‘I don’t think about him’: Altman gives Musk the ‘Don Draper’ treatment

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — In one of the most famous scenes from the acclaimed AMC drama, “Mad Men,” character Michael Ginsberg barges his way onto an elevator with the show’s top-dog ad man, Don Draper, famously played by Jon Hamm.

After questioning Draper’s last-minute decision to go with his own idea in a successful pitch meeting, Ginsberg, played by Ben Feldman, tells Draper, “I feel bad for you.”

“I don’t think about you at all,” Hamm’s unflappable Draper replies without missing a beat, before brusquely stepping off the elevator.

In an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared to take a page out of Draper’s handbook. Altman was asked about a tweet response from Elon Musk regarding an announcement from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about launching OpenAI’s new GPT-5 chatbot across various Microsoft platforms.

“Today, GPT-5 launches across our platforms, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Azure AI Foundry,” Nadella tweeted. “It’s the most capable model yet from our partners at OpenAI, bringing powerful new advances in reasoning, coding, and chat, all trained on Azur.”

“OpenAI is going to eat Microsoft alive,” tweeted Musk in response.

Nadella responded a short while later, saying that, “People have been trying for 50 years and that’s the fun of it! Each day you learn something new, and innovate, partner, and compete. Excited for Grok 4 on Azure and looking forward to Grok 5!”

But it was Altman who really had the last word.

When asked on “Squawkbox” what he thought of Musk’s response, he simply replied, “You know, I don’t think about him that much.”

Don Draper would have been proud.

Musk and Altman founded OpenAI together. Musk later left the company and since then, the two have reportedly fallen out.