Saint, Satan, Sam: Chat about the ChatGPT Man

Indian Express

2 days ago

For many people, AI (artificial intelligence) is almost synonymous with ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by OpenAI, which is the closest thing tech has had to a magic genie. You just tell ChatGPT what you want in information terms and it serves it up – from writing elaborate essays to advising you on how to clear up your table to even serving up images based on your descriptions. Such is its popularity that at one stage it even overtook the likes of Instagram and TikTok to become the most downloaded app in the world. While almost every major tech brand has its own AI tool (even the mighty Apple is working on one), AI for many still remains ChatGPT.
The man behind this phenomenon is Samuel Harris 'Sam' Altman, the 40-year-old CEO of OpenAI, and perhaps the most polarising figure in tech since Steve Jobs. To many, he is a visionary who is changing the world and taking humanity to a better place. To many others, he is a cunning, manipulative person who uses his marketing skills to raise money and is actually destroying the planet. The truth might be somewhere between those two extremes. By some literary coincidence, two books have recently been released on Sam Altman, and are shooting up the bestseller charts. Both are superbly written and researched (based on interviews with hundreds of people), and while they start at almost the same point, they not surprisingly come to rather different conclusions about the man and his work.
Those who tend to see Altman as a well-meaning, if occasionally odd, genius will love Keach Hagey's The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future. Hagey is a Wall Street Journal reporter and while she does not put a halo around Altman, her take on the OpenAI CEO reflects the title of the book – she sees Altman as a visionary who is trying to change the world. The fact that Altman collaborated on the book (although he is believed to have thought he was too young for a biography) might have something to do with this, for the book does articulate Altman's vision on a variety of subjects, but most of all, on AI and where it is headed.
Although it begins with the events leading up to Altman's being dramatically sacked as the CEO of OpenAI in November 2023, and his equally dramatic reinstatement within days, Hagey's book is a classic biography. It walks us through Altman's childhood, his getting interested in coding and then his decision to drop out from Stanford, before getting into tech CEO mode by first founding social media app Loopt and then joining tech incubator Y Combinator (which was behind the likes of Stripe, Airbnb and Dropbox) after meeting its co-founder Paul Graham, who is believed to have a profound impact on him (Hagey calls him 'his mentor').
Altman also gets in touch with a young billionaire who is very interested in AI and is worried that Google will come out with an AI tool that could ruin the world. Elon Musk in this book is very different from the eccentric character we have seen in the Trump administration, and is persuaded by Altman to invest in a 'Manhattan Project for AI,' which would be open source, and ensure that AI is only used for human good. Musk even proposes a name for it: OpenAI. And that is when things get really interesting.
The similarities with Jobs are uncanny. Altman too gets deeply influenced by his parents (his father was known for his kind and generous nature), and like Jobs, although he is a geek, Altman's rise in Silicon Valley is more because of his ability to network and communicate than because of his tech knowledge. In perhaps the most succinct summary of Altman one can find, Hagey writes: 'Altman was not actually writing the code. He was, instead, the visionary, the evangelizer, and the dealmaker; in the nineteenth century, he would have been called 'the promoter.'
His speciality, honed over years of advising and then running…Y Combinator, was to take the nearly impossible, convince others that it was in fact possible, and then raise so much money that it actually became possible.'
But his ability to sell himself as a visionary and raise funds for causes has also led to Altman being seen as a person who literally moulded himself to the needs of his audience. And this in turn has seen him being seen as someone who indulges in doublespeak and exploits people for his own advantage (an accusation that was levelled at Jobs as well) ) – Musk ends up suing Altman and OpenAI for allegedly not being a non-profit organisation, which it was set up as.
While Hagey never accuses Altman of being selfish, it is clear that the Board at OpenAI lost patience with what OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutstkever refers to as 'duplicity and calamitous aversion to conflict.' It eventually leads to his being sacked by the OpenAI board for not being 'consistently candid in his communications with the board.' Of course, his sacking triggered off a near mutiny in OpenAI with employees threatening to leave, which in turn led to his being reinstated within a few days, and all being seemingly forgotten, if not forgiven.
Hagey's book is a compelling read on Altman, his obsession with human progress (he has three hand axes used by hominids in his house), relationships with those he came in touch with, and Silicon Valley politics in general. At about 380 pages, The Optimist is easily the single best book on Altman you can read, and Hagey's brisk narration makes it a compelling read.
A much more cynical perception of Altman and OpenAI comes in Karen Hao's much talked-about Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI. Currently a freelancer who writes for The Atlantic, Hao had previously worked in the Wall Street Journal and had covered OpenAI as back as in 2020, before ChatGPT had made it a household name. As its name indicates, Hao's book is as much about Altman as it is about OpenAI, and the place both play in the artificial intelligence revolution that is currently enveloping the world. At close to 500 pages, it is a bigger book than Hagey's, but reads almost like a thriller, and begins with a bang: 'On Friday, November 17, 2023, around noon Pacific time, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Silicon Valley's golden boy, avatar of the generative AI revolution, logged on to a Google Meet to see four of his five board members staring at him. From his videosquare, board member Ilya Sutskever, OPenAI's chief scientist, was brief: Altman was being fired.'
While Hagey has focused more on Altman as a person, Hao looks at him as part of OpenAI, and the picture that emerges is not a pretty one. The first chapter begins with his meeting Elon Musk ('Everyone else had arrived, but Elon Musk was late usual) in 2015 and discussing the future of AI and humanity with a group of leading engineers and researchers. This meeting would lead to the formation of AI, a name given by Musk. But all of them ended up leaving the organisation, because they did not agree with Altman's perception and vision of AI.
Hao uses the incident to show how Altman switched sides on AI, going from being someone who was concerned about AI falling into the wrong hands, to someone who pushed it as a tool for all. Like Hagey, Hao also highlights Altman's skills as a negotiator and dealmaker. However, her take is much darker.
Hagey's Altman is a visionary who prioritises human good, and makes the seemingly impossible possible through sheer vision and effort. Hao's Altman is a power hungry executive who uses and exploits people, and is almost an AI colonialist. 'Sam is extremely good at becoming powerful,' says Paul Graham, the man who was Altman's mentor. 'You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he would be the king.'
Hao's book is far more disturbing than Hagey's because it turns the highly rose-tinted view many have not just of Altman and OpenAI, but AI in general, on its head. We get to see a very competitive industry with far too much stress and poor work conditions (OpenAI hires workers in Africa at very low wages), and literally no regard for the environment (AI uses large amounts of water and electricity). OpenAI in Hao's book emerges almost as a sort of modern East India Company, looking to expand influence, territory and profits by mercilessly exploiting both customers and employees. Some might call it too dark, but her research and interviews across different countries cannot be faulted.
It would be excessively naive to believe either book as the absolute truth on Altman in particular and OpenAI and AI in general, but they are both must-reads for any person who wants a complete picture of the AI revolution and its biggest brand and face. Mind you, it is a picture that is still in the process of being painted. AI is still in its infancy, and Altman turned forty in April.
But as these two excellent books prove, neither is too young to be written about, while definitely being relevant enough to be read about.