Examining Altman’s statements over time reveals just how much his outlook has powered today’s AI boom. Even amongst Silicon Valley’s many hypesters, he’s been especially willing to discuss open questions—whether large language models contain the ingredients of human thought, whether language may also produce intelligence—as in the event that they were already answered.
What he says about AI is never provable when he says it, but it surely persuades us of 1 thing: This road we’re on with AI can go somewhere either great or terrifying, and OpenAI will need epic sums to steer it toward the appropriate destination. On this sense, he’s the last word hype man.
To know how his voice has shaped our understanding of what AI can do, we read almost every thing he’s ever said in regards to the technology (we requested an interview with Altman, but he was not made available).
His own words trace how we arrived here.
In conclusion …
Altman didn’t dupe the world. OpenAI has ushered in a real tech revolution, with increasingly impressive language models which have attracted hundreds of thousands of users. Even skeptics would concede that LLMs’ conversational ability is astonishing.
But Altman’s hype has at all times hinged less on today’s capabilities than on a philosophical tomorrow—an outlook that quite handily doubles as a case for more capital and friendlier regulation. Long before large language models existed, he was imagining an AI powerful enough to require wealth redistribution, just as he imagined humanity colonizing other planets. Repeatedly, guarantees of a destination—abundance, superintelligence, a healthier and wealthier world—have come first, and the evidence second.
Even when LLMs eventually hit a wall, there’s little reason to think his faith in a techno-utopian future will falter. The vision was never really in regards to the particulars of the present model anyway.
