Sam Altman: ChatGPT and the AI revolution

Summary

Good Bad Billionaire: Sam Altman – ChatGPT and the AI Revolution

Episode Release Date: September 23, 2024
Hosts: Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng
Produced by: BBC World Service

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Introduction

In this episode of Good Bad Billionaire, BBC World Service hosts Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng delve into the life and influence of Sam Altman, the enigmatic billionaire behind the groundbreaking AI platform, ChatGPT. They explore Altman's journey from a tech prodigy to a powerhouse in the artificial intelligence sector, examining both his accomplishments and the controversies that surround him.

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Early Life and Career Beginnings

Sam Altman was born in 1985 in St. Louis, Missouri, into a supportive middle-class Jewish family. From an early age, he displayed exceptional technical prowess—by three, he could use a VCL, and by eight, he was programming on a Macintosh computer. Altman attended the prestigious John Burroughs School, where his competitive nature and leadership qualities began to shine. At 16, he publicly came out as gay, taking a bold stand that significantly impacted his school's culture ([05:30]).

After high school, Altman enrolled at Stanford University in 2003 to study computer science. However, his entrepreneurial spirit led him to drop out at 19 to focus on his startup, Looped, a location-based social media app developed with his then-boyfriend, Nick Sivo ([08:56]).

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Rise Through Y Combinator and Strategic Investments

Looped's initial success included securing deals with major mobile carriers, peaking at a $175 million valuation. Despite this, user engagement waned, leading to the sale of the company for $43 million in 2012, netting Altman $5 million ([11:21]). Undeterred by this setback, he co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother, focusing on venture capital investments in emerging startups.

By 2014, Altman's acumen earned him the presidency of Y Combinator, where he mentored and invested in some of the most successful startups, including Uber and Airbnb. His strategic advice—such as urging Airbnb to alter revenue projections from millions to billions—proved visionary, contributing significantly to their exponential growth ([13:11]).

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Founding OpenAI and Spearheading AI Development

In 2015, Altman co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit organization aimed at ensuring that artificial intelligence benefits humanity. With notable co-founders like Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman, OpenAI pledged $1 billion to develop AI responsibly. Altman's leadership emphasized ethical considerations and the potential of AI to revolutionize various industries ([17:16]).

Despite its noble beginnings, the financial demands of AI research led to the creation of OpenAI LP, a for-profit arm designed to secure the necessary capital. This shift attracted a $10 billion investment from Microsoft, cementing OpenAI's status as a dominant player in the AI landscape ([21:44]).

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Boardroom Turmoil and Reinstatement as CEO

A dramatic turn of events unfolded in November 2023 when Altman was abruptly fired by OpenAI's non-profit board amid allegations of dishonesty. This led to a frantic five-day power struggle, with major stakeholders like Microsoft and OpenAI staff vehemently supporting Altman's reinstatement ([24:38]).

Ultimately, Altman was rehired as CEO by Tuesday night, restoring stability and solidifying his position as a leading figure in AI development. This incident highlighted the intense internal conflicts regarding OpenAI's direction and governance ([26:22]).

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Personal Life and Preparation for an AI-Driven Future

Beyond his professional endeavors, Altman's personal life is marked by significant investments and unique preparations for potential global catastrophes. He owns a 950-acre cattle ranch in Napa Valley, despite being a vegetarian, and has amassed a collection of rare items, including a Bronze Age sword and a jet engine ([30:31]).

Altman identifies as a survival prepper, stocking essentials like guns, gold, antibiotics, and gas masks in anticipation of an AI-induced apocalypse. This behavior raises questions about his confidence in managing AI's risks versus his public optimism about its benefits ([31:03]).

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Evaluating Sam Altman: Categories of Judgment

Simon and Zing assessed Altman across several categories to determine whether he is a "Good," "Bad," or "Just Another Billionaire."

1. Wealth ([32:17])

   • Rating: 3 out of 10
   • Comments: Altman's recent billionaire status is seen as entry-level, with significant spending on luxury items and unique collectibles.

2. Rags to Riches ([33:05])

   • Rating: 2 out of 10
   • Comments: Coming from a comfortable middle-class background, Altman's rise lacks the dramatic "rags to riches" narrative.

3. Villainy ([34:13])

   • Rating: 6 out of 10
   • Comments: While not overtly malevolent, Altman's preparations for disaster and the dual nature of AI's potential raise ethical concerns.

4. Philanthropy ([37:11])

   • Rating: 7 out of 10
   • Comments: Altman has pledged to donate half his fortune and invested in nonprofit initiatives, signaling a commitment to societal good.

5. Power ([38:27])

   • Rating: 8 out of 10
   • Comments: With OpenAI's substantial influence and alliances with global leaders, Altman wields considerable power in shaping AI's future.

6. Legacy ([39:32])

   • Rating: 7 out of 10 (Simon) / 8 out of 10 (Zing)
   • Comments: Altman's role in popularizing AI through ChatGPT positions him as a pivotal figure in technology's evolution, though the full impact remains to be seen.

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Final Judgment: Bad Billionaire

After weighing the categories, Simon and Zing concluded that Sam Altman exemplifies characteristics of a "Bad Billionaire." Despite his contributions to technology and philanthropy, his contradictory actions—public optimism paired with personal preparations for disaster—cast doubt on his ethical stance and intentions.

Key Reflections:

• Altman's belief in AI's potential for good contrasts with his apocalyptic preparations, creating a perception of instability and possible malevolence.
• His aggressive investment strategies and authoritative leadership style suggest a relentless pursuit of power, raising concerns about his influence and control over AI developments.
• While his philanthropic efforts are commendable, they are overshadowed by the ethical implications of his work in AI and the potential societal disruptions it may cause.

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Conclusion and Teaser for Next Episode

The episode wraps up with a teaser for the next installment, where Simon and Zing will profile Aliko Dangote, Africa's longest-reigning richest person and the world's richest black billionaire. Dangote's fortune, built through cement, sugar, salt, and oil refining, offers a contrasting narrative to Altman's high-tech empire.

Stay tuned to Good Bad Billionaire as Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng continue their exploration of the world's most influential billionaires, uncovering the intricate stories behind their wealth and impact.

