Tech whiz Sam Altman readily admits that artificial intelligence will eliminate jobs, but he surely didn’t expect his to be one of the first to disappear.
A super-intelligent computer could not have predicted the chaos that has engulfed Silicon Valley in recent days after Altman was fired from his post running the world’s most advanced AI company – and then bought out by Microsoft.
On Friday, the entrepreneur was ousted as chief executive of OpenAI, a nonprofit company best known for ChatGPT — the popular program that can write essays and even computer code — after the board of directors said he had not been “candid enough” about it. .
Investors and many OpenAI employees were furious at the firing of Altman, 38, and software giant Microsoft, by far the company’s biggest investor, announced Sunday evening that it had hired him to leading its new internal AI team.
Yesterday, Altman supporters turned their anger on the board that ousted him.
Tech whiz Sam Altman (pictured) freely admits that artificial intelligence will eliminate jobs, but he surely didn’t expect his to be one of the first to disappear
A super-intelligent computer could not have predicted the chaos that has engulfed Silicon Valley in recent days after Altman was fired from his post running the world’s most advanced AI company – then acquired by Microsoft (Stock image)
More than 500 of OpenAI’s 700 employees signed an open letter threatening to resign unless the board resigns and reinstates Altman as CEO, and Greg Brockman, who was also ousted, as CEO. president.
It is now claimed that some senior colleagues were concerned that Altman was moving too quickly to commercialize OpenAI’s advances.
He admitted he was eager to beat rivals to develop “artificial general intelligence”, a computer capable of performing any intellectual task a human can, which some scientists say poses a risk existential for our species.
Altman – whose net worth is estimated at $500m (£400m) – created OpenAI in 2015 with Elon Musk as a research organization (rather than a company in its own right) seeking to “advance digital intelligence… for the benefit of humanity.” ‘.
Alongside some of AI’s founding developers, Musk – the pioneer of the Tesla electric car and the world’s richest person – has raised fears that the technology could trigger a global cataclysm as super-intelligent machines take over humans and even wipe them out.
Musk left OpenAI after a falling out with Altman – who claims to be fully aware of the risks of AI – in 2018.
Musk recently complained that OpenAI had become a “maximum profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft,” a development that was “not good karma.” OpenAI is now valued at almost £69 billion.
Insiders say some OpenAI executives felt the same way as Musk and that one in particular, Ilya Sutskever, the company’s co-founder and chief scientist, was instrumental in ousting Altman .
But adding to the confusion, Sutskever said yesterday that he “deeply regrets” his involvement in the board’s decision.
As Silicon Valley debates whether AI is primarily a multi-billion dollar business opportunity or an extremely dangerous technology that must be continually verified, who is the man at the center of the digital storm?
Altman is in many ways the classic Silicon Valley geek – only supercharged. Slender and boyish-looking, he is an extremely bright and self-confident workaholic, notoriously impatient with those he believes are not as intelligent as he is.
More than 500 of OpenAI’s 700 employees signed an open letter threatening to resign unless the board resigns and reinstates Altman as CEO, and Greg Brockman, who was also ousted, as CEO. president. (Stock image)
Altman (pictured) is in many ways the classic Silicon Valley geek – only supercharged. Slender and boyish-looking, he is an extremely bright and self-confident workaholic, notoriously impatient with those he believes are not as intelligent as he is.
Growing up in St Louis, Missouri, he could program and take apart a Mac computer by age eight.
He claims to want to save the planet, citing curing cancer, nuclear fusion and supersonic airliners among his personal priorities.
“I think his goal is to shape the whole future,” says a former colleague. It is also widely believed – although he has denied it – that, like many Silicon Valley executives, he lies somewhere on the autism spectrum. The man seen as the public face of efforts to protect humanity from machines admits he’s not exactly a people person.
“I have no patience for things that don’t interest me: parties, most people,” he said in 2016.
He is also a “doomsday prepper”, admitting that super-intelligent computers are a potential cause of the collapse of global civilization he fears.
“I have weapons, gold, potassium iodide (used to treat radiation injuries), antibiotics, batteries, water, Israeli army gas masks and a large plot of land in Big Sur (California) that I can fly to.”
He told his parents he was gay at the age of 16, before announcing the news publicly at his private school after a Christian group boycotted a meeting on sexuality.
Earlier this year, Altman began a relationship with Oliver Mulherin, an Australian software engineer. They live in San Francisco.
For all his preparation for Doomsday, Altman is an AI optimist, predicting that it will “solve some of our most pressing problems, actually raise the standard of living, and also find much better uses for willpower and creativity human”.
Many in Silicon Valley think he’s the perfect person to do this, but they were also blown away by another Sam – cryptocurrency guru Sam Bankman-Fried.
While no one is suggesting Altman is a criminal, Bankman-Fried faces decades in prison after being convicted of a vast fraud.
