Explained: The Other Sam—How Sam Altman, founder of ChatGPT, WorldCoin is the next tech wunderkind
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Sam Bankman-Fried triggered a crypto crisis in the US last November which effectively vapourised his wealth worth billions within weeks and landed him in a tight spot. But here is the story of the other Sam, whose AI revolution has taken the world by storm and who is being touted as the king of the Artificial Intelligence
Two American Sams have dominated global headlines over the past few months. On one hand, we had FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, who went from being America’s crypto king to an alleged fraudster within weeks. The 30-year-old panjandrum had all fortunes to his name, including a cryptocurrency exchange called FTX, a trading firm called Alameda Research, and massive wealth worth $15.6 billion.
The fall of Sam Bankman-Fried
But the world turned upside down for Sam Bankman-Fried or SBF within a week in November last year. A leaked balance sheet of Alameda showed the company stood on shaky financial grounds. His FTX collapsed following a ravaging crypto run, where a lot of customers rushed to withdraw their funds immediately.
FTX filed for bankruptcy and SBF’s worth came close to nothing. Sam Bankman-Fried now finds himself surrounded by legal troubles where he is accused of illegally taking $10 billion in FTX’s customers' funds for his trading firm.
The other Sam, basking in AI glory
Now, we will be talking about the other Sam of America, the face of the AI revolution which has taken the world by storm: Sam Altman of OpenAI. More than a decade old personality of Silicon Valley, Altman has established himself as the tech titan of the Artificial Intelligence space.
Sam Altman describes himself as an entrepreneur, investor and programmer. He was the president of Y Combinator and CEO of Reddit for a short period of time. He co-founded Loopt in 2005, and he is the current CEO of OpenAI, the parent company of chatbot ChatGPT.
Sam Altman: The startup Guru of America
Since the launch of ChatGPT, Sam Altman has been looking forward to aggressively expanding his tech empire, with crypto being the latest space the 38-year-old billionaire is wading into. Reports indicate that Altman is very close to raising a substantial £100 million in funding for his cryptocurrency initiative Worldcoin, founded in early 2020.
The company’s goal is “to provide a fraction of a digital token to every person worldwide.” Worldcoin, a tech-savvy company, is believed to have employed iris-scanning technology to authenticate individuals and reward them with tokens.
After all, Sam Altman is called the startup Guru for a reason.
While Altman was at Y Combinator (YC), the company helped launch and support numerous successful startups, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, and Reddit.
He has written extensively on startups, technology, and entrepreneurship, aimed at providing guidance to aspiring founders.
Altman has made numerous investments in startups, both as an individual and through Y Combinator's funding activities. His investment portfolio includes successful companies like Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, OpenAI, and many others.
Altman's position in the startup ecosystem has allowed him to build a vast network of influential entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders.
Will Altman rein in the raging AI horse?
Having said that, it’s true that Altman is now leading one such technology even he himself knows a little about: Artificial Intelligence. Some have equated AI with a ticking time bomb and the biggest threat to humanity. Governments are calling for regulating the technology, and some have even rushed to ban it altogether.
Sam Altman also believes that the technology needs intervention by governments. "I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong...we want to be vocal about that," Altman said, adding, "We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening."
In practical terms, ChatGPT has already started impacting humanity, it is eating up jobs, it is being blamed for displaying political biases and some are even crediting the chatbot for a rise in misinformation on the internet. Now, Altman has left it for the governments to tame the disruptive technology, simply because even he himself doesn’t know the boundaries of the ramifications his product can have on humanity.
Will both Sams end up in the same boat?
OpenAI has already fallen prey to intense government scrutiny. Sam Bankman-Fried had agreed to testify before the House Financial Services Committee for his alleged fraudulent actions at FTX. On the other hand, Sam Altman has already faced Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law over the urgent need to regulate Artificial Intelligence.
Watch: ChatGPT creator and CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman testifies in US Senate
Altman acknowledged that “his worst fears are that [the AI industry] cause significant harm to the world”. He also proposed an international AI regulation authority, which would be obviously led by the US. But lawmakers continue to call AI “a bull in a China shop.”
It means that the future of AI and its leaders like Sam Altman hangs in balance as regulatory hurdles continue to pile up. The stakes are high since the future of humanity appears closely tied to the future of AI. Altman may be riding high on the massive wave of the AI revolution, but a failure to overlook the impending challenges will not only inflict great harm on humanity but might also lead to a disastrous and uncontrolled evolution of the technology.