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Notable Quotes:

• Simon Jack ([03:39]): "This is the man behind artificial intelligence or one of the companies behind it. OpenAI."
• Zing Tsjeng ([05:30]): "When fellow students objected to a speaker booked for National Coming Out Day, Sam actually announced he was gay to the whole school."
• Simon Jack ([08:44]): "Learn something new with this podcast every time."
• Zing Tsjeng ([16:09]): "So Sam then uses most of his money to invest via Hydrazine Capital in Y Combinator companies."
• Simon Jack ([21:44]): "Sam quickly raised a billion dollars in investment from Microsoft."

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This summary provides an in-depth overview of the "Sam Altman: ChatGPT and the AI Revolution" episode, capturing the essence of the discussion, key insights, and the hosts' final assessment of Sam Altman's role as a billionaire in the AI domain.

Transcript

[Simon Jack]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.

[Michael Lewis]

Hey there, it's Michael Lewis, author of Going Infinite Moneyball, the Blind side and Liars Poker. On the latest season of my podcast, against the Rules, I'm exploring what it means to be a sports fan in America and what the rise of sports betting is doing to our teams, our states and ourselves. Join me and listen to against the Rules on America's number one podcast network, iHeartradio. Open your free iHeart app and search against the Rules. Listen to against the rules on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Simon Jack]

Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Every episode we pick a billionaire and find out how they made their money.

[Zing Seng]

Then we judge them. Are they good, bad, or just another billionaire?

[Simon Jack]

I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.

[Zing Seng]

And I'm Zing Seng. I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

[Simon Jack]

And this week's Billionaire is the founder of a company that's either going to kill us all, cure us all, put us all out of a job, means we can't believe anything we read, see or hear. It's the man behind artificial intelligence or one of the companies behind it. OpenAI.

[Zing Seng]

It's Sam Altman, who is, I think for my money, the first openly gay billionaire we've had on this show.

[Simon Jack]

I think so. He's 39 years old. He's the chief executive of OpenAI, who makes something you may have heard of everyone seems to have heard of in the last couple of years called ChatGPT.

[Zing Seng]

He's newly minted. He only was worth $1 billion as.

[Simon Jack]

Of this year and interestingly, he didn't make his fortune from artificial intelligence.

[Zing Seng]

He is also what you might call an incredible deals guy. He actually describes himself as having a delusional level of self confidence.

[Simon Jack]

As I say, he's in charge of OpenAI, although wasn't for about a very tumultuous week. We'll get into that a bit later in the program. This is a company that is shaping all futures. For years I've been going to places like Davos and they've been saying artificial intelligence is going to change our lives. They've been droning on about it for decades and in the last couple of years it's hit us like a freight train.

[Zing Seng]

In fact, we'll actually probably try and use ChatGPT during this program.

[Simon Jack]

Let's give it a whirl. What is Good Bad Billionaire podcast? Good Bad Billionaire is a show that examines the lives of billionaires through a critical lens. Aiming to explore whether they've had a positive or negative impact on the world, the hosts delve into personal histories, business practice and philanthropic efforts of these ultra wealthy individuals, discussing both their achievements and their controversies. That's pretty good.

[Zing Seng]

That's actually pretty accurate.

[Simon Jack]

Putting us out of a job already.

[Zing Seng]

I wish we'd never picked it up now.

[Simon Jack]

Well, maybe when it comes to judging, Sam Altman will give chatgpt the last word. Stay tuned.

[Zing Seng]

So Sam Altman is a man who likes expensive and rare things as befits any billionaire.

[Simon Jack]

He's got a half a million dollar watch, so rare only 33 were ever made. If you're a watch geek, it's called a Grubel Falsey invention piece one in red gold.

[Zing Seng]

He also splashed out on a $15 million red McLaren F1 car.

[Simon Jack]

And he collects technological artifacts including, we're told, a Bronze Age sword and a jet engine. He's also a survival prepper. And that means people preparing for some apocalypse to befall the earth.

[Zing Seng]

Yes. So he's collected guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water and gas masks. So he's clearly readying himself for some cataclysmic event.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, in fact, he's getting ready should artificial intelligence, which he is kind of helping to foster in case it attack humanity. Let's have a listen to Sam testify before a US Senate committee in 2023.

[Michael Lewis]

My worst fears are that we, the.

[Zing Seng]

Field, the technology, the industry, cause significant.

[Michael Lewis]

Harm to the world.

[Zing Seng]

I think that could happen a lot of different ways. It's why we started the company. It's a big part of why I'm here today.

[Simon Jack]

Well, it doesn't sound he's that confident. If he's doing all this prepping, it's very confident that he can stop it attacking humanity.

[Zing Seng]

Or maybe he just enjoys having a plan B. What you might gather from that quote is that Sam actually believes that open air. With him in charge, that's an important caveat. We'll be able to harness AI to make the world a better place.

[Simon Jack]

So our fundamental question we always ask in this is he a good, bad, or just another billionaire? Is a pretty pertinent one and one that's really current.

[Zing Seng]

Well, before we get into all of that, let's just trace Sam Altman's journey from a zero to a million.

[Simon Jack]

Sam Opman was born in 1985, grew up in a solid middle class Jewish family in St. Louis in the United States.

[Zing Seng]

His dad worked in real estate, his mother was a dermatologist and he was the eldest of four children.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, the family played maths games over dinner, and they were super competitive. His brother remembers Sam saying, I have to win and I'm in charge of everything.

[Zing Seng]

Born with that instinct to rule, you might say. And Sam was good with tech from a very young age. So by three years of age, he could work the vcl. By eight, he could program the Macintosh computer his parents gave him.

[Simon Jack]

And he went to a private school called John Burroughs, rated one of the top hundred schools in the US and.

[Zing Seng]

He was well liked there. In fact, his headteacher said that teachers liked him because he was very, very bright and a hard worker. But he was also super social.

[Simon Jack]

And as you said, Singh, he is gay. He came out to his parents at 16, and he described growing up gay in the Midwest in the 2000s as not the most awesome thing at 17.

[Zing Seng]

And this is really interesting. When fellow students objected to a speaker booked for the for National Coming Out Day, Sam actually announced he was gay to the whole school at Azembly. And he asked everyone whether the school wanted to be a repressive place or one that was open to different ideas. So quite a ballsy move.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. Brave. The school counselor said what Sam did changed the school. It felt like someone had opened up a great big box full of all kinds of kids and let them out into the world.

[Zing Seng]

I actually think this is quite brave because, you know, Sam Altman is now about 39, and I think that when he was growing up, you know, that was a time when kids were still using the word gay as a pejorative.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. And the Midwest is not New York City, that's for sure.

[Zing Seng]

Certainly not.

[Simon Jack]

Or San Francisco. But I also think in a way, as we go through his story, he can look people in the eye and sort of be very, very direct with them. He could stand his ground and say his thing and feel confident in his own skin.

[Zing Seng]

And that will become very important in the boardroom dramas he'll have to deal with when he grows up.

[Simon Jack]

For sure. So not our first billionaire to enroll at Stanford University in Palo Alto. He joined in 2003 to study computer sc.

[Zing Seng]

And, you know, at the time, going to Stanford would have been really exciting and inspiring because Silicon Valley, which is exactly where Stanford University is, was coming back strong after the dot com bust.

[Simon Jack]

So while at university, there were some technological developments that would influence what he was doing. He learned that gps, Global positioning satellite services would soon be available on mobile phones.

[Zing Seng]

Right. I remember in my younger days having to write down directions on a Piece of paper to get places.

[Simon Jack]

Sure. On something called an A to Z in London, using a map to get somewhere. You're talking to someone who used to deliver pizzas at the age of 17. Without GPS, it was a nightmare. We'll see whether artificial intelligence beats it. For my money, GPS is the single most useful invention ever on the face of the earth.

[Zing Seng]

And understandably, Sam also felt the same way because with his then boyfriend, Nick Sivo, he developed an app called Looped. This would allow users to track their friends on a map. So basically, location based social media, sort of like what Snapchat does with find your friends.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. And the app got some a place on a brand new summer camp that's a bigger American tradition. Everyone goes on camp, but usually you go a bit younger. But this was a special camp for tech startups called Y Combinator, which he attended in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the summer break after his second year at Stanford in 2005.

[Zing Seng]

So Y Combinator at the time was a relatively new thing. It was a kind of investment experiment which was run by a guy called Paul Graham and his wife, Jessica Livingston, and their friends. And they were frustrated at the pace of venture capital investing because they believed that investors should be, quote, making more smaller investments. They should, should be funding hackers instead of suits. They should be willing to fund younger founders.

[Simon Jack]

So at this camp, each founder was given $6,000 to work on their idea whilst being coached with the chance to pitch to Paul's wealthy friends for 15 minutes at the end. He worked so hard, purportedly that summer that he says he got scurvy, which is something that used to be set sailors back in the old ship faring days, because it's caused by vitamin C deficiency, which they used to cure by putting limes on board. Which is why to this day, Brits in America are called limeys.

[Zing Seng]

Wow, I did not know that. Learn something new with this podcast every time. So Sam was inspired by a summer Y Combinator because by the age of 19, he actually dropped out of Stanford to focus on loops.

[Simon Jack]

That is so ballsy. I just cannot imagine you get into like the premier tech and science university in the world and you decide you're so confident you're going to drop out. It's just, you know, I can't imagine doing that.

[Zing Seng]

I mean, he shares that with one of our other billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg, you know, both programmers who drop out of university to build essentially the nascent social media companies of this day and age.

[Simon Jack]

And Bill Gates, remember, dropped out of Harvard. So, you know, Basically, if you want to make it big, drop out of school kids.

[Zing Seng]

I think that's a good message to leave people with.

[Simon Jack]

In his role as startup founder, Sam proved to be what people say is an incredible deals guy. One of the reasons he got a place on Y Combinator was that he passed the so called young founders test. He could manage adults.

[Zing Seng]

And this is really important, right, because if you're a 19 year old who behaves like a 19 year, 19 year old, you're put in charge of a million billion dollar company and you cannot manage 35, 45, 55 year olds, you're toast.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. In fact, Y Combinator's Paul Graham, the guy who founded it, said at age 19, Sam seemed like he had a 40 year old inside him. There are other 19 year olds who are 12 inside.

[Zing Seng]

And this is interesting given what you said about how he seems to be a very straight talking guy, because when he was challenged by these older venture capitalists that his idea for Looped was stupid, he would apparently look them straight in the eye and say, really? Why do you think so?

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. A profiler in New magazine described him as a formidable operator, quick to smile, but also quick to anger. With Paul saying, Sam is extremely good at becoming powerful.

[Zing Seng]

Interesting choice of words. A year later, after Sam started looped, he raised $12 million. So clearly those venture capitalists kind of liked his ballsiness. And he'd secured a deal with the mobile phone company Sprint.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. And over the next few years, he got more deals with other mobile carriers and the valuation of the company reaches $175 million. That was its peak.

[Zing Seng]

It soon dropped because while the company and him were popular with investors, the app actually wasn't taking off among users.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. This is interesting because he said that his mistake was thinking that locations would be important with social media. And I remember when there was a phase when people thought that was going to be important. But he said in his words, people would lie on their couches and just consume content and learned you can't make humans do something they don't want to do.

[Zing Seng]

So Sam actually caused time unlooped in 2012. Him and the other co founders sell the company for a much lower value of $43 million.

[Simon Jack]

And that was actually a negative return for some of the venture capitalists who bought in at a higher price. But Sam himself made $5 million from the sale. So while he was probably worth a lot more on paper at one point, we now know he's definitely got $5 million in the bank in 2012. Sam Altman is a millionaire.

[Zing Seng]

However, he is not happy with how all of this ended. He said, failure always sucks, but failure when you're trying to prov really sucks.

[Simon Jack]

And it's not just the business that failed. His relationship failed. After selling their company, Sam and Nick, his partner, break up after nine years together.

[Zing Seng]

So at this point, Sam is newly single, newly a millionaire, and now he really has a chip on his shoulder and something to prove.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, so he's going to prove it by becoming a famous billionaire. That journey from a million to a billion. A journey that will involve being fired and upsetting Scarlett Johansson.

[Zing Seng]

And we'll get into that in just a second.

[Michael Lewis]

Hey there, it's Michael Lewis, author of Going Infinite Moneyball, the Blind side and Liars Poker. On the latest season of my podcast, against the Rules, I'm exploring what it means to be a sports fan in America and what the rise of sports betting is doing to our teams, our states and ourselves. Join me and listen to against the Rules on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search against the Rules. Listen to against the rules on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Zing Seng]

So now let's start Sam's journey from a million to a billion.

[Simon Jack]

We've talked about making smaller investments in smaller companies and lots more of them. And while he was still at Looped, Sam had started doing just that, investing small amounts in his entrepreneurial peers.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah, he'd also become a partner in Y Combinator. So he'd become a mentor to these startups and was also starting to invest directly with them.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, So Y Combinator had grown from the first summer program into a full time professional incubator. In eight years, it had supported over 500 startups, including some household names, Dropbox, Airbnb, for example.

[Zing Seng]

So as well as personally investing $100,000 in Airbnb, Sam also gave them some advice when he saw their pitch for the initial funding. They projected their revenue at 30 million, and Sam advised them to change all the M's to B's. Because either you don't believe everything you said in the rest of the deck or you're ashamed or I can't do math.

[Simon Jack]

So change all the millions in the pitch to billions. And I remember this period really well and had some friends in California and they said, actually, unless you are ludicrously ambitious and you say you're going to spend tons of money investing in this company, the venture capitalists won't be interested. They're not interested in sensible projections. They want moonshots all of the time. So replace the M's with B's and then you've got some interest.

[Zing Seng]

That's so intriguing. So basically you have to aim high and then if you kind of fall under that, you'll still have succeeded more than if you just aimed lower.

[Simon Jack]

Exactly. So in 2012, when he sells looped, he takes the $5 million from that sale and he uses it to set up his own venture capital fund with his brother Jack and call Hydrazine Capital.

[Zing Seng]

I have a question about venture capital, which is, is that just a fancy name for investing?

[Simon Jack]

Well, yeah. Venture capital is not for investing in companies on the stock exchange. Venture capital is for investing companies that might only have an idea on the board. It might not have even made anything yet. It might be pre revenue. So they haven't made any money yet. And it certainly would be pre profit. Most of these companies will never have made a profit. They are the big companies of the future and most of them fail. And the point is, it's a bit like a movie studio. You make a bunch of movies, nine of them lose money. The tenth one is Titanic. Do you know what I mean? And so basically the big hits pay for all the misses many times over. That's the model.

[Zing Seng]

And do you just need to be ludicrously wealthy to be a venture capitalist?

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, I think it's fair to say that most venture capitalists and the money they get from investors are from people who have got a very high risk appetite, which means they can afford to take bigger chances, which must mean they've got a bigger comfort level. And which means they must be wealthy.

[Zing Seng]

Which means that neither of us would really qualify as venture capitalists ever.

[Simon Jack]

I don't think we'd be allowed to be venture capitalists. There's quite a lot of when you sign up to all these things, you have to fill in quite a lot of forms. So he's founded this hydrazine capital 5 million from his own money. He raises a further 21 million, including money and some mentorship from Peter Thiel, the co founder of PayPal, an early investor in Facebook. You can listen to our episodes on the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg where Peter Thiel plays a big role.

[Zing Seng]

So Sam then uses most of his money to invest via Hydrazine Capital in Y combinator companies. And within two years he's written on his blog that five of his first 40 investments were worth 100 times their invested capital.

[Simon Jack]

So that goes back to what I was saying. He made 40 investments. Five of them are worth 100 times their invested capital, even if the other 35 are worth nothing. He's making big money, right?

[Zing Seng]

So clearly he's made some bets that have paid off. At least he says they have.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. In 2014, Paul Graham steps aside from Y Combinator and makes Sam the president. Silicon Valley was pretty surprised he'd handed it over to Sam, who was just 28 at this point.

[Zing Seng]

Paul said, Y Combinator needs to grow, and I'm not the best person to grow it. Sam is what it needs at this stage in its evolution.

[Simon Jack]

And he wanted to expand Y Combinator's remit beyond just technology. In fact, his ambition was to build a trillion dollar conglomerate that moved the whole world forward in a number of different industries. He blogged that science seems broken. He asked for applications from companies in energy and biotech, artificial intelligence, robotics and other scientific fields.

[Zing Seng]

And this expansion into new fields was a gamble, but it was profitable. The year before Sam took over, Y Combinator's combined companies had a valuation of 11.5 billion. The year after he took over, it was $65 billion.

[Simon Jack]

That is an astonishing acceleration in value. You know, one of these things about being right place, right time. What we saw from post.com bust to today is probably the biggest period of wealth creation in history. And they were right in the middle of that stream. And Paul Graham said, I think his Sam's goal is to make the whole future.

[Zing Seng]

So it's not just about getting money and becoming rich. It's also about shaping the future.

[Simon Jack]

If it was just about money, I'd be out by 10 million, probably even earlier than that, or certainly by 100. To press on to a billion and beyond, you've got to think you're doing something more than just accumulating wealth. It's more like, I think one of them mentions it, we'll get to it later. More like a religion than it is investing.

[Zing Seng]

Oh, yeah. In fact, it's very Alexander the Great, I think.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. So it's at this moment that Sam Altman sets up an organization that will shape the future of the world. And it's probably the reason we're covering him today, because in 2015, he found OpenAI, a non profit artificial intelligence company with a goal, a humble goal to benefit humanity.

[Zing Seng]

So the nonprofit bit is interesting, right, because it was set up that way to resist some of these factors that drive much of the tech industry, you know, that for profit motive. So instead, Sam believed it would operate more like a research facility or a think tank.

[Simon Jack]

And it's interesting they set this up because clearly even at this stage they've got an instinct and a hunch. It's a very powerful technology which will need some kind of conscience and some kind of regulation, some kind of moderation, someone to think about it.

[Zing Seng]

Ethics, basically.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, for sure. Exactly. And perhaps the world's most famous billionaire at the moment, Elon Musk, was his co chair. Other founders included Peter Thiel, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Emphasis, founded by another of our good bad billionaires, NR Narayana Murty.

[Zing Seng]

And together these founders pledged $1 billion to work on AI that would be, quote, unquote, good and dominate the market before other companies could release, quote, bad AI.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, and this is one of the biggest investment trends around. Anything that has got anything to do with AI over the last couple of years has exploded in value. If you look at a company called Nvidia, which supply the chips, which basically power a lot of the AI, that company has gone stratospherically in the period of two years. It's overtaken Google, Microsoft, Amazon, all of them because they basically think AI is going to be a dominant technology. They have the chips to power it. By the way, it's also led to a lot of AI washing. So now every company says, oh, we're an AI company, we're an AI company. Hoping that some of that hysteria rubs off on them and their shares shoot up. So a lot of people claiming to be AI enabled or at the cutting edge of AI are not at all.

[Zing Seng]

Oh wow, I love that term, AI washing. So OpenAI, this billion dollar AI project was from one of the biggest names in tech and it made people very excited.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, but the big money needed was proving beyond a nonprofit organization because the.

[Zing Seng]

Costs were really high. Right. AI is a specialist field. You had to hire the world's best AI researchers. They want multimillion dollar salaries, cloud computing power alone. So the power it takes to feel AI development also costs tens of millions of dollars. And Elon Musk felt OpenAI was actually falling behind Google, which was developing its own take on AI, and that it would not be relevant without a dramatic change in his words, in execution and resources.

[Simon Jack]

And he wanted Tesla to buy OpenAI, but the board refused. So Elon left OpenAI. But something was going to have to change.

[Zing Seng]

And during this time, Sam had been working simultaneously on Y Combinator and Open AI. So doing two jobs at one.

[Simon Jack]

But OpenAI was taking so much of his time, the board at Y Combinator asked him, listen, you've got to choose, you've got to choose between these two companies. And Sam chose OpenAI, leaving Y Combinator as present in 2019 to concentrate on being CEO of OpenAI. But importantly, he keeps hold of his Y Combinator investments, so he still keeps the investments that he's got.

[Zing Seng]

However, Sam did agree with Elon Musk on one thing. He felt that OpenAI was falling behind and he had this kind of grand solution for it. He wanted to create a for profit organization, OpenAI LP, that exists within the larger company structure. Although this is important, the nonprofit board remained in control.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, so you've got a nonprofit board, but you've got a division of the company which can make money in order to fund the kind of things that OpenAI was set up to do. So once they've made this change, Sam quickly raised a billion dollars in investment from Microsoft.

[Zing Seng]

And becoming a for profit was not an uncontroversial move. And which we'll discuss later. But Sam also claims to have had no equity in OpenAI and to draw a salary of just $65,000 as CEO. So he's basically trying to say, I'm not making any money from this.

[Simon Jack]

Right. This is not, this is not personal enrichment that's motivating me here. So OpenAI clearly isn't the way that Sam Altman is going to become a billionaire, but it is how he becomes famous and why we're covering him. So let's continue the OpenAI story.

[Zing Seng]

Now cast your mind back to the end of 2022, when all of a sudden everyone started talking about something called ChatGPT. And this was OpenAI, AI's huge breakthrough.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. As I say, people have been droning on about AI's impact on the world for years and years and years, and it suddenly arrived in real form in ChatGPT, which you could go onto the Internet to use. You could download it onto your phone, you type in questions, and it's something which is more than a glorified search engine. It's something that can actually figure out by scraping information. Whenever it can help you write an essay, it can solve novel, logical problems. You know, the first time I ever used it, I was blown away. I couldn't believe what it was doing.

[Zing Seng]

I think the thing that really blew my mind about ChatGPT, you can type in questions and it'll answer you, but something about it feels like you're talking to someone else and someone else is responding in real time, which, you know, just Google searching something doesn't have that feeling.

[Simon Jack]

No. It certainly passes what is called the Turing Test. And the Turing Test was named after the famous guy who broke the Enigma code during the war, Alan Turing, brilliant mathematician. And he said the test of artificial intelligence is could you tell the difference between talking to the computer or talking to a person? And I think in certain times on ChatGPT, it is very, very hard. If someone told you there was a person at the other end of it, you would believe it.

[Zing Seng]

When it launched, Sam immediately became a household name and also someone the world really listened to. Right.

[Simon Jack]

In fact, in spring 2023, he did a 22 country world tour, meeting world leaders including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron, French President, the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, and many others. And Sam said For many people, 2023 was the year they started taking AI seriously.

[Zing Seng]

So Sam Altman is now becoming a household name. But then a dramatic twist occurs in the story, because on a Thursday in November of that very year, a year after ChatGPT's launch, Sam receives a text from an OpenAI board member to join a Google Meet the next day.

[Simon Jack]

And this Google Meet unleashed chaos. A chaotic power struggle at Open Eye that was literally the headlines around the world. Because on the Friday, Sam was fired as the chief executive of OpenAI.

[Zing Seng]

Yes, it kicked off this chaotic five day power struggle. You can really see this as the culmination of this battle between two ideologies within OpenAI.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, one side, essentially the Silicon Valley techno optimist. They strongly supported the for profit model. And on the other side was the bunch fearful of AI, probably the founding reason for establishing OpenAI. They wanted to be much more cautious. They believed the nonprofit model was safer. And Sam, it seems, was in the former camp. The for profit side and the release.

[Zing Seng]

Of ChatGPT had exacerbated the division between these two sides. Because when you released ChatGPT into the world, immediately other companies were like, hey, we could make a lot of money using this.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. So on that Friday, he was fired by the nonprofit board who announced that a deliberative review process had found Sam was not consistently candid in his communications with the board. That was the language they used. Pretty vague. But that lack of candidness led it to lose confidence in his ability to be OpenAI's CEO.

[Zing Seng]

Is it actually that unusual for boards to sack their CEOs?

[Simon Jack]

No, it's not that unusual. I mean, I mean, if a CEO is going to get sacked, and they do get sacked, it's the board that sacks them. That's the board's job. The board's job is to hire and Fire CEOs, one of their many jobs. And so it's not unusual. It is quite unusual for a company which is becoming this successful and high profile. They must have known this would be a huge shock through the system.

[Zing Seng]

Actually, some of OpenAI's investors only found out that he was being fired through social media, and it basically spooked them.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. Over the next few days, there was pressure from OpenAI's biggest investor, Microsoft, and lots of Open AI staff threatened mass resignations unless he was reinstated into his job.

[Zing Seng]

And the board kind of, I guess you could put this quite simply, panicked. They went through three CEO changes in basically as many days.

[Simon Jack]

By Tuesday night, Sam was rehired as chief executive of OpenAI. And two weeks later, time magazine announced Sam Altman was chief Executive of the year. People were talking about little else in technology circles other than what was going on at OpenAI.

[Zing Seng]

I mean, it's pretty much their fastest firing and hiring that I've heard of.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, it's not the kind of firing and rehiring that unions care about. It is an interesting boardroom drive drama. And Time magazine quoted a source who witnessed all of this stuff going on, who said, in a lot of ways, Sam is a really nice guy. He's not an evil genius. He cares about humanity. But there's also a clear pattern, if you look at his behavior, of really seeking power in an extreme way. Let's note that comment for our judging panel later.

