The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future
by
Keach Hagey
Published 19 May 2025
It just seemed like magic,” he said. That July, he delivered the opening talk at Allen & Company’s Sun Valley conference, speaking about the hands-on approach he brought to running Airbnb. His mentor, Paul Graham, years later turned a subsequent speech by Chesky about that approach into a viral meme with an essay titled “Founder Mode.” Afterwards, as the pink sunset gave way to a star-flooded Idaho sky, Chesky gathered at a picnic table with Altman, Pichai, and a few other tech CEOs to debrief. Altman said he’d love to talk to Chesky more about how to run a company. Chesky said he’d love to talk to Altman more about the implications of DALL-E.
…
Louis, 26, 53 Delicious (website), 75 Deming, Peter, 59–60, 64 democracy, 152–53, 225 Democratic Party, 21, 204, 207–8, 234, 296 Deployment Safety Board (DSB), 279–80, 287 Deshpande, Alok, 58–61, 64, 76, 85, 89, 102, 111, 127 Deshpande, Sheila, 58, 91 Desmond-Hellmann, Sue, 303 Deutsch, David, 314–15 Dewey, John, 45 deworming charities, 211, 213 Diamandis, Peter, 144, 210 diffusion model trained by adding digital “noise,” 262–63 Digital Chocolate mobile gaming company, 97 Diller, Barry, 229 Ditton, Andy, 34–35 DJ Kay Slay, 102 DJI drones, 231 DLA Piper lobbying firm, 300 DNNresearch, 182 Doblet phone-charging startup, 149, 177 Dodgeball location-based app, 104, 105, 118 Donahue, Nick, 260–61 Dota 2 (video game), 215–18, 221–22, 242, 284 dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, 73, 87, 93 Dowling, Steve, 287 Dropbox, 123, 139, 150, 152, 157, 158–59, 247 drop-outs, tech bros as mostly, 62, 88, 91–92, 96, 108, 113, 124, 132, 175, 179, 217–18 Dubai, 274 eBay, 82, 168 economic growth democracy and, 152–53, 225 dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, 73, 87, 93 financial crisis of 2008, 4, 116–17, 131, 137, 150 as a kind of spiritual hack, 153 real wages, 132 Edge web browser, 272 Edison, Thomas, 46 effective altruism, 2, 4, 6 189–214, 224, 265–66, 276, 300 “bed nets” era of, 212 deworming charities, 211, 213 GreaterWrong forum, 301 Open Philanthropy Project, 213–14, 241, 266–67, 276–77, 299–301 see also AI safety Effective Ventures, 276 Efficient Market Hypothesis, 144 Eichler, Mike, 30, 40 80,000 Hours, 211–12 Elbaz, Gil, 243 Electronic Arts, 97 Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 59, 98 energy production, 13, 134, 231, 280, 313–14 nuclear energy, 12–13, 57, 108, 134–36, 154, 177, 205, 230, 259, 280 solar energy, 28 see also compute Enigma machine, 139 Enlightenment, 314–15 Enron, 60 esports, 215–16 Evans, Jon, 142 Extropians, 141–42, 144–45, 164–65, 199, 214 Fabolous (DJ), 102 Facebook, 60, 63, 73, 79–80, 96, 101, 116–17, 123, 127, 131, 137, 161, 169, 184, 188, 204, 207–8, 229 fact-checking, 265 Fairchild Semiconductor, 72, 87 fake news, 265 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 59, 106 Federal Trade Commission, 285 Feldman, Ellen, 173 Fellow Robots robotics company, 210 Fermi’s paradox, 170 “few shot” learning, 244 “Feynman method of being a genius,” 219 Filan, Daniel, 305 financial crisis of 2008, 4, 116–17, 131, 137, 150 “finding product-market fit,” 107, 156 “finding your tribe,” 157 Finney, Hal, 142 Firefox web browser, 63 Flexport