Sam Altman

There is a lot of stuff I like. I love backpacking. I love going to an island where I can just sit on the beach and read or scuba dive and sail. I do a lot of that. I still go backpacking around Europe in the summers and staying in hostels. I love that.

Technology magnifies differences, and it's been replacing or obviating jobs for a long time. But what happens as that case accelerates? I'm not one of these doomsayers who says, 'There will be no jobs.'

The Gmail app is definitely the app I use the most. I am always running from meeting to meeting, so it keeps me up-to-date with everything going on. I actually e-mail more often from my iPhone than my laptop, so having a nicely designed e-mail app is really important.

I don't think even when you find a person, you can be completely honest, ever. There's still pieces of you that you don't give away. I do believe you always need that place where it's just you, your thoughts, no one else's judgment or anything.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.