In the January 7, 2025, episode of ReThinking with Adam Grant titled “Sam Altman on the Future of AI and Humanity,” Adam Grant concludes with a deceptively simple question for the OpenAI CEO:

In his interview, he offers more than just a personal response. He offers a concise worldview about what constitutes a “better life” in the age of AI, something that is worth looking at in detail.

In this essay, I argue that Altman’s response reveals what we can call the “faith of the technologist”: the belief that scientific and technological progress, especially AI-driven progress, is the primary driver of prosperity, fulfillment, and human advancement. To illustrate this idea, I draw on Isabelle Stengers’s concept in Cosmopolitics (2010) that modern scientific projects depend on specific forms of “faith” that determine what constitutes reality and what is excluded.

I will approach this in three steps. First, I will unpack what “a better life” means in Altman’s framework. Second, I will use Stengers to demonstrate how this concept functions as a form of faith. Third, I will explore what this cosmology tends to omit.

Altman’s approach is to frame having children as a contribution to society. He explains:

This is not a revolutionary concept, and perhaps serves only as a reminder that even the archetypal tech CEO subscribes to the idea that the continuation of society depends on some people deciding to reproduce. Yet implicit in this idea is a minimal attachment to the future. Society must continue, and children are how that happens.

However, the answer does not stop at reproduction. Altman connects his future child to his vision of the world they should inherit.

This expectation is familiar: a “better life” for the next generation. But this desire is not purely individualistic. For a child’s life to be “better,” their environment must be able to sustain that possibility. In other words, private hopes depend on a public world of infrastructures, institutions, and shared conditions that allow for “abundance,” “prosperity,” and personal fulfillment.

What is noteworthy is that Altman’s faith is not primarily in political or social institutions. It is in scientific and technological progress. The reason for this is simple. When one driver, such as “progress,” becomes the default explanation for a “better life,” it also becomes a filter that determines what counts as a real cause and what is treated as secondary.

In Cosmopolitics, Isabelle Stengers reflects on what it takes for modern physicists to do their work. Following Max Planck, she argues that physicists must affirm the possibility of a unified conception of the physical world as a kind of working faith. Without this belief, their vocation would fall apart.

For them, this is a precondition — a belief — the “faith of the physicist,” as Stengers calls it. It is the belief that the world is, in principle, intelligible in a unified way, beyond particular experiments and instruments. Altman’s self-description echoes this structure of faith transposed from physics to AI.

Thus, “faith of the technologist” emerges here. Scientific progress is seen as the main way that standards of living and the “quality of the human experience” improve. Planck’s former duty for physicists — maintaining faith in a unified world — appears here as the duty to continually advance the technological frontier because meaningful improvement is expected to come from there.

Using Stengers’ terminology, this perspective is not a neutral description of technology. It is a cosmology, a way of imagining the world in which AI-driven scientific progress primarily shapes the conditions of human life. Once you label it a cosmology, you can ask a more precise question: What must be left out for this story to be coherent and convincing?

Altman repeatedly insists that something unique is happening. He says:

This “once in human history” perspective positions current developments as a civilizational shift outside of normal time. On this scale, the stakes of his techno-faith seem more significant. If AI is indeed about to surpass human intelligence, the “better life” for his child will be defined in a world where humans are no longer at the top of the cognitive hierarchy.

Yet alongside this grand rhetoric, Altman offers a remarkably modest observation about everyday life.

Some tension arises here. On the one hand, it is a once-in-a-lifetime transition. On the other hand, daily life is “kind of not that different.” This revolutionary event is real but slow. It occurs over decades rather than in a single apocalyptic moment. The earlier expectation that everything would change once we had a model as powerful as our most powerful one is now seen as naive.

This pace matters. A “better life” for the next generation is not guaranteed simply by the existence of powerful models. It depends on how societies adopt the technology, how institutions adapt to it, and how conflicts, inequalities, and ecological constraints interact with this new artifact.