logistics platform, 138 Florida, 40 “Flowers for Algernon” (Keyes), 140 Foo Camp, 63 Forbes (magazine), 257 Foreign Affairs (journal), 267 Foresight Institute, a technology think tank, 144 Forstall, Scott, 112, 114, 116 “Founder Mode” (Graham), 263 founders as kings, 6, 60, 65, 68, 70–75, 95 Founders at Work (Livingston), 63, 64 Founders Fund venture firm, 2, 6, 132, 139, 147, 226 Foursquare, 118–20, 126 Francis, Peggy, 32, 36 “Free Oceana,” 141 Freemasonry, 31 Fridman, Lex, 17, 304 Friend, Tad, 201 From Zero to One (Thiel and Masters), 132, 230 frontier in American history, 153 FroSoCo (short for Freshman Sophomore College), 55, 57 FTX crypto market, 212, 257 Furstenberg, Diane von, 229 Future of Humanity Institute, 5, 165–66, 241–42, 267 Future of Life conference, Puerto Rico (2015), 167–70, 207, 211 Future of Life Institute, 145, 168, 208–9, 272 Galef, Julia, 225 Galois, Évariste, 174 game theory, 166, 285 Gates, Bill, 65, 90, 212, 216, 267–68 Gates, Melinda, 212 Gauss, Carl Friedrich, 174 Gawker Media, 137, 204–5 gay marriage rights, 56, 296 Gay Straight Alliance, 52 Gaza, war in, 289 GE (General Electric), 210 Gebbia, Joe, 263 Gebru, Timnit, 252–53, 270–71 Gemini AI model, 307 general artificial intelligence (AGI), see AI (artificial intelligence) generative AI, 1, 3, 9, 219, 221, 270 generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs), 3, 221, see also various GPTs under OpenAI genius, human, 77, 81, 127, 140, 156, 219 “Gentle Seduction, The” (Stiegler), 199–200 George, Henry, 256 Georgia, 23–25, 58, 104, 142 GeoSim 3D modeling company, 209–10 Germany, 274 Gibney, Bruce, 132–33 Gibstine, Connie (Sam’s mother), 15, 31–38, 39–50, 53–54, 91, 201–2, 227–28, 248–50, 261, 295, 312 Gil, Elad, 136 Gillette, 62, 71 Ginsberg, Allen, 166 Girard, René, 131 Github Copilot, 262 Gittell, Ross, 35 GiveWell, 212–13, 266 Giving Pledge, 212 Giving What We Can, 211 global positioning system (GPS) chips in mobile phones, 57–58, 99 Gmail, 123, 150, 286–87 Go (game), 191–92, 216–17 “godfathers of AI,” 188, 312 Goertzel, Ben, 145 Goetz, Jim, 88 Goldman Sachs, 59, 64, 150, 225 Good Ventures foundation, 212–13 Google AdSense, 243 Alphabet, 194, 271 “Attention Is All You Need” (“the transformer paper”), 218–19, 270 Bard conversational model, 271 Chrome web browser, 272 DeepMind acquisition, 146–48, 154, 165, 168–69, 171–72, 184, 189–94, 208, 211, 217, 221, 270 Dodgeball location-based app acquisition, 104, 105, 118, 104 Gemini AI model, 307 Gmail, 123, 150, 286–87 recent initial public offering (IPO) of, 87 YouTube acquisition, 93–94 see also Anthropic Google assistant, 271 Google Brain, 82, 169, 184, 243, 270 Google Colab Notebook, 247 Google I/O annual developer conference, 307 Google Maps, 59 Google Search, 270 Gordon-Levitt, Joseph, 210, 225 GotNews (website), 204 GPTs (generative pre-trained transformers), see chatbots; various GPTs under OpenAI Graham, Paul, 3, 13–16, 62–65, 67–76, 81–82, 94, 136, 149, 151, 186, 263 “A Unified Theory of VC Suckage,” 72–73 “Collison installation,” 246 “Founder Mode,” 263 “How to Start a Startup,” 69–70 painting’s influence on, 67–69 see also Y Combinator (YC) graphical user interfaces, 195 graphics processing units (GPUs), 176, 181–82, 219, 247, 255 Gras, Mike, 249 GreaterWrong forum, 301 Green Dot prepaid