How I Persuaded Sam Altman to Shut Down Sora and Resign from OpenAI
"Got to get you into my life!"
Growing up, the Beatles were a bit of a religion in our house. As a child I played with Beatles toys and watched the “Yellow Submarine” cartoon. As a teen I dealt with heartbreak by listening to “Yesterday” and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” as my Dad instructed he had too. I embraced the John Lennon rebel ethos as an angry young man. When I got married after college it was to an edgy artist who self-identified as my Yoko Ono.
But now entering middle-age and on marriage two, I’ve come to appreciate Sir Paul McCartney in a way which I never had before, and now more identify with him.
I used to not care for Paul as much among the four Beatles and with his post-Beatles career. I thought “oh, these are just happy pop songs. So what? Give me some serious art, man!”
But now at 42 I know the secret about where those happy pop songs came from and how they ultimatley made Paul a billionaire. And I know that it’s true.
I learned this just recently: do you know the origins of “Got to Get You Into My Life” from “Revolver”? Who exactly is the “you” who Paul sings to?
He has revealed it and it is very well documented: marijuana. He wrote this song about getting stoned for the first time and then dedicating himself to making sure he got some into his life every day.
It turns out that Paul was a MASSIVE stoner who only quit when he became a grandpa. Fifty years of sustained, high level weed smoking—some accounts characterize him smoking joints like how people drink cups of tea—is what enabled Paul to produce decades of perfect pop songs and a mountain of cash.
I advocate this same lifestlye for all.
So when Sora 2 debuted as a standalone app last fall, I started exploring this theme as I began developing my “Ibis Head People Planet!” webcomic that will formally launch later this year:
October 11, 2025:
This is very clearly stoner humor:
And this is, of course, David Lynch-inspired stoner humor:
However, I soon discovered some problems and felt compelled to make OpenAI CEO Sam Altman aware of my disocoveries:
October 20, 2025:
October 23, 2025:
I decided that I needed to ask Altman to explain why this was happening.
October 25, 2025:
I began to consider if perhaps the way to counter the hateful videos could be with promoting loving videos instead?
No, it was going to be necessary to confront Altman again:
I decided to present my case straight, typing in the words that I wanted the AI avatar of myself to say:
I made a few more videos on October 25 but after that I was done for the year.
Nov. 17, 2025:
I announced my intent to begin boycotting all Sam Altman products:
March 24, 2026:
Yesterday, with the announcement of Sora’s shutdown, it seemed time to make a few final ones to conclude the story as it should conclude:
March 25, 2026:
People are going to say that Altman just wants to reallocate the compute power to other projects that can make more money. That’s certainly true but don’t let that fool you from believing that it wasn’t a trip out to Yucca Valley to smoke a few bowls of Horchata that didn’t really persuade him to do the right thing.