This is where the “faith” structure becomes visible. If the change is slow, “progress” is not something you can achieve by pulling a single lever. It must pass through institutions, incentives, laws, and conflicts before becoming a lived reality. This means that until we reach the next level we must have “faith” that we are on the right path.

When the conversation turns to work and the economy, Altman emphasizes a familiar historical pattern: new technologies destroy some jobs but create others, and societies eventually adapt.

This technological optimism is shaped by a story about the past. Excessive past panics were unfounded because new work always appeared. This time is “just the next step” on a pre-existing exponential curve. The uniqueness of AI — the once-in-human-history transition — is supported by the reassurance of continuity. The shape of the curve remains the same.

Altman makes this point more explicit with a pop culture reference.

The line from Battlestar Galactica — “All this happened before, all this will happen again” — captures this ambivalence. While the AI revolution may feel “super important” and qualitatively different, it also fits into a recurring cycle of panic, hype, and eventual normalization.

The “new thing launched on the Internet” serves as a substitute for many past disruptions that, with the benefit of time, seem less earth-shattering than they did at the time. This has the effect of alleviating anxieties. AI is both unprecedented and not entirely without precedent.

The “faith” helps to frame this idea. It limits imagination by suggesting that similar adaptations will occur again, and that the same “progress story” will continue to work.

Some of Altman’s most provocative remarks concern everyday interactions and the creation of meaning. He envisions a near future in which AI is not only powerful, but also subjectively compelling. He judges:

This is not just a claim about efficiency. It is a statement about what constitutes “interesting” and “empathic” behavior and where people will seek companionship, advice, or understanding. It suggests that the richest dialogues for many people may take place with non-human systems.

Yet, when Altman imagines a world in which AI far surpasses human abilities, he argues that human comparisons will primarily be social, not machinic.

Here, the human world retreats into comparative games of status, recognition, and relative standing among others. AI does not become the main axis of self-worth. It is background infrastructure against which human rivalries and attachments continue, however brilliant it may be.

There is an irony in holding these two ideas together. On the one hand, the “most interesting and empathetic conversations” may be with an AI. On the other hand, people will still be absorbed in status games with each other rather than measuring themselves against AIs.

The technology promises unprecedented forms of understanding, yet humans continue to seek recognition primarily from each other. AI appears as both a superior other and a tool whose accomplishments will not define people’s sense of self.

The “better life” seems then envisioned as being both more emotionally supported by AI and still socially competitive among humans. This raises questions about the type of community that is being assumed.

Returning to Stengers, Cosmopolitics explores the types of worlds that emerge when scientific practices presume to represent “the world” or “nature” as a whole. The “faith of the physicist” becomes problematic when it establishes a monopoly on what reality is permitted to be.

Similarly, Altman’s techno-optimistic stance and sense of duty to scientific progress shape his worldview. He believes that scientific and technological progress is the primary driver of a better future. This view encompasses the unique nature of the AI transition and the belief that AI will facilitate the “most empathetic conversations” while preserving human status games and building a coherent narrative.

In that narrative, the world Altman hopes for his child is one where:

Stengers would likely ask what this narrative leaves out. What practices, forms of life, and non-human actors are not given a voice in this cosmology? What political and ecological constraints are dismissed by the assertion that this is the one thing that will most advance scientific progress and improve living standards?

Progress stories often omit the boring physical layer. These systems depend on power and hardware, both of which rely on supply chains that can tighten or break. Next is the social layer, where rules and enforcement determine who is protected, exposed, or benefited. Furthermore, a “better life” cannot be experienced without something more fulfilling than material conditions.

Listening to Altman through the perspective of Stengers helps question his optimism. It shows that behind the polished language of “progress” and is a specific kind of faith, no less substantial than Planck’s belief in a unified physical world.

It is a belief that the AI revolution will be able to fulfill the simple desire expressed at the beginning — that a child might live “a better life” in a world that can accommodate such a wish.