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Time of India
30-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Sam Altman vs Elon Musk: Who was a brighter student?
It's a tale of two rebels, each standing at the frontier of artificial intelligence, each reimagining the future of technology, and yet, each shaped by radically different relationships with education. Elon Musk and Sam Altman have both emerged as era-defining figures. One is rewriting the script for interplanetary life and autonomous machines; the other is scripting the very language that machines now use to write back. But beneath the rockets, bots, and billion-dollar valuations lies a question both urgent and timeless: whose educational journey speaks more to this generation, and the next? The premise: Learning beyond the lecture hall In a world where traditional college degrees are losing their monopoly on success, Musk and Altman offer two distinct case studies on how far vision, curiosity, and risk-taking can carry you. Not merely as entrepreneurs, but as self-architected thinkers, their stories challenge the notion that diplomas dictate destiny. And yet, their respective narratives, one shaped by escape velocity, the other by algorithmic reinvention, reveal more than personal ambition. They reflect two competing philosophies of what education should be: An accelerant for bold invention, or a blueprint for structured disruption. Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like These Are The Most Beautiful Women In The World Undo by Taboola by Taboola Elon Musk: The degree collector who defied the syllabus Elon Musk's educational trajectory was less a straight line and more a launch sequence, each stop a fuel station en route to ignition. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk exhibited an early obsession with computers and engineering, coding his first video game by age 12. Education, for him, was not a finish line but a toolkit. He began at Queen's University in Canada and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, walking away with dual bachelor's degrees in Physics and Economics—fields that would later serve as scaffolding for SpaceX and Tesla. But the most revealing educational move Musk made was not one he completed. Enrolling in a PhD program in Applied Physics at Stanford, Musk dropped out within 48 hours, a footnote that speaks louder than any dissertation. That moment wasn't a rejection of knowledge, but of stagnation. He saw no value in waiting for permission to invent the future. Musk's lesson? Learn everything, but don't let anything keep you from building. Sam Altman: The dropout who reprogrammed Silicon Valley Then there's Sam Altman—quietly intense, intellectually omnivorous, and dangerously good at spotting what comes next. Long before he co-founded OpenAI or built ChatGPT into a global sensation, Altman was a precocious kid in St. Louis, disassembling his Macintosh for fun. He attended Stanford University for Computer Science but left after two years to launch Loopt, a geolocation app that fizzled financially but blazed his trail into tech's inner sanctum. His real education began after he dropped out. As President of Y Combinator, Altman became the oracle of early-stage innovation—nurturing Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe. He then pivoted into global AI leadership, co-founding OpenAI with a mission as ambitious as it is philosophical: ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Unlike Musk, Altman doesn't flaunt his dropout status. He doesn't need to. The way he's built OpenAI, Worldcoin, and his own brand of 'tech diplomacy' proves that he wasn't walking away from learning—he was walking towards a more useful version of it. Altman's lesson? Education is everywhere, especially when you leave the classroom. Two roads, one summit While Musk charges ahead with Martian colonization and neural interfaces, Altman is charting the evolution of digital consciousness. Musk imagines machines that move matter; Altman imagines machines that move meaning. And yet, their views on education converge in one quiet truth: school may start the fire, but it's your obsession that keeps it burning. Musk internalized the value of learning but refused to let school slow him down. Altman saw Stanford not as an institution to finish, but a springboard to jump from. Both treated education as modular—taking what served them and discarding the rest. So whose journey is more inspiring? The answer lies not in comparing GPAs or net worth, but in decoding the why behind their choices. If you believe that education should be structured, global, and multidisciplinary, Musk's journey offers the blueprint. His path assures you that yes, institutional knowledge matters—but only if it fuels your launch, not holds you back. If you see education as something lived rather than lectured, then Altman is your north star. His trajectory shows how a college dropout can still become an intellectual juggernaut—provided he's willing to build, break, and rewire systems from the ground up. In a way, both men are rebels—with a cause. And for students watching from the sidelines, the moral isn't 'drop out' or 'go all in.' It's this: Be relentlessly curious. Learn faster than the world changes. And most importantly—write your own curriculum. Because in the age of AI, Mars missions, and machine tutors, inspiration no longer belongs to degrees. It belongs to those brave enough to teach themselves what school never could. Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
