Inside the Mind of Sam Altman: How the OpenAI CEO Sees the World

It’s been a long time since a titan of tech grew to become a pop-culture icon. Steve Jobs stepped out on stage in his black turtleneck in 1998. Elon Musk set his sights on Mars in 2002. Mark Zuckerberg emerged from his Harvard dorm room in 2004.

And now, after years of stasis in Silicon Valley, now we have Sam Altman.

The cofounder and CEO of the chatbot pioneer OpenAI stands on the heart of what is shaping as much as be a trillion-dollar restructuring of the worldwide economic system. His picture — boyishly earnest, chronically monotonic, carelessly coiffed — is a throwback to the low-charisma, high-intelligence nerd kings of Silicon Valley’s glory days. And as together with his mythic-hero predecessors, persons are hanging on his each phrase. In September, when Altman went on a podcast referred to as “How I Write” and talked about his love of pens from Uniball and Muji, his genius life hack ignited the web. “OpenAI’s CEO solely makes use of 2 forms of pens to take notes,” Fortune reported — with a video of the podcast.

It’s simple to chortle at our desperation for crumbs of knowledge from Altman’s desk. But the notability of Altman’s notetaking capacity is a significant signifier. His concepts on productiveness and entrepreneurship — to not point out all the things from his tackle science fiction to his alternative of nutritional vitamins — have develop into salient not simply to the worlds of tech and enterprise, however to the broader tradition. The new mayor-elect of San Francisco, as an example, put Altman on his transition workforce. And have you ever observed that numerous tech bros are beginning to put on sweaters with the sleeves rolled up? A Jobsian singularity might be upon us.

But the eye to Altman’s pen preferences raises a bigger query: What does his mindset in the end imply for the remainder of us? How will the way in which he thinks form the world we reside in?

To reply that query, I’ve spent weeks taking a Talmudic dive into the Gospel According to Sam Altman. I’ve pored over lots of of hundreds of phrases he is uttered in weblog posts, convention speeches, and classroom appearances. I’ve dipped right into a decade’s value of interviews he is given — possibly 40 hours or so. I will not declare to have taken something greater than a core pattern of the huge Altmanomicon. But immersing myself in his public pronouncements has given me a brand new appreciation for what makes Altman tick. The revolutionary god-kings of the previous had been rule-breaking disruptors or destroyers of genres. The new man, in contrast, represents the apotheosis of what his predecessors wrought. Distill the previous three a long time of tech tradition and enterprise observe right into a super-soldier serum, inject it into the closest scrawny, pale arm, and also you get Sam Altman — Captain Silicon Valley, defender of the religion.

Let’s begin with the vibes. Listening to Altman for hours on finish, I got here away pondering that he looks as if a reasonably good man. Unlike Jobs, who bestrode the stage at Apple occasions dropping one-more-things like a modern-day Prometheus, Altman would not spew ego in all places. In interviews, he comes throughout as assured however laid again. He typically begins his sentences with “so,” his have an effect on as flat as his native Midwest. He additionally has a Midwesterner’s amiability, one way or the other seeming to agree with the premise of virtually any query, regardless of how idiotic. When Joe Rogan requested Altman whether or not he thinks AI would someday find a way, by way of mind chips, to edit human personalities to be much less macho, Altman not solely let it trip, he turned the interview round and began asking Rogan questions on himself.

Another distinction with the tech gurus of yore: Altman says he would not care a lot about cash. His shock firing at OpenAI, he says, taught him to worth his loving relationships — a “recompilation of values” that was “a blessing in disguise.” In the spring, Altman instructed a Stanford entrepreneur class that his money-, power-, and status-seeking phases had been all within the rearview. “At this level,” Altman stated, “I really feel pushed by desirous to do one thing helpful and fascinating.”

Altman is even trying into common fundamental revenue — giving cash to everybody, straight out, no strings connected. That’s partly as a result of he thinks synthetic intelligence will make paying jobs as uncommon as coelacanths. But it is also a product of bizarre self-awareness. Altman, famously, was within the “top notch” of Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s ur-incubator of tech startups. Now that he is succeeded, he recollects that grant cash as a form of UBI — a present that he says prevented him from ending up at Goldman Sachs. Rare is the colossus of business who acknowledges that anybody apart from himself tugged on these bootstraps.