debit card company, 126–27, 133 Green-Lowe, Jason, 301–2 Grey, Aubrey de, 144, 259 Groom, Lachy, 151–52, 154, 157 Gross, Daniel, 309 Groupon, 119, 116 Guardian, The (newspaper), 220 Gurevich, Mikhail, 77, 82 Gurson, Doktor, 149, 177 Hacker News message board, 132, 151 hackers/hacking, 3, 57, 63, 68–70, 160n, 162 Haffner & Gibstine Real Estate, 32 Halcyon Molecular, 257–59 Hall, Ed, 26 Halo 3 (video game), 95, 109 ham radios, 32–33, 48 Hanson, Robin, 141–42, 144 Harder, Josh, 207 “hardware strategy, the,” 226, see also compute Harris, Kamala, 273, 313 Harris, Sylvia, 24–25 Hartford Courant (newspaper), 28 Hartford, CT, 28–29 Hartford Institute of Criminal and Social Justice, 28 Hartmann, Frank, 28–29 Harvard Computer Society, 69 Hassabis, Demis, 145–47, 169, 171–72, 192, 209 Hassenfeld, Elie, 212 Hawaii, 227, 250, 260, 295, 311–12 Hawking, Stephen, 169, 211 Hawkins, Trip, 97 HBO’s Silicon Valley, 101, 258–59 HBO’s Westworld, 199 heads, frozen, 141 Health Extension Foundation, 258 Helion Energy nuclear fusion startup, 13, 136, 207, 259, 280, 298 Helo telepresence robot, 210 Her (film), 307 Herzog, Isaac, 274 Hill, Daniel, 165 Hilton, Jacob, 265 Hinduism, 17 Hinton, Geoff, 178–84, 188, 266, 312–13 hip-hop, 102 Hipmunk travel search company, 162 HIV/AIDS, 33, 43, 49 Hoffman, Reid, 109, 172, 223, 231, 234–35, 277, 296 Hogan, Hulk, 205 Holocaust, attempted analogies to the, 135 Homejoy, 195 Horizon Institute for Public Service, 301 housing, see affordable housing Houston, Drew, 157 “How to Start a Startup” (Graham), 69–70 Howard, James, 110–11 Howl (Ginsberg), 166 Huffman, Steve, 69–70, 75, 76–78, 81, 162–63 Hui, Fan, 192 Human Advancement Research Community (HARC), 195, 197–98, 236 humans in a democratic society, 135 human genius, 77, 81, 127, 140, 156, 219 human-computer interfaces, 210 learning to truly produce knowledge, 314 neuroscience and studying the human brain, 145–48, 202 “only good for hugs or sex,” 269 their brains as the original neural nets, 181 see also chatbots Hunnewell, H.
…
Louis, 26, 53 Delicious (website), 75 Deming, Peter, 59–60, 64 democracy, 152–53, 225 Democratic Party, 21, 204, 207–8, 234, 296 Deployment Safety Board (DSB), 279–80, 287 Deshpande, Alok, 58–61, 64, 76, 85, 89, 102, 111, 127 Deshpande, Sheila, 58, 91 Desmond-Hellmann, Sue, 303 Deutsch, David, 314–15 Dewey, John, 45 deworming charities, 211, 213 Diamandis, Peter, 144, 210 diffusion model trained by adding digital “noise,” 262–63 Digital Chocolate mobile gaming company, 97 Diller, Barry, 229 Ditton, Andy, 34–35 DJ Kay Slay, 102 DJI drones, 231 DLA Piper lobbying firm, 300 DNNresearch, 182 Doblet phone-charging startup, 149, 177 Dodgeball location-based app, 104, 105, 118 Donahue, Nick, 260–61 Dota 2 (video game), 215–18, 221–22, 242, 284 dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, 73, 87, 93 Dowling, Steve, 287 Dropbox, 123, 139, 150, 152, 157, 158–59, 247 drop-outs, tech bros as mostly, 62, 88, 91–92, 96, 108, 113, 124, 132, 175, 179, 217–18 Dubai, 274 eBay, 82, 168 economic growth democracy and, 152–53, 225 dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, 73, 87, 93 financial crisis of 2008, 4, 116–17, 131, 137, 150 as a kind of spiritual hack, 153 real wages, 132 Edge web browser, 272 Edison, Thomas, 46 effective altruism, 2, 