What this is about:
A major new New Yorker investigation asks a more unsettling question than founder gossip usually allows: What does it mean when one of the most powerful figures in AI is also a recurring governance problem?

Why it matters:
This is not just about personality. OpenAI now sits near the centre of the AI stack — consumer, enterprise and public-sector facing — so repeated concerns about candour, oversight and safety trade-offs are governance issues, not executive quirks.

What’s happening:
The New Yorker revisits the 2023 OpenAI board crisis with new interviews and internal material, including Ilya Sutskever’s reported view that Altman should not “have his finger on the button.” Read against the old board statement that Altman was “not consistently candid,” the picture is less of a one-off rupture and more of a recurring problem of constraint.

The structural problem:
Frontier AI is still being governed with ordinary corporate tools despite extraordinary claims about societal impact. Delaware’s 2025 review of OpenAI’s recapitalisation imposed structural reforms and safety conditions, which is a reminder that regulators have not treated these concerns as theoretical.

Reality check:
An investigation is not a verdict, and some claims are contested. But the broader pattern is hard to miss: repeated governance rupture, repeated safety concern, repeated dependence on trust in a very small number of people. In a sector building systems with societal-scale consequences, personal credibility is not a substitute for durable oversight.

The interesting bit:
The deeper question is not whether Altman is uniquely flawed. It is whether frontier AI has already outgrown the kind of leadership culture that still runs on charisma, speed and private assurances.

The line:
If the future of AI depends on trusting the person at the top, that is already a governance failure.

Sources: The New Yorker | Delaware AG on OpenAI recapitalisation | International AI Safety Report 2026

I’m not a jam maker. I’m a baker. Or at least, in theory, I’m a baker. I own a KitchenAid, which currently sits in my kitchen looking both grease-ridden and betrayed through lack of use. During the pandemic, I made bread for my friends, specifically sourdough with swear words etched into the top, occasionally covered in glitter, and briefly considered starting a company called Rude Bread. Clearly, that didn’t happen, because here I am instead, writing to all of you. Lucky you!

Anne (Psychiatrist friend who I wrote a poem for, remember?), however, does make jam. Bloody amazing jam. So I spent Good Friday at her house with loose leaf English Breakfast tea made in “builders’ style” because Anne makes tea no other way, a freshly made hot cross bun from a Nigella recipe, a wood-burning stove, and this utterly deranged Italian plum jam. Honestly, it may as well have been an SSRI in a jar. It tastes sour and lifting and sweet; like European summer on fire in your mouth. Ah yes, Europe. F Brexit. F it hard. The whole scene felt offensively comforting, the sort of domestic civilisation we seem determined, as a universe, to keep voting against and then acting surprised when everything feels a bit more sh*t.

Anyway, the jam made my life better, which is more than can be said for most public discourse at the moment. War rages on. Mango Mussolini continues to appear in my field of vision with such regularity that I can hardly believe he is real and not a lost sketch from Spitting Image. There is something especially grotesque about living in a time where satire can no longer keep up with the source material.

A jar of plum preserve, that is all I’ve got for this week: not transformation, not insight, just the reminder that sometimes comfort arrives in unsexy forms. Tea. Toast. Jam. Europe. Thoughts to spread thickly.

The ACA Conference & Expo is this weekend April 9–11 in Columbus, Ohio, with sessions and conference activity centered at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. It’s ACA’s big annual gathering for learning, networking, and wandering an expo hall while promising yourself you’ll “just take a quick look” at one more booth.

This year’s lineup includes 200+ education sessions across 24 topic areas, including counseling practice, ethics, advocacy, and technology, plus sessions on social media misinformation, trauma, and digital mental health.

Also: (ahem), I’ll be at the Blueprint booth in the expo hall, so if you’re there, please stop by and say hello.

One of my favorite interventions from my nearly 20 years in practice is the Drawing a Bridge.

It’s simple, visual, and more powerful than it first appears.

How it works:
Invite the client to draw a bridge and what’s on either side. On one side of the bridge is where they’ve been. The other side represents where they’re going - encourage details to help the client step closer into the vision of where they want to go.

When creating the bridge and sharing about it afterward, have the client consider some of the following:

The last steps can feel the most powerful, by asking:

I especially like this intervention with clients who are going through change, contemplating change, or having trouble seeing the progress they’ve already made. I’ve found it especially meaningful with people coming out of or considering leaving an abusive relationship.

It can look almost too simple at first. Maybe even a little elementary. But the act of creating helps people take a step back and see their lives differently. The image makes something visible before the client is ready to put it into words and action.

Not recommended. But I did what I had to do as a mom with a 9-year-old on spring break.

I was very lucky to receive this upgrade for Christmas. If you have been following along from the beginning, you’ll know about my L3 write-up. This one is not for the faint of heart (or skin, for that matter). Thomas has taken to sitting on top of me whilst I ‘relax’, which may in fact have taken this to L5!

Note from Ann: I got the Shakti Mat L2 for Christmas this year and can only tolerate about 8 minutes on it while wearing a shirt. Let it be known that I am now even more convinced that Marianne is part woman, part medieval warrior.

Stories from the community

The top answer was bathroom/basic human survival, with 57% of the vote. Some might call that a blowout.

The remaining responses were split evenly, with 14% each going to:

Not a single vote went to snack or coffee refill, text/life admin, or scrolling. Making it very clear that this is an unusually responsible and well-regulated group of therapists, and that everyone here is better than me.

Notes from the Community: