Sam Altman: ChatGPT and the AI revolution

23:27So a lot of people claiming to be AI enabled or cutting edge of AI are not at all. Oh, wow. I love that term, AI washing. So OpenAI, this billion dollar AI project was from one of the biggest names in tech, and it made people very excited. Yeah, but the big money needed was proving beyond a non-profit organisation. Because the costs were really high, right? AI is a specialist field. you had to hire the world's best AI researchers. They want multi-million dollar salaries. Cloud computing power alone, so the power it takes to fuel AI development, also costs tens of millions of dollars. And Elon Musk felt OpenAI was actually falling behind Google, which was developing its own take on AI, and that it would not be relevant without a dramatic change, in his words, in execution and resources.

24:14And he wanted Tesla to buy OpenAI, but the board refused, so Elon left OpenAI, but something was going to have to change. And during this time, Sam had been working simultaneously on Y Combinator and OpenAI, so doing two jobs at once. But OpenAI was taking so much of his time, the board at Y Combinator asked him, listen, you've got to choose, you've got to choose between these two companies. And Sam chose OpenAI, leaving Y Combinator as president in 2019 to concentrate on being CEO of OpenAI. But importantly, he keeps hold of his Y Combinator investments, so he still keeps the investments that he's got.

24:46However, Sam did agree with Elon Musk on one thing. He felt that OpenAI was falling behind and he had this kind of grand solution for it. He wanted to create a for-profit organisation, OpenAI LP, that exists within the larger company's structure. Although this is important, the non-profit board remained in control. Okay, so you've got a non-profit board, but you've got a division of the company which can make money in order to fund the kind of things that OpenAI was set up to do. So once they've made this change, Sam quickly raised a billion dollars in investment from Microsoft. And becoming a for-profit was not an uncontroversial move, and which we'll discuss later.

25:25But Sam also claims to have had no equity in OpenAI and to draw a salary of just $65 ,000 as CEO. So he's basically trying to say, I'm not making any money from this. Right. This is not personal enrichment that's motivating me here. So OpenAI clearly isn't the way that Sam Altman is going to become a billionaire, but it is how he becomes famous and why we're covering him. So let's continue the OpenAI story. Now, cast your mind back to the end of 2022, when all of a sudden, everyone started talking about something called ChatGPT. And this was OpenAI's huge breakthrough. Yeah, as I say, people have been droning on about AI's impact on the world for years and years and years.

26:05And it suddenly arrived in real form in ChatGPT, which you could go onto the internet to use. You could download it onto your phone. You type in questions. And it's something which is more than a glorified search engine. It's something that can actually figure out by scraping information whenever it can help you write an essay. It can solve novel, logical problems. You know, the first time I ever used it, I was blown away. I couldn't believe what it was doing. I think the thing that really blew my mind about ChatGPT, you can type in questions and it'll answer you. But something about it feels like you're talking to someone else and someone else is responding in real time, which, you know, just Google searching something doesn't have that feeling.

26:47No, it certainly passes what is called the Turing test. And the Turing test was named after the famous guy who broke the Enigma code during the war, Alan Turing, brilliant mathematician. And he said the test of artificial intelligence is could you tell the difference between talking to the computer or talking to a person? And I think sometimes on the chat GPT, it is very, very hard. If someone told you there was a person at the other end of it, you would believe it. When it launched, Sam immediately became a household name and also someone the world really listened to, right? In fact, in spring 2023, he did a 22 country world tour meeting world leaders, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron, French President, the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, German Chancellor Olaf Schultz, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, and many others.

27:37And Sam said for many people, 2023 was the year they started taking AI seriously. So Sam Altman is now becoming a household name. But then a dramatic twist occurs in the story. Because on a Thursday in November of that very year, a year after ChatGPT's launch, Sam receives a text from an OpenAI board member to join a Google Meet the next day. And this Google Meet unleashed chaos. A chaotic power struggle at OpenAI that was literally in the headlines around the world. Because on the Friday, Sam was fired as the chief executive of OpenAI. Yes, it kicked off this chaotic five-day power struggle. You can really see this as the culmination of this battle between two ideologies within OpenAI.

28:24Yeah, one side, essentially the Silicon Valley techno optimist, they strongly supported the for-profit model. And on the other side was the bunch fearful of AI, probably the founding reason for establishing open AI. They wanted to be much more cautious. They believed the non-profit model was safer. And Sam, it seems, was in the former camp, the for-profit side. And the release of ChatGPT had exacerbated the division between these two sides because when you release ChatGPT into the world, immediately other companies were like, hey, we could make a lot of money using this. Yeah. So on that Friday, he was fired by the non-profit board who announced that a deliberative review process had found Sam was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.

