The Ball in OpenAI's court

Dean Ball in San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore. Christie Hemm Klok for BI On a gloomy July evening, Dean Ball is appraising the political theory shelf in the basement of San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore. It's the end of his second day at OpenAI , and he's arrived straight from orientation in a cashmere zip-up hoodie, carrying a company-issued tote bag. He pulls a copy of Friedrich Hayek's "The Pure Theory of Capital" from the shelf, notes how rare it is to see it in the wild, and flips through its pages. It's a fitting choice. Ball has landed in a distinctly Hayekian role at OpenAI. The 20th century economist, as Ball recounts to me, argued that political change begins not at the ballot box but among intellectuals, whose ideas would eventually filter into government. His work inspired a generation of right-wing think tanks that helped remake American politics.