Pretty cool, huh?

But he thinks no one person should be trusted here.

He is a high-minded idealist, and at the same time, he's a ruthless capitalist.

Here's how Altman built OpenAI from a niche research lab into an $86 billion ringleader of the generative A.I.

boom, all while walking the thin line between commercial success and utopian ideals.

My worst fears are that we cause significant, we the field, the technology, the industry, cause significant harm to the world.

Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with the mission of developing A.I.

for the benefit of humanity, which is a little bit weird in Silicon Valley.

That benefit of humanity mandate means a couple things.

This technology is really consequential.

If it's misused, it could have really disastrous consequences.

They felt that Google had a monopoly around the research of the technology, and so they really wanted OpenAI to be this alternative.

In a statement, Google said that it is proud of the deep investments we've made in research, but that it recognizes the many contributions to A.I.

that came from researchers in academia and tech companies large and small.

Already, people are grappling with what's at stake here, and I think the better angels are going to win out.

To this day, Altman talks about wanting to give away OpenAI's technology for free.

He really believes that A.I.

is a technology that should exist outside of the business realm.

But critics of the company, like OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, say that commercial success has clouded Altman's social mission.

This would be like, let's say you funded an organization to save the Amazon rainforest.

Instead, they became a lumber company and chopped down the forest and sold it for money.

I have tremendous respect for Elon.

I, you know, obviously we have some different opinions about how A.I.

should go, but I think we fundamentally agree on more than we disagree on.

What do you think you agree most about?

That getting this technology right and figuring out how to navigate the risks is super important to the future of humanity.

The way to think about the social mission is just that it's a part of the DNA of the company.

But I don't think it actively has prevented them from releasing products.

Listen to this. Very creepy.

A new artificial intelligence tool is going viral for cranking out entire essays in a matter of seconds.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022.

In just three months later in February, it saw one billion visitors.

When ChatGPT was launched, a lot of people were kind of wondering why Altman was releasing a product so quickly that he felt could potentially be misused and why he basically kickstarted this really crazy A.I.

race where all of these companies are competing against one another and basically releasing products like within days of each other.

Before releasing any new system, OpenAI conducts extensive testing.

The buzz catapulted OpenAI from a wonky research lab to an $86 billion unicorn backed by Silicon Valley giants from Microsoft.

We've been partnered with OpenAI deeply now for multiple years.

To read Hoffman and Vinod Khosla.

I think that's something that OpenAI really has had to wrestle with because their identity as a startup when they were founded is like kind of these outsiders who had this sort of heroic mission of making sure the technology was developed in the right way.

But now they're kind of the big guys on the block.

Altman shepherded OpenAI through that meteoric rise, raising his profile along the way.

The one and only person who's going to be deciding our futures.

I don't think so.

Altman cultivated this relationship with Microsoft and basically convinced Satya Nadella to pour billions and billions of dollars into what was at the time just a research project.

And I think that's Altman's superpower.

He's really good at selling a vision and getting people on board.

And he knows a lot of people with deep pockets.

News Corp., the owner of The Wall Street Journal, has also made a content licensing partnership with OpenAI.

Altman's networking superpower was built through years of building and investing in Silicon Valley.

Before he became OpenAI's CEO, he dropped out of Stanford to build the short-lived social network Looped and ran the startup incubator Y

Combinator. Whenever I've helped people for no immediate benefit and with no intention of ever getting a benefit at all, time and again in my career, it has really later benefited me a lot.

And he flexed that network during the biggest test of his leadership at OpenAI to date.

This is a stunner in some respects, Steve.

Yeah, Sam Altman is out as CEO of OpenAI.

In November 2023, OpenAI's board voted to fire him with concerns that he hadn't been consistently candid in his communications.

When ChatGPT came out November 2022, the board was not informed in advance about that.

We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter.

As part of its social mission, OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit so that the company didn't have to answer to shareholders.

It eventually launched a for-profit arm, but the nonprofit board is still in charge.

OpenAI is an unusual company, and we set it up that way because AI is an unusual technology.

But after Altman was ousted, OpenAI's employees backed him with force.

More than 90 percent threatened to leave unless he was reinstated and the board resigned.

A lot of employees really buy into his vision.

They really like working for Altman, and Altman also made them really rich.

There was also a flood of support outside the company.

From investors like Microsoft.

We really want to partner with OpenAI and we want to partner with Sam.

And so irrespective of where Sam is, he's working with Microsoft.

To other powerful Silicon Valley leaders.

And I think it just speaks to the stature that he has over this industry.

People familiar with the thinking said that some of the board of directors who ousted Altman also felt he wasn't being clear about the size and scope of his investments.

By his own estimate, Altman and his venture funds have invested in more than 400 companies.

The holdings he controls were worth more than $2.8 billion as of early 2024.

This has really been the source of his influence in Silicon Valley.

Him funding and investing in entrepreneurs, making connections with venture capitalists.

Altman's personal portfolio includes large stakes in companies like Reddit, which announced a partnership with OpenAI in May.

He's kind of starting to really personally benefit from the AI boom.

And it's particularly interesting because he doesn't own a stake in OpenAI.

He's talked about not wanting to own a stake because he doesn't want those financial incentives to influence his commitment to developing AI for the benefit of humanity.

In a statement, OpenAI board chair Brett Taylor said, we carefully manage any potential conflicts and always put OpenAI and our mission first.

He added that Altman has consistently followed policies and been transparent about his investments.

Altman was reinstated as CEO after a turbulent five days and began an overhaul of the board.

The company is reexamining its governance structure, but hasn't announced any changes.

But OpenAI moved on quickly, releasing demos of big products like text-to-video generator Sora and GPT-4.0, a model that includes a voice assistant.

Hey, ChatGPT, how are you doing?

I'm doing fantastic.

Thanks for asking.

But not everyone is pleased with how the products have been rolled out.

Actress Scarlett Johansson publicly criticized OpenAI for using a voice that sounded similar to hers for GPT-4.0.

After she told Altman she wasn't interested.

It really speaks to this broader question of trust and safety, right, and OpenAI's social mission.

In a statement, Altman said that the voice is not Scarlett Johansson's and it was never intended to resemble hers.

The company is also pausing the use of the voice.

But I think more broadly, yeah, the cat's out of the bag.

I mean, people see billions, if not trillions of dollars in this sector.

And I think OpenAI is very much there.

I mean, they want to win this business battle.

And that race now has more players than it did when OpenAI began.

It's really quite astonishing how a technology that was really just housed in research labs across universities and big tech companies has like turned into a thing that is boosting the S&P 500.

All of that stuff was started by Altman and his very intentional decision to show the world what this technology is capable of.

So Altman and OpenAI are trying to stay on top of the exploding field at the same time that they're trying to convince the public to trust them. And there is a place in history at stake, too.

There's not another company in Silicon Valley that's facing as much scrutiny and competition as OpenAI.

So if they're able to come out on top, I think Altman could be seen as one of the visionary tech CEOs of the AI era.

And if he doesn't, he won't be seen as that.

He might be seen as something else.