[Zing Seng]

So after this brief boardroom blip, he's back in position as the CEO of OpenAI. So let's get back to Sam's money and his journey to a billion.

[Simon Jack]

Back during his years at Y Combinator, he had invested in some of the world's biggest startups. He invested his personal wealth in 125 companies.

[Zing Seng]

Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn, said SAM is rare in that he's a capable investor, but he's also making bold bets.

[Simon Jack]

And those included some quite small investments he made early on that paid off big time. He put $100,000 into Uber in its early days. By the time its IPO, that was Uber was valued at $82 billion. He put 100,000 into Airbnb in 2008. So he's really backed some very, very good horses here.

[Zing Seng]

He's also invest. So not just kind of a few hundred thousand here and there. He put $375 million into Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion company that in 2021 was valued at $2.5 billion.

[Simon Jack]

And another of his investments, Reddit, paid off. In March 2024, it sold shares to the public, had an IPO. On that day, Sam's stake in the company rose to be worth $600 million. And a month later, Forbes declared him worth $1 billion. So just this year, March of this year, age 39, Sam Altman is a billionaire.

[Zing Seng]

Just a month after being named a billionaire, Sam is back in the headlines.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. Enter Stage left in May 2024, Scarlett Johansson, who said she was shocked and angered after OpenAI launched a chat bot with a voice eerily silent similar to her own.

[Zing Seng]

Now, if you are a fan of Joaquin Phoenix films, you will know that Scarlett Johansson starred in a sci fi movie called her in 2013. So it's about a guy played by Joaquin Phoenix who falls in love with his device's AI operating system, which basically exists as a voice. It's voiced by Scarlett Johansson.

[Simon Jack]

And this is Sam Altman's favorite science fiction movie. And Scarlett Johansson revealed that Sam Altman had approached her about voicing the new chatbot, but she had rejected that.

[Zing Seng]

Sam apologized when the AI chatbot came out and explained the voice was not Scarlett, it was a voice actress. Having said that, if you listen to the chatbot, it sounds exactly like her.

[Simon Jack]

And many commented that his approach with OpenAI was a bit like Mark Zuckerberg's kind of move fast and break things. An approach that saw tech companies make big decisions, then deal with the consequences afterwards.

[Zing Seng]

Still, Sam's approach has made OpenAI valuable. As of 2024, it's valued at $80.

[Simon Jack]

Billion, but as we've said, claims he has no equity. That means an ownership stake in OpenAI. So that is not the reason he's on this list. It's the reason we're talking about him, but it's not the reason he's rich. Meanwhile, in his private life, he married his long term partner, Oliver Mulherin, a software engineer at their estate in Hawaii.

[Zing Seng]

As you do of his marriage, he said, I was expecting it not to feel any different or better. However, it does feel different and feels better. I'm very happy.

[Simon Jack]

Oh wow. Overwhelming response to marriage that. Naturally, the tech couple live primarily in San Francisco, but as a billionaire, he has of course houses all over the place.

[Zing Seng]

That includes a 950 acre cattle ranch in Napa Valley, California, despite the fact Sam's a vegetarian.

[Simon Jack]

And interestingly, at least one of his properties is dedicated to lasting out the apocalypse. Back in 2016, this is just after he's founded OpenAI. Remember he told the New Yorker magazine that he prepped for survival. He's a prepper. What does that mean?

[Zing Seng]

Basically, preppers are a kind of subculture, I guess, of people who believe. Believe that the end of the world will come in their lifetime, and therefore they have to hoard resources and land in order to wait out the apocalypse.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Seng]

And Sam Altman said that him and his friends would get drunk and discuss the ways the world would come to an end. One of their most popular scenarios that they brainstormed was AI attacking humanity. And he said, I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in big sir that I can fly to.

[Simon Jack]

I find this deeply problematic. So I think that if you're, you know, nothing dents your confidence in the ethical and Safe deployment of AI than the boss of OpenAI basically arming himself to the teeth with medical supplies and guns and God knows what else in a bunker somewhere to wait for when AI starts attacking us. That's quite unsettling.

[Zing Seng]

No, I mean, it doesn't really inspire confidence in his confidence that he'll be able to fix the problem of AI.

[Simon Jack]

So I suppose this is where we are now. He's prepped, he's ready to go for when AI attacks us. Maybe this is the time we should judge Sam Altman and find out whether he's good, bad, or just another billionaire.

[Zing Seng]

So we do this on a range of categories and we rank him from 0 to 10. Let's begin with wealth, because Sam Altman's actually quite a very entry level billionaire.

[Simon Jack]

I mean, entry level just this year. He only became a billionaire this year. So he is on the bottom right rung and wealth of our billionaires. Having said that, he likes to splash the cash that he does around a lot. That half a million dollar watch a year, fifty million dollar car, the Napa.

[Zing Seng]

Valley ranch, even though he doesn't even eat beef.

[Simon Jack]

The Bronze Age sword.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah, so he definitely does love to spend it.

[Simon Jack]

And we, we do factor that into our rating, how much they splash the cash. So although he's definitely a one when it comes to absolute, his penchant for spending it big nudges him up to a three for me.

[Zing Seng]

Oh, I would rank him higher because there's something about the Bronze Age sword that really gets me.

[Simon Jack]

There's a megalomania in there, isn't there?

[Zing Seng]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I mentioned Alexander the Great earlier. There is something a little bit Alexander the Great about him right where he just wants to conquer everything. I would give him a four out of 10 for this.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, three for me, four for you. We then have a category on rags to riches. How far have they come from their beginnings, whether they be humble or not?

[Zing Seng]

He grew up in a kind of comfortable middle class family. He went to a prestigious private school. He hasn't really traveled that far.

[Simon Jack]

He was in the surroundings where he could develop his skills. Taking apart and using a Mac at.

[Zing Seng]

The age of eight, which his parents gave him as a present, playing maths.

[Simon Jack]

Games and competitive math games with the family, whatever. He's primed for success. And as you say, he went to the best school and he went to Stanford, which basically is a kind of license to print money, it seems, in this, in this day and age. And also, he's not that rich. I mean, he's obviously fabulously wealthy, but by our standards for this podcast, not that rich.

