Sam Altman: Unlikely Paper Advocate
The CEO of Open AI sells AI tools to the world, but he's actually better at promoting pen & paper. Plus: Addressing the latest partisan attacks on Wikipedia.
Last week I wrote for Slate and joined WBUR’s On Point to discuss the latest partisan attacks on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia editing community doesn’t always get it right, but journalists nevertheless have a responsibility to describe the site’s editorial process accurately.
Today, I’m expanding to a new reporting beat: investigating the importance of paper in an age dominated by screens.
Sam Altman wasn’t the kind of guest you’d expect on
’s podcast How I Write. The show usually spotlights bestselling authors sharing tips for overcoming writer’s block, developing a unique voice, and revising drafts. Altman, by contrast, is the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and one of the most recognizable faces of the AI boom. He’s the sort of Big Tech executive lawmakers invite before Congress to talk about AI risk, not consulted for his personal views on the craft of writing.Once on the mic, Altman did what he often does in interviews (and what you’d expect from a man with billions riding on the outcome): he sold the promise of AI. He described ChatGPT as a “general purpose tool” he now uses daily, predicting that soon he’d rely on it “for most things I do.” The impression was of a man happily tethered to his screen, using digital tools to generate the next big idea.
That’s what makes the back half of the interview so striking. About 43 minutes in, Perell asks Altman if he takes notes during the week. Altman’s green eyes light up: “I’m a huge notetaker.” Perell presses him: “Ooh, tell me about that.”
Suddenly the AI pitchman turns into a fanboy gushing about his favorite paper and pens. “You definitely want a spiral notebook because one thing that’s important is you can rip pages out frequently. You want it to lie flat on the table, with a hard front and back. And you also want something that can fit in a pocket,” Altman says, using his own notebook to demonstrate. The spiral, he explains, is crucial so you can rip up pages and place them side by side. He’s equally opinionated about pens, declaring the Uniball micro 0.5 the “best pen overall” with Muji’s 0.38 dark pen coming in second.
Handwriting isn’t an occasional hobby for Altman but a daily practice. He fills a fresh spiral every two weeks, leaving his housekeeper to clear away the piles of crumpled pages. He says he’s always scribbling new observations, half-formed ideas, notes to self, and strategies to test.
Altman’s enthusiasm for spiral notebooks is so endearing that it almost obscures the irony. His job as the CEO of OpenAI is to promote the company’s AI tools to billions of potential customers, promising the transformative benefits of this digital technology. But when he does his own deep thinking, his style is decidedly analog.
Perhaps there’s a lesson here: even in the age of AI, the sharpest minds still reach for pen and paper to discover good ideas.
If you enjoyed this, you might like my post about the psychological reasons to prefer print.
I still have a pen and pad next to my keyboard on my desk. Without my weekly to do list I would be lost.
Good one Stephen