I was thinking about it because I think the state is in a very bad place, particularly when it comes to the cost of living and specifically the cost of housing. And if that doesn’t get fixed, I think the state is going to devolve into a very unpleasant place. Like one thing that I have really come to believe is that you cannot have social justice without economic justice, and economic justice in California feels unattainable. And I think it would take someone with no loyalties to sort of very powerful interest groups. I would not be indebted to other groups, and so maybe I could try a couple of variable things, just on this issue.
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I don’t think I’d have enough experience to do it, because maybe I could do like a few things that would be really good, but I wouldn’t know how to deal with the thousands of things that also just needed to happen.
And more importantly than that to me personally, I wanted to spend my time trying to make sure we get artificial intelligence built in a really good way, which I think is like, to me personally, the most important problem in the world and not something I was willing to set aside to run for office.
Now he’s free to run for governor of California in 2026:
Prediction market: https://manifold.markets/firstuserhere/will-sam-altman-run-for-the-governo