[Zing Seng]

That's very true.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. So what do you reckon?

[Zing Seng]

I think maybe a 2 out of 10.

[Simon Jack]

Really? I agree with you. 2 out of 10 for rags to riches Villainy, always an interesting category. Now then, there's lots of lenses we could look at this through.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah, Sam Altman has been very clear about the fact he thinks AI is a threat, but he also thinks of himself as the guy to handle it.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, he's the AI wrangler. Basically. He thinks it could bring about the end of the world. And he's also talked to having an absolutely delic. Delusional level of self confidence. So confident is he that he's prepping for the. For Armageddon.

[Zing Seng]

Interestingly, many people have said he's not responsible enough to be taking on this mantle of being the AI wrangler. Business Insider quoted this venture capitalist who said he's one of the more intellectually dishonest guys in tech.

[Simon Jack]

Now, Business Insider didn't identify the person who said that. It could be someone who's got an axe to grind against Sam Altman. You know, he's had investments in multiple companies. You can upset people along the way, so we don't know know who or why that was said, but it's a perspective to throw into the pot.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah. And actually, in January 2024, OpenAI quietly changed some language around a policy which kind of walked back on a ban on the military use of its AI. Its policy still states it shouldn't be used to harm yourself or others, including to develop or use weapons. But it's interesting that they've kind of tried to walk that back and it's also worth noting that ChatGPT has already been used in various war propaganda campaigns, ones that OpenAI claims they've shut down. But apparently bad actors in Russia, China, and Israel have been using ChatGPT to spread misinformation and disinformation. So there's this fear already that AI is being used to threaten democracy.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, so the question on villainy is, is he malevolent? Has he created something that is malevolent? Not necessarily, but could be used for malevolent purposes. Does that make him a villain? Given the fact that there were plenty of other people who were working on this, including Google, including Microsoft, including others, this genie was always going to come out of the bottle anyway.

[Zing Seng]

It's an interesting one because I feel like in five to 10 years, the SAM Altman story will have moved on enough that we will get a clearer idea of that malevolence or villainy. There seem to be murmurings, right, of people talking about, he has this almost kind of crazy desire for power. The board clearly didn't trust him initially. After a revolt, he was reinstalled. It feels like we're at the beginning of the spiopic.

[Simon Jack]

Given his prepping for the disaster, he feels a bit, to me, like the pilot on the airplane who jumps out with his parachute and says, see all? That person is not a good guy.

[Zing Seng]

This is also very true. I think for me, he comes out at 6 out of 10. You know, I think AI definitely has been used for nefarious ends.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, I don't think he's done anything particularly villainous apart from tell us everything's gonna be okay while preparing for total disaster. And that doesn't sit well with me. So I'll give him a six as well. But maybe we'll save some of those considerations for our final judgment on whether he's good or bad or just another billionaire.

[Zing Seng]

So let's come to the category that could save his reputation. Philanthropy. In May 2024, Sam announced he had signed the Giving Pledge to give away at least half of his fortune in his lifetime.

[Simon Jack]

This was set up by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to encourage the super rich to give away half of their fortune in their lifetime. That brings the total members to 240, which sounds great, but remember, there are nearly 2,800 billionaires, so it's less than 10.

[Zing Seng]

So, worth noting, this announcement was also made at a time he was hitting the headlines for less positive stuff, including making Scully Hansen very angry indeed.

[Simon Jack]

But while he was at Y Combinator, Sam did invest in some Nonprofit organizations. He invested $100,000 for a 0% stake rather than his usual $100,000 for a 7% stake. And in 2015, he started a nonprofit, YC Research, with $10 million of his own money. Okay, so philanthropy. I think he scores pretty highly here. I'm going to give him. I'm going to give him a seven.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah, I think I'll give him a seven. It's interesting. I mean, the timing of it obviously quite convenient for his piao. But not every single newly minted billionaire immediately signs up to the giving pledge to give it away.

[Simon Jack]

No, they don't. They don't. So, okay, we'll give him seven for that. There's another category. We have power. In 2016, he blogged. A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will. A surprising percentage of the time. The most successful founders don't set out to create companies. They're on a mission to create something closer to a religion.

[Zing Seng]

Oh, I don't know. This gives me the heebie jeebies. I don't like that at all.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. But I do think, you know, like we say, a lot of our billionaires have to have that zeal, if you.

[Zing Seng]

Like religious zeal, Messianic kind of.

[Simon Jack]

And in terms of power, there's no doubt that, you know, Microsoft made a $10 billion investment in OpenAI. That is the GDP of some small Eastern European countries. And there's no doubt the chat GPT is probably seen as the market leader in a world changing technology and he's in charge of it. So I'd say power is pretty high. Put it this way, we saw the list of people he met on that world tour in 2023. He's walking straight into the most powerful rooms in the world.

[Zing Seng]

If you didn't have a messiah complex before, you certainly would develop one after you met the 15th world leader, right?

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, exactly. He was entertained at the courts of these world leaders. So I'd give him an 8 for power right now.

[Zing Seng]

As it currently stands, if Sam Altman came out and said AI is rubbish, he would cause entire companies to crumble.

[Simon Jack]

He would. I think he's got real power. So 8 might be even an underestimate, but I'm going to stick with it. 8.

[Zing Seng]

Okay, well, I'll kind of nudge that up to a 9 out of 10. I think he's enormously powerful right now.

[Simon Jack]

Okay. The other category is legacy. Now this one could be possibly. We just don't know yet. Right. But it could be maybe one of the most Consequences, legacies of anyone that we've covered so far.

[Zing Seng]

Oh, yeah, more than. More than Bezos, more than Zuckerberg. In fact, in 2024, in January, the IMF warned that AI would affect 40% of jobs worldwide.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. It could put hundreds of millions of people out of work. And it also. I think the other part of the legacy is that with the deep fakes that we see, a lot of these are generated by AI, but it's shaken our faith in anything we read, see or hear. It's very common now, isn't it? If you scroll through stuff on social and say, you know, I just don't believe that. I think it must be AI.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah. And, you know, initially when AI generated images came out, people said things like, oh, yeah, you can tell it's fake. Look at these people, they've got 11 thumbs. But every single month, I think it is getting better, it is improving. And it all really takes a kind of malevolent actor, bad, you know, a bad actor to just redirect that technology towards kind of nefarious means.

