[People in the News] Sam Altman CEO Who Sparked the AI Chatbot 'ChatGPT' Craze

Appearing as Fortune February Cover Model
MS and Musk Investment... "Not a Researcher but a Businessman"

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] Artificial intelligence (AI) and the AI chatbot 'ChatGPT' were common topics among attendees at the World Economic Forum (WEF·Davos Forum) held in Davos, Switzerland, from the 16th to the 20th (local time). The U.S. economic media Business Insider described it as "No discussion in Davos took place without AI and ChatGPT."

ChatGPT, a conversational AI, is an AI service that responds to text input in a chat window, using machine learning algorithms trained on vast amounts of data obtained from the internet. It can write at an expert level, not only composing papers but also passing the U.S. law school exam with essays written by itself. It also scored passing marks on essential exams for graduation from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, a prestigious U.S. MBA program. In the tech industry, ChatGPT, released on November 30 last year, is being evaluated as a potential standard in the AI field.

The developer of ChatGPT, OpenAI, received investment from Microsoft (MS) on the 23rd. This was the third partnership following those in 2019 and 2021. MS did not disclose the exact investment amount, but Bloomberg reported that the total investment over several years could reach $10 billion (approximately 12.3 trillion KRW).

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, featured as the cover model of the February 2023 issue of Fortune magazine in the United States (Photo by Fortune Twitter)

On the 25th, the U.S. economic magazine Fortune published an article titled "Inside ChatGPT: How OpenAI Founder Sam Altman Created the Most Noteworthy Technology in the World Alongside Microsoft's Multi-Billion Dollar Investment," revealing that CEO Sam Altman traveled to Seattle multiple times in 2019 to showcase OpenAI’s AI model to MS CEO Satya Nadella and secured the first investment. Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which created the globally spotlighted ChatGPT, became the cover model for Fortune’s February and March issues this year.

◆ 'Entrepreneur' Altman... Even Drew Investment from Musk

Altman, born in 1985, is an entrepreneur from Chicago, USA. He studied computer engineering at Stanford University but dropped out. In 2005, at age 19, he founded Loopt, a location-based social networking application, but the business failed to expand and was acquired by a venture capital (VC) firm in 2012. According to Fortune, he used this capital to enter the VC industry.

Altman gained recognition for his business skills and joined Y Combinator (YC), a world-renowned Silicon Valley accelerator known as a "startup boot camp," to succeed founder and famous venture capitalist Paul Graham in 2011. In 2014, at age 28, he was appointed president of YC and played a key role there until 2019. He was named "Top Young Entrepreneur in Technology" by BusinessWeek in 2008 and one of the top investors under 30 by Forbes in 2015.

Fortune described Altman as "an entrepreneur, not a scientist or AI researcher," noting that he is recognized for his talent in raising venture capital funds. It is reported that Altman has expressed interest in creating economic value in so-called deep tech sectors with low development probability but high potential, such as nuclear fusion and quantum computing.

A photo posted by CEO Sam Altman on his Twitter on the 5th, with the caption "The first day of OpenAI, 7 years ago today." (Photo by CEO Sam Altman)

Altman’s business acumen was also demonstrated in the founding of OpenAI in 2015. According to Fortune, in July 2015, then YC president Altman hosted a dinner at a hotel. Fortune reported, "The purpose of this dinner was to discuss creating competitors to prevent Google, which had acquired AI company DeepMind in 2014, from monopolizing artificial general intelligence (AGI) with human-like intelligence." Subsequently, Altman explicitly set the goal of democratizing the benefits of advanced AI by establishing the nonprofit organization OpenAI.

The name OpenAI implies the organization’s commitment to conducting related research and publicly releasing the technology to ensure transparency, according to foreign media. The 2015 hotel dinner was attended by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and many AI industry experts. Musk, along with Peter Thiel, president of Clarium Capital, and Reid Hoffman, chairman of LinkedIn, invested in OpenAI. Altman, as YC president, led OpenAI’s founding and devoted effort to laying the company’s foundation in its early stages. He became OpenAI’s CEO only in May 2019.

◆ 'Cautious Mode' on ChatGPT Issues... "Ultimately Adapting to AI"

Altman has recently shown a "cautious mode" regarding the attention focused on ChatGPT. At a VC event held in San Francisco on the 12th, despite rumors of additional MS investment, he appeared to try not to get excited, Fortune reported. According to the report, he said at the event, "One strange thing about this technology is that it is impressive but not robust. When you first use the demo version, it’s amazing, but after 100 uses, you will eventually see its weaknesses."

Introducing ChatGPT on the OpenAI homepage (Photo by OpenAI homepage)

He stated that he is currently addressing issues arising from ChatGPT. According to Business Insider, in an interview with StrictlyVC on the 18th, he said they would develop a way to detect a kind of "AI plagiarism" when GPT systems are used to write school assignments. This statement came after students and teachers in New York, Seattle, and other places banned ChatGPT use. Foreign media also reported that some universities in Australia reverted to the old method of having students write answers on paper under proctor supervision during exams to block ChatGPT use.

However, he emphasized that while they plan to experiment with watermarking technology to prevent AI plagiarism, schools and others should not rely solely on such tools. He believes that the world needs to adapt to and utilize AI in learning. He added that there will be technological improvements related to preventing unintended consequences caused by AI in the future.

Altman also predicted regarding AI-infused daily life that the "best-case scenario" would be "incredible abundance and systems that can solve deadlocked problems or improve reality." However, he expressed concern about misuse in the short term, saying, "It is impossible to overstate the importance of AI safety," and added, "I want to see more things happen."