Sam Altman

When I met Sam Altman in 2008, what stood out to me most wasn’t just that he was a brilliant technologist—he was, at his core, a humanist. Sam foresaw that the exponential curve of technological progress would culminate in the most powerful tool ever created: artificial general intelligence (AGI). He saw a tool that could do immense good but, in the wrong hands, could be a destructive weapon. Sam co-founded OpenAI to responsibly bring AGI to the world. Initially, he established OpenAI as a nonprofit. When he couldn’t raise enough money as a nonprofit, he structured the company as a capped-profit model, forgoing ownership. OpenAI went on to develop ChatGPT, a revolutionary tool, launched in November, that I used to edit this very piece. If anyone knows where this is going, it’s Sam. But Sam also knows that he doesn’t have all the answers. He often says, “What do you think? Maybe I’m wrong?” Thank God someone with so much power has so much humility.