[Simon Jack]

On the other hand, I was talking to the boss of a big drug company the other day, and they said that artificial intelligence has the capacity to make incredible breakthroughs in things like infectious diseases, in cancer, in treating Alzheimer's, potentially just that. The sheer computing power to notice patterns and do diagnostics and whatever could see a huge change. Having said that, we are talking about Sam Altman, not AI gener generally, but his legacy, I think, is that he was the person who put it in a form that really grabbed the public's attention. In ChatGPT, artificial intelligence being, you know, with lots of other people, it brought us to. To our attention in a. In a way that others hadn't.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah, that's very true, actually. And I think that if it wasn't for OpenAI making ChatGPT, a lot of these AI developments would have kind of slid relatively under the radar of the average consumer.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Seng]

You know, with ChatGPT, you suddenly realized, oh, wow, this is. This is happening. This is a thing that exists.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Seng]

And.

[Simon Jack]

And children will never have to do their own homework ever again. That is not that we're encouraging it. No, we're not encouraging that. But all we. All I know is that, you know, CHAT GPT has, Has put AI in the hands of individuals. So for legacy, as somebody who made AI a reality for millions of people, I. I think he'll be remembered. But his legacy, I think, is way too early in this powerful technology to see where he personally will figure in It. So I'm just going to give him a five. Oh.

[Zing Seng]

I actually disagree because I think whatever happens with the future of AI, whether or not OpenAI survives as a company and people chatgpt to the dustbin of history. I think when historians write the story of AI, assuming that there are historians after AI kills us all, I think ChatGPT will be one of the first things that they'll talk about.

[Simon Jack]

It'll be like the Model T Ford.

[Zing Seng]

Exactly.

[Simon Jack]

Automobile. That's a good argument. Once again, you've persuaded me to bump him up to a 7.

[Zing Seng]

I'm bumping him up from myself to an 8 out of 10 for legacy.

[Simon Jack]

Because Joe's CHAT deputy will be like the Model T of the automobile industry when it comes to AI uses. That's a really good way to put it. So you're what, eight? I'm going to go seven.

[Zing Seng]

Okay.

[Simon Jack]

So the final judgment. Judgment is Sam Altman good, bad, or just another billionaire? Shall we see what ChatGPT says?

[Zing Seng]

Yes, let's do it.

[Simon Jack]

Sam Altman's impact is multifaceted. Opinions about him vary. Here are some key points. Altman played a crucial role in nurturing numerous successful startups through his leadership at Y Combinator. As a co founder and CEO of OpenAI, he's been at the forefront of AI research and development, pushing for advancements that aim to benefit human.

[Zing Seng]

I mean, that seems slightly biased on ChatGPT's part.

[Simon Jack]

Okay. Sam Altman can be seen as a force for both positive innovation and potential ethical concerns. His contributions to technology and entrepreneurship are significant, but the broader implications of his actions and the industry he represents invite critical scrutiny.

[Zing Seng]

Right, so chatgpt's hedging.

[Simon Jack]

Hedging, yeah. Well, you know, there we go. So we've got to come off the fence.

[Zing Seng]

Okay.

[Simon Jack]

I'm going to say that it's hard not to conflate your view of him with your view of AI. Yes, right. And that might be unfair, but I think it's impossible to do it. And. And bear in mind also that he is not the person who invented artificial intelligence. People have been working on it since post war Alan Turing, people like that. Demis Habesis on Google, Deep Mind and many others. But for me, the swing factor on this one is, if he's so convinced that it's going to be a force for good, why has he stocked a bunker full of gas? Miles asks. Iodine, Antibiotics. Antibiotics. Guns. Gold. Why is he prepping for the apocalypse if he thinks it's going to be such a good thing? And that is a tension I cannot get out of my mind and unsettles me. So I'm going to say with apologies to Sam Altman, but I think ultimately that makes him a bad billionaire.

[Zing Seng]

Having said that, he also doesn't make his money. In fact, he hasn't made his billion off artificial intelligence. Intelligence. But you're right, I do think there's something a little bit odd about that tension. And, you know, just chatgpt alone. For instance, in one industry in journalism and publishing, there are now people saying they could just automate journalists out of a job just through chatgpt alone.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Seng]

I mean, and maybe we are at the beginning, the very beginnings of his story. I mean, maybe we're being a little bit foolhardy in assessing him so quickly, but I do think there is something of the bad billionaire about him.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Seng]

And I'm not just saying that because Chachi PT hedged it and said he was just another billionaire.

[Simon Jack]

On the other hand, he's not the inventor of artificial intelligence. He's an investor in technology who ended up as the chief executive of a company which is in the forefront of developing AI, which is different. He's not the evil genius who's kind of plotting the downfall of humanity. He's running a company which has a lot of power and has made huge strides. So I still think that tension that he's preparing for disaster when he tells everyone else it's going to be all right is like the pilot on an airplane jumping out with the last parachute, saying it's all so he just creeps into bad territory.

[Zing Seng]

But only just in Sam Altman's defense. Maybe prepping for the apocalypse is sort of a billionaire version of building a fire escape.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, but a fire escape in a building is something everyone can use. I'm willing to bet there's only room for Sam Altman's nearest and dearest in his bunker. I don't think it's the same thing at all.

[Zing Seng]

Sam Altman, you are officially a bad billionaire. So who do we have?

[Simon Jack]

Next episode we have Africa's richest person, a title he's held for 30, 13 years in a row. And he's a good old fashioned industrialist.

[Zing Seng]

He's also the world's richest black billionaire.

[Simon Jack]

He's made a fortune out of cement, sugar, salt was very late to the oil refining game. He is Aliko Dangote.

[Zing Seng]

Good Bad Billionaire is a podcast from the BBC World Service. It's produced by Hannah Hufford and Mark Ward with additional production by Tamsen Currie. James Cook is the editor and it's a BBC Studios production. For BBC World Service.

[Simon Jack]

For the BBC World Service, the senior podcast producer is Kat Collins and the podcast commissioning editor is John Mannell.

[Michael Lewis]

Hey there, it's Michael Lewis, author of Going Infinite Moneyball, the Blind side and Liars Poker. On the latest season of my podcast, against the Rules, I'm exploring what it means to be a sports fan in America and what the rise of sports betting is doing to our teams, our states and ourselves. Join me and listen to against the Rules on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search against the Rules. Listen to against the rules on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcast.