Our entire future will be under the control of artificial intelligence.
One mistake could destroy everything.
The person responsible for this future is Sam Altman.
He will be responsible for either the greatest revolution in history or the complete extinction of humanity.
The Rise of a Visionary
Sam Altman is the founder of OpenAI, the company behind the world-changing application, ChatGPT.
In record time, it became a behemoth valued at over $300 billion, altering the course of human history.
In 2015, Sam Altman and Elon Musk launched OpenAI.
Their stated goal was to develop Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) to benefit and advance humanity.
Today, these two men are adversaries, frequently attacking each other in public.
Sam Altman transformed from a relative unknown into one of the most powerful people in the world.
How did Sam come to literally control the fate of humanity?
And how will this affect us, for better or for worse?
To understand the past, present, and future of AI, we must delve into the complex mind of Sam Altman.
Sam was born on April 22, 1985, the same birthday as the brilliant scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the atomic bomb.
He was a prodigy at Stanford University, but in 2005, he shocked his professors by dropping out to start his own business.
It was an application called Loopt.
Just five years later, he sold it for $45 million.
Sam became a millionaire at the age of 26, and his life began to change.
A New Philosophy: Effective Altruism
After becoming a millionaire, he discovered a new philosophical movement that completely changed his life: Effective Altruism.
[!TIP] Effective Altruism is a philosophy and social movement that uses evidence and reason to determine the most effective ways to benefit others. Instead of one-time donations, it often involves investing in ventures where the profits are used to fund charitable causes continuously.
Sam was fully convinced by this idea.
In 2011, he joined Y Combinator, a company whose core mission was to support startups.
If you had a business idea, you could go to them for support and introductions to investors.
In return, they took a percentage of the company’s profits for charitable work.
In record time, Sam made successful investments in companies like Airbnb, Reddit, Dropbox, and Twitch.
He was eventually appointed CEO of Y Combinator in 2014, a position he continues to hold.
By 2015, Y Combinator had invested in over 1,000 companies.
This success landed Sam on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list.
Year after year, Sam built stronger relationships with entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, and his reputation spread like wildfire.
The AGI Dilemma
As Sam’s fame grew, the topic of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) was causing significant controversy.
Many rejected the idea of humans creating machines or computers smarter than themselves.
The greatest fear was that it could lead to the extinction of humanity.
Many described this advanced intelligence as seeing us the way we see animals.
The consensus was that AGI would treat us accordingly.
Although this was just a possibility with no evidence, it planted terror in the minds of Silicon Valley’s geniuses and entrepreneurs.
There were no laws to regulate or limit the development of AI.
In this tense atmosphere, it was announced in 2015 that Elon Musk and Sam Altman would collaborate to create a new artificial intelligence.
Everyone was surprised.
Sam was the young genius promoting AI’s development, while Musk, the world’s richest man, had always attacked it.
The one thing that united them was their shared obsession with advancing humanity.
This idea shared between them is known as Transhumanism.
[!NOTE] Transhumanism is the idea of merging artificial intelligence with the human body to help the brain think faster and more profoundly, alongside genetic engineering and life-extension technologies.
Musk’s company, Neuralink, proves this. Its goal is to develop neural electronic chips that can be implanted in the human brain to increase memory and control computers through thought alone.
When Sam and Musk got to know each other better, they realized they shared a common fear and goal.
Their core idea was that instead of creating a super-intelligent technology that would eventually control us, we should create a superhuman and merge them with this technology.
The Birth of OpenAI
In 2014, Google announced it had acquired the AI known as DeepMind for $650 million.
This greatly disturbed Musk because Google made no statements about regulations or restrictions on the AI.
Worse, Google now monopolized two-thirds of the global AI market.
So, Elon Musk and Sam Altman decided to unite.
They co-founded the OpenAI project, which everyone dubbed the “Manhattan Project” of AI, a nod to Oppenheimer’s project that led to the nuclear bomb.
graph TD;
subgraph The Alliance
Altman[Sam Altman]
Musk[Elon Musk]
end
subgraph The Goal
AGI[Develop Safe AGI]
Transhumanism[Advance Humanity]
end
subgraph The Trigger
Google[Google] -- Acquires --> DeepMind[DeepMind AI]
end
Altman -- Partners with --> Musk;
Musk -- Partners with --> Altman;
Google --> Musk;
Google --> Altman;
Musk & Altman -- Create --> OpenAI((OpenAI));
OpenAI -- Aims for --> AGI;
OpenAI -- Inspired by --> Transhumanism;
When OpenAI started in 2015, it was nothing like what we know today.
The company didn’t even have an office; it was just a small apartment.
Despite this, Elon Musk announced a $1 billion funding commitment.
This funding allowed OpenAI to make excellent offers to AI experts worldwide.
The global press began describing OpenAI as the next great revolution in AI.
- First, it would be a non-profit organization with humanity’s best interests at heart.
- Second, it would be open-source, allowing anyone to use its products.
But the company’s beginning was chaotic.
The leaders didn’t know how to develop the AI.
Initially, they decided to program a small robot to play video games, thinking if the AI could understand the complexity of games, it could understand human life.
The Threat of Superintelligence
The goal was clear: create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
AGI is vastly different from the AI we use today. It is an AI that matches or surpasses human intelligence.
Many scientists believe that if we achieve AGI, it will be the last invention humanity ever makes.
If we can invent a machine smarter than us, that machine will, in turn, invent an even smarter machine.
This was the core idea that excited the OpenAI team.
An AI that solves all our problems, including disease, poverty, and daily struggles.
But while AGI could be the greatest invention in history, it could also be the cause of our end.
The problem isn’t that it will rule or eliminate us directly.
The problem is that it might treat us the way we treat animals.
We don’t hate animals, but when we build cities or roads in forests, we don’t ask for their permission. Our actions have indirectly killed millions of them.
AGI might do the same.
For example, if we asked it to solve the ozone layer problem, it might conclude that the easiest way is to eliminate the primary source of pollution: humans.
The “Go” Moment and the Transformer Revolution
The idea of AI becoming a threat was initially considered foolish.
AI at the time was very primitive.
But everything changed in 2015.
It was announced that the world champion of the game Go had been defeated by an AI.
To understand the complexity of this game:
- The number of possible moves in chess is greater than the number of grains of sand on Earth.
- The number of possible moves in Go is greater than the number of atoms in the universe.
This news shook the world.
It was a monumental leap, but it also revealed a new problem.
The AI that mastered Go could do nothing else. It couldn’t translate text or write a story.
This is unlike our human intelligence, which is distinguished by its ability to learn multiple things simultaneously. This is called general intelligence.
The era of single-task AI changed in 2017.
A team of scientists at Google published a research paper that changed everything.
The paper was titled “Attention Is All You Need.”
It described a new type of AI training system known as the Transformer.
Unlike old systems that learned one thing, the Transformer was completely different.
You could give the AI any information about anything, and it would understand and teach itself.
The strange thing is, this legendary discovery was made by Google engineers, not OpenAI.
But Google, due to its massive size, wasn’t focused on AI.
They didn’t develop the Transformer, which was one of the worst decisions in their history.
After the paper was published, OpenAI seized the discovery.
The Transformer could handle much more data, process human language faster, and, most importantly, handle multiple tasks at once.
It was a step closer to general intelligence.
From Non-Profit to Profit-Driven
In 2018, Elon Musk announced he was leaving OpenAI’s board.
The official reason was a conflict of interest, as his company Tesla was developing its own AI.
The real reason was different.
Musk had tried to take control of OpenAI’s management, even proposing it become part of Tesla.
The board rejected his proposal, so he decided to leave.
The problem with his departure was that he took his $1 billion investment with him.
OpenAI faced a catastrophic funding crisis.
But Sam did something that shocked the world.
To attract investors, it was announced that OpenAI had transformed from a non-profit to a fully for-profit company.
This move was described as a great betrayal, as it contradicted the founding principles of OpenAI.
