Yesterday, in a shock announcement, the 6 person board of Open AI fired its most prominent member, Sam Altman. Alongside Altman, Greg Brockman, another founder and member of the 6 person board was fired. A majority decision would potentially require all other 4 members. Sam was replaced by Mira Murati, a 34 years old Albanian woman who started work at Goldman Sachs and then worked at Tesla. She has served as Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI since 2018.
At 38, Altman, is far from old, incompetent or otherwise expired. Many see him as the Oppenheimer of our age, who, just like the Greek God, Prometeus went up to the Gods to bring people AGI; AGI (Artificial General Intelligence, incarnated in Chat GPT) for Altmann, the Atomic Bomb for Oppenheimer and good old fire in the case of Prometeus -- all inventions changed the world in ways that were difficult to imagine before.
Sam played an interesting game in Sillicon Valley. Unlike Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Larry Page or Steve Jobs, he made the controversial decision to own no stock on Open AI. That is strange, as he could have had that for free. It isn't at all clear that he received a higher salary for having no stock. Companies like Open AI pay their founders in stock, not salary.
Apparently, Altman's global net worth is under 1 billion, despite being equally transformational and experiencing a more meteoric rise than the above. So in spite of his talent and impact on the world, Altman is remarkably poor. And, he could have had the money. Why not? Was he afraid of ending up in jail, like Sam Bankman-Fried, silenced like Julian Assange or dead like Turing and others? Or, did he want to be free to wage war against OpenAI? Free to switch sides? Free from personal bias that would arise from owning shares in the company he created?
What's next for Sam? The week before he got fired, he toured 22 countries, meeting presidents and prime ministers to talk about legal measures to keep the world safe from AI. Is he aiming to be the next US President? In a time of world war, he could be just what America needs to win. He'd sure make a strong candidate, who, unlike Elon Musk, is American born American. He's proven to be altruistic, by owning no shares in Open AI. He's a poor man for his intellectual ability and impact, attractive to both men and women, good looking, and has proven that he can change the world already. Then US electorate would have to choose between despicable figures like Trump and Biden and someone who truly has his marbles. Someone ready to rule both men and robots.
Or will he be killed? He's already lost OpenAI, which, one could reasonably argue, it's worth more than his private life, both in terms of arbitrary value, impact on the world, and experience. As a man with nothing to lose, he's not bound to act within political expectations, when doing things agains the order of society. He's also immune to financial losses, as one billion isn't much money to lose for Sam. Thus, if he needs to be controlled, he may have to be killed. If so when? Will he make it as far as Kennedy?
Update: After Microsoft offered to hire him and a fraction of the staff at OpenAI did not show up and were given the option to be at Microsoft instead, Sam got his job back and changed the executive board.
More about Sam: A fairly unfiltered and not very customer friendly blog. It looks real. Probably written by Sam himself. It's most recent post discusses cold fusion, and argues the cheap energy it will generate can solve climate change. If it works, it would replace fossil fuels and since energy would be, basically, free, it could be used to remove the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
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