29:06That was the language they used. Pretty vague. But that lack of candidness led it to lose confidence in his ability to be OpenAI's CEO. Is it actually that unusual for boards to sack their CEOs? No, it's not that unusual. I mean, if a CEO is going to get sacked, and they do get sacked, it's the board that sacks them. That's the board's job. The board's job is to hire and fire CEOs, one of their many jobs. And so it's not unusual. It is quite unusual for a company which is becoming this successful and high profile. They must have known this would be a huge shock through the system. Actually, some of OpenAI's investors only found out that he was being fired through social media and it basically spooked them.

29:51Yeah, over the next few days, there was pressure from OpenAI's biggest investor, Microsoft, and lots of OpenAI staff threatened mass resignations unless he was reinstated into his job. And the board kind of, I guess you could put this quite simply, panicked. They went through three CEO changes in basically as many days. By Tuesday night, Sam was rehired as chief executive of OpenAI. And two weeks later, Time magazine announced Sam Alton was chief executive of the year. People were talking about little else in technology circles other than what was going on at OpenAI. I mean, it's pretty much the fastest firing and hiring that I've heard of.

30:25Yeah, it's not the kind of firing and rehiring that unions care about. It is an interesting boardroom drama. And Time magazine quoted a source who witnessed all of this stuff going on, who said, in a lot of ways, Sam is a really nice guy. he's not an evil genius. He cares about humanity, but there's also a clear pattern, if you look at his behaviour, of really seeking power in an extreme way. Let's note that comment for our judging panel later. So after this brief boardroom blip, he's back in position as the CEO of OpenAI. So let's get back to Sam's money and his journey to a billion. Back during his years at Y Combinator, he had invested in some of the world's biggest startups.

31:04He invested his personal wealth in 125 companies. Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn, said Sam is rare in that he's a capable investor, but he's also making bold bets. And those included some quite small investments he made early on that paid off big time. He put$100 ,000 into Uber in its early days. By the time its IPO, Uber was valued at$82 billion. He put$100 ,000 into Airbnb in 2008. So he's really He backed some very, very good horses here. He's also invested big. So not just kind of a few hundred thousand here and there. He put$375 million into Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion company that in 2021 was valued at$2.5 billion.

31:47And another of his investments, Reddit, paid off. In March 2024, it sold shares to the public, had an IPO. On that day, Sam's stake in the company rose to be worth$600 million. And a month later, Forbes declared him worth$1 billion. So just this year, March of this year, age 39, Sam Altman is a billionaire.

32:13Just a month after being named a billionaire, Sam is back in the headlines. Yeah, enter stage left in May 2024. Scarlett Johansson, who said she was shocked and angered after OpenAI launched a chatbot with a voice eerily similar to her own. Now, if you are a fan of Joaquin Phoenix films, you will know that Scarlett Johansson starred in a sci-fi movie called Her in 2013. So it's about a guy played by Joaquin Phoenix who falls in love with his device's AI operating system, which basically exists as a voice. It's voiced by Scarlett Johansson. And this is Sam Altman's favourite science fiction movie.

32:50And Scarlett Johansson revealed that Sam Altman had approached her about voicing the new chatbot, but she had rejected that. Sam apologised when the AI chatbot came out and explained the voice was not Scarlett's, it was a voice actress. Having said that, if you listen to the chatbot, it sounds exactly like her. And many commented that his approach with OpenAI was a bit like Mark Zuckerberg's kind of move fast and break things, an approach that saw tech companies make big decisions, then deal with the consequences afterwards. Still, Sam's approach has made OpenAI valuable. As of 2024, it's valued at $80 billion.

33:28But as we've said, Sam claims he has no equity. That means an ownership stake in OpenAI. So that is not the reason he's on this list. It's the reason we're talking about him, but it's not the reason he's rich. Meanwhile, in his private life, he married his long-term partner, Oliver Mulherin, a software engineer at their estate in Hawaii, as you do. Of his marriage, he said, I was expecting it not to feel any different or better. However, it does feel different and feels better. I'm very happy. Oh, wow. Overwhelming response to marriage, that. Naturally, the tech couple live primarily in San Francisco.

33:59But as a billionaire, he has, of course, houses all over the place. That includes a 950-acre catarrage in Napa Valley, California, despite the fact Sam's a vegetarian. And interestingly, at least one of his properties is dedicated to lasting out the apocalypse. Back in 2016, this is just after he's founded OpenAI, I remember, he told the New Yorker magazine that he prepped for survival. He's a prepper. What does that mean? Basically, preppers are a kind of subculture, I guess, of people who believe that the end of the world will come in their lifetime and therefore they have to hoard resources and land in order to wait out the apocalypse.

34:35And Sam Altman said that him and his friends would get drunk and discuss the ways the world would come to an end. one of the most popular scenarios that they brainstormed was AI attacking humanity. And he said, I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defence Force and a big patch of land in Big Sur that I can fly to. I find this deeply problematic. I think that if you're, you know, nothing dents your confidence in the ethical and safe deployment of AI than the boss of OpenAI basically arming himself to the teeth with medical supplies and guns and God knows what else in a bunker somewhere to wait for when AI starts attacking us.

35:21That's quite unsettling, no? I mean, it doesn't really inspire confidence in his confidence that he'll be able to fix the problem of AI. So I suppose this is where we are now. He's prepped, he's ready to go for when AI attacks us. Maybe this is the time we should judge Sam Altman and find out whether he's good, bad or just another billionaire. So we do this on a range of categories and we rank him from zero to 10. Let's begin with wealth because Sam Altman's actually quite a very entry level billionaire. I mean, entry level just this year. He only became a billionaire this year. So he is on the bottom rung on wealth of our billionaires.

35:56Having said that, he likes to splash the cash that he does around a lot. that half a million dollar watch? A year? Fifty million dollar car? The Napa Valley Ranch, even though he doesn't even eat beef. The Bronze Age Sword? Yeah, so he definitely does love to spend it. And we do factor that into our rating, how much they splash the cash. So although he's definitely a one when it comes to absolute wealth, his penchant for spending it big nudges him up to a three for me. Oh, I would rank him higher because there's something about the Bronze Age Sword that really gets me. There's a megalomania in there, isn't there?

36:31Oh, yeah. I mean, I mentioned Alexander the Great earlier. There is something a little bit Alexander the Great about him, right? Where he just wants to conquer everything. I would give him a four out of ten for this. OK, three for me, four for you. We then have a category on rags to riches. How far have they come from their beginnings, whether they be humble or not? He grew up in a kind of comfortable middle class family. He went to a prestigious private school. He hasn't really travelled that far. He was in the surroundings where he could develop his skills, taking a part and using a Mac at the age of age.

37:02Which his parents gave him as a present. Playing math games and competitive math games with the family, whatever. He's primed for success. And as you say, he went to the best school and he went to Stanford, which basically is a kind of license to print money, it seems, in this day and age. And also he's not that rich. I mean, he's obviously fabulously wealthy, but by our standards for this podcast, not that rich. That's very true. So what do you reckon? I think maybe a two out of ten, really. I agree with you. Two out of ten for rags to riches. Villainy, always an interesting category. Now then, there's lots of lenses we can look at this through.

37:35Yeah, Sam Altman has been very clear about the fact he thinks AI is a threat, but he also thinks of himself as the guy to handle it. Yeah, he's the AI wrangler. Basically, he thinks it could bring about the end of the world. And he's also talked to having an absolutely delusional level of self-confidence. So confident, is he, that he's prepping for Armageddon? Interestingly, many people have said he's not responsible enough to be taking on this mantle of being the AI wrangler. Business Insider quoted this venture capitalist who said he's one of the more intellectually dishonest guys in tech. Now, Business Insider didn't identify the person who said that.

38:12It could be someone who's got an axe to grind against Sam Altman. You know, he's had investments in multiple companies. You can upset people on the way. So we don't know who or why that was said, but it's a perspective to throw into the pot. Yeah, and actually in January 2024, OpenAI quietly changed some language around a policy which kind of walked back on a ban on the military use of its AI. Its policy still states it shouldn't be used to harm yourself or others, including to develop or use weapons. But it's interesting that they've kind of tried to walk that back. And it's also worth noting that ChatGPT has already been used in various war propaganda campaigns.

38:49One is that OpenAI claims they've shut down, but apparently bad actors in Russia, China and Israel have been using chat GPT to spread misinformation and disinformation. So there's this fear already that AI is being used to threaten democracy. OK, so the question on villainy is, is he malevolent? Has he created something that is malevolent? Not necessarily, but could be used for malevolent purposes. Does that make him a villain, given the fact that there are plenty of other people who work on this, including Google, including Microsoft, including others? This genie was always going to come out of the bottle anyway.

39:22It's an interesting one because I feel like in five to ten years, the Sam Oakman story will have moved on enough that we will get a clearer idea of that malevolence or villainy. There seem to be murmurings, right, of people talking about he has this almost kind of crazy desire for power. The board clearly didn't trust him initially after a revolt he was reinstalled. It feels like we're at the beginning of this biopic. Given his prepping for the disaster, he feels a bit to me like the pilot on the aeroplane who jumps out with his parachute and says, see you all. That person is not a good guy. This is also very true.

39:57I think for me, he comes out at six out of ten. You know, I think AI definitely has been used for nefarious ends. Yeah, I don't think he's done anything particularly villainous apart from tell us everything's going to be OK while preparing for total disaster. And that doesn't sit well with me. So I'll give him a six as well. But maybe we'll save some of those other considerations for our final judgment on whether he's good or bad or just another billionaire. So let's come to the category that could save his reputation, philanthropy. In May 2024, Sam announced he had signed the giving pledge to give away at least half of his fortune in his lifetime.

40:32This was set up by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to encourage the super rich to give away half of their fortune in their lifetime. That brings the total members to 240, which sounds great. But remember, there are nearly 2 ,800 billionaires, so it's less than 10%. So worth noting, this announcement was also made at a time he was hitting the headlines for less positive stuff, including making Scully Hansen very angry indeed. But while he was at Y Combinator, Sam did invest in some non-profit organisations. he invested$100 ,000 for a 0 % stake rather than his usual$100 ,000 for a 7 % stake. And in 2015, he started a non-profit YC research with$10 million of his own money.

41:12Okay, so philanthropy, I think he scores pretty highly here. I'm going to give him a 7. Yeah, I think I'll give him a 7. It's interesting. I mean, the timing of it, obviously, quite convenient for his PR. But not every single newly minted billionaire immediately signs up to the giving pledge to give it away. No, they don't. They don't. So, OK, we'll give him seven for that. There's another category we have, power. In 2016, he blogged, a big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time. The most successful founders don't set out to create companies. They're on a mission to create something closer to a religion.

41:48Oh, I don't know. This gives me the hubby-jubbies. I don't like that at all. Yeah. But I do think, you know, like we say, a lot of our billionaires have to have that zeal, if you like, religious zeal. Messianic kind of impulse. And in terms of power, there's no doubt that, you know, Microsoft made a$10 billion investment in OpenAI. That is the GDP of some small Eastern European countries. And there's no doubt that ChatGPT is probably seen as the market leader in a world-changing technology. And he's in charge of it. So I'd say power is pretty high. Put it this way. We saw the list of people he met on that world tour in 2023.

42:28He's walking straight into the most powerful rooms in the world. If you didn't have a messiah complex before, you certainly would develop one after you met the 15th world leader, right? Yeah, exactly. He was entertained at the courts of these world leaders. So I would give him an eight for power. Right now, as it currently stands, if Sam Altman came out and said, AI is rubbish, he would cause entire companies to crumble. He would. I think he's got real power. So eight might be even an underestimate, but I'm going to stick with it. Eight. OK, well, I'll kind of nudge that up to a nine out of 10.

42:57I think he's enormously powerful right now. OK. The other category is legacy. Now, this one could be possibly, we just don't know yet, right? But it could be maybe one of the most consequential legacies of anyone that we've covered so far. Oh, yeah. More than Bezos, more than Zuckerberg. In fact, in 2024, in January, the IMF warned that AI would affect 40 % of jobs worldwide. Yeah, it could put hundreds of millions of people out of work. And it also, I think the other part of the legacy is that the deep fakes that we see, a lot of these are generated by AI, but it's shaken our faith in anything we read, see or hear.

43:43It's very common now, isn't it? If you scroll through stuff on social and say, you know, I just don't believe that. I think it must be AI. Yeah. And, you know, initially when AI generated images came out, people said things like, oh, yeah, you can tell it's fake. Look at these people. They've got 11 thumbs. But every single month, I think it is getting better. It is improving. And it all really takes a kind of malevolent actor, bad, you know, a bad actor to just redirect that technology towards kind of nefarious means. On the other hand, I was talking to the boss of a big drug company the other day, and they said that artificial intelligence has the capacity to make incredible breakthroughs in things like infectious diseases, in cancer, in treating Alzheimer's potentially, just the sheer computing power to notice patterns and do diagnostics and whatever could see a huge change.

44:39having said that we are talking about sam altman not ai generally but his legacy i think is that he was the person who put it in a form that really grabbed the public's attention in chat gpt artificial intelligence being this you know with lots of other people it brought us to to our attention in a in a way that others hadn't yeah that's very true actually and i think that if it wasn't for open ai making chat gpt a lot of these ai developments would have kind of slid relatively under the radar of the average consumer. Yeah. You know, with ChatGPT, you suddenly realised, oh, wow, this is happening.

45:15This is a thing that exists. Yeah. And children will never have to do their own homework ever again. That's not a recommendation. Not that we're encouraging it. We're not encouraging that. But all I know is that, you know, ChatGPT has put AI in the hands of individuals. So for Legacy, as somebody who made AI a reality for millions of people, I think he'll be remembered. But his legacy, I think, is way too early in this powerful technology to see where he personally will figure in it. So I'm just going to give him a five. Oh, I actually disagree because I think whatever happens with the future of AI, whether or not open AI survives as a company and people chat GPT to the dustbin of history.

45:56I think when historians write the story of AI, assuming that there are historians after AI kills us all, I think chat GPT will be one of the first things that they'll talk about. It'll be like the Model T Ford of the automobile. That's a good argument. Once again, you've persuaded me to bump him up to a seven. I'm bumping him up for myself to an 8 out of 10 for legacy. OK, because chat GPT will be like the Model T of the automobile industry when it comes to AI uses. That's a really good way to put it. So you're what? 8. I'm going to go 7. OK. So the final judgment. Is Sam Altman good, bad or just another billionaire?

46:32Shall we see what chat GPT says? Yes, let's do it. Sam Altman's impact is multifaceted. Opinions about him vary. Here are some key points. Altman played a crucial role in nurturing numerous successful startups through his leadership at Y Combinator. As a co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, he's been at the forefront of AI research and development, pushing for advancements that aim to benefit humanity. I mean, that seems slightly biased on ChatGPT's part. Okay, Sam Altman can be seen as a force for both positive innovation and potential ethical concerns. His contributions to technology and entrepreneurship are significant, but the broader implications of his actions and the industry he represents invite critical scrutiny.

47:11Right. So Chachapiti's hedging. Hedging. Yeah, well, you know, there we go. So we've got to come off the fence. OK. I'm going to say that it's hard not to conflate your view of him with your view of AI. Yes. Right. And that might be unfair, but I think it's impossible not to do it. and bearing mind also that he is not the person who invented artificial intelligence. People have been working on it since post-war. Alan Turing, people like that, Demis Havasis at Google DeepMind and many others. But for me, the swing factor on this one is if he's so convinced that it's going to be a force for good, why has he stocked a bunker full of gas masks, iodine...

47:55Antibiotics. Antibiotics, guns, gold. Yeah. Why is he prepping for the apocalypse if he thinks it's going to be such a good thing? And that is a tension I cannot get out of my mind and unsettles me. So I'm going to say with apologies to Sam Altman, but I think ultimately that makes him a bad billionaire. Having said that, he also doesn't make his money. In fact, he hasn't made his billion off artificial intelligence. But you're right. I do think there's something a little bit odd about that tension. And, you know, just ChatGPT alone, for instance, in one industry, in journalism and publishing, there are now people saying they could just automate journalists out of a job just through ChatGPT alone.

48:36I mean, and maybe we are at the beginning, the very beginnings of his story. I mean, maybe we're being a little bit foolhardy and assessing him so quickly. But I do think there is something of the bad billionaire about him. And I'm not just saying that because ChatGPT hedged it and said he was just another billionaire. On the other hand, he's not the inventor of artificial intelligence. He's an investor in technology who ended up as the chief executive of a company which is in the forefront of developing AI, which is different. He's not the evil genius who's kind of plotting the downfall of humanity.

49:06He's running a company which has a lot of power and has made huge strides. So I still think that tension that he's preparing for a disaster when he tells everyone else it's going to be all right is like the pilot on an airplane jumping out with the last parachute saying it's all going to be fine. So he just creeps into bad territory, but only just. In Sam Altman's defence, maybe prepping for the apocalypse is sort of a billionaire version of building a fire escape. Yeah, but a fire escape in a building is something everyone can use. I'm willing to bet there's only room for Sam Altman's nearest and dearest in his bunker.

49:35I don't think it's the same thing at all. Sam Altman, you are officially a bad billionaire. So who do we have next episode? We have Africa's richest person, a title he's held for 13 years in a row. And he's a good old fashioned industrialist. He's also the world's richest black billionaire. He's made a fortune out of cement, sugar, salt. It was very late to the oil refining game. He is Aliko Dangote. Good Bad Billionaire is a podcast from the BBC World Service. It's produced by Hannah Hufford and Mark Ward, with additional production by Tamsin Curry. James Cook is the editor and it's a BBC Studios production for BBC World Service.

50:15For the BBC World Service, the senior podcast producer is Kat Collins and the podcast commissioning editor is John Manel.

50:49Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.