Altman’s seeming rejection of wealth is a key ingredient of his mythos. On a latest look on the “All-In” podcast, the hosts questioned Altman’s lack of fairness in OpenAI, saying it made him appear much less reliable — no pores and skin within the recreation. Altman defined that the corporate was arrange as a nonprofit, so fairness wasn’t a factor. He actually wished he’d gotten some, he added, if solely to cease the countless stream of questions on his lack of fairness. Charming! (Under Altman’s watch, OpenAI is shifting to a for-profit mannequin.)

Altman did not get the place he’s as a result of he made a fortune in tech. Y Combinator, the place he began out, was the launchpad for monsters like Reddit, Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, DoorDash, and dozens of different firms you have by no means heard of, as a result of they by no means obtained large. Loopt, the corporate Altman based at 20 years outdated, was within the second class. Yet regardless of that, the Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham named him president of the incubator in 2014. It wasn’t due to what Altman had achieved — Loopt burned by $30 million earlier than it folded — however as a result of he embodies two key Silicon Valley mindsets. First, he emphasizes the necessity for founders to specific absolute certainty in themselves, it doesn’t matter what anybody says. And second, he believes that scale and progress can remedy each downside. To Altman, these two tenets aren’t simply the way in which to launch a profitable startup — they’re the dual generators that energy all societal progress. More than any of his predecessors, he overtly preaches Silicon Valley’s nearly non secular perception in certainty and scale. They are the important thing to his mindset — and possibly to our AI-enmeshed future.

In 2020, Altman wrote a weblog put up referred to as “The Strength of Being Misunderstood.” It was primarily a paean to the concept of believing you might be proper about all the things. Altman urged that individuals spend an excessive amount of time worrying about what different individuals take into consideration them, and may as an alternative “commerce being short-term low-status for being long-term high-status.” Being misunderstood by most individuals, he went on, is definitely a energy, not a weak point — “so long as you might be proper.”

For Altman, being proper will not be the identical factor as being good. When he talks about who the most effective founders are and what makes a profitable enterprise, he would not appear to suppose it issues what their merchandise truly do or how they have an effect on the world. Back in 2015, Altman instructed Kara Swisher that Y Combinator did not actually care concerning the particular pitches it funded — the founders simply wanted to have “uncooked intelligence.” Their precise concepts? Not so vital.

“The concepts are so malleable,” Altman stated. “Are these founders decided, are they obsessed with this, do they appear dedicated to it, have they actually thought of all the problems they’re more likely to face, are they good communicators?” Altman wasn’t betting on their concepts — he was betting on their capacity to promote their concepts, even when they had been unhealthy. That’s one of many causes, he says, that Y Combinator did not have a coworking house — so there was no place for individuals to inform one another that their concepts sucked.

Altman says founding a startup is one thing individuals ought to do after they’re younger — as a result of it requires turning work-life stability right into a pile of radioactive slag.

“There are founders who do not take no for a solution and founders who bend the world to their will,” Altman instructed a startups class at Stanford, “and people are those who’re within the fund.” What actually issues, he added, is that founders “have the braveness of your convictions to maintain doing this unpopular factor since you perceive the way in which the world goes in a manner that different individuals do not.”

One instance Altman cites is Airbnb, whose founders hit on their large concept after they maxed out their bank cards attempting to start out a special firm and needed to lease out a spare room for further money. He additionally derives his disdain for self-doubt from Elon Musk, who as soon as gave him a tour of SpaceX. “The factor that sticks in reminiscence,” Altman wrote in 2019, “was the look of absolute certainty on his face when he talked about sending massive rockets to Mars. I left pondering ‘huh, so that is the benchmark for what conviction appears like.'”

This, Altman says, is why founding a startup is one thing individuals ought to do after they’re younger — as a result of it requires turning work-life stability right into a pile of radioactive slag. “Have nearly an excessive amount of self-belief,” he writes. “Almost to the purpose of delusion.”

So if Altman believes that certainty in an concept is extra vital than the concept itself, how does he measure success? What determines whether or not a founder seems to be “proper,” as he places it? The reply, for Altman, is scale. You begin an organization, and that firm winds up with plenty of customers and makes some huge cash. A good suggestion is one which scales, and scaling is what makes an concept good.

