The name Sam Altman has been prominent in the Silicon Valley technology circle for almost ten years, but it was only recently that this name began to become a household name.
No one would have thought that this young man would become the leader in the world's AI competition at the age of 38.
If you finish reading his story, you will probably feel like this: This world still belongs to Sheniu.
As a social cow, Altman has many legendary life experiences.
According to a recent long article published by Insider, he played chess with billionaire Peter Thiel, hosted a St. Barts wedding for investor Keith Rabois, and had a relationship with Stripe co-founder John Collison. Discuss driving tips, and nine-figure deals with venture capitalist Lachy Groom.
In 2017, Rahul Vohra, the founder of the smash hit mini program Superhuman, suddenly learned that Google planned to shut down a service, which would lead to the destruction of Superhuman.
When Vohra panicked, Altman told him that he was about to attend a party with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and "I'll see what I can do."
The next day, a Google executive contacted Vohra to tell him the problem had been resolved and to apologize.
Yes, in Sheniu’s world, solving problems is so easy.
Altman’s living room has become a petri dish for new technologies and companies.
He was always "trying to bring smart people together," the co-founders said.
On the weekends, Altman would fly to Napa and Tulum with groups of friends and colleagues, or eat pizza at his home in San Francisco. There, people talked about everything from cancer research to nuclear war.
The famous OpenAI was born from a series of dinners.
All social efforts have been rewarded.
## Altman, who has made more than 400 investments in nine years, often walks or calls the founders.
Altman has a soft spot for even the most implausible projects. He has invested in products ranging from the fastest commercial airliners to brain implants.
And his most expensive side business is nuclear fusion energy.
Researchers have shunned the research for decades, but Altman simply invested $375 million in fusion company Helion to bring the technology to market faster.
A doctor named Jeeshan Chowdhury wanted to create a company to treat addiction. Few investors were interested until Altman handed him a check.
This year, Journey Colab, a company founded by Chowdhury, has projects ready to enter the clinical trial stage.
Right: Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott
Idealists in Silicon Valley?In 2015, when Altman and Musk co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit research organization, the purpose was to "make AI benefit all mankind as much as possible, without considering profitability."
How to benefit mankind? First, you need to create an AI.
As the former president of Y Combinator, Altman gives the impression that he is trustworthy.
Y Combinator provides funding to startups. Altman has invested his personal wealth in clean energy and medical treatment companies, hoping to delay aging for all mankind.
In March, when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, Altman provided loans to many companies that could not pay wages.
Rewind AI CEO Dan Siroker said this after raising funds from Altman: "In a world full of cruelty, transactions and profit-seeking people, he is a true missionary. One."
If Musk is a fringe person in Silicon Valley, then Altman is an idealist.
Today, Altman's influence and power have only grown. He sits on the boards of seven companies, and while ChatGPT's success has garnered worldwide attention, Altman has been named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people.
Will OpenAI start the next industrial revolution for mankind, or will it be the end of the world?
In the atmosphere of crazy debate around the world, Altman seemed very calm.
"We can have a better world. Something needs to happen for it to happen. I like this feeling of being useful."
Some people compare Altman to Icarus, who uses wings made of wax and feathers to fly high in the sky. In this regard, Altman admitted, "We are indeed working on something that we do not fully understand."
Despite this, he still firmly believes that fear should not hinder human progress.
"This is Altman's world," said noted technology developer Ric Burton, "and we all live in it."
As a teenager, Altman dreamed of working at Google. So he went to Stanford University, the alma mater of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
While working as an undergraduate researcher at Stanford University’s AI Lab, Altman met Sebastian Thrun, founder of Google’s Moon Landing Factory.
Altman's intelligence and unusual curiosity left a deep impression on Thrun.
Right: Sebastian Thrun
After graduating from his sophomore year, Altman chose to drop out of school to develop an application called Loopt, which allows users to know the real-time location of their friends.
It was at that time that Paul Graham founded Y Combinator. Altman became one of the first eight entrepreneurs funded by Y Combinator.
In the end, Loopt did not live up to expectations, and Saltman sold it to an online bank for $43 million. By some standards, it was a failed startup, as it only doubled what investors invested.
But what Altman gained was a surge in popularity.
And often socializing with big guys has also rewarded Altman. In 2014, Graham wanted to retire and chose Altman, then 28, to take over Y Combinator.
During Altman’s tenure, Y Combinator experienced hypergrowth, going from investing in a dozen startups per batch to Hundreds.
Swelling together is Altman’s ambition.
He led Y Combinator to raise a venture fund, taught a class at Stanford University, established a research lab to study universal basic income, and invested $1,000 of his own money Ten thousand U.S. dollars.
In 2015, OpenAI was born.
In Altman’s innovation empire, OpenAI is the crown jewel.
ChatGPT’s instant success made OpenAI the most famous startup company in the world.
## Altman is also very frank about the risks of super AI to humans. He admitted that if AI could become smarter on its own, it could pose a huge threat to human survival.
From the beginning, OpenAI has been very different from other companies in developing AI. OpenAI’s algorithms are more focused on creating specific tasks.
In 2019, OpenAI released the GPT-2 model, but they intentionally limited the model because they were worried that if the language model becomes larger, it will be used to produce "deception" Sexual, biased or abusive language."
As a result, in 2022, they suddenly went in the opposite direction, took a gamble, and urgently launched ChatGPT, and within a month the monthly active users exceeded 100 million.
In this regard, Altman believes that launching a product is the most critical step in understanding and shaping product capabilities. After all, "There is a limit to what we can learn in the laboratory."
Obviously, after many years of In his crazy social experience, Altman has a richer and deeper understanding of the human world than a technical nerd. This is also one of the key factors that enabled ChatGPT to come out ahead of schedule.
Jim Fan, Nvidia’s chief AI science academy, said that if we are really on the edge of the next industrial revolution, then the more people exposed to these AIs, the more people will be able to Share the benefits of technology.
But the controversy never stopped.
Many people are wondering whether OpenAI’s preconceptions are appropriate for a product with such a far-reaching impact. A former OpenAI employee said, "You are helping AI replace your job, which is essentially feeding a beast."
is more powerful than GPT-4 in calling for a moratorium on training Altman expressed his understanding of AI's letter, "I often worry about the same problem."
The New York Times Altman has been called the "ChatGPT King"
# However, some people do not believe Altman's remarks at all.
In 2021, Anthropic was established. The artificial intelligence company, founded by 11 former OpenAI employees, aims to create "safer, bootable and more reliable models."
Most of its team members have been deeply involved in many key topics of OpenAI, such as GPT-3, multi-modal neurons in neural networks, reinforcement learning that introduces human preferences, etc.
In March this year, Claude, an AI chatbot created by Anthropic, officially issued applications.
However, it remains to be seen whether Anthropic, which aims to raise $5 billion over the next four years, can withstand the market pressure that its founders believe is corroding OpenAI.
Just like him Like his colleagues in Silicon Valley, Altman is also obsessed with "extending his life." That sense of urgency intensified especially when his father passed away in 2018.
Of course, Altman’s goal is not to gain immortality, but to live “10 more years of healthy, energetic life.”
A long time ago, scientists actually conducted experiments where young and old mice were sutured together so that they could share their blood systems, which allowed the old mice to recover. Partial energy.
In 2020, researchers discovered that they could replace the plasma of old mice with saline and albumin to achieve a similar Effect. In other words, the cause of aging lies in old blood. Just by diluting it, it is possible to realize the long-cherished wish of delaying aging.
Altman was very concerned about this, and soon attracted Joe Betts, who had been a part-time partner at Y Combinator. -Lacroix founded Retro Biosciences.
Even the US$180 million the company received in the latest round of financing was all invested by Altman himself.
In addition, Altman has backed a company that hopes to enable two men to conceive a child and another A company that provides multigene embryo screening.
Over the years, there is an "anecdote" about Altman that has been spread a lot: "On a private plane, the pilot suddenly lost the ability to move, and Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, quickly stood up He came out and took over control of the plane, eventually bringing everyone safely to the ground."
Now, Altman has become famous all over the world, the media reported on him, and Bill Gates recognized him His every word on Twitter is closely followed by 1.6 million fans.
Is this hype? Or is someone trying to suck up to the most powerful man in Silicon Valley? Or are we wishful thinking and forcing a story of heroism on him?
In this regard, Altman said: "It is definitely exaggerated! Many stories will become... It’s getting more and more outrageous.”
Indeed, as Altman said, once the story and technology leave your hands, sooner or later they will become unrecognizable.
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