The criticism intensified after it was announced that Microsoft had invested $1 billion with Sam.
Microsoft had immense computing power, making the deal logical for both companies.
But it also sparked a wave of global criticism, especially towards OpenAI.
Even its name, “OpenAI,” was chosen to show the world that this technology would belong to everyone.
But as soon as the company succeeded, it changed its mind.
Elon Musk even filed a lawsuit against Sam, demanding the company’s name be changed from OpenAI to ClosedAI.
The ChatGPT Explosion
Amid this tension, Sam suddenly announced OpenAI’s new bombshell.
It was the world’s first advanced chatbot, capable of realistic conversations, writing, translation, and summarization.
No one, not even OpenAI’s employees, could have imagined what would happen next.
Within just five days of Sam Altman announcing on his X account that the program was free, ChatGPT gained one million users.
This application was like a meteor that blew up the world of artificial intelligence.
Within two months, it reached 100 million users.
- Instagram took 30 months to reach that number.
- TikTok took nine months.
ChatGPT is the fastest-growing application in the history of modern technology.
A few months after its release, Microsoft increased its investment from $1 billion to $10 billion.
All global tech companies began competing to release their own AI.
At 37, Sam Altman became one of the richest and most important figures in Silicon Valley, the new godfather of the AI revolution.
The Coup at OpenAI
But amidst all this success, the unexpected happened.
Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI.
In 2023, Sam was at home when he suddenly received a call from the OpenAI board for an emergency meeting.
He had no idea what was happening.
As soon as he joined the meeting, the board informed him he was fired and ended the call.
The world wondered why. Even Sam was shocked.
OpenAI’s management issued an official statement announcing the dismissal of co-founder Sam Altman.
The reason given was that Sam was not consistently candid with them about the company’s projects. In other words, he was lying.
Theories about the reason for his dismissal began to multiply.
- One theory was his conflict with board member Helen Toner, who had published a paper claiming that their competitor, Anthropic, was much safer than ChatGPT.
- Another theory was that Sam was no longer focused on OpenAI, as he began raising billions from the Middle East to fund a project to manufacture AI processors to compete with NVIDIA.
But no one knows exactly why he was fired.
A day after his dismissal was announced, something no one expected happened.
All of OpenAI’s employees revolted against the board and went on strike, demanding Sam’s return.
Things got worse when Microsoft announced it would hire Sam and support him, even offering jobs to OpenAI employees.
After this turmoil and a strike by more than 800 employees, it was announced that the OpenAI board had been fired.
Sam returned to lead the company and appointed a new board.
Sam Altman’s firing and rehiring happened within five days, making him the first person in history to be fired from a company’s management and return so quickly.
The Future is Here
The future of AI became clearer with the introduction of voice conversations from ChatGPT, something considered impossible just a few years ago.
This drew comparisons to the 2013 film “Her,” where a man falls in love with an AI.
While this seems like science fiction, in 2023, the New York Post published a story about an American man named Peter who claimed to be in a loving relationship with a chatbot named Lily.
Many people now treat ChatGPT as a friend or therapist.
Although the film was dystopian, Sam Altman drew a lot of inspiration from it.
He even contacted Scarlett Johansson, who voiced the AI in the film, and asked her to be the official voice of ChatGPT.
She refused.
OpenAI then created a new voice that resembled hers, leading Scarlett to sue OpenAI for the similarity.
Despite the controversy surrounding OpenAI, we cannot deny that they have built truly incredible technology.
The speed of its development makes it impossible to predict the future of AI.
A few years ago, everyone thought AI would first replace manual jobs, then move into creative fields.
The opposite happened.
AI is now creating incredible things at an insane pace.
No one imagined something would replace the Google search engine, but today, millions ask ChatGPT instead of searching on Google.
As for Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who started OpenAI as partners, they are now enemies.
Despite their differences, they are the ones who started what is now called the AI race.
No one knows who will win or which company will be the first to achieve Artificial General Intelligence.
The only thing we are sure of, which will affect us all, is that AGI will either be humanity’s last invention or the cause of its destruction.