Michael Lewis, the charismatic and quotable author behind The Big Short and Moneyball, to name just a few of his bestselling nonfiction titles, has a new book deal in the works—but this one comes with a sci-fi twist. Speaking at a live recording of SoFi’s The Important Part podcast in New York City, Lewis revealed that he has a verbal agreement with Sam Altman to write a biography of the OpenAI leader, but only when ChatGPT is capable of writing a competing draft. The anecdote has been partially told before, but never at this level of detail, with the prospect of the legendary writer making Altman the latest member of his cast of protagonists.
As the New York Times wrote in its review of Going Infinite, Lewis’s book about disgraced crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried, the writer always “makes sure to give you an unsung hero to root for.” Hollywood has often found this a winning recipe for film adaptation. The renegade baseball general manager in Moneyball, for instance, was later played by Brad Pitt, while the characters in The Big Short were portrayed by Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, and Pitt again, among others. “Even Lewis’s first book, Liar’s Poker, which recounts all kinds of bad behavior on Wall Street, is structured around a young man named Michael Lewis,” the Times notes, with that underdog hero leaving the “absurd money game” of finance to become a journalist and celebrated author.