4, 6 189–214, 224, 265–66, 276, 300 “bed nets” era of, 212 deworming charities, 211, 213 GreaterWrong forum, 301 Open Philanthropy Project, 213–14, 241, 266–67, 276–77, 299–301 see also AI safety Effective Ventures, 276 Efficient Market Hypothesis, 144 Eichler, Mike, 30, 40 80,000 Hours, 211–12 Elbaz, Gil, 243 Electronic Arts, 97 Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 59, 98 energy production, 13, 134, 231, 280, 313–14 nuclear energy, 12–13, 57, 108, 134–36, 154, 177, 205, 230, 259, 280 solar energy, 28 see also compute Enigma machine, 139 Enlightenment, 314–15 Enron, 60 esports, 215–16 Evans, Jon, 142 Extropians, 141–42, 144–45, 164–65, 199, 214 Fabolous (DJ), 102 Facebook, 60, 63, 73, 79–80, 96, 101, 116–17, 123, 127, 131, 137, 161, 169, 184, 188, 204, 207–8, 229 fact-checking, 265 Fairchild Semiconductor, 72, 87 fake news, 265 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 59, 106 Federal Trade Commission, 285 Feldman, Ellen, 173 Fellow Robots robotics company, 210 Fermi’s paradox, 170 “few shot” learning, 244 “Feynman method of being a genius,” 219 Filan, Daniel, 305 financial crisis of 2008, 4, 116–17, 131, 137, 150 “finding product-market fit,” 107, 156 “finding your tribe,” 157 Finney, Hal, 142 Firefox web browser, 63 Flexport logistics platform, 138 Florida, 40 “Flowers for Algernon” (Keyes), 140 Foo Camp, 63 Forbes (magazine), 257 Foreign Affairs (journal), 267 Foresight Institute, a technology think tank, 144 Forstall, Scott, 112, 114, 116 “Founder Mode” (Graham), 263 founders as kings, 6, 60, 65, 68, 70–75, 95 Founders at Work (Livingston), 63, 64 Founders Fund venture firm, 2, 6, 132, 139, 147, 226 Foursquare, 118–20, 126 Francis, Peggy, 32, 36 “Free Oceana,” 141 Freemasonry, 31 Fridman, Lex, 17, 304 Friend, Tad, 201 From Zero to One (Thiel and Masters), 132, 230 frontier in American history, 153 FroSoCo (short for Freshman Sophomore College), 55, 57 FTX crypto market, 212, 257 Furstenberg, Diane von, 229 Future of Humanity Institute, 5, 165–66, 241–42, 267 Future of Life conference, Puerto Rico (2015), 167–70, 207, 211 Future of Life Institute, 145, 168, 208–9, 272 Galef, Julia, 225 Galois, Évariste, 174 game theory, 166, 285 Gates, Bill, 65, 90, 212, 216, 267–68 Gates, Melinda, 212 Gauss, Carl Friedrich, 174 Gawker Media, 137, 204–5 gay marriage rights, 56, 296 Gay Straight Alliance, 52 Gaza, war in, 289 GE (General Electric), 210 Gebbia, Joe, 263 Gebru, Timnit, 252–53, 270–71 Gemini AI model, 307 general artificial intelligence (AGI), see AI (artificial intelligence) generative AI, 1, 3, 9, 219, 221, 270 generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs), 3, 221, see also various GPTs under OpenAI genius, human, 77, 81, 127, 140, 156, 219 “Gentle Seduction, The” (Stiegler), 199–200 George, Henry, 256 Georgia, 23–25, 58, 104, 142 GeoSim 3D modeling company, 209–10 Germany, 274 Gibney, Bruce, 132–33 Gibstine, Connie (Sam’s mother), 15, 31–38, 39–50, 53–54, 91, 201–2, 227–28, 248–50, 261, 295, 312 Gil, Elad, 136 Gillette, 62, 71 Ginsberg, Allen, 166 Girard, René, 131 Github Copilot, 262 Gittell, Ross, 35 GiveWell, 212–13, 266 Giving Pledge, 212 Giving What We Can, 211 global positioning system (GPS) chips in mobile phones, 57–58, 99 Gmail, 123, 150, 286–87 Go (game), 191–92, 216–17 “godfathers