Within a year, he became a Silicon Valley superstar. And his dismissal by Open AI, announced three days ago, on Friday, November 17, 2023, surprised everyone. Sam Altman is considered a pioneer and one of the leading figures in the world of artificial intelligence (AI). His departure from the company he founded is considered a real earthquake. Meanwhile, IT’s child prodigy has already found another target.
Open AI to Microsoft for “mission to continue”
Three days after his firing, Satya Nadella, the chairman of Microsoft, which invested billions of dollars in the computing infrastructure used by OpenAI, announced that he would hire him “to lead a new AI research group” along with other executives who later resigned. “Mission in progress,” the contact wrote on X (formerly Twitter), and you can bet that will be the case.
Sam Altman founded OpenAI (initially a non-profit foundation) in 2015 with the idea of developing artificial intelligence “safe and for the benefit of humanity,” as co-founder Elon Musk put it. He was fired in an interview with the New York Times in 2019. Artificial intelligence has been in the spotlight ever since millions of people adopted ChatGPT, OpenAI’s interface that can talk to humans in natural language and generate any text upon a simple request.
“He promised that as (artificial) intelligence is integrated everywhere, we will all have superpowers on demand,” Sam Altman said at a conference on Thursday, a day before his impeachment. The entrepreneur faced particularly strong concerns expressed about democracy and employment. “I have great empathy for people’s feelings, whatever their feelings are,” he assured AFP.
Who is Sam Altman and how did he become one of the most influential personalities on the planet?
Born in April 1985, the entrepreneur grew up in St Louis (Missouri). His life changes when he gets a Mac for his eighth birthday. He told Esquire in 2014 that the internet helped him experience his homosexuality “when he had no one to talk to about it.” He studied computer science at Stanford but left college early to create the Loopt social network, which was sold in 2005. In 2012 for $43 million. In 2014, he became head of Y Combinator, which invests in startups and provides consultancy to entrepreneurs in exchange for equity capital. In particular, the organization has worked with companies such as Airbnb, Stripe and Reddit.
Its chairman, Derek Greenfield, remembers a very “intense” person. “He thinks and speaks quickly, asks the tough questions, but always in an encouraging way,” he explains.
“He’s a (deep-thinking) thinker who tries to do things right at all costs,” says Insider Intelligence’s Jeremy Goldman.
Sam Altman, who is passionate about shorts and T-shirts, sports cars and airline pilots in his spare time, often gives the impression of being an introvert. He calls himself an optimist, but according to the New Yorker, he’s also a “survival expert”: He stores guns, gold, water and antibiotics on his estate in Big Sur, on the California coast. The prolific entrepreneur has personally invested in several companies, including $375 million in nuclear fusion startup Helion. “My vision for the future and why I love both Helion and OpenAI is that if we can truly reduce the cost of intelligence and the cost of energy, everyone’s quality of life will improve dramatically,” he said on CNBC in May.
In July, it officially launched Worldcoin, a new cryptocurrency with an authentication system based on human iris. The stated purpose: To reduce the risk of fraud and fraud in an industry where the use of pseudonyms is common. On a political level, he described Donald Trump as a “threat to national security” and organized a fundraiser for Democratic candidate Andrew Yang, who supports universal income, i.e., minimum welfare for all. automation.”
“It’s not complicated: We need technology to create more wealth and a policy that distributes it fairly,” Sam Altman wrote on his blog. “The technological progress we will achieve in the next hundred years will be far greater than the advances we have achieved since we controlled fire and invented the wheel,” he predicted in a 2021 blog post.
And his dismissal is already having consequences: More than 500 OpenAI employees are threatening to leave the company if the board does not resign and Sam Altman does not return. reports this Wall Street Magazine I am quoting some sources. OpenAI has 770 employees.
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Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
