward. 

This week, AI's biggest names are talking billions, debating some rather wild scenarios, and discovering a few surprises along the way. 

Grab your coffee — things are getting interesting.

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🕵️ One Hacker, 100+ Companies. Why hack a company yourself when AI can do the overtime? Security firm NorForge revealed that a single hacker used AI agents to target over 1,200 websites, reportedly breaking into 100+ companies, including major names like Deere and SharkNinja, for an estimated $50 per successful attack. It's still unclear whether any data was stolen, but the experiment shows how cheaply AI can scale cyberattacks.

🦂 AI Takes a Sting at Drug Discovery. Who needs a PhD when you have Claude and $200K? Anthropic teamed up with five staffers from investment firm Citrini Research, letting AI generate over 318,000 protein designs aimed at tackling scorpion venom — with just five human prompts. Of the 211 designs sent to labs, 17 successfully latched onto toxins, though none have proven they can actually neutralize venom (so don't fire your antivenom supplier just yet).

⚖️ AI Is for Everyone. So Why the Gender Gap? AI may be open to everyone, but apparently, the playing field missed the memo. A new Harvard study found that while men and women are similarly likely to try AI, 64% of employed women receive no workplace AI training, compared to 49% of men. And the visibility gap is even bigger: men appear in AI news headlines 14.6 times more often than women.

AI's biggest companies are starting to sound less like tech startups and more like people preparing for a very unusual future. 

Anthropic is proposing to dedicate billions in company equity to public benefit, while its co-founder claims the singularity — when AI accelerates discovery faster than humans can keep up—has already begun. Meanwhile, OpenAI's Sam Altman is reportedly weighing three radically different ways to keep advanced AI under control, just as the company's technology helps uncover critical security flaws hiding in some of the internet's most widely used software. 

From scientific breakthroughs to economic disruption and cybersecurity, the conversation is shifting from how powerful AI can become to how society will handle that power. And judging by this week's developments, even the people building it are still figuring out the instruction manual.

Anthropic wants to put its money where its AI is. 

Its proposed Public Benefit Fund would receive 5% of company equity — potentially worth $48 billion — with additional shares possible as the company's valuation grows. The goal? Support nonprofits and potentially distribute money directly to people affected by AI-driven disruption.

Meanwhile, co-founder Jack Clark told global policymakers that the singularity has already begun, pointing to massive improvements in AI's scientific and mathematical abilities. He even presented a scenario in which rapid AI adoption could push US GDP to $44 trillion by 2030.

Anthropic is preparing for a future of enormous AI-generated wealth, but its fund still needs approval. Promising billions is one thing; getting those benefits into people's pockets is another.

Who's going to control AI when it becomes powerful enough to improve itself?

 According to Sam Altman, there are three possible scenarios:

Altman reportedly favored international oversight, called the third scenario terrible, and emphasized the need for a speed limit on self-improving AI.

The world's biggest AI competitors increasingly recognize the need for shared rules. Getting everyone to cooperate while racing for the same finish line? That's the tricky part.

AI has uncovered some rather unpleasant surprises in PHP, the programming language powering much of the internet. 

Researchers using OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol identified critical, decade-old security flaws that could allow hackers to hijack vulnerable servers without logging in.

OpenAI and security partners coordinated fixes with PHP maintainers, while the NSA urged immediate protective action.

AI is making hidden software vulnerabilities easier to discover—for security researchers and potentially hackers alike. Yesterday's perfectly functional website could be tomorrow's cybersecurity headache.

You definitely don't need to work in artificial intelligence to feel the consequences of these developments.

The decisions being discussed today could eventually influence how companies operate, how governments regulate technology, and who receives the economic benefits of increasingly capable AI.

For workers and business owners, the implications are especially practical:

The common thread running through all three stories is responsibility. Powerful technology is arriving faster than institutions, businesses, and individuals can necessarily adapt.

That doesn't mean the future is doomed — or guaranteed to be wonderful. It means decisions about ownership, safety, and access are becoming just as important as the next impressive AI breakthrough.

Hey, you didn’t get all this info for nothing — share it! If you know someone who’s diving into AI, help them stay in the loop with this week’s updates.

Sharing is a win-win! Send this to a friend who’s all about tech, and you’ll win a little surprise 👀

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A playground for your imagination (and low-key prompt skills).

Each send, we give you a customizable DALL·E prompt inspired by a real-world use case — something that could help you in your business or job if you wanted to use it that way. But it’s also just a fun creative experiment.

You tweak it, run it, and send us your favorite. We pick one winner to feature in the next issue.

Bonus: you’re secretly getting better at prompt design. 🤫

Last week, we challenged you to test GPT-4o’s visual generation skills with this prompt.

Here’s the WINNER:

Congrats to Jajun for this creation!🥳

Want to be featured next? Keep those generations coming!

Deep inside a gigantic greenhouse powered by advanced robotics, [your object] has become the central component of an extraordinary living ecosystem. Mechanical arms tend to towering tropical plants, tiny irrigation drones weave between enormous leaves, and transparent pipes carry glowing turquoise water through the structure. The object remains instantly recognizable, but its surfaces are integrated with botanical details, precision-engineered components, and vivid bioluminescent accents. Sunlight pours through the glass ceiling, illuminating emerald foliage, bright coral flowers, and polished metallic surfaces. Ultra-detailed photorealism, cinematic wide-angle photography, vibrant colors, crisp textures, dramatic natural lighting.

If AI outputs feel inconsistent, it’s usually not the model, it’s missing structure.
We documented the exact 6- Part System we use to get reliable results across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

It’s a short guide you can finish in under an hour, with plug-and-play prompts + exercises so you actually build the skill and fix the frustrating AI inconsistencies.

Subscriber Price: $10 (normally $19).

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