of AI,” 188, 312 Goertzel, Ben, 145 Goetz, Jim, 88 Goldman Sachs, 59, 64, 150, 225 Good Ventures foundation, 212–13 Google AdSense, 243 Alphabet, 194, 271 “Attention Is All You Need” (“the transformer paper”), 218–19, 270 Bard conversational model, 271 Chrome web browser, 272 DeepMind acquisition, 146–48, 154, 165, 168–69, 171–72, 184, 189–94, 208, 211, 217, 221, 270 Dodgeball location-based app acquisition, 104, 105, 118, 104 Gemini AI model, 307 Gmail, 123, 150, 286–87 recent initial public offering (IPO) of, 87 YouTube acquisition, 93–94 see also Anthropic Google assistant, 271 Google Brain, 82, 169, 184, 243, 270 Google Colab Notebook, 247 Google I/O annual developer conference, 307 Google Maps, 59 Google Search, 270 Gordon-Levitt, Joseph, 210, 225 GotNews (website), 204 GPTs (generative pre-trained transformers), see chatbots; various GPTs under OpenAI Graham, Paul, 3, 13–16, 62–65, 67–76, 81–82, 94, 136, 149, 151, 186, 263 “A Unified Theory of VC Suckage,” 72–73 “Collison installation,” 246 “Founder Mode,” 263 “How to Start a Startup,” 69–70 painting’s influence on, 67–69 see also Y Combinator (YC) graphical user interfaces, 195 graphics processing units (GPUs), 176, 181–82, 219, 247, 255 Gras, Mike, 249 GreaterWrong forum, 301 Green Dot prepaid debit card company, 126–27, 133 Green-Lowe, Jason, 301–2 Grey, Aubrey de, 144, 259 Groom, Lachy, 151–52, 154, 157 Gross, Daniel, 309 Groupon, 119, 116 Guardian, The (newspaper), 220 Gurevich, Mikhail, 77, 82 Gurson, Doktor, 149, 177 Hacker News message board, 132, 151 hackers/hacking, 3, 57, 63, 68–70, 160n, 162 Haffner & Gibstine Real Estate, 32 Halcyon Molecular, 257–59 Hall, Ed, 26 Halo 3 (video game), 95, 109 ham radios, 32–33, 48 Hanson, Robin, 141–42, 144 Harder, Josh, 207 “hardware strategy, the,” 226, see also compute Harris, Kamala, 273, 313 Harris, Sylvia, 24–25 Hartford Courant (newspaper), 28 Hartford, CT, 28–29 Hartford Institute of Criminal and Social Justice, 28 Hartmann, Frank, 28–29 Harvard Computer Society, 69 Hassabis, Demis, 145–47, 169, 171–72, 192, 209 Hassenfeld, Elie, 212 Hawaii, 227, 250, 260, 295, 311–12 Hawking, Stephen, 169, 211 Hawkins, Trip, 97 HBO’s Silicon Valley, 101, 258–59 HBO’s Westworld, 199 heads, frozen, 141 Health Extension Foundation, 258 Helion Energy nuclear fusion startup, 13, 136, 207, 259, 280, 298 Helo telepresence robot, 210 Her (film), 307 Herzog, Isaac, 274 Hill, Daniel, 165 Hilton, Jacob, 265 Hinduism, 17 Hinton, Geoff, 178–84, 188, 266, 312–13 hip-hop, 102 Hipmunk travel search company, 162 HIV/AIDS, 33, 43, 49 Hoffman, Reid, 109, 172, 223, 231, 234–35, 277, 296 Hogan, Hulk, 205 Holocaust, attempted analogies to the, 135 Homejoy, 195 Horizon Institute for Public Service, 301 housing, see affordable housing Houston, Drew, 157 “How to Start a Startup” (Graham), 69–70 Howard, James, 110–11 Howl (Ginsberg), 166 Huffman, Steve, 69–70, 75, 76–78, 81, 162–63 Hui, Fan, 192 Human Advancement Research Community (HARC), 195, 197–98, 236 humans in a democratic society, 135 human genius, 77, 81, 127, 140, 156, 219 human-computer interfaces, 210 learning to truly produce knowledge, 314 neuroscience and studying the human brain, 145–48, 202 “only good for hugs or sex,” 269 their brains as the original neural nets, 181 see also chatbots Hunnewell, H.