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Who is Sam Altman: The Man Behind AI Revolution

Sam Altman is an American Entrepreneur and investor best known as the CEO of OpenAI since 2019 and was critical in the development of ChatGPT. He has been compared with visionaries like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs because of his vision for the future and introduction of revolutionary AI tech, emerging as the pioneer in this technology and creating a path for others to follow.

Who is Sam Altman: Early Life & Education

He was born into a Jewish family in Chicago, Illinois, and moved as a young boy to the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. He was inclined towards computers and had a great aptitude for numbers and coding at a young age. Sam attended John Burroughs, an elite prep school, where he announced to a school assembly that he was gay and encouraged teachers to post “Safe Space” placards in their classrooms in support of gay students. “What Sam did changed the school.” Altman studied Computer Science at Stanford University; however, he dropped out after two years, saying he learned more playing poker with classmates than attending lectures by professors.

Who is Sam Altman: Personal Details

Full Name	Samuel Harris Altman
Date of Birth	22 April, 1985
Place of Birth	Chicago, Illinois, USA
Nationality	American
Spouse	Oliver Mulherin
Occupation	CEO of OpenAI
Net Worth	$500-700 Million

Career Trajectory

2005- Founded Loopt, a location-sharing app.
Part-time partner at Y Combinator.
2012- founded venture fund Hydrazine Capital with his brother Max Altman.
President of Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019.
2015-founded OpenAI with Elon Musk.

OpenAI: ChatGPT and Controversy

In 2018, Elon Musk asked Sam to let him run OpenAI so that they can catch up to Google; however, Altman declined, which led to Musk leaving the company and stopping his funding. Financial difficulties surrounded OpenAI as research and development take a lot of computer resources and funding.

In 2019, OpenAI created a for-profit organisation OpenAI Global LLC that the board of non-profit would control. OpenAI Global partnered with Microsoft and started using Microsoft’s cloud computing service, Azure and gave a 49% share of OpenAI Global to Microsoft.

Open AI released ChatGPT in 2022 and AI became a hot topic for discussions around the globe, with many concerns about the use of AI and its implications for humanity.

OpenAI’s ownership structure was also questioned, which ultimately culminated in Sam Altman being fired as CEO of OpenAI. The board of directors held that “Altman was not candid in his conversation with the board”. It was announced that board chair Greg Brockman would step down along with Sam which sparked a row, and most of OpenAI employees signed a letter demanding their resignation and threatening to leave unless Altman and Brockman were re-instated.

After multiple rounds of negotiations, the board was dissolved and a new board was formed with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman returning to OpenAI.

Sam’s pivotal role can be recognised by the fact that when he was fired as CEO at OpenAI, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Altman and Brockman would lead an AI research team at that company.

Towards new Horizons

Sam Altman is leading OpenAI and exploring different avenues of Artificial Intelligence. His most recent launch of Sora, an AI model that allows users to generate one-minute-long videos based on text inputs.

The young CEO is also a man known to be ready for an apocalypse with his stock of guns, gold and a private island where he can fly to in case of any calamity like AI attacking humans, nuclear war or a lethal synthetic virus. In a conversation with The New Yorker, he was quoted as saying, “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman told the founders in 2016. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”