Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Why was ChatGPT born in OpenAI? If you take a look at the trajectory of Sam Altman's life, you will marvel: people who can change the world may not know the most about technology, but they must know the most about people.

The name Sam Altman has emerged in Silicon Valley tech circles for nearly a decade, but it is not until recently that the name has become a household name.

No one would have thought that this young man would become the world leader in AI competition at the age of 38.

If you finish reading his story, you will probably feel like this: this world still belongs to the social cow.

Smart people solve technology, social cattle unite them as a social cow, Altman has many legendary life experiences.

According to a recent long post by Insider, he played chess with billionaire Peter Thiel, married investor Keith Rabois on St. Barts Island, discussed driving skills with Stripe co-founder John Collison, and made a nine-figure deal with venture capitalist Lachy Groom.

In 2017, Rahul Vohra, founder of Mini Program Superhuman, suddenly learned that Google planned to shut down a service, which would lead to the destruction of Superhuman.

When Vohra panicked, Altman told him that he was going to a party with Google CEO Sundar Pichai. "I'll see what I can do." "

The next day, a Google executive contacted Vohra to tell him that the problem had been resolved and apologized.

Yes, in the world of social cattle, solving problems is so easy.

The living room of Altman has become a petri dish for new technologies and new companies.

Co-founders say he is always "trying to bring smart people together".

On weekends, Altman flies to Napa and Tulum with groups of friends and colleagues, or eats pizza at his home in San Francisco. There, people talk about nuclear war from cancer research.

The thunderous OpenAI was born from a series of dinners.

All the social has been rewarded.

Altman has made more than 400 investments in nine years, and he often walks with his founders or makes phone calls.

Altman has a penchant for the most unreliable projects. He invests in a wide variety of products, from the fastest commercial airliners to brain implants.

And his most expensive sideline is nuclear fusion energy.

Researchers have shunned the study for decades, but Altman simply invested 375 million dollars in fusion company Helion to bring the technology to market faster.

A doctor named Jeeshan Chowdhury wants to start a company to treat addiction. Few investors were interested until Altman handed him a check.

This year, Journey Colab, a company founded by Chowdhury, has projects ready to enter clinical trials.

Right: Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott Silicon Valley idealist? When Altman and Musk co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit research organization, in 2015, the goal was to "make AI benefit the entire human race as much as possible, without thinking about profit." "

How to benefit mankind? First, you need to create an AI.

As a former president of Y Combinator, Altman gives the impression that he is trustworthy.

Y Combinator provides funding for startups. While Altman invests his personal wealth in clean energy and medical treatment companies, he hopes to delay the aging of all mankind.

When Silicon Valley banks collapsed in March, Altman provided loans to companies that were unable to pay their wages.

After raising money from Altman, Rewind AI's CEO Dan Siroker said: "in a world full of cruel, tradable and mercenary people, he is one of the true missionaries." "

If Mr Musk is on the fringes of Silicon Valley, Altman is an idealist.

Today, the influence and power of Altman is only increasing. He is a board member of seven companies, and ChatGPT's success has won worldwide attention, and Altman has been named one of the 100 most influential people in time magazine.

Will OpenAI start the next industrial revolution of mankind, or the end of the world?

In the atmosphere of frenzied debate around the world, Altman seems very calm.

"We can have a better world. There is something that needs to happen before it can be realized. I like this feeling of usefulness. "

Some people compare Altman to Icarus, using wings made of wax and feathers to fly high in the air. In response, Altman admitted, "We are really working on something we don't fully understand." "

Nevertheless, he firmly believes that fear should not hinder the progress of mankind.

"this is the world of Altman," said Ric Burton, a famous technology developer. "We all live in it. "

When the Sam Altman empire was born as a teenager, Altman dreamed of working at Google. So he went to Stanford, the alma mater of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

While working as an undergraduate researcher at AI Lab at Stanford University, Altman met Sebastian Thrun, the founder of Google's moon landing factory.

Thrun was impressed by Altman's cleverness and unusual curiosity.

Right: after graduating from Sebastian Thrun's sophomore year, Altman chose to drop out to develop an app called Loopt, which allows users to know the real-time location of their friends.

It was then that Paul Graham founded Y Combinator. Altman became one of the first eight entrepreneurs funded by Y Combinator.

In the end, Loopt didn't live up to expectations, and Saltman sold it to an online bank for $43 million. By some standards, this is a failed startup because it has only doubled the amount of money invested by investors.

But what Altman gains is a surge in popularity.

And often with the boss social, also let Altman get the return. In 2014, Graham wanted to retire and chose Altman, then 28, to take over Y Combinator.

During Altman's tenure, Y Combinator experienced rapid growth, from investing in more than a dozen startups per batch to hundreds.

Along with the expansion, there is the ambition of Altman.

He led Y Combinator to raise a venture fund, taught a course at Stanford University, set up a research laboratory to study national basic income, and invested $10 million out of his own pocket.

When the time comes to 2015, OpenAI is born.

In Altman's innovation empire, the OpenAI is the crown jewel.

With the sudden success of ChatGPT, OpenAI has become the most famous start-up company in the world.

Altman is also very honest about the risks that Super AI poses to humans. He admits that if AI can become smarter on its own, it may pose a great threat to the survival of mankind.

From the beginning, OpenAI is very different from other companies' idea of developing AI, and OpenAI's algorithm is more inclined to create specific tasks.

In 2019, OpenAI released GPT-2 's model, but they deliberately limited the model for fear that if the language model became larger, it would be used to produce "deceptive, biased, or abusive language."

As a result, in 2022, they suddenly did the opposite, took a gamble and urgently launched ChatGPT, and the number of monthly active users exceeded 100 million within a month.

Altman believes that the launch of the product is the most critical step to understand and shape the product capability. After all, "there is a limit to what we can learn in the lab. "

Obviously, in years of crazy social experience, Altman has a richer and deeper understanding of the human world than technocrats. This is also one of the key factors that ChatGPT can come out in advance.

"if we are really on the brink of the next industrial revolution, the more people are exposed to these AI, the more people can share the benefits of technology," said Jim Fan, Nvidia's chief AI academy.

But the controversy never stops.

Many people wonder whether OpenAI's preconceived approach is appropriate for a product with such a far-reaching impact. A former OpenAI employee said, "you are helping AI replace your job, which is essentially feeding a beast." "

Altman understands the open letter calling for a suspension of training and a stronger AI than GPT-4. "I am often worried about the same problem," Altman said. "

The New York Times has called Altman "ChatGPT King", but there are some people who don't believe Altman's remarks at all.

In 2021, Anthropic was founded. The artificial intelligence company, founded by 11 former OpenAI employees, aims to create "safer, guided and more reliable models".

Most of its team members are also deeply involved in many key topics of OpenAI, such as GPT-3, multimodal neurons in neural networks, reinforcement learning introducing human preferences, and so on.

In March this year, Claude, an AI chat robot built by Anthropic, officially released its application.

However, Anthropic aims to raise $5 billion over the next four years, and it remains to be seen whether it can withstand the market pressure that its founders believe erodes OpenAI.

To renew human life and get two men / women pregnant with children, just like his Silicon Valley counterparts, Altman is obsessed with the issue of "life renewal". The sense of urgency grew, especially when his father died in 2018.

Of course, Altman's goal is not to achieve immortality, but to "live a healthy and dynamic life for more than 10 years".

Long ago, scientists actually did experiments in which young and old mice were stitched together to share the blood system, which restored some of the old mice to life.

In 2020, researchers found that the plasma of older mice could be replaced with saline and albumin to achieve a similar effect. In other words, the reason for aging lies in old blood, and the long-cherished wish of delaying aging can be realized simply by diluting it.

Altman was very concerned about this, and soon pulled Joe Betts-Lacroix, a former part-time partner of Y Combinator, to start Retro Biosciences.

What's more, Altman invested all the $180 million the company received in its latest round of financing.

In addition, Altman supports a company that hopes to get two men pregnant with children and another company that provides polygenetic embryo screening.

Saved a whole plane? Over the years, an "anecdote" about Altman has been buzzing: "on a private jet, the pilot suddenly lost his ability to move, and Altman, as the CEO of OpenAI, quickly stepped forward and took control of the plane, eventually bringing everyone safely to the ground. "

Now, Altman has become famous all over the world, he has been reported in the media, Bill Gates has approved him, and every word he says on Twitter has been closely followed by 1.6 million followers.

Is this hype? Or is there someone trying to win the favor of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley through flattery? Or are we wishful thinking to force heroism stories on his head?

In response, Altman said: "it is absolutely exaggerated!" Many stories will become more and more outrageous after being handed down from one another to another. "

Indeed, as Altman said, once stories and technologies leave their hands, they will sooner or later become beyond recognition.

Reference:

Https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-chatgpt-worldcoin-helion-future-tech-2023-4

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Xin Zhiyuan (ID:AI_era)

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.