Yahoo
28-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘I Prep for Survival': OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Worries About The ‘Nonzero' Chance The World Will End From ‘a Lethal Synthetic Virus'
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and prominent Silicon Valley investor, is widely known for his measured approach to both technological innovation and the complex risks that accompany it. His remark, 'I prep for survival. My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the world will end. After a Dutch lab modified the H5N1 bird-flu virus… the chance of a lethal synthetic virus being released… became, well, nonzero,' highlights not just casual speculation but a perspective rooted in expertise and firsthand engagement with issues at the crossroads of science, technology, and society. A Leader in Innovation and Caution Altman's career demonstrates an unusual blend of technological optimism and caution. Since co-founding the social location app Loopt and serving as president of the influential startup incubator Y Combinator, Altman has been a driving force behind transformative companies like Airbnb, Stripe, and DoorDash. His move to OpenAI positioned him at the forefront of artificial intelligence, where rapid advancements have fueled both hope for progress and debate over associated perils. More News from Barchart Warren Buffett Warns Inflation Turns Business Into 'The Upside-Down World of Alice in Wonderland' But Weeds Out 'Bad Businesses' Why GOOGL Stock May Be the Market's Next Big Winner Alphabet Posts Lower Free Cash Flow and FCF Margins - Is GOOGL Stock Overvalued? Get exclusive insights with the FREE Barchart Brief newsletter. Subscribe now for quick, incisive midday market analysis you won't find anywhere else. This dual outlook — a belief in technology's potential and awareness of its dangers — is central to Altman's leadership. As he influences the development of AI models now impacting millions globally, his concerns are not hypothetical. They spring from direct involvement in managing and mitigating emerging risks, including threats posed by biotechnology and synthetic biology. Context for Concern: The H5N1 Case Altman's reference to the Dutch lab's modification of the H5N1 bird-flu virus is rooted in a real scientific episode. In the early 2010s, researchers deliberately altered avian influenza to study its capacity for human transmission, sparking controversy and new anxieties about 'gain-of-function' research. This episode shifted expert discourse: the theoretical risk of engineered pandemics became more palpable, even if such events remain exceedingly rare. For Altman, whose social circles reportedly include leading technologists and scientists, such discussions are not mere conjecture. They inform both his advocacy for responsible innovation and his personal preparedness mindset. These views resonate within the broader context of market and societal trends, where leaders are increasingly called to account for their roles in shaping risks, from cybersecurity to pandemic threats. Authority Grounded in Experience As the steward of OpenAI — a firm whose technologies could reshape economies and everyday life — Altman's authority on such matters is widely recognized. Regulators, investors, and fellow executives pay close attention when he speaks about future dangers, whether they arise from advanced AI, synthetic viruses, or other disruptive forces. Altman's background in startup incubation, investment, and the management of frontier technologies has nurtured a deep understanding of the unpredictable intersections of science and society. His measured warnings about engineered biological risks, as well as other existential challenges, reflect not just personal caution but a broader ethos of vigilance that many now see as essential to responsible leadership in the technological age. In a shifting landscape, Altman's pronouncements about nonzero risks carry weight both for their substance and their source — reminding markets, policymakers, and innovative communities that resilience begins with acknowledging hard realities as well as bold ambitions. On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Sam Altman biographer Keach Hagey explains why the OpenAI CEO was ‘born for this moment'
In 'The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future,' Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey examines our AI-obsessed moment through one of its key figures — Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. Hagey begins with Altman's Midwest childhood, then takes readers through his career at startup Loopt, accelerator Y Combinator, and now at OpenAI. She also sheds new light on the dramatic few days when Altman was fired, then quickly reinstated, as OpenAI's CEO. Looking back at what OpenAI employees now call 'the Blip,' Hagey said the failed attempt to oust Altman revealed that OpenAI's complex structure — with a for-profit company controlled by a nonprofit board — is 'not stable.' And with OpenAI largely backing down from plans to let the for-profit side take control, Hagey predicted that this 'fundamentally unstable arrangement' will 'continue to give investors pause.' Does that mean OpenAI could struggle to raise the funds it needs to keep going? Hagey replied that it could 'absolutely' be an issue. 'My research into Sam suggests that he might well be up to that challenge,' she said. 