Sam Altman is leading us into the future with OpenAI
pic.twitter.com/wKMRZID2QgIn 2019, Altman told Queerty that he’d been dreaming of working on a project like OpenAI since he was a freshman in college.“I don’t know exactly how AI is going to play out,” Altman said. “But I think some version of it is maximizing human potential and minimizing human suffering.
When you have an agent that you can ask to do anything, and as long as it doesn’t harm or impede somebody else’s free will, it will do that: that’s an incredible superpower.”Part of Altman’s passion for technology came from discovering the magic of the internet while in elementary school, he said, something he has in common with plenty of queer folks.“A lot of LGBTQ people had experiences like I had, like the internet was really formative for us,” Altman said. “I met many of my friends and I learned way more on the internet than I ever learned in school, I think.”The internet was also where Altman first came out as gay. “I remember like it was yesterday, with such clarity, the first time I told people online.
I was 12,” he recalled. “And what a terrifying but electrifying thing that just sort of cemented the power of the internet to me, because I never could have told people in person.
It was just outside the realm of possibility. But I found this community as a very young teenager, and that was awesome. I will be forever grateful to the internet as this abstract concept for that.
