The lights faded as five actors took their places around a table at a makeshift stage in a New York art gallery that became the theater for the night. Wine and water were falling through the familiar space, as the house – full of media – sat down to watch the premiere of “Doomers”, the latest game of Matthew Gasda based loosely on the export of Sam Altman as its Managing Director Openai in November 2023.
The project imagines the events that took place after the co-founder of Openai, and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever informed Altman that he was fired-a decision by the Board of Directors that the CEO had excluded the security of AI and participated in . Despite the obvious scholastic research that went on to depict the Gasda of that night, the playwright told TechCrunch that his goal was not to create a documentary but to use this setting as a microcosm for the wider philosophical issues of security of ai.
People have for the millennia that created the myth and knowledge of the next great inventions of humanity and the dangers of their pursuit. As Prometheus steals a fire and Oppenheimer that separates the individual, humanity cannot resist the lure of his own inventions. With Gasda’s game, the arts now weigh in the philosophical discussion on rapid technological innovation – cement technology and its barons at Zeitgeist.
“The humanities, the arts, we can say something about it,” Gasda told TechCrunch. “We are probably without teeth financially and without teeth technologically, but we are not tooth in the way we have the right to represent this world as well as anyone else.”
In Gasda’s game, the company is called Mindmesh, and the selfish, childish, frustrated CEO is called Seth.
The first act appears in Seth’s “War Room”, as he and those who are closer to him discuss the advantages of the extinction of the Board of Directors, what should be their next steps and if the CEO is right to pursue technology of society. The second act takes place in the Mindmesh meeting room and describes the various fears among its members, including that the newly formed Seth could take punishment to those who betrayed him and that “we will get out of a kind of competitors”.
The central intensity of the game is the one that plays on the world scene today – AI’s existential threat over the existential promise of it.
‘I had fired to create miracles’
Gasda says he wrote 35 designs of this game, which previewed the first audiences in August. After more trips to San Francisco-and many writing sessions fueled by Celsius later-he arrived with the “Doomers” edition that promotes New York this weekend until February and will be presented in San Francisco in March.
Gasda, who is known for the writing and direction of “Dimes Square” and “Zoomers”, told us that he wanted to understand the characters and psychology of a group of people who do not “deal with self-relocation”.
The result is a cast 10, half of which are based on real people such as Openai Sam Altman CEO, former chief technologist Mira Murati and co -founder and President Greg Brockman. Murati served as a temporary chief executive during the executive waiting. She left the company in September 2024 to start his own company.
Other characters are based on Helen Toner and Adam D’Angelo, two former members of the Board of Directors who voted to leave Altman. And even Eliezer Yudkowsky, a researcher who asked Openai to close before that Ends the world.
Gasda said Seth, the character based on Altman, is perhaps the most true-in form in his depiction, but also left room for fantastic character illustrations that will recognize those who know the vaginal area-a hard VC porn It is the future of AI, a newly established founder Gen Z Millionaire, and a lawyer from Stanford.
“I wanted to extract enough sense of loyalty and sense of reality to make the game difficult and make the characters effectively real enough to disable people who really know what happened or know what a board of the board is in a company AI like, “Gasda said, noting that Altman sent a copy of the game before his premiere.
The questions that the discussion of the casts are relatively: If the development of AI accelerates “we” we can win. If its growth slows down to allow better safety and alignment. Does it have to close completely to protect the human race?
Through these discussions, we see the archetypes of each character fulfilled: If there is a choice between victory and moral, Seth, the character based on Altman, chooses to win.
He states loudly that the Board of Directors shot him “to create miracles”, and argues that alignment would be a “misuse of a sacred resource”. It is human, he says, to continue excellence and adds that Mindmesh is the “immune system” in the world, a well -meaning American-We agi that will protect us when the “bad” agi goes fraud.
“The only thing you need to do is overcome and run out,” says Seth. The characters based on Mira Murati and Greg Brockman largely behind Seth, even when he offends them, supporting an AI Utopia vision where technology heals the disease and opens interplanetary space trips. In which the character of moral security, Alina, says: “Make it sound like a gay in a bottle.”
Gasda sprinkles dry humor throughout “Doomers” – illuminating the mood of another tense object. It also introduces humor by recording the shades of Silicon Valley’s culture. Multiply and ketamine were mentioned more than once, and at one point, the characters get comfortable mushrooms. There are references to Robotaxis Waymo, and at one point he observes a character, “I know drinking is low, but I really need a drink”, in relation to the cali-sober trend that surpasses the vagina.
There are security questions remain
The events depicted in this game took place about 15 months ago and the debate on AI has already shifted as the struggle for sovereignty exceeds security issues.
Altman ended up returning to power immediately, as Openai engineers threatened to abandon massively if they did not return. A new board that is comfortable with Openai shifting to a speculative structure since then has been established under the CEO. Sutskever and Jan Leike, the co-head of the Openai super-control group, have surpassed. Other researchers focusing on security they raised concerns AI has also departed about AI laboratories.
This has not harmed Openai.
The company is reportedly increasing a round of $ 40 billion that would estimate it to $ 340 billion, while President Donald Trump promises to protect AI from regulation as a new equipment match against China and new competitors, such as Deepseek, enter the ring. In short, AI’s innovation is accelerated, without slowing down, as the character of Seth wanted. The question that everyone is waiting for the answer is whether this is good.
“It’s bad to build God,” says Alina, the moral in the work. “Because we are so bad and rely on us.”