For Altman, this is not only a enterprise mannequin. It’s a philosophy. “You get really wealthy by proudly owning issues that enhance quickly in worth,” he wrote in a 2019 weblog put up referred to as “How to Be Successful.” It would not matter what — actual property, pure sources, fairness in a enterprise. And the way in which to make issues enhance quickly in worth is “by making issues individuals need at scale.” In Altman’s view, large progress is not only a method to preserve traders glad. It’s the proof that confirms one’s unwavering perception within the concept.

Artificial intelligence itself, after all, relies on scale — on the ever-expanding information that AI feeds on. Altman stated at a convention that OpenAI’s fashions would double or triple in dimension yearly, which he took to imply they will finally attain full sentience. To him, that simply goes to indicate the efficiency of scale as an idea — it has the power to imbue a machine with true intelligence. “It feels to me like we simply discovered a brand new truth of nature or science or no matter you need to name it,” Altman stated on “All-In.” “I do not imagine this actually, however it’s like a religious level — that intelligence is an emergent property of matter, and that is like a rule of physics or one thing.”

Altman says he would not truly know the way clever, or superintelligent, AI will get — or what it can suppose when it begins pondering. But he believes that scale will present the solutions. “We will hit limits, however we do not know the place these shall be,” he stated on Ezra Klein’s podcast. “We’ll additionally uncover new issues which are actually highly effective. We do not know what these shall be both.” You simply belief that the exponential progress curves will take you someplace you need to go.

In all of the recordings and writings I’ve sampled, Altman speaks solely hardly ever about issues he likes exterior startups and AI. In the canon I discover few books, no films, little visible artwork, not a lot meals or drink. Asked what his favourite fictional utopias are, Altman mentions “Star Trek” and the Isaac Asimov quick story “The Last Question,” which is about a man-made intelligence ascending to godhood over eons and creating a brand new universe. Back in 2015, he stated “The Martian,” the story of a marooned astronaut hacking his manner again to Earth, was eighth on his stack of bedside books. Altman has additionally praised the Culture collection by Iain Banks, a couple of far-future galaxy of abundance and house communism, the place people and AIs reside collectively in concord.

Fiction, to Altman, seems to carry no particularly mysterious human ingredient of creativity. He as soon as acknowledged that the most recent model of ChatGPT wasn’t superb at storytelling, however he thought it was going to get significantly better. “You present it a bunch of examples of what makes story and what makes a foul story, which I do not suppose is magic,” he stated. “I believe we actually perceive that properly now. We simply have not tried to do this.”

It’s additionally not clear to me whether or not Altman listens to music — at the least not for pleasure. On the “Life in Seven Songs” podcast, many of the favourite songs Altman cited had been from his highschool and faculty days. But his prime decide was Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. “This grew to become one thing I began listening to after I labored,” he stated. “It’s an awesome stage of pleasure, however it’s not distracting. You can take heed to it very loudly and really quietly.” Music might be nice, however it should not get in the way in which of productiveness.

For Altman, even drug use is not leisure. In 2016, a “New Yorker” profile described Altman as nervous to the purpose of hypochondria. He would phone his mom — a doctor — to ask whether or not a headache is likely to be most cancers. He as soon as wrote that he “used to hate criticism of any kind and actively prevented it,” and he has stated he was “a really anxious and sad particular person.” He relied on caffeine to be productive, and used marijuana to sleep.

Now, although? He’s “very calm.” He would not sweat criticism anymore. If that sounds just like the optimistic end result of years of remedy, properly — type of. Last summer time, Altman instructed Joe Rogan that an expertise with “psychedelic remedy” had been some of the vital turning factors in his life. “I struggled with all types of hysteria and different unfavorable issues,” he stated, “and to observe all of that go away — I got here again a completely totally different particular person, and I used to be like, ‘I’ve been lied to.'”

