Sam Altman

CEO of OpenAI. Previously president of Y Combinator (2014–2019). Co-founded Loopt. Investor in Helion, Retro Biosciences, and others. Survived a dramatic board-firing and reinstatement in November 2023, which became the most high-profile corporate governance episode in AI history.

Background

Joined OpenAI as board member and early advisor, then became CEO in 2019. Led OpenAI through the release of GPT-3, DALL-E, GPT-4, ChatGPT (the product that brought LLMs to mass market), Sora, and the o1 reasoning model series. Known for expansive public framing around compute infrastructure needs and AGI timelines.

Appearances in this wiki

Key positions

• Compute will be ‘the most precious commodity in the world’ — AGI requires energy and infrastructure investment at civilisational scale
• AGI timeline: ‘by the end of this decade, possibly somewhat sooner’
• The road to AGI will involve major power struggles — treats this as expected, not preventable
• Current models are ‘primitive’ relative to what’s coming — builds anticipation by deprecating present capabilities
• Prefers direct subscription business models over advertising for AI products
• Government should be AI’s insurer of last resort, never of first resort — backstops systemic risk but should not pre-emptively write AI safety policy or hold equity in AI companies
• Names a third, under-discussed AI safety risk beyond misuse and intentional misalignment: a single dominant model unintentionally shifting collective belief through continuous co-evolution with users, with no bad actor and no rogue intent involved