 "Sam Altman: The man who played 'UNO Reverse' card on OpenAI's board")
Sam Altman on Wednesday was reinstated as the chief executive officer (CEO) of OpenAI five days after he was sacked, following a revolt among the 800-member staff who threatened to decamp with him to Microsoft.
Upon his arrival at OpenAI on November 22, Altman sacked the Board involved in firing him last week, and the only remaining member of the Board team is Adam D'Angelo, CEO of Quora. Ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former US Treasury Secretary and president of the Harvard University Larry Summers will join D'Angelo.
Background
Born in 1985 in Chicago, Altman went to John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri. He grew up as the oldest of four siblings, in what he calls a "middle-class Jewish family". When Altman was eight years old, he got his first computer, a Macintosh LC II, for which he said that this was a pivotal event that ignited his passion for programming. He said, "The Mac was this dividing line in my life: before I had a computer and after."
He studied computer science at Stanford University but dropped out to start Loopt, a location-based social networking company in 2005. In 2012, the company was acquired by Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million. Following this, he joined Y Combinator, a US-based technology startup accelerator, as a partner in 2013 and became its president a year later.
After his stint in Y Combinator, Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk, and Greg Brockman. However, Musk resigned from OpenAI in 2018 as his other companies, SpaceX and Tesla, were also working on AI technologies. In 2019, OpenAI declared itself as a "for-profit" company and partnered with the likes of Microsoft.
Since its inception, the company has developed several AI tools, such as ChatGPT and DALL.E. Even while OpenAI has a valuation of around $29 billion, Altman does not have an equity stake in the AI-powered startup behind the popular ChatGPT tool and digital image creator, DALL-E.
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Investment by Microsoft
In 2018, OpenAI received a $1 billion investment from Microsoft in 2019. Since then, Microsoft has not only invested in OpenAI but has also integrated the technology into its Bing search engine, GitHub coding tools, Microsoft 365 productivity bundle, and Azure cloud.
ChatGPT era
In November 2022, Altman shook the tech world with the launch of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that can write answers to just about anything can draft emails, among other things. ChatGPT has since then kicked off the era of "generative" AI in technology.
In one of his recent interviews, Altman said that AI is a disruptor but it is not a permanent job killer. He said that AI might kill jobs but the good part is that tech-induced paradigm shifts also create new jobs. Altman believes that "entrepreneurship and innovation are critical economic growth and societal progress drivers in the present times".
In 2008, Businessweek magazine recognised Altman as one of the "Top Young Tech Entrepreneurs". He also received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo in 2017.