Melia Russell

Weekend project 🌈👩🏼‍🎨

Once I passed out at a dispensary while reporting a story on the “Apple store of weed,” broke my jaw, had it wired shut and subsisted on Soylent for six weeks.

Read @melia.bsky.social and @juliablack.bsky.social's deep dive into Sam Altman immediately:

He's played chess with Peter Thiel, sparred with Elon Musk and once, supposedly, stopped a plane crash: Inside Sam Altman's world, where truth is stranger than fiction With the success of ChatGPT, Altman has turned into a household name. And he's just getting started.

Julia Black and I spoke to 50 of Altman’s friends, colleagues, and critics (including Altman) to give you a nuanced portrait of the complicated man planning your future. You haven’t heard this story before.
https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-chatgpt-worldcoin-helion-future-tech-2023-4

But what’s one man’s utopia is another man’s nightmare. Even Altman acknowledges the risks. "I have no doubt there are going to be other people that develop these technologies and use them in ways that I really don't like," he said, adding: "I do worry, of course. I mean, I worry about it a lot."

At a point when Silicon Valley couldn't seem to find inspiration beyond delivery apps, dog filters, and electric scooters, Altman arrived as the starry-eyed prophet, heralding a new era of progress that — he believes — is akin to the discovery of fire or the invention of the wheel.

Altman insists this web is more of a coincidence than a master plan. "I mean, I hate to dissuade you 'cause it sounds so compelling, but in the spirit of accuracy, I have to try to dissuade you," he told me and my co-writer Julia Black.

Altman has supported human-enhancement startups that promise to help mere mortals stay in the game. For skeptics, it starts to look as if he's betting the future of humanity on a fragile system of interdependent moonshots.

Smart machines obviously require massive amounts of computing power and electricity. So Altman funded a company seeking to provide virtually unlimited clean, cheap energy. As for the threat that superintelligence will surpass human capabilities?

When he recognized that automation would leave millions without jobs, Altman started a nonprofit to research universal basic income. When he saw that distribution of those funds would run into problems with scammers trying to double-dip, he invented a device that could identify people.

But there’s more to the story here. Sam Altman is bankrolling a revolution that goes far beyond artificial intelligence. He’s built a harmonious ecosystem; when one entity creates a problem, he introduces another one to solve it.

With the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Sam Altman has gone from Silicon Valley poster boy to household name. He's on the board of 7 companies, including a psychedelics startup and a pair of nuclear power labs. This spring has brought a media blitz, with Altman named to the Time 100.

Hello! I’m Melia (pronounced like Barack Obama’s daughter) and I’m a senior correspondent at Business Insider, covering startups and the investors who fund them. Today, I published the biggest story of my career. 🧵