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Sam Altman's new 'social contract' for AI

PLUS: Stress test business ideas with Perplexity

Zach Mink

April 7, 2026

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Sam Altman wants the U.S. government to tax robots, create a national wealth fund, implement a 4-day workweek, and start planning for AI that can't be shut off. He also wants you to know this is urgent.

OpenAI's 13-page policy document lays out ideas behind the "new social contract," which Altman says is needed for a world adjusting to superintelligence — a transition he says has already begun.

In today’s AI rundown:

OpenAI’s new ‘social contract’ ideas for society, ASI
New Yorker surfaces secret memos behind Altman's firing
Stress test business ideas with Perplexity
Wang's first Meta models getting ready to ship
4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

📜 OpenAI’s new ‘social contract’ ideas for society, ASI

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI just published a 13-page policy document with ideas to help society navigate superintelligence and its societal impacts, asking Washington to tax AI-driven profits, create a wealth fund, implement a 4-day workweek, and more.

The details:

The proposal said we are “beginning a transition toward superintelligence”, with Altman telling Axios the moment requires a new “social contract” for society.
The most aggressive idea: a sovereign-style fund seeded by AI firms that would pay dividends to every American, as Alaska does with oil revenue.
Other ideas include taxes on robot labor, a 4-day workweek, "Right to AI" access for all, and containment playbooks for rogue autonomous AI.
Axios called it "the most detailed blueprint any tech titan has ever published for how to tax, regulate, and redistribute wealth from the technology he's building."

Why it matters: The CEO of an $852B company is asking the U.S. to prepare for a future where his own tech breaks the economic system — and you don't make that pitch unless you believe it's actually coming. But with the way things are moving, coupled with the slow-moving gears of the government, the clock is ticking.

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SAM ALTMAN

🔍 New Yorker surfaces memos behind Altman's firing

Image source: The New Yorker

The Rundown: The New Yorker published an investigation into Sam Altman, drawing on 100+ interviews, unseen memos from ex–chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, and notes from Dario Amodei — alleging a long-running pattern of deception at the top of OpenAI.

The details:

The reporting spans Altman's full career arc, including conflicts at his startup Loopt, Y Combinator partners trying to push him out, and the OAI board drama.
Sutskever's memos, built from 70 pages of Slack messages and HR docs, allege Altman misrepresented safety protocols to the board.
Amodei's private notes, kept for years, reach the same conclusion as Sutskever independently: "The problem with OpenAI is Sam himself.”
A Microsoft exec told the reporters there's "a small but real chance" Altman is "remembered as a Bernie Madoff, Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer.”

Why it matters: While there is no ‘smoking gun’ in this piece, there is a vastly detailed and concerning pattern of deception that seems to span across Altman’s career. But for every detractor, you also have fiercely loyal supporters and coworkers – making the CEO of the nearly trillion-dollar AI giant one of the most polarizing figures in the world.

AI TRAINING

🤔 Stress test business ideas with Perplexity

The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to use Perplexity Deep Research to stress test any business idea. Save the prompt below once and rerun it on every idea you have to see what’s feasible to build.

Step-by-step:

Open Perplexity and switch to Deep Research mode. This works on the free plan (5 queries/day) and is basically a hidden version of Perplexity Computer
Paste this prompt with your idea in the chat, hit run, and walk away for 5 to 6 minutes. Perplexity does the research and builds the slide deck in the same run
Save the prompt somewhere you will actually use it again, like in a dedicated Perplexity space
Then, every Saturday morning, take one idea off your list and run it. You will burn through a year of half-evaluated ideas in a month

Pro tip: Build variants. A 6-slide version for a co-founder pitch, a version that compares two ideas, or a 90-day MVP plan for ideas that already cleared validation.

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🚀 Wang's first Meta models getting ready to ship

Image source: Lovart / The Rundown

The Rundown: Meta is set to release the first AI models developed by Alexandr Wang’s Superintelligence team, with Axios reporting the company will make some of them available as open source — though the largest models will reportedly stay closed.

The details:

Meta and Wang’s codenamed ‘Avocado’ model was delayed in March over benchmark performances that fell short of rival models across the board.
The company is reportedly planning a consumer-focused, hybrid approach that includes both open and closed models for broad distribution across its apps.
Axios said Meta “knows its new models may not be competitive across the board” but “believes it will have areas of strength that appeal to consumers.”

Why it matters: This report doesn’t inspire confidence for a release that has already been delayed for poor performance, and after all the money spent and the high-profile new team brought in, another flop would be a painful one for a tech giant pushing desperately to enter the frontier AI race.

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📰 Everything else in AI today

The Information reported that Sam Altman and OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar are not on the same page regarding IPO timing, though OpenAI denied the claim.

Iran's military singled out the $30B Stargate data center in Abu Dhabi as a target, publishing satellite footage and vowing to destroy U.S. infrastructure across the region.

OpenAI Head of Business Finance Chengpeng Mou posted new stats on ChatGPT’s use for healthcare questions, with the platform getting 2M insurance messages weekly.

Google released AI Edge Eloquent, a free iOS dictation app that cleans up raw speech into polished text entirely on-device.

Legion Health won approval to let its AI app directly refill psychiatric medications, the first time a state has greenlit AI to do the process without clinician oversight.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Wayne F. in the United Kingdom:

"I use AI as my "Workhorse" to act as a one-person eLearning agency. I host SME lessons in NotebookLM as a reference library. Using Kolb’s Learning Cycle, I map complex 5-part Pentad scenarios on a digital canvas, replacing physical rooms once filled with hundreds of post-its and flip charts.

I maintain strict control via a command-driven workflow, only generating assets when I trigger "VEO" or "create-image" using Nano Banana and Veo 3.1. Finally, I use Perplexity with NotebookLM to audit my work against the QM Rubric, Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance, and Kolb’s cycle. AI allows me to collapse an entire production team into a single pipeline where I am simultaneously Creator, Designer, and Lead Auditor."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.