'But success is not guaranteed.' In addition, Hagey's biography (also available as an audiobook on Spotify) examines Altman's politics, which she described as 'pretty traditionally progressive' — making it a bit surprising that he's struck massive infrastructure deals with the backing of the Trump administration. 'But this is one area where, in some ways, I feel like Sam Altman has been born for this moment, because he is a deal maker and Trump is a deal maker,' Hagey said. 'Trump respects nothing so much as a big deal with a big price tag on it, and that is what Sam Altman is really great at.' In an interview with TechCrunch, Hagey also discussed Altman's response to the book, his trustworthiness, and the AI 'hype universe.' This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You open the book by acknowledging some of the reservations that Sam Altman had about the project — this idea that we tend to focus too much on individuals rather than organizations or broad movements, and also that it's way too early to assess the impact of OpenAI. Did you share those concerns? Well, I don't really share them, because this was a biography. This project was to look at a person, not an organization. And I also think that Sam Altman has set himself up in a way where it does matter what kind of moral choices he has made and what his moral formation has been, because the broad project of AI is really a moral project. That is the basis of OpenAI's existence. So I think these are fair questions to ask about a person, not just an organization. As far as whether it's too soon, I mean, sure, it's definitely [early to] assess the entire impact of AI. But it's been an extraordinary story for OpenAI — just so far, it's already changed the stock market, it has changed the entire narrative of business. I'm a business journalist. We do nothing but talk about AI, all day long, every day. So in that way, I don't think it's too early. And despite those reservations, Altman did cooperate with you. Can you say more about what your relationship with him was like during the process of researching the book? Well, he was definitely not happy when he was informed about the book's existence. And there was a long period of negotiation, frankly. In the beginning, I figured I was going to write this book without his help — what we call, in the business, a write-around profile. I've done plenty of those over my career, and I figured this would just be one more. Over time, as I made more and more calls, he opened up a little bit. And [eventually,] he was generous to sit down with me several times for long interviews and share his thoughts with me. Has he responded to the finished book at all? No. He did tweet about the project, about his decision to participate with it, but he was very clear that he was never going to read it. It's the same way that I don't like to watch my TV appearances or podcasts that I'm on. In the book, he's described as this emblematic Silicon Valley figure. What do you think are the key characteristics that make him representative of the Valley and the tech industry? In the beginning, I think it was that he was young. The Valley really glorifies youth, and he was 19 years old when he started his first startup. You see him going into these meetings with people twice his age, doing deals with telecom operators for his first startup, and no one could get over that this kid was so smart. The other is that he is a once-in-a-generation fundraising talent, and that's really about being a storyteller. I don't think it's an accident that you have essentially a salesman and a fundraiser at the top of the most important AI company today, That ties into one of the questions that runs through the book — this question about Altman's trustworthiness. Can you say more about the concerns people seem to have about that? To what extent is he a trustworthy figure? Well, he's a salesman, so he's really excellent at getting in a room and convincing people that he can see the future and that he has something in common with them. He gets people to share his vision, which is a rare talent. There are people who've watched that happen a bunch of times, who think, 'Okay, what he says does not always map to reality,' and have, over time, lost trust in him. This happened both at his first startup and very famously at OpenAI, as well as at Y Combinator. So it is a pattern, but I think it's a typical critique of people who have the salesman skill set. So it's not necessarily that he's particularly untrustworthy, but it's part-and-parcel of being a salesman leading these important companies. I mean, there also are management issues that are detailed in the book, where he is not great at dealing with conflict, so he'll basically tell people what they want to hear. That causes a lot of sturm-und-drang in the management ranks, and it's a pattern. Something like that happened at Loopt, where the executives asked the board to replace him as CEO. And you saw it happen at OpenAI as well. You've touched on Altman's firing, which was also covered in a book excerpt that was published in the Wall Street Journal. One of the striking things to me, looking back at it, was just how complicated everything was — all the different factions within the company, all the people who seemed pro-Altman one day and then anti-Altman the next. When you pull back from the details, what do you think is the bigger significance of that incident? The very big picture is that the nonprofit governance structure is not stable. You can't really take investment from the likes of Microsoft and a bunch of other investors and then give them absolutely no say whatsoever in the governance of the company. That's what they have tried to do, but I think what we saw in that firing is how power actually works in the world. When you have stakeholders, even if there's a piece of paper that says they have no rights, they still have power. And when it became clear that everyone in the company was going to go to Microsoft if they didn't reinstate Sam Altman, they reinstated Sam Altman. In the book, you take the story up to maybe the end of 2024. There have been all these developments since then, which you've continued to report on, including this announcement that actually, they're not fully converting to a for-profit. How do you think that's going to affect OpenAI going forward? It's going to make it harder for them to raise money, because they basically had to do an about-face. I know that the new structure going forward of the public benefit corporation is not exactly the same as the current structure of the for-profit — it is a little bit more investor friendly, it does clarify some of those things. But overall, what you have is a nonprofit board that controls a for-profit company, and that fundamentally unstable arrangement is what led to the so-called Blip. And I think you would continue to give investors pause, going forward, if they are going to have so little control over their investment. Obviously, OpenAI is still such a capital intensive business. If they have challenges raising more money, is that an existential question for the company? It absolutely could be. My research into Sam suggests that he might well be up to that challenge. But success is not guaranteed. Like you said, there's a dual perspective in the book that's partly about who Sam is, and partly about what that says about where AI is going from here. How did that research into his particular story shape the way you now look at these broader debates about AI and society? I went down a rabbit hole in the beginning of the book, [looking] into Sam's father, Jerry Altman, in part because I thought it was striking how he'd been written out of basically every other thing that had ever been written about Sam Altman. What I found in this research was a very idealistic man who was, from youth, very interested in these public-private partnerships and the power of the government to set policy. He ended up having an impact on the way that affordable housing is still financed to this day. And when I traced Sam's development, I saw that he has long believed that the government should really be the one that is funding and guiding AI research. In the early days of OpenAI, they went and tried to get the government to invest, as he's publicly said, and it didn't work out. But he looks back to these great mid-20th century labs like Xerox PARC and Bell Labs, which are private, but there was a ton of government money running through and supporting that ecosystem. And he says, 'That's the right way to do it.' Now I am watching daily as it seems like the United States is summoning the forces of state capitalism to get behind Sam Altman's project to build these data centers, both in the United States and now there was just one last week announced in Abu Dhabi. This is a vision he has had for a very, very long time. My sense of the vision, as he presented it earlier, was one where, on the one hand, the government is funding these things and building this infrastructure, and on the other hand, the government is also regulating and guiding AI development for safety purposes. And it now seems like the path being pursued is one where they're backing away from the safety side and doubling down on the government investment side. Absolutely. Isn't it fascinating? You talk about Sam as a political figure, as someone who's had political ambitions at different times, but also somebody who has what are in many ways traditionally liberal political views while being friends with folks like — at least early on — Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. And he's done a very good job of navigating the Trump administration. What do you think his politics are right now? I'm not sure his actual politics have changed, they are pretty traditionally progressive politics. Not completely — he's been critical about things like cancel culture, but in general, he thinks the government is there to take tax revenue and solve problems. His success in the Trump administration has been fascinating because he has been able to find their one area of overlap, which is the desire to build a lot of data centers, and just double down on that and not talk about any other stuff. But this is one area where, in some ways, I feel like Sam Altman has been born for this moment, because he is a deal maker and Trump is a deal maker. Trump respects nothing so much as a big deal with a big price tag on it, and that is what Sam Altman is really great at. You open and close the book not just with Sam's father, but with his family as a whole. What else is worth highlighting in terms of how his upbringing and family shapes who he is now? Well, you see both the idealism from his father and also the incredible ambition from his mother, who was a doctor, and had four kids and worked as a dermatologist. I think both of these things work together to shape him. They also had a more troubled marriage than I realized going into the book. So I do think that there's some anxiety there that Sam himself is very upfront about, that he was a pretty anxious person for much of his life, until he did some meditation and had some experiences. And there's his current family — he just had a baby and got married not too long ago. As a young gay man, growing up in the Midwest, he had to overcome some challenges, and I think those challenges both forged him in high school as a brave person who could stand up and take on a room as a public speaker, but also shaped his optimistic view of the world. Because, on that issue, I paint the scene of his wedding: That's an unimaginable thing from the early '90s, or from the '80s when he was born. He's watched society develop and progress in very tangible ways, and I do think that that has helped solidify his faith in progress. Something that I've found writing about AI is that the different visions being presented by people in the field can be so diametrically opposed. You have these wildly utopian visions, but also these warnings that AI could end the world. It gets so hyperbolic that it feels like people are not living in the same reality. Was that a challenge for you in writing the book? Well, I see those two visions — which feel very far apart — actually being part of the same vision, which is that AI is super important, and it's going to completely transform everything. No one ever talks about the true opposite of that, which is, 'Maybe this is going to be a cool enterprise tool, another way to waste time on the internet, and not quite change everything as much as everyone thinks.' So I see the doomers and the boomers feeding off each other and being part of the same sort of hype universe. As a journalist and as a biographer, you don't necessarily come down on one side or the other — but actually, can you say where you come down on that? Well, I will say that I find myself using it a lot more recently, because it's gotten a lot better. In the early stages, when I was researching the book, I was definitely a lot more skeptical of its transformative economic power. I'm less skeptical now, because I just use it a lot more. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Melden Sie sich an, um Ihr Portfolio aufzurufen. Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten
TechCrunch
01-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Sam Altman biographer Keach Hagey explains why the OpenAI CEO was ‘born for this moment'
In 'The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future,' Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey examines our AI-obsessed moment through one of its key figures — Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. Hagey begins with Altman's Midwest childhood, then takes readers through his career at startup Loopt, accelerator Y Combinator, and now at OpenAI. She also sheds new light on the dramatic few days when Altman was fired, then quickly reinstated, as OpenAI's CEO. Looking back at what OpenAI employees now call 'the Blip,' Hagey said the failed attempt to oust Altman revealed that OpenAI's complex structure — with a for-profit company controlled by a nonprofit board — is 'not stable.' And with OpenAI largely backing down from plans to let the for-profit side take control, Hagey predicted that this 'fundamentally unstable arrangement' will 'continue to give investors pause.' Does that mean OpenAI could struggle to raise the funds it needs to keep going? Hagey replied that it could 'absolutely' be an issue. 'My research into Sam suggests that he might well be up to that challenge,' she said. 'But success is not guaranteed.' In addition, Hagey's biography (also available as an audiobook on Spotify) examines Altman's politics, which she described as 'pretty traditionally progressive' — making it a bit surprising that he's struck massive infrastructure deals with the backing of the Trump administration. 'But this is one area where, in some ways, I feel like Sam Altman has been born for this moment, because he is a deal maker and Trump is a deal maker,' Hagey said. 'Trump respects nothing so much as a big deal with a big price tag on it, and that is what Sam Altman is really great at.' Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW In an interview with TechCrunch, Hagey also discussed Altman's response to the book, his trustworthiness, and the AI 'hype universe.' This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You open the book by acknowledging some of the reservations that Sam Altman had about the project — this idea that we tend to focus too much on individuals rather than organizations or broad movements, and also that it's way too early to assess the impact of OpenAI. Did you share those concerns? Well, I don't really share them, because this was a biography. This project was to look at a person, not an organization. And I also think that Sam Altman has set himself up in a way where it does matter what kind of moral choices he has made and what his moral formation has been, because the broad project of AI is really a moral project. That is the basis of OpenAI's existence. So I think these are fair questions to ask about a person, not just an organization. As far as whether it's too soon, I mean, sure, it's definitely [early to] assess the entire impact of AI. But it's been an extraordinary story for OpenAI — just so far, it's already changed the stock market, it has changed the entire narrative of business. I'm a business journalist. We do nothing but talk about AI, all day long, every day. So in that way, I don't think it's too early. And despite those reservations, Altman did cooperate with you. Can you say more about what your relationship with him was like during the process of researching the book? Well, he was definitely not happy when he was informed about the book's existence. And there was a long period of negotiation, frankly. In the beginning, I figured I was going to write this book without his help — what we call, in the business, a write-around profile. I've done plenty of those over my career, and I figured this would just be one more. Over time, as I made more and more calls, he opened up a little bit. And [eventually,] he was generous to sit down with me several times for long interviews and share his thoughts with me. Has he responded to the finished book at all? No. He did tweet about the project, about his decision to participate with it, but he was very clear that he was never going to read it. It's the same way that I don't like to watch my TV appearances or podcasts that I'm on. In the book, he's described as this emblematic Silicon Valley figure. What do you think are the key characteristics that make him representative of the Valley and the tech industry? In the beginning, I think it was that he was young. The Valley really glorifies youth, and he was 19 years old when he started his first startup. You see him going into these meetings with people twice his age, doing deals with telecom operators for his first startup, and no one could get over that this kid was so smart. The other is that he is a once-in-a-generation fundraising talent, and that's really about being a storyteller. I don't think it's an accident that you have essentially a salesman and a fundraiser at the top of the most important AI company today, That ties into one of the questions that runs through the book — this question about Altman's trustworthiness. Can you say more about the concerns people seem to have about that? To what extent is he a trustworthy figure? Well, he's a salesman, so he's really excellent at getting in a room and convincing people that he can see the future and that he has something in common with them. He gets people to share his vision, which is a rare talent. There are people who've watched that happen a bunch of times, who think, 'Okay, what he says does not always map to reality,' and have, over time, lost trust in him. This happened both at his first startup and very famously at OpenAI, as well as at Y Combinator. So it is a pattern, but I think it's a typical critique of people who have the salesman skill set. So it's not necessarily that he's particularly untrustworthy, but it's part-and-parcel of being a salesman leading these important companies. I mean, there also are management issues that are detailed in the book, where he is not great at dealing with conflict, so he'll basically tell people what they want to hear. That causes a lot of sturm-und-drang in the management ranks, and it's a pattern. Something like that happened at Loopt, where the executives asked the board to replace him as CEO. And you saw it happen at OpenAI as well. You've touched on Altman's firing, which was also covered in a book excerpt that was published in the Wall Street Journal. One of the striking things to me, looking back at it, was just how complicated everything was — all the different factions within the company, all the people who seemed pro-Altman one day and then anti-Altman the next. When you pull back from the details, what do you think is the bigger significance of that incident? The very big picture is that the nonprofit governance structure is not stable. You can't really take investment from the likes of Microsoft and a bunch of other investors and then give them absolutely no say whatsoever in the governance of the company. That's what they have tried to do, but I think what we saw in that firing is how power actually works in the world. When you have stakeholders, even if there's a piece of paper that says they have no rights, they still have power. And when it became clear that everyone in the company was going to go to Microsoft if they didn't reinstate Sam Altman, they reinstated Sam Altman. In the book, you take the story up to maybe the end of 2024. There have been all these developments since then, which you've continued to report on, including this announcement that actually, they're not fully converting to a for-profit. How do you think that's going to affect OpenAI going forward? It's going to make it harder for them to raise money, because they basically had to do an about-face. I know that the new structure going forward of the public benefit corporation is not exactly the same as the current structure of the for-profit — it is a little bit more investor friendly, it does clarify some of those things. But overall, what you have is a nonprofit board that controls a for-profit company, and that fundamentally unstable arrangement is what led to the so-called Blip. And I think you would continue to give investors pause, going forward, if they are going to have so little control over their investment. Obviously, OpenAI is still such a capital intensive business. If they have challenges raising more money, is that an existential question for the company? It absolutely could be. My research into Sam suggests that he might well be up to that challenge. But success is not guaranteed. Like you said, there's a dual perspective in the book that's partly about who Sam is, and partly about what that says about where AI is going from here. How did that research into his particular story shape the way you now look at these broader debates about AI and society? I went down a rabbit hole in the beginning of the book, [looking] into Sam's father, Jerry Altman, in part because I thought it was striking how he'd been written out of basically every other thing that had ever been written about Sam Altman. What I found in this research was a very idealistic man who was, from youth, very interested in these public-private partnerships and the power of the government to set policy. He ended up having an impact on the way that affordable housing is still financed to this day. And when I traced Sam's development, I saw that he has long believed that the government should really be the one that is funding and guiding AI research. In the early days of OpenAI, they went and tried to get the government to invest, as he's publicly said, and it didn't work out. But he looks back to these great mid-20th century labs like Xerox PARC and Bell Labs, which are private, but there was a ton of government money running through and supporting that ecosystem. And he says, 'That's the right way to do it.' Now I am watching daily as it seems like the United States is summoning the forces of state capitalism to get behind Sam Altman's project to build these data centers, both in the United States and now there was just one last week announced in Abu Dhabi. This is a vision he has had for a very, very long time. My sense of the vision, as he presented it earlier, was one where, on the one hand, the government is funding these things and building this infrastructure, and on the other hand, the government is also regulating and guiding AI development for safety purposes. And it now seems like the path being pursued is one where they're backing away from the safety side and doubling down on the government investment side. Absolutely. Isn't it fascinating? You talk about Sam as a political figure, as someone who's had political ambitions at different times, but also somebody who has what are in many ways traditionally liberal political views while being friends with folks like — at least early on — Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. And he's done a very good job of navigating the Trump administration. What do you think his politics are right now? I'm not sure his actual politics have changed, they are pretty traditionally progressive politics. Not completely — he's been critical about things like cancel culture, but in general, he thinks the government is there to take tax revenue and solve problems. His success in the Trump administration has been fascinating because he has been able to find their one area of overlap, which is the desire to build a lot of data centers, and just double down on that and not talk about any other stuff. But this is one area where, in some ways, I feel like Sam Altman has been born for this moment, because he is a deal maker and Trump is a deal maker. Trump respects nothing so much as a big deal with a big price tag on it, and that is what Sam Altman is really great at. You open and close the book not just with Sam's father, but with his family as a whole. What else is worth highlighting in terms of how his upbringing and family shapes who he is now? Well, you see both the idealism from his father and also the incredible ambition from his mother, who was a doctor, and had four kids and worked as a dermatologist. I think both of these things work together to shape him. They also had a more troubled marriage than I realized going into the book. So I do think that there's some anxiety there that Sam himself is very upfront about, that he was a pretty anxious person for much of his life, until he did some meditation and had some experiences. And there's his current family — he just had a baby and got married not too long ago. As a young gay man, growing up in the Midwest, he had to overcome some challenges, and I think those challenges both forged him in high school as a brave person who could stand up and take on a room as a public speaker, but also shaped his optimistic view of the world. Because, on that issue, I paint the scene of his wedding: That's an unimaginable thing from the early '90s, or from the '80s when he was born. He's watched society develop and progress in very tangible ways, and I do think that that has helped solidify his faith in progress. Something that I've found writing about AI is that the different visions being presented by people in the field can be so diametrically opposed. You have these wildly utopian visions, but also these warnings that AI could end the world. It gets so hyperbolic that it feels like people are not living in the same reality. Was that a challenge for you in writing the book? Well, I see those two visions — which feel very far apart — actually being part of the same vision, which is that AI is super important, and it's going to completely transform everything. No one ever talks about the true opposite of that, which is, 'Maybe this is going to be a cool enterprise tool, another way to waste time on the internet, and not quite change everything as much as everyone thinks.' So I see, I see the doomers and the boomers feeding off each other and being part of the same sort of hype universe. As a journalist and as a biographer, you don't necessarily come down on one side or the other — but actually, can you say where you come down on that? Well, I will say that I find myself using it a lot more recently, because it's gotten a lot better. In the early stages, when I was researching the book, I was definitely a lot more skeptical of its transformative economic power. I'm less skeptical now, because I just use it a lot more.
The Guardian
16-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The Optimist by Keach Hagey review – inside the mind of the man who brought us ChatGPT
On 30 November 2022, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted the following, characteristically reserving the use of capital letters for his product's name: 'today we launched ChatGPT. try talking with it here: In a reply to himself immediately below, he added: 'language interfaces are going to be a big deal, i think'. If Altman was aiming for understatement, he succeeded. ChatGPT became the fastest web service to hit 1 million users, but more than that, it fired the starting gun on the AI wars currently consuming big tech. Everything is about to change beyond recognition, we keep being told, though no one can agree on whether that will be for good or ill. This moment is just one of many skilfully captured in Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey's biography of Altman, who, like his company, was then virtually unknown outside of the industry. He is a confounding figure throughout the book, which charts his childhood, troubled family life, his first failed startup Loopt, his time running the startup incubator Y Combinator, and the founding of OpenAI. Altman, short, slight, Jewish and gay, appears not to fit the typical mould of the tech bro. He is known for writing long, earnest essays about the future of humankind, and his reputation was as more of an arch-networker and money-raiser than an introverted coder in a hoodie. OpenAI, too, was supposed to be different from other tech giants: it was set up as a not-for-profit, committed by its charter to work collaboratively to create AI for humanity's benefit, and made its code publicly available. Altman would own no shares in it. He could commit to this, as he said in interviews, because he was already rich – his net worth is said to be around $1.5bn (£1.13bn) – as a result of his previous investments. It was also made possible because of his hyper-connectedness: as Hagey tells it, Altman met his software engineer husband Oliver Mulherin in the hot tub of PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel at 3am, when Altman, 29, was already a CEO, and Mulherin was a 21-year-old student. Thiel was a significant mentor to Altman, but not nearly so central to the story of OpenAI as another notorious Silicon Valley figure – Elon Musk. The Tesla and SpaceX owner was an initial co-founder and major donor to the not-for-profit version of OpenAI, even supplying its office space in its early years. That relationship has soured into mutual antipathy – Musk is both suing OpenAI and offering (somewhat insincerely) to buy it – as Altman radically altered the company's course. First, its commitment to releasing code publicly was ditched. Then, struggling to raise funds, it launched a for-profit subsidiary. Soon, both its staff and board worried the vision of AI for humanity was being lost amid a rush to create widely used and lucrative products. This leads to the book's most dramatic sections, describing how OpenAI's not-for-profit board attempted an audacious ousting of Altman as CEO, only for more than 700 of the company's 770 engineers to threaten to resign if he was not reinstated. Within five days, Altman was back, more powerful than ever. OpenAI has been toying with becoming a purely private company. And Altman turns out to be less of an anomaly in Silicon Valley than he once seemed. Like its other titans, he seems to be prepping for a potential doomsday scenario, with ranch land and remote properties. He is set to take stock in OpenAI after all. He even appears to share Peter Thiel's supposed interest in the potential for transfusions of young blood to slow down ageing. The Optimist serves to remind us that however unprecedented the consequences of AI models might be, the story of their development is a profoundly human one. Altman is the great enigma at its core, seemingly acting with the best of intentions, but also regularly accused of being a skilled and devious manipulator. For students of the lives of big tech's other founders, a puzzling question remains: in a world of 8 billion human beings, why do the stories of the people wreaking such huge change in our world end up sounding so eerily alike?
