He was not exactly sure what problems it will solve, but he argued that ChatGPT showed the first signs of what is possible. He said his company was building technology that would “solve some of our most pressing problems, really increase the standard of life and also figure out much better uses for human will and creativity.” His message had not changed much since 2019. Looking out over the water, we discussed, once again, the future of A.I. On a recent afternoon walk at the ranch, we stopped to rest at the edge of a small lake. Altman is a man who lives with contradictions, even at his getaway home: a vegetarian who raises beef cattle. The Cor-Ten steel that covers the outside walls is rusted to perfection.Īs you approach the property, the cows roam across both the green fields and gravel roads. Their 25-year-old house is remodeled to look both folksy and contemporary. But as Friday arrives, they move to the ranch, a quiet spot among the rocky, grass-covered hills. Altman and his partner, Oliver Mulherin, an Australian software engineer, share a house on Russian Hill in the heart of San Francisco. Altman’s weekend home is a ranch in Napa, Calif., where farmhands grow wine grapes and raise cattle.ĭuring the week, Mr. The warning, sent with the driving directions, was: “Watch out for cows.” It makes sense that he believes that the good thing will happen rather than the bad.īut if he’s wrong, there’s an escape hatch: In its contracts with investors like Microsoft, OpenAI’s board reserves the right to shut the technology down at any time. His life has been a fairly steady climb toward greater prosperity and wealth, driven by an effective set of personal skills - not to mention some luck. He believes that artificial intelligence will happen one way or another, that it will do wonderful things that even he can’t yet imagine and that we can find ways of tempering the harm it may cause. Altman pointed out that, as fate would have it, he and Oppenheimer share a birthday.) “Technology happens because it is possible,” he said. At one point during our dinner in 2019, he paraphrased Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan Project, who believed the atomic bomb was an inevitability of scientific progress. Altman is to understand that Silicon Valley will push this technology forward even though it is not quite sure what the implications will be. “If you’re equally upsetting both extreme sides, then you’re doing something right,” said OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman. But those closest to him believe this is as it should be. That means he is often criticized from all directions. As chief executive of OpenAI, he somehow embodies each of these seemingly contradictory views, hoping to balance the myriad possibilities as he moves this strange, powerful, flawed technology into the future. Louis, sits calmly in the middle of it all. Altman, a slim, boyish-looking, 37-year-old entrepreneur and investor from the suburbs of St. Still others spend much of their time arguing that the technology is never as powerful as everyone says it is, insisting that neither nirvana nor doomsday is as close as it might seem. Others believe it could destroy humanity. Some believe it will deliver a utopia where everyone has all the time and money ever needed. But few can agree on the future of this technology. researchers and pundits see ChatGPT as a fundamental technological shift, as significant as the creation of the web browser or the iPhone. Or even destroying the world as we know it. He also worried that the technologies his company was building could cause serious harm - spreading disinformation, undercutting the job market. would bring the world prosperity and wealth like no one had ever seen. effort to build an atomic bomb during the Second World War had been a “project on the scale of OpenAI - the level of ambition we aspire to.” As if he were chatting about tomorrow’s weather forecast, he said the U.S. Altman sipped a sweet wine in lieu of dessert, he compared his company to the Manhattan Project. It said Microsoft’s billion-dollar investment would help OpenAI build what was called artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., a machine that could do anything the human brain could do. Halfway through the meal, he held up his iPhone so I could see the contract he had spent the last several months negotiating with one of the world’s largest tech companies. At his suggestion, we had dinner at a small, decidedly modern restaurant not far from his home in San Francisco. I first met Sam Altman in the summer of 2019, days after Microsoft agreed to invest $1 billion in his three-year-old start-up, OpenAI.
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