He went into extra element on the Songs podcast in September. “I believe psychedelic experiences might be completely unimaginable, and those which were completely life-changing for me have been those the place you go journey to a information, and it is psychedelic medication,” he stated. As for his nervousness, “when you had instructed me a one-weekend-long retreat in Mexico was going to alter that, I might have stated, ‘completely not.'” Psychedelics had been simply one other life hack to resolve emotional turmoil. (I reached out to Altman and supplied to debate my observations with him, within the hopes he’d appropriate any locations the place he felt I used to be misreading him. He declined.)

AI began attracting mainstream consideration solely prior to now couple of years, however the subject is far older than that — and Altman cofounded OpenAI practically a decade in the past. So he is been requested what “synthetic basic intelligence” is and when we will get it so typically, and for therefore lengthy, that his solutions typically embrace a whiff of frustration. These days, he says that AGI is when the machine is as good because the median human — select your individual worth for “good” and “median” there — and “superintelligence” is when it is smarter than all of us meatbags squished collectively. But ask him what AI is for, and he is so much much less certain-seeming at present than he was.

There’s the power to put in writing code, positive. Altman additionally says AI will sometime be a tutor nearly as good as these out there to wealthy individuals. It’ll do consultations on medical points, possibly assist with “productiveness” (by which he appears to imply the velocity at which an individual can be taught one thing, versus having to look it up). And he stated scientists had been emailing him to say that the most recent versio of ChatGPT has elevated the speed at which they’ll do “nice science” (by which he appears to imply the velocity at which they’ll run evaluations of potential new medication).

And what would you or I do with a superintelligent buddy? “What if all people on the earth had a very competent firm of 10,000 workers?” Altman as soon as requested. “What would we be capable of create for one another?” He was being rhetorical — however regardless of the reply seems to be, he is positive it is going to be definitely worth the great price in power and sources it can take to realize it. As OpenAI-type companies broaden and proliferate, he says, “the marginal price of intelligence and the marginal price of power are going to pattern quickly towards zero.” He has lately speculated that intelligence shall be extra beneficial than cash, and that as an alternative of common fundamental revenue, we must always give individuals common fundamental compute — which is to say, free entry to AI. In Altman’s estimation, not realizing what AI will do does not imply we should not go forward and restructure all of society to serve its wants.

And moreover, AI will not take lengthy to offer us the reply. Superintelligence, Altman has promised, is simply “hundreds of days” away — half a decade, at minimal. But, he says, the clever machine that emerges most likely will not be an LLM chatbot. It will use a completely totally different technical structure that nobody, not even OpenAI, has invented but.

That, at its core, displays an unreconstructed, dot-com-boom mindset. Altman would not know what the longer term will carry, however he is in a rush to get there. No matter what you concentrate on AI — productiveness multiplier, financial engine, hallucinating plagiarism machine, Skynet — it isn’t onerous to think about what may occur, for good and unwell, when you mix Altman’s absolute certainty with monstrous, unregulated scale. It solely took a few a long time for Silicon Valley to go from cumbersome laptop mainframes to the web, smartphones, and same-day supply — together with all of the disinformation, political polarization, and generalized nervousness that got here with them.

But that is the form of ballistic arc of progress that Altman is promoting. He is, at coronary heart, an evangelist for the Silicon Valley manner. He did not construct the tech behind ChatGPT; crucial factor he ever constructed and scaled is Y Combinator, an old style enterprise community of human beings. His wealth comes from investments in different individuals’s firms. He’s a macher, not a maker.

In a way, Altman has codified the beliefs and intentions of the tech large pictures who preceded him. He’s simply extra clear about it than they had been. Did Steve Jobs mission utter certainty? Sure. But he did not give interviews concerning the significance of projecting utter certainty; he simply launched killer laptops, blocked rivals from utilizing his working system, and constructed the app retailer. Jeff Bezos did not discovered Amazon by telling the general public he deliberate to scale his firm to the purpose that it will pocket 40 cents of each greenback spent on-line; he simply began mailing individuals books. But Altman is on the report. When he says he is completely positive ChatGPT will change the world, we all know that he thinks CEOs have to say they’re completely positive their product will change the world. His predecessors in Silicon Valley wrote the playbook for Big Tech. Altman is simply studying it aloud. He’s touting a future he hasn’t constructed but, together with the promise that he can will it into existence — no matter it’s going to wind up trying like — one podcast look at a time.

Adam Rogers is a senior correspondent at Business Insider.